sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bone Wars, Bone Wars (book), Dippy, Dippy (London), Dippy (statue), Forbes Avenue

THE MAN WHO BROUGHT TO .

20 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | WINTER 2001-02 ne afternoon inAugust 1899, a farm wagon rattled Then on August 9, back at the main camp, Holland suffered a along a rocky track north of Medicine Bow, Wyo. sudden attack of appendicitis. He had to get back toMedicine Bow It was a warm day: sparse grass and sagebrush and medical help as fast as he could. The only problem was the stretched in all directions, and mountains rimmed driver, who was unaccustomed to being bossed around by an the northern and eastern horizons. Here and there, eastern patrician witha large mustache and well-made clothes. the tan landscape was relieved by a meandering After returning to Pittsburgh, Holland was well enough to write arroyo full of green grass. It had been a wetter year than most. his chief paleontologist, still incamp: AMr.S. Sage drove from the wagon seat, while inback, eyes closed I believe [Sage] to be a man utterly unworthy, and I and his face twisted, lay , director of the may say the same thing of Hoggshedd, who turned up four-year-old Carnegie Museum of Natural History. at the railroad station on Friday morning to bid me He was a man who was used to command, and the helplessness good-by, almost too drunk to stand straight. He was of this situation tortured him as they jolted along. According to full as a tick. This man, Iunderstand, has applied to an account he wrote to the supervisor of the museum's field you for work, and would liketo be permanently in our operations in Montana, Holland politely asked Sage to drive a employment. Do not employ him. Iam satisfied that littlefaster. Inreply, he is a bad egg. At all events he is not the kind of man ... Ireceived from him a volley of oaths, he informing we wish to have any dealings with, and Iam very sorry me that he was doing the driving and guessed he to have introduced either of these men to your atten- knew how to do it better than Idid. Iallude to this cir- tion and by employing them myself to have given color cumstance because in view of the facts his conduct to the belief that I approve of them, which Ido not. was simply brutal, and Ido not wish the man to be Verbum sat. [Enough said.] 2 employed in any capacity whatever by yourself or any of our people. 1 Holland turned 51 inthe summer of 1899. He had risen steadily inhis career through ambition, hard work, a habit of command, Holland wasn't used to having his commands disputed. He and good social connections. After he died in 1932, more than one spent his entire working life in charge of institutions, and was memorialist praised Holland as a "Renaissance man," which,inhis never an easy man to work for. He had been in this overbearing way, he was. He was educated for the ministry, spent time for three weeks, much of it visiting the museum's new most of his career as a professional administrator, and thought of quarry on the high plains north of the little railroad himself as a naturalist. town of Medicine Bow. The bone digging was producing spec- He and his wife, Carrie Moorhead Holland, raised two sons: early Holland, a Pittsburgh banker, tacular —results. Moorhead who became successful and Everyone a laborer, a cook, three museum paleontologists, Raymond Holland, who became an artist, moved to Connecticut, a couple young men come along appears to parents worry and of who'd— withHolland from and have caused his considerable Pittsburgh for a summer outing was exhilarated by clear air and far into their old age. camp life. There had been lively visits from a group of American Of the connections outside his family, Holland seems to have Museum of Natural History paleontologists, also digging for valued his friendship with the most. A tone of dinosaurs just 10 miles away. And the final week of the stay, command underlies nearly allHolland's correspondence, withone Holland,a cook, and the two young men had gone to the mountains important exception; when he wrote Carnegie, he was extremely ; tocamp, fish,and collect animal skins and butterflies for the museum. eager toplease.

I, WILLIAM HOLLAND 21 Building crates at William Holland was born in 1848 in Jamaica, where his Carnegie saw in Holland a lieutenant ,„ sheep Cre(jk 18g9 parents were missionaries inthe Moravian Church. He grew up in whose loyalty would be permanent, and to transport dinosaur North Carolina and Bethlehem, Pa., then graduated from Amherst Holland found in Carnegie a patron bones -back to Pitts- College inMassachusetts. Early on, he had a love for the natural who would open doors to influence burBh From left: WillieReed, Jacob world, especially insects. In 1874, he graduated from Princeton and power. Wortman, Paul Miller, Hebrew, 1886, , Theological Seminary, where he added a knowledge of In Holland became a trustee of and wi||ie s father Chaldean, and Arabic to the Greek and Latin he had already the Western University of Pennsylvania, William H. Reed. The learned as an adolescent. 3 Eventually he learned French, Spanish, then located in the city of Allegheny, bones were wrapped in and German as well. now Pittsburgh's North Side. In1891, he P^ter-soaked . . burlap, then packed in Holland was hired as the pastor at the Bellefield Presbyterian left the clergyo/ to become university' hay in the crates. in Pittsburgh, at chancellor, top executive. His Church the bell tower of which still stands— the social the corner of Fifth and Bellefield avenues, in a connections made him an effective fashionable church ina newlyfashionable part of the city.Church fund-raiser at a time when demand for the university's services connections enabled him to meet and marry the daughter ofJohn was growing fast. Enrollment grew from about 100 students when Moorhead, an ironmanufacturer. The Hollands' house stillstands Holland took over to more than 800 by 1899. 5 on the other corner of Fifth and Bellefield, and now houses the Meanwhile, Andrew Carnegie had offered tobuild a library for Universityof Pittsburgh's music department. Pittsburgh ifthe city would maintain it.City officials resisted for years until Carnegie upped his contribution to $1 million. The the 1880s, the Hollands began spending time in the increased funds also allowed a much larger building withroom for summers at the Mountain House, an inn at Cresson, Pa., on art galleries, a lecture hall, a music hall, and a natural history Inthe Pennsylvania Railroad at the crest of the Allegheny museum. Carnegie purchased 19 acres in Oakland from Mary Mountains. Sometimes they found themselves dining at a table Schenley for what would become the Carnegie Institute. The next to one occupied by Andrew Carnegie and his mother, who, building's foundation was finished in 1892, the year ofthe bloody though they had moved from Pittsburgh to New York many Homestead Strike. Construction continued, despite angry and years before, kept a summer house nearby. widespread opposition from workers appalled that the city would The twomen became friends, despite their differences; one an accept a giftfrom the man who owned the Homestead mill.6 ambitious young clergyman, the other, 13 years his senior, a Carnegie Institute opened late in 1895, withHolland serving on multimillionaire industrialist. They took walks in the woods, and some of its boards. He became its director inMarch 1898, while Holland taught the older man the names of plants and birds.4 retaining his university chancellorship. As his career advanced,

22 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | WINTER 2001-02

r\

The crew from New York's American Museum of Natural History visits the Carnegie Museum of Natural History crew at Camp Carnegie, 1899. Standing left to right: William DillerMatthew (AMNH), (AMNH), (AMNH), WilliamJacob Holland (CMNH), Jacob Wortman (CMNH), and William H. Reed (CMNH). Seated: Walter Granger (AMNH), George Mellor (CMNH), Ira Schallenberger (CMNH), and Arthur Coggeshall (CMNH).

t

s s s I o

Holland stillmade time for his intellectual pursuits. Through the By 1895, America's natural history museums had not done 1880s, he published articles on , , and ento- much in the way of displaying dinosaurs. Marsh had a huge mology; in 1887, he accompanied a voyage to Japan to observe a collection on shelves, but the bones were not meant for the public solar eclipse; in 1889, he traveled to west Africa to collect moths to admire. Naturalist and sculptor Benjamin and butterflies. 7 Waterhouse Hawkins had erected a somewhat conjectural skeleton It was butterflies that he loved the most. By the mid-1890s, of a Hadrosaurus at the Academy of Natural Sciences Holland had assembled one of the world's largest collections of in 1868. Early in the 1890s, Henry Fairfield Osborn at the Lepidoptera, which he donated to the Carnegie Museum once American Museum of Natural History in New York began he began working there. In 1899, Doubleday, McClure & Co. displaying skeletons in more-or-less lifelike poses, with published Holland's Butterfly Book. It and the Moth Book, painted backgrounds, but as yet, had put up no dinosaurs. published in 1903, became standard reference works inthe field. Nothing came of Carnegie's hope for help from Marsh. But Holland had also become a dedicated amateur oil painter, when, inDecember 1898, Carnegie read ofthe discovery ofa huge trustee of a number of colleges and universities, and a business- dinosaur inWyoming, he immediately sent Holland the story from banking Post, adding margin, "My — buy man withinterests in and real estate. And he'd become the New York — inthe Lord cant you — wealthy: requests for loans are fairly frequent in his correspon- this for Pittsburgh try.... Wyoming State University isnt rich dence: $5,000 here, $8,500 there. His debtors included Henry Oliver, get an offer —hurry AC."10 a Carnegie partner who led the steel empire into Minnesota iron Eager for a chance to please Carnegie and prove himself, mining. Others were more humble, like aninjured man witha sick Holland sprang into action. He contacted William Harlow Reed, a family who wroteinMarch 1899, to thank Holland forhis patience former buffalo hunter and railroad worker who collected about an overdue mortgage payment. Wyoming dinosaur bones forMarsh. Reed, nowa assistant The museum of the new Carnegie Institute acquired some big and fossil collector at the fledgling University of Wyoming in skeletons in the first few years after its 1895 opening, including a Laramie, had been named in the newspapers as the dinosaur's mammoth and an Irish elk. From the start, however, Andrew discoverer. But the bones, he informed Holland, were still in Carnegie had something bigger in mind. He invited his friend, the ground. And Reed was too cagey to name a price for getting of Yale, to Pittsburgh to attend the dedica- them out, despite repeated requests. Finally, frustrated, Holland tion ceremonies. Marsh, the greatest paleontologist of the day, boarded a train inMarch 1899, and traveled to Wyoming to meet presided at Yale's Peabody Museum over the greatest fossil collec- withReed. speaker's — probably Decisive, doubt, tion ofthe time. From the — dais and without insistent, without a flicker of Holland took telling Marsh beforehand Carnegie announced his hope that charge and steered events that year inwayshe was never quite able 8 — Marsh might be able to spare a few dinosaurs for Pittsburgh. to do again. He promptly hired Reed at a salary half again as

24 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY |WINTER 2001-02 high man was drawing as the bone— from the university to work for three years as HOW 700,000 POUNDS OF UTAH CAME TO THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM a field collector and fossil preparator for By Bob Batz, Jr. the Carnegie Museum. But the trustees of the University of Wyoming felt the In 1997, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Bob Batz, Jr., spent two weeks inWyoming and dinosaur was theirs. They'd even managed Utah visitingthe sites where the Carnegie Museum found many ofits dinosaur skeletons. This excerpt is adapted fromone of his articles. to use it,undug and unseen, to pry $22,000 out of the Wyoming Legislature for a new "This is where, many Utah residents would say, the Great Crime occurred," says Dan science building. Chure, motioning to an open mass grave filled with hundreds of bones. Rather than grim, Not surprisingly, the trustees were less Chure is grinning, because he is a National Park Service paleontologist, or fossil expert, than eager to deal. Holland offered them and these are dinosaur bones you can see exposed on the face of a fossil quarry at $2,000 for the dinosaur; they declined. — Dinosaur National Monument in northeastern Utah. Their recent victory at the legislature The "Great Crime" dates back nearly a century, when tons of were taken from and, certainly, the fact that Holland repre- — this and other quarries by, as Chure puts it, "that Eastern Museum" the Carnegie Museum sented one of the richest men inthe world of Natural History. "Stole" is the actual word Chure uses, but not seriously. Probably. — gave them a much higher opinion of Visitors to the Pittsburgh museum's famous Dinosaur Hall might be surprised at how its value. One trustee finally mentioned — many of the star skeletons — including the 71-foot-long hail from this the figure of $100,000. Both sides parted site. Pittsburghers who visit the national monument might be even more surprised to see indisgust. how heavy the museum's stamp remains here. In fact, "Carnegie Quarry" is what many Holland then hired Stephen Downey, still call this 150-foot-long slanted rock face, which forms one wall of the mostly-glass a well-connected Laramie lawyer with inti- visitors center. mate knowledge of state and federal land From 1909 to 1922, Carnegie Museum crews dug into the seam with picks and law,who had onlyrecently stepped down as — shovels, drills and wedges even dynamite. And they shipped to Pittsburgh 446 crates president of the university trustees. of plaster-wrapped fossils weighing 700,000 pounds. Downey pointed out that since the Early in the excavation, Carnegie Museum director William Holland contacted dinosaur lay on federal land, getting clear President Woodrow Wilson, concerned that someone might homestead on this treasure- title was only a matter of staking and trove. On Oct. 4, 1915, Wilson designated 80 acres as Dinosaur National Monument recording a claim. The university could be (expanded to 211,000 acres in 1938). bypassed entirely. Cheered, Holland left Allpossessiveness aside, Dan Chure acknowledges that Andrew Carnegie's big bucks Downeyincharge of the land question and probably were the best tool for getting a lot of these big guys out of the ground, so they headed back to Pittsburgh. He then trav- could be studied by scientists and stared at by the public. eled toNew York,where he met withphysi- "The Carnegie stopped because they'd filled up all their storage areas," says cian and paleontologist Jacob Wortman, Chure, and it's the same problem the Utah center now faces. Osborn's best field collector at the Ameri- "What we ultimately want to do is to have a big collections facility.This building is can Museum of Natural History. Holland not big enough to do all the things that need to be done." had plenty of Carnegie's money to spend, and he wanted to hire only the best. ForInformation about Dinosaur National Monument, call(801)789-2115 or visit www.nps.gov/dino In New York, Holland also met with From "The Real Jurassic Park: Carnegie's Dinosaur Hall is Filled withFossils from the Utah Site Now Carnegie, who advised him not to antago- Protected as Dinosaur National Monument," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 10, 1997. Another ofBob's articles —about the discovery ofDiplodocus carnegii at Sheep Creek, and the the university trustees, but made it — nize Carnegie's life-size statue of"" can be found at www.post-gazette.com/magazine/ 19990702dippy2.asp

WILLIAM J. HOLLAND 25 Dinosaur Hall includes carnegii, the world's longest mounted fossil skeleton.

be inclined to generosity toward the university inthe future. He was more frank ina letter to Owen, the surveyor: ...It will do the University of £> Wyoming a great deal more good to have this skeleton taken up and mounted and exhibited \u25a0 in the Museum at Pittsburg, ? where three or four hundred thousand people will see it every year, having clear he wanted the dinosaur. Holland would find the second attached to itthe label stating that itwas presented to directive easier to comply withthan the first. the museum by the University of Wyoming; than itwill Itturned out that WilliamReed had staked the wrong section of ifthey should have some bone butcher go in and grub land by mistake, the surveyor had been unable to head out inthe the thing up, as bones in their museum have been fieldand set things right,Downey was out of town, and Reed was grubbed up, and piled away in their cellar. A pile of getting cold feet about tellingthe trustees he'd taken a new job with old broken bones in the cellar of a university cannot their chief dinosaur competitor. Holland decided that onlyhis own be compared to a skeleton, skillfully exhumed from presence could clear up the mess, so he headed back to Wyoming. the matrix and set up. They have the chance of their Reed still didn't feel free to accompany him, so Holland and sur- lives now, if only they knew it....11 veyor BillyOwen traveled by railand wagon to the fossil fields of the Freezeout Mountains, about 80 miles northwest of Laramie. But events made any negotiations moot. Reed left for the field The pair had a variety of adventures, which included round- the first week in May, where he was joined a few weeks later by ing up a pile of unused telegraph poles and most of the men of Wortman and an assistant, Arthur Coggeshall, both of whom the little railroad town of Medicine Bow to build a pontoon Holland had hired away from the American Museum inNew York, bridge over the swollen Little Medicine Bow River. At the The three men went promptly to work, prospecting widely dinosaur quarry, Owen ran the lines necessary to properly in the Freezeouts. claim, men, they — describe the and the two neither with any real expe- When got to the original quarry— the one Holland and rience collecting fossils, removed the top hunk of a sauropod Owen had visited a month before they found that Reed's old femur from the ground and loaded it into the wagon. Elated, boss from the university, geology professor Wilbur Knight, had Holland headed home with the first dinosaur bone ever collected already been there. Knight had replaced the museum's claim on the for the Carnegie Museum. stake with a claim for the university, dug a 10-by-15-foot trench, Holland was by now so confident he would eventually acquire and had torn all the bones out of the ground. Wortman coolly the entire dinosaur that he was ready to make a remarkable offer, reported the mess, then let his feelings show: He wrote Otto Gramm, president of the University of Wyoming ... My judgement of the quarry as it stands today is trustees, proposing to file theland claim onbehalf ofthe university, that it is positively no good and Iwould not give 50 as there were plenty of bones for all. He didn't really mean it. He cents for the whole layout including what they have wrote Downey a few days later to say he stillexpected to get the taken out from it. There is evidence that they were dinosaur as Carnegie wanted itso badly, and urged the lawyer to gouged out in the most primitive and unskillful man- pressure the trustees to give the land back to the museum. If ner and had the quarry been everso good a one the that occurred, Holland wrote, Carnegie would almost certainly digging that was done would have decreased its value tremendously. 12

26 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY |WINTER 2001-02 But ifWortman was upset, Holland was bursting withrage: Creek, a tributary of the LittleMedicine BowRiver. There, during ... Everything apparently has turned out badly. The the first days of July, they found bone fragments scattered on the last letter, in which you inform me of what has been surface. Then Wortman spotted a line of huge vertebrae, most of done by Professor Knight, caps the climax. I had no an entire backbone, showing among the sagebrush and through idea Knight could act in such a way. After arranging to the clays. Atnearly the same moment, Reed shouted from a rise buy the land for the university, to discover that the nearby. He, too, had found bones, apparently those of an even specimen which makes it alone valuable has been larger dinosaur. 15 utterly destroyed, is a profound mortification.... We Itwas a brilliant prospect. Acrew from the American Museum, want as quicklyas possible to extricate ourselves from digging just 10 miles away,admired and envied the Carnegie crew's all relations with these people at Laramie and [from success. Holland traveled to Wyoming for a third time that year, the] President of the University down I have a very and stayed for three weeks that ended withhis aforementioned poor opinion of the whole blooming outfit: they appar- appendicitis attack. Aweek ofice packs back home didn't solve the ently do not know how to meet manly men in a manly problem; he knew, he said, how Mother Earth felt during the ice way, but are as full of littlenarrow, petty jealousies as age, "poulticed with frozen snow from the pole toLongIsland." 16 an egg is of meat.... 13 Doctors finallyresorted to surgery, and Holland nearly died. Itwas November before he wasback at work fulltime, but the illness had The same day, Holland instructed Downey to drop all efforts changed him. He remained self-important and overbearing, but to up 14 But to appeared to by Knight firm the—land claim. thanks what the ire and bile that filled him when he felt thwarted be good luck really a combination of long experience and seem not to have returned. — 17 professional skill the Carnegie bone collectors in Wyoming Holland kept his appendix as a souvenir, pickled inalcohol. found an even better dinosaur. The smaller, better dinosaur at Sheep Creek turned out tobe a In late June, unfazed by whatever it was Knight had actually Diplodocus, a genus of sauropods — the now-familiar long- done, they left the Freezeouts and began prospecting further east. necked, long-tailed, elephant-legged herbivorous dinosaurs that They came to a spot Reed had first scouted inMay, along Sheep dominated the late Jurassic period 140 million years ago. Within

WILLIAMJ HOLLAND 27 Dinner in the mess tent at "Camp Carnegie," as the men called their headquarters at Sheep Creek, Wyo., 1899. At left is WilliamHolland (with knife) and Jacob Wortman (with cup).

E |

— two years, the Diplodocus and another nearby were excavated, emperors one that in its size made a clear statement of his wrapped in burlap and plaster for protection, crated in big wealth and power. wooden boxes, and shipped back to Pittsburgh. Here, they were Holland,ever loyal, spent a large part of the next 10 years deliv- cleared from the matrix of surrounding rock and plaster, and ering the dinosaur gifts.By 1915, he and Coggeshall had delivered described and illustrated for science: an enormous amount of Diplodocus carnegii replicas, cast from the same molds, to national work ina veryshort time. museums in , , , Bologna, St. Petersburg, La After only nine months, Holland fired the highly competent Plata, , and . Ineach city,Coggeshall would spend Wortman. To replace him, , an even more many weeks overseeing the erection ofthe armature, the mounting brilliant paleontologist, was lured away from Princeton. Then in ofthe bones, and the building ofthe base, while Holland was feted spring 1900, squeezed out job, by Carnegie Hatcher and Holland Reed of his the intellectual— and social establishment. The — deciding with some justification that he was unreliable. Friction Diplodocus "Dippy"as the fossil preparators came to call it became chronic between Hatcher and Holland as well, but became the world's first celebrity dinosaur, the first dinosaur Hatcher was just enough better at avoiding confrontation that he millions ofpeople ever saw. managed to stay employed. For one thing, he had some profound questions job meanwhile, building Carnegie — scientific that he wanted to pursue, and he knew his was —the Museum was the best platform from which to do so. His sound political Holland,withAndrew Carnegie's money into an institution that sense is perhaps displayed in his decision to name the new rivaled the Smithsonian inWashington, D.C., the American Diplodocus carnegii, after the patron to whom they all Museum ofNatural History inNew York,and the Field Columbian owed their livelihoods. Museum inChicago as one of the great institutions of American Carnegie became smitten with dinosaurs in general and with science. Itwas clear by 1904, when the time came for Hatcher and his namesake inparticular. Proudly he showed KingEdward VIIof Coggeshall to mount the first Diplodocus cast for practice, that England a drawing of the skeleton when the king visited Skibo, their museum needed more space. Before the cast was shipped to Carnegie's castle in Scotland, in 1902. The king asked for a London, the only place big enough to display itwas inthe hall of Diplodocus for the . Overseeing the making of a the Pittsburgh Exposition Society, downtown. plaster replica for the kingbecame chief among Hatcher's duties Finally, in1907, after eight years of planning, construction, and for the next two years. In 1905, Holland took Coggeshall, the fossil the expenditure of $5 million,an expanded Carnegie Institute preparator, withhim to London, where they joined Carnegie for opened with much ceremony. It included more library and art the unveiling at the Natural HistoryMuseum inSouth Kensington. gallery space, a lavish new foyer for the music hall,a Hallof Sculp- press it, it,high-society ture, a Architecture, a big new The loved the scientists loved London Hall of — and —hall for dinosaurs. loved it,but Carnegie, a small, bouncy man, loved itbest of all. Diplodocus carnegii the original, not a cast went on display at Since cashing in all his steel interests in 1901, he was the richest last at its own museum. man inthe world.Nowhe had a present for kings, presidents, and Carnegie understood that science needed routine operational

WINTER 2001-02 28 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | support as well as space for public display. Each year, until his and 1915, including a large monograph on Diplodocus carnegii, death, he gave the museum $10,000 just for paleontology, over and which took up where Hatcher's descriptive work on the dinosaur above the museum's regular operating budget. The money sup- had left off. ported efforts like Wortman's and Hatcher's inWyoming, and the As always, he waded cheerfully into conflict. A number of far more spectacular finds from the Jurassic quarries at Echo Park paleontologists, including Oliver P. Hay of the Smithsonian, on the -Utah border, [see sidebar on page 25] There, in argued that Hatcher and Holland had mounted the Diplodocus all 1909, Carnegie bone collector Earl Douglass discovered a spectac- wrong, that the big sauropods instead had walked like crocodiles, ularly complete Apatosaurus in a hard sandstone layer pitched at a withknees and elbows out sideways and bellies dragging. 67-degree angle. The site eventually yielded six of the seven But Holland had a huge advantage. He had the actual bones complete Jurassic dinosaur skeletons still on display at the close by,as a cast was being prepared for the Czar. Holland directed Carnegie: Apatosaurus, , the juvenile , his assistants to try to place the legs as his opponents had illus- , Camptosaurus and . 18 trated them and see what there was to see. Nothing fit;nothing Holland, meanwhile, winding 1912, worse, was down. In he and worked. And the position—would have brought the great Coggeshall a month-long steamer trip New to cage deeper, proportionally, made from York the barrel of the dinosaur's rib — far than mouth of the River Plate, in Argentina, to see to the erection of the rib cage of any crocodile so low the animal would have yet another Diplodocus carnegii at the new national museum at needed a trough in the earth to walk forward. Holland included a LaPlata. Ayear later, Holland published a book about the journey, diagrammatic cross section. "The Diplodocus must have moved in To the River Plate and Back. He painted himself as a naturalist a groove or rut. This might account early extinction," for his "he withtime on his hands: time tonotice airborne spider webs at sea, deadpanned. "Itis physically and mentally bad to 'get in a rut.' 20 to speculate about volcanoes on the moon, to paint ocean sunsets But when Holland found himself disagreeing with scientists from the steamer deck. He's fond as ever ofhis own turns ofphrase whose clout and reputation were greater than his own, he pulled but never impatient, never disappointed or betrayed, never eager, his punches. Marsh had concluded that the proper head for the never angry: a different man from the one inhis letters. He was huge sauropod Apatosaurus, first quarried at Como Bluffin 1879 reluctant, he writes at the beginning ofthe book, to undertake the and at the time stillknown as , was a large, boxy skull trip: 64 years old,he was swamped with work,poor inhealth, low which actually had turned up four miles away. The problem in spirits. He'd been on long trips is difficult, because the connection abroad at least four out ofthe previous between the top vertebra and the back sixyears. 19 ofthe skull on sauropods is weak; heads But he was overplaying his ennui. are almost never found attached to the The languorous tone of the book was neck. Marsh died in1899, but the force what people expected of a writer The Smithsonian National Museum of of his opinion continued beyond the commenting on the natural world Natural History was the first institution grave. When Osborn mounted the in the years before World War I to post online a photo of every dinosaur American Museum's Apatosaurus in changed everything. specimen on exhibit. Museum staff 1905, he followed Marsh's lead and After Hatcher had died unexpectedly plans to list the complete holdings by placed what is now known to be a in 1904, Holland added the duties of the end of 2002. The museum's com- Camarasaurus skull on the specimen. curator of paleontology to his museum prehensive Web site includes behind- Beginning in 1909, however, Earl directorship. Despite his lack of formal the-scenes photos and answers to the Douglass' diggings inUtah appeared to training in the field, Holland produced top 10 misconceptions about dinosaurs. tell a different story. By 1914, many eight scientific papers between 1905 http://www.nmnh.si.edu/paleo/dino sauropod skeletons had been excavated.

WILLIAMJ. HOLLAND 29 — narrow, time, One ofthem —witha low fore- More tired all the Holland still head and peglike teeth looked very managed to finish a new edition of The much like a larger version of a Butterfly Book. In December 1932, he Diplodocus skulland lay just 12 feet from died of a stroke. the end of the neck of a new and spec- Holland's death, and Osborn's in tacularly complete Apatosaurus. In 1915, 1935, mark the end of an era of empire Holland published a paper in which he building among American natural politely raised the flag of uncertainty: history museums. The search for speci- maybe Marsh and Osborn had been mens had become global. Dinosaur wrong, he suggested. 21 But, finally, he bones from around the world filled William J. Holland new America's most memorable dinosaur mounted— the Apatosaurus from Utah Apatosaurus louisae, named for Carnegie's wife,Louise halls: at Osborn's American Museum of Natural History in New with no head at all. York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Holland never made up his mind: the skeleton remained Peabody Museum at Yale, and of course the Carnegie Museum, all headless until after his death, when his successor took the built during the first quarter of the 20th century. Our notion of Marsh-Osborn route and attached a Camarasaurus skull. Most natural history museums as temples to science, with dinosaurs other museums followed suit, and the popular idea of a boxy- their central shrine, dates to those decades. Far into the 20th headed "Brontosaurus" has lasted right down through the century, vertebrate paleontology, and particularly dinosaur pale- decades to Barney the dinosaur and beyond. But in the 1970s, ontology, maintained a financial and political power base that paleontologists John Mclntosh ofWesleyan University and David greatly outweighed its intellectual prestige. Most life scientists by Berman of the Carnegie Museum concluded that Holland's that time had already begun to regard experimental biology, long-ago suspicions were legitimate. In 1979, they replaced the especially genetics, as the true frontier oftheir profession, not the wrong skull with the right one. erection and display ofextinct fossil vertebrates. 22 Carnegie died inAugust 1919. In1922, Holland turned 74,and Around the time of Holland's and Osborn's deaths, the Great retreated to director emeritus status at the museum. Inexchange, Depression dried up funds for paleontology expeditions, reducing he took on the duties ofpresident ofthe Carnegie Hero Fund, with paleontology's prestige. Intellectual interest indinosaurs dwindled an office in the Oliver Building in , and further. Notuntil the 1970s, withthe emergence ofnew theories of suddenly by asteroids, joined the board of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the hot-blooded dinosaurs— killed off — did huge charity into which Carnegie had moved the bulk of his for- dinosaurs' popularity and scientific respectability rise again. tune. Holland was busy as ever but, as he grew older, felt scattered The Carnegie Museum erected a new rex cast, and unsatisfied. Colds laid him low longer, travel took longer to running, tail stretched straight back, inthe front hall between the recover from,letters took much longer to answer. Music Hall foyer and the great marble stairs. And in July 1999, a Inspring 1930, he traveled with ArthurCoggeshall's brother, century after Wortman, Reed, and Coggeshall found the bones at Louis, to install a Diplodocus carnegii cast inMexico City. Ithad Sheep Creek, the museum unveiled its new, outdoor model of a taken Holland nearly three years of correspondence with full-sized, fullyfleshed Diplodocus carnegiiP The dinosaur stands Mexican officials to work out the logistics, and until the last offthe museum's northwest corner, long neck dramatically curved, minute he wasn't sure if he felt well enough to go. But he bending its gaze away from and the stoplight there. enjoyed the trip,and established a new friendship witha Mexican Holland, wholiked big things as much as Carnegie did, wouldhave lepidopterist, Carlos Hoffman. enjoyed the sight as he walked to work. ©

30 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY I WINTER 2001-02 Tom Rea grew up inPittsburgh and lives in Casper, Wyo., withhis family. Notes This article is adapted from his new book, : The Excavation 1 Holland to Wortman, Aug. 15, 1899. [CMNH an] and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie's Dinosaur, recently published by the University ofPittsburgh Press. 2 Holland to Wortman, Aug.15, 1899. [CMNH an] 3 Fleming, et. al., "WilliamJacob Holland, D.D., LLD.," and Environs, 814. Bibliography 4 Hendrick, Lifeof Andrew Carnegie, 227. Primary sources cited came from anumber ofarchives, abbreviated as follows: CLPgh = Carnegie LibraryofPittsburgh archives 5 Alberts, Pitt, 41, 50. In 1908, the school finally moved to Oakland and was renamed The CMNHan = Carnegie Museum ofNatural History annex archives . = CMNHbr Carnegie Museum ofNatural History big bone room archives 6 Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 573. HSWP = Holland papers, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania Library 7 Leighton, "WilliamJacob Holland," 347. &Archives LOC =Library of Congress microfilm 8 Holland, "Story of a Diplodocus," 683. Itwouldhave been consistent withCarnegie's meth- ods not totalk this over withMarsh before announcing itpublicly. Carnegie finessed Henry Clay joining Wall, Carnegie, Alberts, Robert C. Pitt: The Story of the University of Pittsburgh, 1787-1987 Frick into the steel business the same way.See Andrew 484. (Pittsburgh: Univ. ofPittsburgh Press, 1986). 9 Hoagland, "They Gave Lifeto Bones." Fleming, George Thornton et. al., eds., History Pittsburgh and Environs of 1" New YorkPost, December 1, 1898. Carnegie often addressed Holland as "MyLordChancel- (New York: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1922). lor"or "MyLord." On Dec. 11, 1898, the New YorkJournal and Advertiser, a Hearst paper, Huge, Huge." Gangewere, Robert Jay. "This is Really Carnegie Magazine devoted an entire page tothe discovery under the headline, "Most Colossal Animal Ever On 1999) (July/Aug. 12-18. Earth Just Found Out West." The dinosaur, supposedly 130 feet long and 120,000 pounds, Hendrick, Andrew (New York: Doubleday, Burton J. The Life of Carnegie witha roar that could be heard 10 miles and a stomach that could hold three elephants, Doran, 1932). was shown rearing back on its hind legs and peering into an eleventh-floor window of the Clayton. "They Life Bones." Monthly (Feb. Hoagland, Gave to Scientific New York Lifebuilding. 1943) 114-33. 11 May [HSWP] Holland, William J., "The Diplodocus Is a Great Find, Says Dr. Holland." Holland-Owen, 13, 1899. Pittsburg Dispatch (Aug. 10, 1899). [CLPgh] 12 Wortman to Holland, June 28, 1899. [CMNH br] This letter, describing in some detail what ."The Story of the Diplodocus." Westminster Review 163 (June 1905) Wortman and Reed found when they got tothe quarry, and a second letter from Wortman on 683-92. June 30, have only come to my attention since my book, Bone Wars, was published. Ihad ."AReview ofSome Recent Criticisms of Sauropod Dinosaurs Existing thought only Holland's reactions to them had survived. in the Museums of the , with Special Reference to That of 13 Holland toWortman, July 3, 1899. [CMNH an] Diplodocus carnegiei [sic] in the Carnegie Museum." American Naturalist 44, 14 no. 521 (May 1910) 259-83. Holland toDowney, July 3, 1899. [CMNH an] .. To the River Plate and Back (New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1913). 15 Holland, "Diplodocus Is a Great Find." ."Heads and Tails: AFew Notes Relating to the Structure of Sauropod 16 Holland toWortman, Aug. 22, 1899. [CMNH an] Dinosaurs." Annals of the Carnegie Museum 9, (1915) 273-78. Leighton, Henry. "Memorial of William Jacob Holland." Bulletin of the Geological 17 Holland toA.Darlow, Oct. 10, 1899. [CMNH an] Sciences of America 44 (1933) 347-52. Includes a bibliography of Holland's 18 McGinnis, Carnegie's Dinosaurs. 17-25, 55-80, 113. publications. 15 Bach, passim. McGinnis, Helen J. Carnegie's Dinosaurs (Pittsburgh: The Board of Trustees, Holland, To the River Plate and Carnegie Institute, 1982). 20 Holland, "Review of Criticisms of Sauropod Dinosaurs," 262. n.a., "The Dinosaur ofWyoming." New YorkPost, Dec. 1, 1898. [CMNHbr] 21 Holland, "Heads and Tails," 273-278. n.a., "Most Colossal Animal Ever On Earth Just Found Out West." New York 22 Journal and Advertiser, Dec. 11, 1898. [LOC] For more on the turn-of-the-century rift between university and museum attitudes toward Rainger, Ronald. "Collectors and Entrepreneurs: Hatcher, Wortman and the the life sciences, see Rainger, Agenda forAntiquity, 18-23. Structure of American Vertebrate Paleontology Circa 1900." Earth Sciences 23 Gangewere, "This is Huge, Really Huge." History 9, no. 1 (1990) 14-21. . An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890-1935 (Tuscaloosa: Univ.of Alabama Press, 1991). Wall, Joseph Frazier. Andrew Carnegie (New York: Oxford Univ.Press 1970).

WILLIAM J. HOLLAND 31