Biological Station (UMBS) Biological Station (UMBS) College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Michigan Publishing Copyright © 2015 by the Regents of the University of Michigan The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey was first published beginning in 1942. For its 2017 Bicentennial, the University undertook the most significant updating of the Encyclopedia since the original, focusing on academic units. Entries from all versions are compiled in the Bicentennial digital and print-on-demand edition. This book was produced using Pressbooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by PrinceXML. Contents 1. Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 1 George R. La Rue 2. Biological Station (UMBS) (1975) 15 3. Biological Station (UMBS) (2015) 19 David M. Gates [1] Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) George R. La Rue IN the spring of the year 1900 Professor Jacob E. Reighard of the Department of Zoology appeared before the Board of Regents to discuss the establishment of a biological station on the Great Lakes, to be under University control but maintained by the government. The Regents then asked President Angell to take the matter up with Senator James McMillan in the hope of obtaining favorable action by the government. Apparently the project came to naught. The idea was not entirely abandoned by the University, however, for in October, 1903, Professor John O. Reed included in his plan for the betterment of the Summer Session a suggestion that a biological station be established at some suitable place on the lakes of Michigan, “for the study of Botany and Zoölogy and for accommodation of persons desiring to do advanced work in those lines” (R.P., 1901-6, p. 270). But again no immediate action resulted. Authorization of the establishment of a biological station was finally secured and was recorded thus in the minutes of the Board of Regents for April 28, 1909: On motion of Regent Carey it was voted that a teaching or research 2 Biological Station (UMBS) station in Botany and Zoology at a total appropriation for equipment, salaries and other expense for 1909 not to exceed $2,000, should be established at the Bogardus Engineering Camp,1 provided at least twenty students should elect the course for the coming Summer Session. (R.P., 1906-10, p. 472.) During the summer of 1908 the University had acquired a tract of land of nearly fourteen hundred acres, on the south and east shores of Douglas Lake, Cheboygan County, partly by purchase and partly by gift from Charles and Hannah W. Bogardus, of Pellston (R.P., 1906-10, pp. 274-75, 348). According to Reighard, Colonel Bogardus and his wife had expressed the wish that scientific orkw be done on the site: With that remark, the biological station was conceived. Dean Cooley wanted still more land and thought that the founding of a biological station might lead Colonel and Mrs. Bogardus to offer it on the same favorable terms as before. He took the matter to the Board of Regents and, largely through the efforts of Regent Carey, they were persuaded to send a committee from Ann Arbor in the fall of 1908 to look over the proposed site. (Reighard, p. 5.) The personnel of that committee does not appear on the records of the Regents, nor is their report acknowledged or published. Reighard stated that he was not a member and that he did not know its membership, but that Frederick C. Newcombe of the Department of Botany represented the science of biology, and he believed that the secretary of the University and several Regents were members of the party. The committee recommended that the Regents found a biological station to be administered by the Summer Session. George P. Burns, of the Department of Botany, who may have been a member of the committee, strongly urged the establishment of a biological station. Although only fourteen of the required twenty students applied for admission, the Biological Station was permitted to go ahead under the directorship of Reighard and with Burns 1. This name later (Mar., 1916) was changed to Camp Davis. Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 3 as the other member of the teaching staff and Miss Frances J. Dunbar as general assistant. For buildings the Station had one of the two small, old log buildings which had been hastily built about 1904 for use as a railroad grading camp. The surveying camp was located a third of a mile farther west on South Fishtail Bay of Douglas Lake. About six miles to the west and a little south was the village of Pellston, eight miles southeast was Topinabee, and thirteen miles northeast was Cheboygan. A plague of black flies delayed the opening of the session for a week, and this delay gave much-needed time for erecting the tents for living quarters and for installing shelves and windows in the log laboratory and a platform and a hand pump for the aquarium. Photographs taken at the time record these preparations and the barren appearance of the landscape, which had been repeatedly burned over. Gaunt black stubs twenty to fifty feet high were prominent features of the landscape, and huge pine stumps showed that a magnificent pine forest had been removed some thirty years earlier (1876 and 1877). The women students lived in tents pitched near the engineers’ dining tent on the hill behind the surveying camp. The men’s tents were pitched along the shore west of the log laboratory. The log laboratory had shelves for equipment, books, supplies, and specimens, also tables for classes, research, and officeork. w Those few tents, some of them borrowed, and the old log building used as a laboratory, with a small shed attached at the rear, a platform, a water tank, and a hand pump for the aquarium, constituted the physical plant. The fleet consisted of three rowboats. There were no automobiles nor trucks for transportation overland. Students and staff boarded at the dining tent operated by the Bogardus Engineering Camp. Since the Biological Station was still considered an experiment, at the close of the session the students were asked to report on the value of their work and their experiences during the summer. Without exception, these reports (in the Biological Station files) were enthusiastic in their praise of the character and quality of the instruction, of the type of courses offered, and of the value of the work accomplished in preparation for teaching and research. All placed high value 4 Biological Station (UMBS) on their experiences. Most of the students preferred living in tents to living in dormitories. Their suggestions in these letters had considerable weight with Director Reighard and with the administration in evaluating the Station as an experiment in biological education. Although the Station was considered to have been successful, there remained much uncertainty regarding its permanence and, particularly, its location. From 1913 to 1916 inclusive the very existence of the Station was endangered; it lacked the strong support of the Departments of Botany and Zoology. A majority of its staff and students came from other institutions. The comprehensive and vigorous report of Director Otto C. Glaser at the close of the session of 1916 brought it the needed support of the departments and strengthened the determination of the Summer Session authorities to continue its existence. Since that time the Station has been looked upon as an established part of the Summer Session and well past the experimental stage. The Station had been situated on Douglas Lake because the University owned the land and on that particular site because of its proximity to the Bogardus Engineering Camp and the availability of the log buildings. There had been no survey of the state to determine the best area for a biological field station, nor had the Bogardus tract been carefully surveyed for the best site. As early as 1911 parties from the Station had examined Burt Lake and had reported on its nonsuitability as a location. Adverse reports were made following examinations of Pine Lake in Charlevoix County in 1917 by members of the staff and of a tract south of Williamsburg in 1927 by members of the staff and Regents Beal and Hubbard. In later years much of the shore line of Douglas Lake was carefully examined, and reports were made on part of Section 29, Munro Township, lying at the northwest corner of the tract. Again and again the directors and their staffs examined Grapevine Point, about three-fourths of a mile north of the Engineering Camp, and brought that site to the attention of the Board of Regents. Plans were prepared for the development of a physical plant on that site, and repeated requests for funds for that purpose were presented to the Board. Biological Station (UMBS) (1942) 5 In turn, the Board, no less than twice, requested funds from the legislature for the development on Grapevine Point. Meanwhile, after the World War, the growth in the enrollment at the Biological Station had been rapid and continuous. Many small buildings had been erected on the narrowly limited original site, bounded on the front by the lake and on the side and back by the engineers’ base line and an old dry beach pool. Roads and streets had not been built and could not be cheaply constructed on the soft beach sand. A water supply under pressure, sanitary toilets, and other conveniences had not been provided. The old site was recognized as intolerable, and the need for expansion became greater year by year. In the fall of 1927 a party consisting of President Little, Secretary Smith, Regent Beal, Deans Huber, Kraus, and Dana, Professors Bartlett and Ruthven, and Directors La Rue and Johnston inspected the two camps on the Bogardus Tract and examined Grapevine Point as a site for the Biological Station.