Hermon
Carey BumpusHermon
Carey BumpusHermon Carey Bumpus (1862-1943) received the Pugsley Gold Medal "for outstanding service in the field of national park education." He was born in Buckfield, Maine, in 1862. At Dorchester High School he became a close friend of the son of Marshall P. Wilder who was president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Wilder had extensive greenhouses and a good private library on his estate and these stimulated the early interest in nature that Bumpus evinced. He was an eager collector of specimens in his grade school years, and realized that if he was to follow his desire to be a naturalist he needed a college education.
In 1879, he entered Brown University, which was assembling a substantial natural sciences museum. Bumpus was appointed an assistant in the museum where he was responsible for assisting with the preparation of specimens. He was involved with helping in the revision and illustration of textbooks authored by Professor Jenke, who was a leading scholar in the field. After graduation he started a Ph.D. and taught undergraduate classes there to fund it.
In 1886, before completing the Ph.D., he was offered a professorship in the department of biology at Olivet College in Michigan, where he quickly established a zoological laboratory. In the same year, he married Lucy Ella Nightingale, his boyhood sweetheart. After three years at Olivet, he returned to New England, accepting a fellowship at Clark University which provided him with the time and resources to complete the Ph.D. degree. His dissertation was on the embryology of the American lobster.
In 1888, the Marine Biological Laboratory was opened at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, as a graduate institution where biologists could continue their research work in the summer months. In 1889, Bumpus launched a summer training school there for young researchers in biology and it was so popular that he was appointed assistant director of the laboratory. He was only 30 years of age at the time, but he held this position until 1895 when he became director of the US Bureau of Fisheries laboratories which were located nearby also at Woods Hole. Bumpus retained an active interest in the Marine Biological Laboratory and was a member of its board of trustees from 1897 to 1942.
In 1890, Brown University recruited Bumpus to return and establish a substantial graduate and research program in biology. When he accepted the professorial position he was aged 28. The president of Brown stated, “In the opinion of the best authorities he has, of his age, no superior as a specialist in his line. He is not, however, a narrow specialist but thoroughly informed in every branch of the science of life. He is withal a stirring teacher and an affable and cultivated gentleman.” Bumpus made his first trip to Europe in 1893 and, thereafter, was a prodigious traveler whose natural inquisitiveness stimulated a desire to see as much of the earth as possible.
In the early 1890s biometry, the application of statistics to biological data was in its infancy, and Bumpus was one of the pioneers of its development. However, during his career, Bumpus’ output of scientific papers was not large. His restless energy found more satisfaction in doing things than in sitting at a desk with a pen in his hand. Nevertheless, the prominence of the biology department at Brown was evidence of his reputation and success. In 1897, the university’s enrolment was 866, of whom 354 were studying in the department of biology. The accomplishments of the department caused Bumpus to feel that his mission at Brown had been completed.
Bumpus was a man of ideas who had the energy to put them into effect. For example, with two leading ornithologists, he mapped out a six-point program that became the basis for the organization of the National Association of Audubon Societies in America and when it was incorporated Bumpus became a director. He was also vice president of the American Morphological Society and the American Society of Naturalists. This restless energy and the completion of his mission at Brown led Bumpus to accept the position of curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in 1900. His impressive accomplishments in the first year led to him being appointed the Museum’s first director in 1902.
The museum was well-funded since its board of trustees was composed of the leading financiers of New York. It was a great institution with a wealth of material and equipment, but the exhibits were not well presented. Bumpus brought a radically different perspective to the museum believing that its purpose was not primarily as a storehouse for natural history specimens serving as research materials for the scientific staff, but as an educational institution. He stressed the imperative of presenting exhibits attractively since this would enhance public interest and, hence, their educational value. He had the ability to remove the mystery and formidability from science by presenting it in a vivid, interesting manner which made it popular and easily understood.
In 1906, Bumpus was instrumental in forming the American Association of Museums and became its first president. However, when the Museum of Natural History’s longtime chairman who had championed the Bumpus improvements died in 1908, opponents who resented his popularization of science reduced his authority so he resigned.
His experience with the museum’s large budget and with securing appropriations from both state and local governments meant Bumpus acquired considerable expertise in handling large sums of money and in dealing with politicians. The University of Wisconsin at this time was looking for someone with these qualifications to handle its business affairs. It offered the position to Bumpus. This position of business manager was the first such office established by an American University. Bumpus held this position from 1911 to 1914 and restored the financial chaos which he inherited to order in his three years at Wisconsin.
His work at Wisconsin attracted the attention of Tufts College which offered him the presidency there in 1914. The former president of Brown wrote to Tufts saying, “There could not be a better man for the head of Tufts for the simple reason that God doesn’t produce any better.” The college was in great financial difficulty but Bumpus rectified the situation and restored it to viability. He resigned from Tufts in 1918 at the age of 57, yearning for the freedom to pursue his personal interests.
It was at this point that he became involved with the fledgling National Park Service. He noted, “Taken as a whole and visited as they are by millions of people eager to learn, the National Parks offer the most attractive opportunity for adult education that now remains undeveloped. How shall the tourist be given the information that will render his visit educationally worthwhile?” His response was to conceive of “trailside museums.” He believed that the surroundings of the museums, not the contents, were the exhibits, and that the museums should serve as sources of information about the works of nature that were left at their sites undisturbed. In these trailside museums exhibits were to be made available to the visitor that explained the surrounding region with maps, pamphlets, guides and a library of pertinent books. His ideas provided the conceptual foundation for today’s interpretive centers.
The first of these trailside museums was in Yosemite at the Glacier Point Lookout Station, 3000 feet above the Valley floor. The enthusiasm with which this project was received by both the public and the NPS led to the installation of others at Bear Mountain in the Palisades Interstate Park in New York and on the rim of Grand Canyon. Bumpus personally supervised the development of these amenities and many that followed them. He also instituted “natural history shrines” which were structures containing information about nearby objects or natural phenomena. For example, beside a beaver dam there would be a shrine giving information about beavers.
When money became available from the Laura Spelman Fund and other Rockefeller sources for museums in various national parks, Bumpus became chief consultant and director for the planning of these institutions. He and his associates in the National Park Service developed many new types of exhibits, designed and published new directive and interpretative bulletins, and made extraordinary progress in popularizing nature study in the national parks, while never neglecting history, archaeology and ethnology. He was one of the influential designers of the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the early 1930s, Dr. Bumpus became chairman of the National Parks Advisory Board and directed its affairs until 1940 when at the age of 78 his physicians advised him to resign because of a heart ailment. He invested long hours and engaged in extensive arduous travel in pursuing NPS’s education goals, but accepted only out-of-pocket expenses for his labors.
In his obituary of Herman Bumpus, Horace Albright wrote: