American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936

Although this Web site delivers something less than its sweeping title suggests, it nevertheless offers a notable collection of images. The site assembles approximately 4,500 photographs documenting the field excursions of University of Chicago ecologists, including Henry C. Cowles and George D. Fuller, between 1891 and 1936. A majority of the images, which have been digitized from originals owned by the University of Chicago Library’s Department of Special Collections, reflect nearly half a century of faculty-led field trips and field classwork across forty-three states. Also included are more than two hundred images taken during the International Phytogeographic Excursion of 1913, on which Cowles escorted a group of European botanists and botanical ecologists on a cross-country tour of ecologically notable locations, including the Indiana Dunes, where Cowles conducted the field research for his pathbreaking theory of dynamic vegetational succession. A useful timeline and an interpretive essay, “Ecology and the American Environment,” supplement the images, providing context for the significance of Cowles and his work, the University of Chicago Botany Department, the International Phytogeographic Excursion, and the development of ecological ideas during the period covered by the collection

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