Always the observer, Alexander Wetmore (1886 - 1978) was still in college when he began working as an Agent of the Biological Survey, part of the United States Department of Agriculture. Within his first two years with the Bureau he had traveled from Alaska to the Virgin Islands studying the geographic distribution of birds and mammals and their impact on local economies. Wetmore, together with his colleagues, took pains to capture a visual record of their work, and this album spans that time.
Join other volunteers in transcribing the captions of these photographs and get a glimpse of life traveling across the country documenting animal life in the early days of the 20th century.
Always the observer, Alexander Wetmore (1886 - 1978) was still in college when he began working as an Agent of the Biological Survey, part of the United States Department of Agriculture. Within his first two years with the Bureau he had traveled from Alaska to the Virgin Islands studying the geographic distribution of birds and mammals and their impact on local economies. Wetmore, together with his colleagues, took pains to capture a visual record of their work, and this album spans that time.
Join other volunteers in transcribing the captions of these photographs and get a glimpse of life traveling across the country documenting animal life in the early days of the 20th century.
Alexander Wetmore (1886-1978) was the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. A well-known ornithologist and avian paleontologist, Wetmore served as Secretary from 1945 to 1952. Wetmore came to the Smithsonian in November 1924 as Superintendent of the National Zoological Park after a fourteen-year career with the Bureau of Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture. In March 1925, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian in charge of the United States National Museum (USNM), a post he held until his appointment as Secretary in 1945. Wetmore retired in 1952 and was made an honorary Research Associate of the Smithsonian, where he continued his study of recent and fossil birds until his death.