Henry Chandler Cowles:
Ecologist, Teacher, Conservationist

By Victor M. Cassidy

Through his life and work, he prefigured today’s conservation movement--and Chicago Wilderness.

On April 25, 1896, Henry Chandler Cowles visited the Indiana Dunes for the first time. “We climbed up the wonderful piles of sand and saw acres and acres stretching up and down the lake, billowy like a prairie or vast drifts of snow,” the University of Chicago graduate student wrote in his diary. “The sand dune flora is very characteristic and new to me.”

Fired by this experience, Cowles spent much of the next two years studying the dunes and their flora more systematically than anyone before him. Combining careful observation with disciplined thinking, he worked out the complex interactions between plant life and the dynamic dunes environment. In a pioneering ecological study, he described the natural phenomenon called plant succession (see sidebar).

Cowles (it’s pronounced “coals”) later taught ecology at the University of Chicago, both in the classroom and, memorably, in the field. He led enthusiastic groups of students to local sites on weekends and organized month-long trips all over North America, where everyone worked hard all day, slept in tents, cooked over open fires, and had a perfectly wonderful time.

As he studied natural areas, Cowles witnessed thoughtless destruction of the environment and became an active conservationist. Working through several organizations, he helped to defend the Forest Preserves of Cook County, establish state parks in Illinois, and protect forest resources. What started as a penchant for making focused observations of nature would draw him into a life of deep civic engagement.

His skills for reading the landscape, thinking through what he saw, and reaching conclusions are echoed in the work of site stewards and land managers today.

Knew What He Wanted

Henry Cowles was one of those lucky people who always seemed to know what he wanted to do. Born in 1869 on a Connecticut farm, he became fascinated with plants and trees during childhood walks with his mother. By the age of 12 he was keeping a diary, which tells with academic exactitude how he tended crops (“pulled 175 beets,” “potted 242 of my tomatoes”), delivered orders in a horse-drawn cart, and watched over the family seed supply. In church, he learned how to express himself and function in organizations. In school, he learned Greek, Latin, science, and history.

Outside the classroom, Cowles botanized as much as he could in the fields and woods near home. By the time he was 16, he knew the plants in his area and was reading Asa Gray’s authoritative Manual of Botany. He got a sound scientific education at Oberlin College in Ohio, where his botany professor pointed him toward graduate school at the University of Chicago.

Cowles was “a remarkably successful teacher” who “devoted himself mainly to his students, rejoicing in their progress and subsequent accomplishments.”

Origins of Ecology

German and Danish botanists first developed ecology—the study of interactions between living organisms and the environment—in the late 19th century, just as Cowles was entering academia. He enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1894, when the institution was just two years old and eager to explore new fields that elite eastern universities disdained. Ecology was so new that no textbooks existed, and most of the published literature was in German. Cowles actually taught himself Danish so he could read a key study that was only available in its original language.

He originally came to Chicago to study geology, not botany. But he was never more than an average geologist. In the course of his studies, however, he learned the glacial history of the Great Lakes, which gave him a dynamic vision of nature and laid the literal groundwork for success in the newer field.

Professor John M. Coulter eventually recruited Cowles into the newly established Department of Botany. Coulter saw ecology as the coming thing. He knew the dunes flora and encouraged Cowles to write his doctoral thesis on the subject. Cowles’ thesis on the Indiana Dunes environment became one of the first ecological studies in North America. He followed it up with an ecological study of the Chicago vicinity and papers on plant succession, which established his reputation throughout the United States and Europe.

Still a graduate student when he started teaching at Chicago, Cowles created the entire ecology curriculum as he rose through the academic ranks—and decisively influenced America’s first generation of ecologists.

Studying Outdoors

Outdoor field study was central to Cowles’ teaching, and he led ecologists-to-be through Jackson Park near the University of Chicago, the Calumet region south of the city, the dunes, and other local sites. Short and a bit stout, he wore calf-high boots, knickers, a white shirt, and a floppy hat in the field — and always a tie. Students said that you had to “climb through the fence, keep up with the teacher, and take notes at the same time” if you wanted to pass his courses.

Charles C. Adams, a colleague, called Cowles “a remarkably successful teacher” who “devoted himself mainly to his students, rejoicing in their progress and subsequent accomplishments.” Fair-minded, modest, “never at all aggressive,” and “never dogmatic,” Cowles preferred “non-technical language, avoiding new terminology, and the formulation of any rigid system for his science,” Adams wrote. Most all of Cowles’ surveys were descriptive rather than quantitative; his reports almost never used numbers, nor anything resembling the scientific methods used today.

Cowles always took time for a joke, and to just enjoy life. He was said to carry two watches set one hour apart. If someone proposed lunch, he pulled out the slower timepiece.

Conservation Grunt Work

After about 1910, Cowles published very little. But he continued his field teaching and helped to build the conservation movement of his time. In 1913, he co-founded the Friends of Our Native Landscape with landscape designer Jens Jensen. As Jensen told it, the Friends sought to preserve “examples of landscape types that are fast disappearing before the encroachments of industry.” Working with like-minded organizations, the Friends raised public awareness of the Indiana Dunes and worked to defend them. Jensen, who was an excellent public speaker, recruited people to the conservation cause, but it was Cowles’ grunt work that led to victories.

Cowles’ surveying skills would be called into service many times. By 1918, roughly two-thirds of the presettlement forest in Illinois, largely on hills along the Mississippi River, was gone. Farmers had cut the trees, worked the land to exhaustion, and walked away. Stephen A. Forbes, who was director of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, wanted to know how much forested land remained in the entire state of Illinois. Then he could recommend which areas should remain untouched as nature preserves, which could prudently be cut for timber, and which cutover lands should be replanted. Working without pay, Cowles participated in this survey by creating large-scale maps of northern Cook County. Some of this material survives in fragmentary form among his papers.

On behalf of the Friends of Our Native Landscape, Cowles surveyed ecologically important sites in southern Illinois between 1919 and 1923. His work helped persuade the state legislature to buy lands that are today incorporated into the Cache River State Natural Area and several Illinois state parks, including Giant City, Ferne Clyffe, and Cave-in-the Rocks.

Late in 1914, just as the Forest Preserve District of Cook County was officially becoming established, local conservation groups formed the Conservation Council of Chicago to improve communications and increase their public impact.

The coalition faced problems that ranged from grazing of sheep on vulnerable natural lands to the poaching of native orchids. Membership included the Friends of Our Native Landscape, the Chicago Academy of Sciences, the Ecological Society of America, and many others. Cowles, who often presided at monthly meetings, called the Council “a very informal organization…a clearing house for discussion of conservation matters.” Everyone exchanged information at meetings. When some natural area was threatened, member groups raised the alarm on their own initiative, so the public heard many voices instead of just one. The Conservation Council, which apparently survived into the 1930s, was in many ways a precursor to today’s Chicago Wilderness consortium.

Park Dreams

In 1920, Cowles and others planned the First National Park Conference, which was intended to get the nation’s state governments to purchase land for parks. At the Conference, in January of 1921, Cowles said: “We dream of a time when we will have many parks in Illinois…We would like to see today a continuous parkway along the entire length of the Mississippi River…from Minnesota to the gulf [of Mexico]…We should like to see this parkway all along [the rivers of Illinois].” The Nature Conservancy of Illinois still works every day to make this happen.

There is a special way that Henry Chandler Cowles still speaks to today’s site stewards and Chicago Wilderness. His subjective method—reading the landscape, thinking through what he saw, and reaching conclusions — is what stewards use today as they determine which initiatives are most likely to return a site to ecological health. Cowles thus assists in the most challenging ecological work of our time. His spirit helps heal the land.

Victor M. Cassidy is a writer and conservation volunteer. His new biography, Henry Chandler Cowles: Pioneer Ecologist, is the product of three years of research, and is available for purchase at sigelpress.com.