Profiles in History: William Harlow Reed: Wyoming’s Fossil Hunter

Yale museum specimen of Brontosaurus excelsus that was discovered by William Reed. Ad Meskens/CC BY-SA 3.0

William Harlow Reed (1848–1915) was the eldest of 10 children born to Scottish parents. Born in Connecticut at the start of the California Gold Rush, he grew up hearing stories about western expansion, Indian fights, great discoveries of natural fortunes and fossils, and battles of the Civil War. He ran away from home several times to volunteer with the Union Army.

His first job was with the Union Pacific Railroad. He was hired to remove snow to make way for the rail lines. His expertise with a rifle, however, was soon noticed, and he was sent to hunt food for the workers and ward off Indians.

William Reed made a name for himself in the world of paleontology. Public Domain

He married Florence Bovee in 1870. When Florence died during childbirth in 1874, a distraught Reed accepted a job in Carbon Station, Wyoming, as a guide and Indian fighter for the U.S. Army. He later returned to the Union Pacific Railroad as a foreman. While in Como, Wyoming, in 1877, he made a dramatic discovery. He had stumbled across an array of bones on Como Bluff. This discovery ended his occupation as a railroad worker and launched his career in paleontology. The array of bones he found belonged to specimens of the Jurassic period.

Jurassic Fossils

Reed contacted Othniel C. Marsh, professor of paleontology at Yale College. Their working relationship would last, for better and worse, throughout Marsh’s lifetime. Marsh sent several crews to help Reed excavate the area. Reed soon became disgruntled with Marsh’s late payments, tardy and often unreliable equipment, insubordinate crew members, and the lack of recognition for his work. He resigned his position with Marsh in 1883, though he kept in contact and occasionally sent him specimens.

Reed worked with Othniel C. Marsh, professor of paleontology at Yale College, to collect fossils. Public Domain

Throughout the following decade, Reed sent fossils and bones to various institutions around the world, including to Marsh and to the new University of Wyoming. In 1894, he joined Wilbur Clinton Knight, professor of geology at the University of Wyoming, where most of his findings were collected. He signed an exclusive contract in 1896, and the following year he was named assistant geologist and curator of the museum at the University of Wyoming.

Wilbur Clinton Knight, professor of geology at the University of Wyoming. Public Domain

Reed not only made a name for himself in the world of paleontology, despite never receiving a formal education in the sciences, but he also elevated his university to prominence. Between 1896 and 1899, he collected approximately 10,000 specimens for the university, making it second only to Yale for the world’s largest collection of American Jurassic vertebrae fossils.

His name became mainstream when he was interviewed by a reporter for the New York Journal in 1898. During an excavation, Reed discovered a bone fragment belonging to a Brontosaurus giganteus. The headline in the paper read: “MOST COLOSSAL ANIMAL EVER ON EARTH JUST FOUND OUT WEST” (caps in original). The article caught the attention of Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate, who had recently built the Carnegie Museum. He sent a note, along with the newspaper clipping, to his museum director, W.C. Holland, reading “can’t you buy this for Pittsburgh ... hurry.—AC.”

Holland quickly left for Wyoming to meet Reed and signed him to a one-year contract as senior field collector. Carnegie sponsored the rest of the excavation. Reed admitted that the reporter had greatly exaggerated the claim, as the excavation site didn’t hold many remains. On July 4, 1899, Reed led Carnegie’s team to a discovery that would literally change the face of museums around the globe.

A Giant Brontosaurus

Approximately 30 miles from where the Brontosaurus giganteus bone fragment was found, Reed discovered a toe bone that, after excavating the rest of the area, belonged to a nearly intact skeleton of a Diplodocus. The discovery and assembly of the skeleton, which was placed in the Carnegie Museum, was so groundbreaking that heads of state all across the globe desired to have their own version made. Carnegie hired Italian statuary makers and had replicas of the Diplodocus made and sent to museums in Berlin, Bologna, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, Madrid, Mexico City, Munich, Paris, and Vienna. The skeletal statue became known as Diplodocus carnegii and can be seen at the front of many natural history museums.

Sketch of expedition members William H. Reed (L) and Edward Kennedy in Como Bluff, Wyoming. Public Domain

Experiencing the same lack of recognition, however, Reed resigned. He then contacted Walter Granger, of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), who was working an excavation site at Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming. He proposed a dig at Rock Creek, 14 miles away, which he believed was promising. He was not wrong. The AMNH hired Reed and benefited from a plethora of dinosaur remains, primarily Camarasaurus and Allosaurus.

In 1903, shortly after his stint with AMNH, he became the museum curator at the University of Wyoming, and the assistant geology professor the following year. He taught classes, conducted field trips to dig sites, and curated findings for the museum. In 1905, he found a nearly complete skeleton of the ichthyosaur Baptanodon. The find was so substantial that it was named Baptanodon reedi in his honor. Three years later, he helped collect the remains of a Stegosaurus longispinus, which had the longest tail spines of any stegosaur ever discovered.

In its inaugural year of 1908, Reed was inducted into the American Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists (now the Paleontological Society). During his near 40 year career as a paleontologist, or a “fossil hunter” as he called himself, he discovered thousands of specimens from the Jurassic period, including cycads, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and mammals. His findings can be found in museums all over the world.