Canyon Creek Schoolhouse Laboratory 100^th Anniversary

A small group of state and federal scientists set up a laboratory in a rented schoolhouse in Montana 100 years ago this month—September 2021. They worked there only seven years, but what they did made history: created a vaccine for a highly fatal disease; added to our knowledge of diseases carried by ticks; and established the forerunner of what would become today’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The brick schoolhouse in Canyon Creek, Montana, on a snowy day after it had become an official field station of the U.S. Public Health Service, circa 1921.

Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1006