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  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | National Institutes of Health

Canyon Creek Schoolhouse Laboratory 100th Anniversary

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The 25 workers who Cooley wrote about included people working for both the State of Montana and the U.S. Public Health Service. Three of these researchers died during the years that the Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) work was being done at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. Cooley had taught two of them—William Gittinger and Arthur Kerlee—at Montana State College. On June 6, 1929, Cooley dedicated the Gittinger-Kerlee memorial plaque at Montana State College to his former students.

William Edwin Gittinger (1899-June 30, 1922)

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William Gittinger graduated from high school around 1918. He then attended the Montana State College, graduating from Dr. Robert Cooley’s entomology program. He hoped to go to medical school but took a job as a junior laboratory assistant in the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. He had only worked there a short while when he was infected by Rocky Mountain spotted fever and died on June 30, 1922. He was almost 23 years old and left his mother, two sisters, and a brother.  According to Lucy Salamanca, after Gittinger died, Dr. Roscoe Spencer posted a sign on the laboratory door: ‘‘Persons entering these premises do so at their own risk!”

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William Edwin GittingerImage Modified

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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 3521

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