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.

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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

The Canyon Creek Schoolhouse was located in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, an up-and-coming agricultural and business area in the early 1900s. In May 1910, the Western News printed a 27-page supplement called the “Bitter Root Valley Illustrated” describing the valley’s businesses, orchards and farmland, industry, and civic and religious life. What the supplement didn’t mention was that a highly fatal disease killed some residents every spring—and there was no prevention or treatment for it. The disease was Rocky Mountain spotted fever.See the whole supplement [link to pages].

Dr. Frank J. O'Donnell wrote his name and the date "Dec. 20, 1924" on one of the pages of the Bitter Root Valley Illustrated supplement. He was a field agent for the Montana State Board of Entomology and did control work for the prevention of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other tick-borne diseases endemic to the valley. We don’t know why he signed his name 14 years after the supplement had been published, but two notable things happened in his life that year: He helped begin production of Rocky Mountain spotted fever vaccine, enabling the promise of the Bitter Root Valley supplement to come true; and he went from being a Montana state employee to a U.S. Public Health Service staff member. Note that “Bitterroot” is today’s preferred spelling.

Object: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 18.10.1

Early residents of the Bitterroot Valley called the disease “black measles”, “blue disease”, “black typhus”, or just “fever.” This disease appeared in the valley after the slope had been cleared of trees for timber to make railway ties for the Northern Pacific Railroad, leaving the perfect environment for ticks. In 1902, the state of Montana asked scientists to investigate the mysterious disease. In less than 22 years, researchers identified what caused the disease, how it was transmitted to humans, and created a life-saving vaccine. This was nearly a miracle in an age with little knowledge of virology and only basic technology.

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This drawing shows the spotted fever rash on a leg. It was drawn in 1903 by Dr. John F. Anderson when he became one of the first scientists to investigate Rocky Mountain spotted fever in Montana.  Anderson was a U.S. Public Health Service officer assigned to the Hygienic Laboratory, which later became the National Institutes of Health.

Read his report [link].   

Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1533-1

Today the Rocky Mountain Laboratories inhabit an entire campus where scientists conduct basic research on Lyme disease, prion diseases, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Ebola, and coronavirus diseases like SARS, MERS, and COVID-19.

We’ve come a long way in the 100 years since the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse became a laboratory to study Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Visit more of this online history to learn about the people and their work at the schoolhouse laboratory.

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An aerial view of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories nowcampus is snuggled in the valley below Downy Mountain in 2017. 

Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 4445gRocky Mountain Laboratories