Canyon Creek Schoolhouse Laboratory 100^th Anniversary

William Edwin Gittinger
(1899-June 30, 1922)

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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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 3521

George Henry Cowan
(January 8, 1886- Oct. 29, 1924)

George Cowan was born in Victor, Montana. His parents were among the original White settlers of the area. A field station for studying Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) was located in Victor before moving to the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory in Hamilton, Montana.

Cowan joined the RMSF investigation in 1913 and was the longest-serving field worker at the time of his death. The Montana State Board of Entomology made him deputy chief of tick control work in 1921, and he continued that work with the U.S. Public Health Service in the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. Cowan helped to collect ticks and when he shot a certain mountain goat, more than a thousand already engorged ticks were picked off of it. Dr. Roscoe Spencer tested to see if the ticks caused RMSF, discovered that ticks had to be fed before they became infectious, and got the idea to grind the ticks into an RMSF vaccine. Unfortunately, the vaccine was not completed before Cowan became ill with RMSF and died in October 1924.

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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1575

Arthur LeRoy Kerlee
(March 5, 1905-February 14, 1928)

Arthur Kerlee was born and educated in Darby, Montana—a local boy studying Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory.  He graduated from Montana State College in 1927 with a B.S. in Botany and Bacteriology. Robert Cooley was one of his professors. After graduating, Kerlee became an assistant bacteriologist in the U.S. Public Health Service at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. He co-authored a paper with Dr. Roscoe Spencer on the Weil-Felix reaction as a diagnostic test for RMSF.

Kerlee died during production of the RMSF vaccine. Because he had already received the vaccine, his death caused some consternation in the Bitterroot Valley until it was found that he had only received the first shot and had become ill either right before the shot or right after the shot, meaning that his immunity had not had a chance to develop.

A large number of Bitterroot Valley citizens attended his funeral, which included a quartet and a military tribute from the American Legion because he had been made a 2^nd lieutenant in the reserve officer’s training corps. He left a father, four brothers, and two sisters. One of his brothers, James, joined the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory in tribute to his sacrifice.

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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1578