When researching a disease, scientists and physicians ask some pretty basic questions: Is there a disease? What causes it? How do you get it? Can you test for that specific disease? What does it do to you? Can we treat or cure it? Can we prevent you from getting it?

When the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory opened in 1921 to investigate Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF), only one of these questions had been answered definitively: Is there a disease? Yes, definitely! Other questions had partial answers that had created more questions. Two big unknowns were how to treat or cure RMSF and how to prevent people from getting it in the first place. The mission of the laboratory was to answer as many of these questions as possible.