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.
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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1006
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In September 1921, state and federal scientists rented schoolhouse in Montana to set up a laboratory. 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 the Rocky Mountain Laboratories of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. This webpage celebrates the 100th anniversary of Canyon Creek Schoolhouse Laboratory.
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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.
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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.
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Object: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 18.10.1
