This is Throwback Thursday #292. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks!  email:esconi.info@gmail.com.

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You may remember Throwback Thursday #284, where we discussed Isabel Bassett Wasson. Wasson (1897-1994) was one of the first female petroleum geologists in the world.

In 1919, she made national headlines by leading a tour of national parks for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. During that trip, she gave a geology lecture at Yellowstone National Park that so impressed the superintendent, he hired her on the spot. She became the first female ranger at Yellowstone, and one of the very first interpretive rangers in the entire National Park Service. She even proposed using college students as seasonal guides—an idea still in practice today.

Wasson worked briefly in Venezuela for the Pure Oil Company as one of the earliest women in petroleum geology. However, after settling in River Forest in 1926, she turned her focus to education, science outreach, and community involvement. She taught science in local schools, gave hundreds of lectures across Chicago institutions like the Field Museum and the Morton Arboretum, and authored numerous articles on geology, ecology, and local archaeology. She inspired countless students and naturalists in the Chicagoland area.

I was going through some old ESCONI photos and found this one of her with a nice display of Mazon Creek plants.

This photo appeared in one of the Chicago newspapers. It was an announcement for her lecture to ESCONI on February 8th, 1952. There wasn’t an announcement in the ESCONI newsletter, but there was a report about the meeting in the March 1952 edition of the newsletter.

Report on February 8th Meeting

The February meeting was one of the highlights of a high lighted year. For one thing, the meeting was held in the High School auditorium instead of in the cafeteria. This was fortunate as a crowd of around 300 gathered to witness “the turn back of time” so well publicized by the Chicago press and so well presented by Mrs. Wasson. With clock work precision, the thousands of years ticked off in reverse: Chicagoland gained altitude as we rose to the top of a gigantic glacier, only to come down again, then up again, etc. Thousands of years turned to 10,000 years per tick of the mighty time clock, then to 100,000 years, on to 1,000,000, then to 10,000,000 ever backward, forever backward. Horse meat was good in those days. And at last the great Carboniferous Age. So hot and humid! So lush the vegetation! So queer looking! Such big dragon flies! Then wow, the snap switch put us back in Downers Grove – there’s Mrs. Wasson. It’s good to see people we know – 1952 isn’t so bad! We were happy to have Mr. & Mrs. McLuckie with us; a note regarding their collection may be found elsewhere in this issue of the NEWS.

Oh… and that reference to the McLuckie fossil collection was covered in Throwback Thursday #104.