Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
The earliest roots of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History extend back to 1876 when a group of professional scientists and amateurs founded the Santa Barbara Natural History Society with a small museum at 1226 State Street. This pioneer effort waned around the turn of the century but was reinforced in 1916 with the arrival of noted ornithologist William Leon Dawson from Ohio. Together with a group of prominent Santa Barbarans, Dawson founded the Museum of Comparative Oology, at first located in two outbuildings on his property on Puesta del Sol in Mission Canyon and based on his own extensive collection of bird eggs as well as collections of several members of the community. Dawson and his friends believed that oology-the study of bird eggs-"would throw a flood of light upon the trend of life itself," yielding "the secrets of life's origins and its destiny."
The Board of Directors soon broadened their vision and expanded the museum to interpret other aspects of natural history. Even though located in a small community on the West Coast, the museum attracted supporters of great vision and generosity as well as directors and staff of great ability and national standing. Among the former was the Hazard family, particularly Dr. Caroline Hazard, President of Wellesley College, who donated a portion of her estate in Mission Canyon for a new museum building and campus. The new building, built with funds donated by Mrs. Rowland G. Hazard in memory of her late husband, opened in 1923 and was soon expanded with several wings funded by other generous supporters from the community. Foremost among these generous patrons was Maj. Max Fleischmann, heir to the Fleischmann Yeast fortune.
Trained at the Denver Museum of Natural History, Egmont Rett joined the Museum in 1923. He was a taxidermist and diorama artist of legendary skills who introduced many innovations in the preparation of live mounts and the production of models that had national impact. In the 1930s and 1960s, famous artists of the California school of plein-aire painters produced backgrounds for dioramas that earned the museum great reputation.
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