Adolph Murie (1899-1974)
In 1888, Joachim Murie and Marie Frimanslund moved from Yavick, Norway to Moorhead, Minnesota and married soon thereafter. Together with Marie’s brother, Henrick, they purchased a homestead. Their first child, Olaus, was born on March 1, 1889. Marie gave birth to five more children, including Martin (1891) and Adolph (1899). In 1895, Joachim died at the age of thirty-seven likely due to tuberculosis. In April of 1899, Marie married Ed Winstrom, a Swedish bartender in Moorhead. Unfortunately, Ed died from tuberculosis two months into their marriage, but Adolph was already conceived. He was born September 6, 1899. In 1909, the family also adopted a girl named Clara. Olaus and Adolph both developed an interest in nature as boys. To help with family finances, they cut grass for their neighbors, worked for local gardeners, and hunted and fished alongside the Red River. Olaus and Adolph both attribute this time of camping, hunting, fishing, and canoe-making to stimulating their fascination with the natural world. [1]
Adolph graduated from Moorhead High School in 1918 and then went to Fargo College for three-and-a-half years. Unfortunately, during his senior year, Fargo College shut down, so Adolph was forced to find another college to attend for his last semester. Adolph chose Concordia College in Moorhead, from which he received his degree. [2]
Like his older brother, Olaus, Adolph spent life researching wildlife at various national parks and related places. In 1922 before he had graduated college, he joined Olaus for five months to survey Mount McKinley (now known as Denali). Adolph returned to Alaska in 1923 where he met Louise “Weezy” Gillete, his future wife. Her half-sister, Margaret “Mardy” Thomas, had met Olaus around 1920 and married him in 1924. Adolph graduated in 1925 from Concordia College with a degree in biology. [3]
In 1929, Adolph received his doctorate from the University of Michigan with a dissertation on the ecological relationships of deer mouse subspecies. He married Weezy in 1932. Weezy had also attended the University of Michigan from which she received a degree in botany. [4]
After Adolph received his PhD, he spent 1929 and 1930 researching the elk populations of Michigan’s Isle Royale. He realized that the elk populations were growing rapidly because there were no predators, so he advocated against predator eradication. In 1933, he worked at the Edwin S. George Reserve in Michigan. In 1934, he was employed at both Glacier National Park in Montana and Olympic National Park in Washington. Afterwards, Adolph worked as the curator of animals/mammals in an Ann Arbor research station. Beginning in January 1934 until August 1934, Adolph helped to research a pair of foxes at the George Reserve. Also in1934, he became employed by the National Park Service in a wildlife position – one of the few biologists hired to study animals. His work included a study of coyotes in Yellowstone in the late 1930s. [5]
From 1939 to 1941, Adolph worked in Mount McKinley National Park researching the relationship of wolves and dall sheep. For his field work, he lived at Mount McKinley from April to October 1939, returning in April 1940 to remain for the next fifteen months. This field research involved a large amount of hiking and climbing; Adolph estimated that he walked 1700 miles in 1939 alone. He discovered that a decline in dall sheep numbers was not due to wolf predation, but rather to a series of hard winters. He published his findings in a book titled The Wolves of Mount McKinley in1944. Due to his work at Yellowstone and Mount McKinley, the National Park Service ceased hunting predators in both parks. [6]
In 1943 National Park Service funding was cut, so Adolph (also known as Ade) was dismissed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs then requested his aid in studying coyotes and cattle on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. After fifteen months of the desert heat, he grew ill. He was recommended to move somewhere cooler, so he relocated to Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the summer of 1944. [7]
In 1945, Adolph and Weezy, along with brother Olaus and his wife Mardy, bought and moved into the STS dude ranch (later known as the Murie Ranch) near Moose, Wyoming. Their sister, Clara, joined them there later. Their children Gail (born 1935) and Jan (born 1939) attended school in the park’s headquarters in Beaver Creek. During their stay at the ranch, Adolph researched elk migration. In 1947, he returned to Mount McKinley to study wolves again. From the fall of 1958 until his retirement in January of 1965, he was stationed at Crater Lake National Park Headquarters in Medford, Oregon. Each summer, he and his family traveled to Mount McKinley to research wildlife, returning to Medford to write articles on his research. [8]
From the mid-1950s onwards, Adolph spent his time at Mount McKinley researching the grizzlies. He observed the bears for long hours. He even went so far as to follow bear families on day-long journeys. In 1961, Olaus joined him to help research the grizzly bears. While Olaus worked as the public figure, Adolph did more of the hands-on research. In 1965, Adolph retired and returned to the Murie ranch. He continued to study grizzlies until his death in 1974. [9]
Author: Jay Kirkland
Footnotes:
[1] Mark Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers: The Murie Brothers of Moorhead and their Passion for Nature,” YouTube video, 1:18:27. Posted by “Historical & Cultural Society of Clay County” May 1, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SLACl2VFV4&ab_channel=HCSCC.
[3] “Adolph Murie: Wildlife Biologist, Conservationist,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/denali-adolph-murie.htm.
[4] “Adolph Murie,” National Park Service; Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers.”’
[5] Andrea Halgrimson, “Moorhead’s Murie was a natural conservationist.” Inforum. April 12, 2010, https://www.inforum.com/entertainment/2922135-halgrimson-moorheads-murie... Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers”; “Adolph Murie: Wildlife Biologist, Conservationist.”; “Adolph Murie — extraordinary naturalist,” National Park Service: Person of the Month, last updated December 17, 2014. http://npshistory.com/persons-of-the-month/person-of-the-month-0115.htm.
[6] Adolph Murie, A Naturalist in Alaska (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), 10; Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers.”
[7] Adolph Murie, A Naturalist in Alaska, 62.; “Adolph Murie — extraordinary naturalist.”
[8] “Adolph Murie: Wildlife Biologist, Conservationist”; Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers”; Murie, A Naturalist in Alaska, 43.
[9] Adolph Murie, The Grizzlies of Mount McKinley (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), xi; “Adolph Murie — extraordinary naturalist”; Halgrimson, “Moorhead’s Murie was a natural conservationist.”