Old Snow Hall: Before the Fair

Old Snow Hall

The first Snow Hall, also referred to as Old Snow Hall, was constructed in 1886 in front of the present day Watson Library. Named for Francis H. Snow, a faculty member who collected specimens for the Cabinet of Natural History and managed the collection from 1866 to 1889, when he was named director of the Museum of Natural History, located in Old Snow Hall. He served as museum director until 1901, and as chancellor of the university from 1890 to 1901.

Old Snow Hall, KU’s first science building, was built to house the 100,000 insect specimens that Snow and his students had collected throughout Kansas and the southwest. Among its various uses, the building included a museum of natural history from 1886-1902. Snow, with Dyche as his assistant, were the first KU professors to teach using natural specimens and largely responsible for the University’s large enrollment in the sciences. By 1912 the building began to show significant signs of a faulty foundation and was eventually replaced by the current Snow Hall in 1930.

In 1888, Dyche completed the mounting of a bison pair for KU’s natural history collection, the same year the last wild bison was seen in the state of Kansas. Recognizing that many of North America’s large mammals were becoming extinct, Dyche resolved to assemble a representative collection of specimens while it was still possible. Reporting to the Board of Regents in July 1890, Dyche wrote:

Allow me to urge upon you the importance of securing at the earliest possible date a good series of representations of other large mammals, such as moose, woodland and barren ground caribou, elk, musk oxen, and polar bears.

Each year of delay will make it necessary to put forth a much greater effort as well as demand a much greater outlay of money. It is hardly necessary to remind you that the building of rail-roads connecting with various water courses during the past few years has practically placed every part of the North American continent under the foot of civilized man. The exhilarating sport of the chase added to the hope of being supplied with food or rewarded by a valuable hide or set of horns, offer inviting temptations which induce the explorer, the pleasure seeker, the frontiersman as well as the professional sportsman and hunter to wage a war upon the large mammals which continually reduces ranks and will soon result in their utter extermination as wild species.

The buffalo is already gone and it is evident to those who have given the subject thought, as can easily be verified by an examination of governmental and other reports that other large mammals will soon disappear.  Laws are being enacted in most of the states and territories for the protection of large game animals. This action will result, it is to be hoped, in prolonging the existence of certain species at least in favored localities, but from the very nature of the environing circumstances it will be for a limited period only.

In view of these considerations and many others which might be produced but for the necessary brief nature of this report, let me urge upon you again gentlemen, the importance of continuing the work of securing as complete a collection of our birds and mammals as possible, and particularly that part of the work which has for its immediate object the securing of a good series of specimens of our large mammals. Holding in mind this one important fact, namely, that if it is not done now (within the next few years), we may never be able to secure these characteristic species of the American fauna.

Dyche was granted a leave of absence and would leave shortly after on a series of expeditions to procure North America’s large mammals. On his expeditions Dyche was able to successfully hunt and collect such animals as the Rocky Mountain goat, elk, and moose still on display in KU’s Natural History Museum today.