The History of Gothic Part III: The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, or It's a Bug's Life

In September of 1911 a man by the name of John C. Johnson was riding a narrow gauge train over the continental divide at Marshall pass, his first trip to the western slope.  He was on his way to Gunnison, Colorado to help start the Colorado State Normal School at Gunnison.  Originally a school with the sole purpose of training students to become teachers, the Normal School has since evolved into Western State College.  Not only was John C. Johnson instrumental in the history of Western State, but he underwent his own evolution through the years he spent in Colorado, and the impact he made on the Gunnison valley in general, and Gothic in particular, has been huge.

Dr. John C. Johnson

Far from having an academic family history, John C. Johnson was born to Swedish immigrants living in a house made of sod on the eastern plains of Colorado.  While I have friends who have an earnest passion for reconstructing the lifestyle of poor farmers, I'm sure that young Johnson was eager to escape the life of toil in agriculture that wedded people to the land.  Of course, the son of a farmer wouldn't be used to having things in life handed to him easily, and John C. Johnson took the lessons of hard work he learned from his family and applied them routinely to his life in academia.  In 1911, after graduating from the Normal School in Greely, Johnson hopped on a train to Gunnison to start another school.  On September 12, the Normal School at Gunnison was fully operational.

Now, "fully operational" a century ago meant something a little different than it does today.  Today, Western State College has a huge campus, a proud (but losing) football team, and many other organized sports teams. They offer classes in Holistic Shamanism and Outdoor Recreation, as well as your more conventional standards like Business or English.  In 1911, the doors opened to 13 students.  Sports teams were non-existent, and terms like Holistic Shamanism probably didn't even exist in the English language.  John C. Johnson was instrumental in changing all of that.

He started with the sports teams.  Within two years, he personally organized the first basketball team and football team.  Johnson rented an old church and converted it into a gymnasium, since for strange and complicated reasons the gymnasium at the college had a ceiling only eight feet high.  How the engineers of the late 19th/early 20th century could build a transcontinental railroad, but fail to make a gymnasium big enough to actually play sports in is something that confuses and perversely delights me.  In any case, the problem allowed Johnson to exercise his brain and his social skills while looking for a way to exercise the body.  Johnson, also the coach of the school's fledgling teams, somehow managed to obtain everything the school needed for a sports program; from a building, to backboards, to opponents.  Also immediately popular, and foreshadowing the eventual economy of the Gunnison valley, was the ski team Johnson started in January of 1912.

Between 1911 and 1928, Johnson served as coach, faculty, and then dean of the Colorado State Normal School, which became Western State College in 1923.  Also during that time, Johnson made the trek up to Gothic, and fell in love with the East River Valley. He had been operating the Rocky Mountain Biological Station in Taylor canyon, under the supervision of Western State College.  By 1927, however, the political climate in Colorado was changing, and due to a change in leadership in both the state and the school, Johnson found himself a target of the Ku Klux Klan, and both his position at Western State, and the RMBS were terminated.  These were dark times for Western State College, but out of them came the birth of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic.

Having learned the pratfalls of being involved in an institution that was subject to the whims of policy and politics, Johnson was determined to continue his work in biology free from the fetters of a government funded institution.  In 1928, with the help of his wife, Vera Adams Johnson, he started renting some buildings from Garwood Judd (who may or may not have had the right to rent them) in Gothic, and established the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.  With Aute Richards, A.O. Weese, and L.A. Adams, John and Vera Johnson incorporated the lab, and began the exciting, but often tedious work of documenting the biological processes that occurred in the high mountain valley.  Through the years, Johnson put much of his own money into the non-profit lab, buying standing buildings and renovating them, building new laboratories and cabins, and conducting painstaking research.  While for most of its history, the lab has been hanging by a financial thread, Johnson's spirit of putting his own sweat, blood, and money into the lab has persisted to this day.  As recent as a decade ago (before complicated building code regulations were being enforced) researchers and staff  would still come together to build the newest house, outhouse, or community structure that was needed.

The RMBL has, over the past 90 years, amassed some of the most important long term data sets the scientific community has at their disposal.  Year after year the "bugologists" would come up through Gunnison and Crested Butte to research everything from the behavior of marmots (large rodents that live in complex social groups,) to wildflowers and the insects that pollinate them, to stream ecology and, more recently, molecular biology.  Having information about how a population of animals lives for 50 or 60 or 70 years is a gold mine (see what I did there?) for biologists.  Being able to track populations in relation to climate, food sources, and predators gives a very good picture about what is really happening in the world around us.  It can even give us insights into ourselves.

I sat down with the director of the lab, Dr. Ian Billick PhD, to talk about some of the applications that come from spending years with his face in the dirt looking at the minute processes that make up this ecosystem.  He brought up an interesting example to illustrate how the natural world can show us a mirror into our own lives.  Apparently, insects in a stream will act differently when trout are feeding.  This may seem intuitive, but a "fear" mechanism, just like anything in science, must be documented and proved before it's considered valid.  Anyway, the insects responded not only to predation, but to the potential of predation, to the "fear" that now governed their lives, since trout were around.  This draws interesting parallels to our own society, and to how we're governing ourselves in the wake of the September 11th bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001. There is scientific evidence that indicates that regardless of actual death, populations will react to a predatory situation with fear, and change their behavior accordingly.  More people die from smoking each year than died in the WTC bombings, yet that act of terrorism has governed the very principles by which we live for a decade now.

The RMBL has always been on the cutting edge of science.  There have been numerous instances of conflicts between the "Old School" and the "New School" within the lab as science and technology have changed over the years.  Out of these robust discussions, and from the research of dedicated scientists, the lab has been instrumental in our understanding the world, our impact on it, and the consequences of that impact.  Michael Soule, the founder of Conservation Biology worked here for a while, and the revered (by some) Paul Ehrlic, author of "The Population Bomb" has been a member of the lab for decades.  The idea that organisms evolve constantly, in response to each other, has been explored here, indicating that evolution is a process and not a road to a predetermined "perfect" end.  With over 1300 peer reviewed publications coming from the lab, and innovative experiments like a warming meadow kept at a few degrees warmer than its surroundings to imitate climate change, the lab has been instrumental in furthering our understanding of how this crazy world actually functions.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory at Gothic

Science is constantly changing, and it has always been a struggle for the lab to change with it.  Without the funding of a large university or the federal government (which also frees the lab from political agenda,) the lab must rely on individual donors, fund raisers like the annual 4th of July Marathon, and grant money to continue operation.  Through these funds, the RMBL continues to move forward.  In 2011, a new building with state of the art laboratory space will be built, and there are plans to construct a visitor's center soon.  The business model of the lab is evolving, and interaction with the non-scientific community is increasing as our world shrinks and our links to each other become closer, more immediate, and more urgent.  The future of the lab rests on the shoulders of the people who come to work here, and relies on the blood and sweat of its members, as it has since John C. Johnson started buying buildings in 1928.  Having met and worked with lab members, these students and scientists from around the world, I'd say the future looks pretty bright.

Johnson, by the way, returned to Western State College in 1966 after a 38 year absence.  He died in 1973.

"In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them."  -Aldo Leopold, Conservationist.


If you'd like to make a donation to the lab, please follow the link below.
www.givedirect.org/give/givefrm.asp?Action=GC&CID=4737






Bibliography for The History of Gothic


1. Johnson, John C. Jr. and Dorothy Johnson. Recollections of W.S.C. and R.M.B.L.  2000.
2. Vandenbusche, Duane. The Gunnison Country.  Gunnison, CO: B&B Printers, 1980.
3. Haase, Carl Leroy.  Gothic History.  1971
4. Wolle, Muriel Sibell.  Stampede to Timberline.  Denver, CO: Sage Publishing, 1949
5. Billick, Ian.  Personal interview.  December 2010.
6. "Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory." Available at www.rmbl.org.  December 2010