William Harlow Reed papers, 1897-1961

William Harlow Reed (1848-1915) headed the Department of Paleontology at the University of Wyoming in the early 1900s. He also curated the paleontological museum (1899-1915). Reed arrived in Wyoming as an employee of the Union Pacific Railroad. While acting as section foreman and station agent near Como Bluff, Wyoming, in 1877, he discovered fossilized dinosaur bones in the rocks, which he brought to the attention of famed dinosaur collector O.C. Marsh. Although Reed was a self-taught geologist and paleontologist, his knowledge of the country where dinosaur fossils could be found won him positions with the Peabody Museum at Yale, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and the University of Wyoming. In his last years, he engaged in sheep ranching in Shirley Basin, Wyoming, in partnership with George Bird Grinnell.

Reed's children were Oscar (with his first wife, Florence Bovee) and William and Dorothy (with second wife Anna E. Clark). Dorothy married George W. Patterson, a court reporter and prosecuting attorney of Albany County, Wyoming.