Aubrey Clare Hildreth (1893-1975) had graduated with a degree in argiculture (horticulture) from West Virginia State University in 1917. After a stint as county agent then a tour of duty overseas in the military, Hildreth returned as research fellow and instructor at the University of Minnesota, wrote his thesis on "Determinations of Hardiness in Apple Varieties and the Relation of Some Factors to Cold Resistance," was employed at the Washington Argicultural Expirment Station, working on Improving the native blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Air.).
Book: High Plains Horticulture: A History
By John F. Freeman
Unfortunately this is the best photo of Dr. Aubrey Clare Hildreth I could find.
He was the husband of cousin 4x removed to me.
The wind-swept
prairies of
Wyoming’s High
Plains seem an
unlikely place for
a young man
interested in
blueberries and
cranberries and
carrying a 1926
diploma
documenting his
doctorate in
Horticulture. The
events that brought this West Virginian to Wyoming
include the 19 March 1928 passage of a Congressional
bill creating the Central Plains Research Station-shortly
to be renamed the Cheyenne Horticultural Field Station.
Only 3 months after the bill’s passage, a 199-year lease
had been executed (2,139 acres from the City at $1 per
year) and Robert Wilson, the Station’s first
superintendent (1928 to 1930), was directing building
construction west of town and north of the railroad and
ranch road paralleling Crow Creek. Herbert Hoover was
elected President in November, and by January 1929,
Wilson was directing carpenters as they installed the
interior trim in the headquarters building and the
Superintendant’s residence. A budget shortfall ended
construction at the end of January and further work
waited until Congress passed, on 4 March 1929, a
Deficiency Appropriation Bill for $25,000 with the funds
being immediately available for the Station. The
decision was then made to build another staff house;
plus, storage cellar, head house (a building attached to
the greenhouses), dairy barn addition to the main barn,
and garages behind all residences and the headquarters
building. ($25,000 went a long way in Cheyenne in
1929!) This construction was initiated and continued
through the end of Wilson’s tenure.
Eight months after the October, 1929 Stock Market
crash, 36-year-old Aubrey Claire Hildreth resigned his
position at the University of Maine Agricultural Station
and left the blueberries and cranberries of Orono,
Maine, to travel with his wife, Marie, and sons John
(age 8) and Robert (age 6) to Cheyenne to assume the
duties of Station Superintendent, Cheyenne
Horticultural Field Station. They left Maine, according to
John, on the 29th or 30th of June and by early July, he
and Robert were playing on the large, leatherupholstered
chairs in the lobby of the Plains Hotel
where the family stayed before moving into the
Superintendent’s residence at the Station. Robert
Wilson’s mission was to build the station; Dr. Hildreth’s
mission was to build the USDA research program and
initiate the first formal High Plains horticultural
research.
Hildreth was born 20 December 1893, on a farm near
Mannington, Marion County, West Virginia. His formal
elementary education was at the one-room
schoolhouse near the family farm, but much of the
boy’s education was at home where most evenings his
father could be found reading to his children or
teaching them arithmetic and otherwise aiding their
scholarship. Hildreth attended secondary school 18
miles away in Fairmont. Later, with the support of his
parents and sister, he obtained a degree in Horticulture
from West Virginia University. During World War I he
served in the field artillery and in January 1919,
Lieutenant Hildreth was honorably discharged. That fall
he began graduate work at the University of Minnesota.
In 1921, he and family neighbor Marie nee Copenhaver,
married, and then journeyed 2500 miles west to
Pullman, Washington, where Hildreth continued
graduate work at Washington State University with a
research project on blueberries and cranberries at one
Washington Agricultural Experiment Station and a
project on dry-land plantings at another. In 1923, he returned to the University of Minnesota to study coldhardiness
in apples for his doctorate. Both the
Washington dry-land horticultural experience and the
Minnesota cold-tolerance research would guide his
USDA work in Cheyenne.
Dr. Hildreth wasted no time implementing the
Cheyenne USDA research program. By 1932 he was
reporting that 866 fruit trees had
been planted in a 1931 dry-land
test for hardy tree-fruit varieties
and that 70 percent were still alive
in 1932. This survival rate appears
to have surprised him since he
specifically noted in the 1932
annual report that the plantings
“…included many varieties not
(thought) adapted to prairie
conditions…” In other words, losses
were expected and death defined
material not adapted to the
Cheyenne climate. He concluded,
“All dead fruit plants were replaced
this spring, for further trial.”
A sulphinated oil developed in
Minnesota for preventing rabbit
injury to plants was used in the 1931-32 tree fruit and
windbreak experiments and Hildreth wrote, “If this
preparation continues to prove effective it will be one
of the most important contributions made to tree
planting on the plains.”
Besides tree fruits, Dr. Hildreth also worked with
currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries.
He recorded high death losses among the existing
varieties of raspberries and strawberries and in doing so
identified a need for High Plains-adapted materials for
these species-a need that was eventually addressed by
a special breeding program carried out under the
direction of the Station’s, Gene Howard in the mid
1960s and resulting in the USDA releases of the ever
bearing Fort Laramie strawberry and the raspberries
Trailblazer, Pathfinder and Plainsman.
By the end of 1933, Hildreth recorded nearly 6,000
accessions or entries that had been added to the station
plant collections and studies.
The establishment of windbreaks was a priority
research area. Besides rabbits, young trees had to
survive desiccating winds that sucked water out of the
plants faster than shallow root systems could replace it.
Conifers were particularly susceptible. To reduce
seedling mortality, Hildreth and J. L. Emerson sprayed
young pine trees with a multitude of coatings ranging
from corn oil to a beeswax emulsion. The 1933 volume
of the journal, Science, carried their report that a brew
of linseed oil, soap, sulfur, and water could be sprayed
on pine seedlings without killing them, and that it
reduced seedling water loss 32%.
Climate effects on plants were an important part of
USDA research in the first decade of Station operation
and the work was summarized in a report published in
the 1941 Yearbook of Agriculture under the title, Effects
of Climate Factors on Growing Plants. It is a research
focus that continues today in the form of the Station’s
Prairie Heating And CO2 Enrichment (PHACE)
experiment.
Dr. Hildreth’s tenure at the Station included 4 special
assignments. In 1935 he oversaw the design, selection,
and installation of plantings in the parks and along the
streets of Boulder City, Nevada; a city constructed for
the families of workers who built Hoover Dam (then
Boulder Dam). From 1942 to 1946 he was Director of
the USDA’s war effort to make the shrub guayule (whyooh-lee)
a practical alternative source for natural
rubber. From 1946 to 1955 he directed research at the
USDA Mandan, North Dakota and Woodward,
Oklahoma research stations in addition to the Cheyenne
program. In 1955, Dr. Hildreth was selected for a 2-year
assignment to Afghanistan to advise on the creation of
an agricultural experiment station in that country and to
develop improved plant materials for the country’s
different regions.
Dr. Hildreth retired from USDA, Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) in 1959 to become the Director of the
newly opened Denver Botanical Gardens. He died in
1975 after being recognized by 16 awards and citations
including the 3 most prestigious awards in
horticulture-The Arthur Hoyt Scott Garden &
Horticultural Medal, The National Council of State
Garden Clubs Silver Medal, and The Liberty Hyde Bailey
Medal (the 12th recipient in the 60 years the award had
existed). His success was partly a result of his focus on
important problems. Walter T. Federer, who was raised
on a ranch north of Cheyenne, worked at the Station as
a young man, attended Colorado State University, and
became world famous as Professor of Biological
Statistics at Cornell University, wrote in his book,
Statistics and Society-Data Collection and
Interpretation, that Dr. Hildreth taught that in analytic
research, the framework of definitions and axioms, as
well as the conclusions to be drawn, must be explicitly
and rigorously stated if there is to be any hope of
effecting a solution and drawing a conclusion. No short,
ambiguous hypotheses statements for him or Dr.
Federer!
Dr. Hildreth’s primary life work of initiating and
maintaining problem-solving USDA agricultural research
at Cheyenne is a priceless heritage that continues to benefit the citizens of the Rocky Mountain region, and
the nation. In 1974, the Station was renamed a 3rd time
to reflect a change in research emphasis and a focus on
problems in rangeland ecology and management. USDA
agricultural research continues to address important
concerns and issues and today, Station scientists are at
the forefront in solving problems related to reclamation
of lands disturbed by mining and energy extraction,
rangeland monitoring, profitable grazing management
that addresses conservation concerns, invasive species,
and global climate change. The products of USDA-ARS
research at the High Plains Grassland Research Station
continue in the problem-solving tradition of Dr. A. C.
Hildreth.
Editorial note: This article celebrates more than 80 years
of USDA agricultural research at the High Plains
Grasslands Research Station west of Cheyenne. Terry
Booth is a Rangeland Scientist at the Station and John
Hildreth, eldest son of A.C. is a retired engineer and
rancher in Laramie.
Source: http://www.rangelands.org/wyoming/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/May_2011_newsletter.pdf
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