March is not only Iowa History Month, but also Women’s History Month!
While women have not always had recognition for their efforts, they have been involved.
Ada Hayden, 1884 – 1950
Photo from the Ada Hayden Collection, Iowa State University Library Digital Collections
One of the most well-known women in Iowa Conservation, Ada Hayden, was born in 1884 and grew up on a farm as an only child. Her home was in Franklin Township in Story County. She attended Iowa State College, which was later renamed Iowa State University. In 1908, she received a bachelor’s degree in botany. After receiving her master’s in botany from Washington University in 1910, she moved back home and worked toward getting her Ph.D from Iowa State College. In 1918, she was the 1st woman and 4th person overall to recieve a doctorate from ISU.
This was only the beginning of her passion for prairie. After her Ph.D, she worked as an assistant botany professor at ISU. In 1934, she became the curator of the herbarium on campus. She concentrated on prairie plants and is said to have created “possibly the best published native flora survey… of any part of Iowa”. She added over 14,000 specimens to the herbarium, many of which were from her family land.
In the 1940’s she began focusing more on prairie preservation. This however, is far from the first time that she thought about saving prairie. In 1919, she wrote an article about the importance of setting aside prairie for permanent preservation and research. She believed that prairie preserves serve as a living museum and field lab for scientists. In 1944 she helped write a report identifying areas of perservable prairie in Iowa.
In 1950, at the age of 65, she died of cancer. Today, there is a beautiful prairie and park in Ames, IA, named after her.
Herma Albertson Baggley, 1896 – 1981
Herma was born in Inwood, Iowa, on October 11th, 1896. She attended the University of Idaho and, while there, received her bachelor’s in botany with a minor in philosophy in 1921 and a master’s in botany in 1929. Over the summer in 1929 and 1930, she worked at Yellowstone National Park, giving talks about Old Faithful. Her entertaining and informative talks would draw in hundreds of people. Because of these talks, in 1931, she became the first woman to become a full-time naturalist with the National Parks Service. She helped design the first trail to Old Faithful, and in her 7 years as a naturalist, she wrote over 20 articles and coauthored Plants of Yellowstone National Park with Walter B McDougal. She also advocated for better living conditions for Park empluees and their families. She argued that improved housing and more benefits would help recruit better-qualified staff.
Kathryn “Kitty” Hach-Darrow, 1922 – 2020
While not Iowa-born, Kitty did a lot of good work in Iowa. While attending Iowa State University, she met her husband, Clifford C. Hach, and they married in 1943. While working in a water treatment plant, Clifford had the idea for a simplified method of analysis that would allow workers to treat water with powdered formulas rather than the heavy chemical solutions they were using. In 1947, they co-founded the Hach Chemical Company based on this idea. They bought an acre of land in Ames, IA, to build their plant on. They also lived in an apartment on the plant with their 3 children.
As municipal standards for drinking water evolved, Kitty recognized the importance of water plant operators as a market and the need to work closely with them to provide long-term customer service. This drive for excellent service led to her creating a direct mail marketing campaign where she flew a plane with product directly to municipalities of all sizes. While operating this campaign, she flew over 7,000 hrs and became a part of the Ninety-Nines, an international group of women pilots.
In 1957, the Hachs won the American Water Works George Warren Fuller Award for distinguished service in the water supply field. In 1978, they moved their headquarters to Loveland, CO.
Kitty was known as an accomplished pilot and one of the top women business owners. She was also the first woman director of an international non-profit focused on better water quality, the American Water Works Association. Afterward she served on many AWWA committees, including the President’s Advisory Council.
These are only a handful of intelligent, caring, and passionate women who have helped shape today’s conservation. Without them and many others, we may not be where we are today. So thank you to the women of the past, who have paved the way for others. Without your struggle, roughly half of the population would not have the choice to be naturalists or conservationists.