Edwin and Barbara McKee Collection

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Volume:

1,560 black-and-white and color photographs; 1,000 black-and-white negatives

Views include:

Portraits of Edwin and Barbara McKee, their families, friends, and colleagues; Havasupai Indians, particularly women basket makers, views of Supai village and homes; Hopi Indians and villages; Navajo Indians, scenic views of the Navajo Reservation, including Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, and Rainbow Bridge, prehistoric sites, hogans and trading posts; Papago (Tohono O'Odham) Indians and dwellings; Grand Canyon, including scenic views, Phantom Ranch, the Colorado River, trails, archaeological sites, flora, fauna, and geologic features; the Arizona Strip, including Pipe Springs and Houserock Valley; Flagstaff and vicinity scenic views, including Wupatki, Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater, and the San Francisco Peaks; Tucson, Phoenix, Prescott, Tombstone, and other Arizona localities; travels to Utah, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and other portions of the United States and to Mexico

Biograpical note:

Born in Mineral Hill, New Mexico in 1902, Barbara Hastings graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in agricultural chemistry in 1924. Ultimately she moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked for C. Hart Merriam in the U.S. Biological Survey, and for the American Automobile Association in the editorial department. In 1929, she offered to drive Dr. Merriam's sister, ornithologist Florence Merriam Bailey, and her husband, biologist Vernon Bailey, to the Grand Canyon to do field work for a period of several months. Hastings served as a chauffeur and assistant to Mr. Bailey. Upon their arrival at the Grand Canyon, on May 6, the Baileys insisted that Hastings meet the new park naturalist, Edwin Dinwiddie McKee, who had been in Mr. Bailey's scout troop as a boy.

Edwin McKee was born in Washington, D.C. in 1906. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated from Cornell University. After Glen Sturdevant, the first Grand Canyon park naturalist, tragically drowned in February of 1929, McKee was offered the job. McKee had previously worked at the Grand Canyon for the U.S. Geological Survey and was keenly interested in both geology and natural history. His introduction to Barbara Hastings had a rather rocky beginning when he took her to a dance at the community hall--but refused to go in and dance. Apparently he redeemed himself over the next few days during a trip with Miss Hastings and the Baileys to Phantom Ranch. In July of 1929 he proposed to Miss Hastings, and they were married in December of that year.

The McKees lived primarily at the Grand Canyon for the next eleven years. They both wrote for the park's bulletin, Grand Canyon Nature Notes, and Mr. McKee authored Ancient Landscapes of the Grand Canyon Region. The McKees also became acquainted with the Havasupai, an interest which ultimately led to the writing, with anthropologist Joyce Herold, of Havasupai Baskets and their Makers: 1930-1940. They traveled extensively to various regions in the Colorado Plateau, as well as elsewhere in the United States and to Mexico. Mr. McKee worked on his graduate degree at the University of Arizona, University of California-Berkeley, and Yale. The couple had three children, William (Bill), Barbara (Bobsy), and Edwin (Ted), born in 1931, 1932, and 1935.

In 1941, Edwin McKee took a position as Director of Science for the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. The following year he also began serving on the faculty of the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he became Chairman of the Department of Geology in 1951. In 1953, the McKees moved to Denver, Colorado when Mr. McKee began working for the U.S. Geological Survey, first as the chief of the Paleotectonic Map Section, and later as a research geologist, an affiliation he retained for the rest of his life. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Sciences degree by Northern Arizona University (then Arizona State College) in 1957. Edwin McKee died in 1984. Barbara McKee, who donated this collection, died in Denver, Colorado in 1998.

Cline Library
Special Collections and Archives Department
Northern Arizona University