Unforgetting Contributions to Environmental Preservation: Remembering Elzada Clover’s and Lois Jotter’s Historical Journey and Work

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 3:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Biographical Stories, Cultural Preservation, and Creative Research Practices in Education

Abstract

This biographical investigation presents the historically significant work of two botanists, Elzada Clover, PhD, who with graduate student, Lois Jotter, mapped the first-ever botanical survey of the Grand Canyon’s Colorado River in 1938. Newspapers at that time expressed misgivings and misogynistic distrust, predicting that Clover and Jotter would fail because they were women. Several reported they would not just fail but die. In early August 1938, after traveling 600 miles in 45 days, the team (Clover, Jotter, an innkeeper interested in commercializing river runs, a photographer and two hired boatmen) made it to their destination, Lake Mead, Arizona. Clover and Jotter identified more than 50 species of flora along the river, including four new species.

Authors

• Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, Louisiana State University

• Hayley Alyce Graham, Louisiana State University