Isabel Bassett Wasson

Isabel Bassett Wasson
Wasson on a bridge, circa 1920
Born	(1897-01-11)January 11, 1897 Brooklyn, New York
Died	February 21, 1994(1994-02-21) La Grange Park, Illinois
Citizenship	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Earth science, geology, ornithology

Isabel Bassett Wasson (January 11, 1897 – February 21, 1994) was one of the first female petroleum geologists in the United States, the first female ranger at Yellowstone National Park, and also one of the first interpretive rangers (male or female) hired by the National Park Service.

Wasson was born Isabel Bassett in Brooklyn, NY on January 11, 1897, daughter of urban planner Edward Bassett and Annie Preston Bassett, and sister of inventor and engineer Preston Bassett. Wasson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College in 1918, majoring in history so she could take a wide range of science courses. She took classes in geology after graduation at the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She met her future husband, petroleum geologist Theron Wasson, whom she married in 1920, while working towards a master's degree in geology at Columbia University, which she finished in 1934. They had three children: Elizabeth W. Bergstrom, a biologist; Edward B. Wasson, a petroleum geologist; and Anne Harney Gallagher, an art historian. Wasson worked as a petroleum geologist in her husband’s office at the Pure Oil Company from the early 1920s until 1928. She published two scholarly articles on geology, one co-authored with her husband about an oil field discovered by Pure Oil in 1914, and another by herself about the ages of rock formations in Ohio and new terminology for them; the latter was cited in a number of other papers and a recent book. After 1928 she spent over 50 years in River Forest, IL, teaching science in the local public schools, lecturing, bird watching (ornithology), and mentoring generations of young naturalists. Her interests included archaeology; she discovered a Native American religious mound in Thatcher Woods, near her house in River Forest, in the 1930s. An article about her discovery called her "the one who started the environmental education movement in America back in the 1920s and '30s."Theron and Isabel divorced in 1953 and she did not remarry. From 1953-1954, Wasson served as President of the Chicago Ornithological Society. Wasson also taught classes at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. She died in La Grange Park, IL, in 1994.