Junius Henderson

Junius Henderson
Junius Henderson in 1904
Born	April 1865 Marshalltown, Iowa
Died	November 4, 1937 (aged 71–72)
Nationality	United States of America
Occupation	lawyer, judge, curator, amateur malacologist
Known for	First curator of the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History

Junius Henderson (April 1865 – November 4, 1937) was an American lawyer, judge, curator, and amateur malacologist who was the first Curator (a position eventually equivalent to Director) of the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, of which he is considered to be the founder. He has been described as “a giant of natural history in early-day Colorado” who “cast an enormous intellectual umbra.”

Born in Marshalltown, Iowa, on April 30, 1865, Henderson was a ninth-generation American. He was of Scottish descent and was the son of a district court judge. By age 22, he was working as the editor of a small Washington newspaper.

In 1892, he moved with his parents to Boulder, Colorado, where he worked in a law office. Two years later, he became a lawyer. By 1902 he had become a county judge and a law instructor at the University of Colorado.

He had always been avidly interested in nature, so when he discovered that the university's natural history collection was small and poorly maintained, with no official curator, he volunteered to take care of it.

He was appointed the honorary curator of the Museum (without pay) in 1902, when "the whole collection would have gone into a good sized wagon, and was of no value." The collection at that time consisted of “a few fossils and mollusk shells, a small collection of rocks and minerals, and several mounted bird and mammals.”

“During his early years as judge and curator,” according to one source, “Henderson found time to earn a bachelor's degree from the university. Instead of attending graduation, he went exploring for fossils.”

Working closely with Professors Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell and Francis Ramaley, he expanded the collection. “His skill in developing the museum collection earned him considerable recognition,” writes one source. In 1909, the Museum was declared a separate University department with a $500 annual budget, and Henderson was granted a salary and a full professorship. He resigned his position as judge and devoted himself full-time to the museum and to the collection of specimens for its collection.

Over a 26-year period, he kept field notebooks containing handwritten daily accounts of his expeditions in the Rocky Mountains. His notebooks have been described as “paint[ing] a vivid picture of a changing Colorado, as horses-and-buggies give way to cars, cities grow, and wild landscapes retreat. Although their primary value is to biologists and geologists, his notes will also be of value to historians, geographers, and anthropologists interested in this period of Colorado’s history.” Those field notes, transcribed in 2001 by Professor Peter Robinson of the University of Colorado at Boulder, are available online.