William Henry Holmes (1846 - 1933). William Henry Holmes, known as W. H. Holmes, was an American explorer, anthropologist, archaeologist, artist, scientific illustrator, cartographer, mountain climber, geologist and museum curator and director. Early life and education William Henry Holmes was born on a farm near Cadiz, in Harrison County, Ohio, to Joseph and Mary Heberling Holmes on December 1, 1846. One of his forebears was the Rev. Obadiah Holmes, who emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts in 1638. William Henry Holmes graduated from the McNeely Normal School, Hopedale, Ohio in 1870 and afterward briefly taught drawing, painting, natural history, and geology at the school. In 1889 the school awarded him an honorary A.B. degree. Later, in 1918, Holmes received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. for his work and achievements. U. S. Geological Surveys Hayden Survey In 1871, he went to Washington, D.C., to study art under Theodore Kaufmann. His talent soon came to the attention of the scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, notably Fielding Bradford Meek, and Holmes was employed drawing and sketching fossil shells and shells of live mollusks. In 1872, Holmes became an artist/topographer with the government survey of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, replacing Thomas Moran. His first trip out West was to the newly established Yellowstone National Park. During the 1870s, Holmes gained a national reputation as a scientific illustrator, cartographer, pioneering archaeologist, and geologist. His work on the laccolith influenced Grove Karl Gilbert's own work on the same. In the field, Holmes worked closely with the photographer William H. Jackson and back in Washington he helped produce Hayden's great achievement, the Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado, And Portions of Adjacent Territory. Dutton Survey After the Hayden Survey was absorbed into the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879, Holmes went to Munich, Germany, to further his art studies under Frank Duveneck and to take lessons in museum making from Adolphe B. Meyer of Dresden's Anthropology Museum. On Holmes's return to the U.S., he was hired by the Geological Survey and assigned to Clarence Dutton as a geologist and illustrator. Holmes illustrated the atlas for Dutton's Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District; his triptych panorama of the Grand Canyon from Point Sublime is a masterpiece of American scientific illustration. He was also a noted mountain climber, and a peak in Yellowstone National Park, Mount Holmes, was named in his honor. In 1875, Holmes began studying the remains of the Ancestral Pueblo culture in the San Juan River region of Utah. His models of ancient Indian ruins were a sensation at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia. Holmes became particularly interested in prehistoric pottery and shell art, producing the published works of Art in Shell of the American Indians and Pottery of the Ancient Pueblos. He expanded these studies to include textiles, and he became well known as an expert in both ancient and existing arts produced by Native Americans of the Southwest. In 1889 he discovered and reported Indian petroglyphs in central West Virginia.