Eleanor Barbour Cook

Born: 22 February 1889, United States
Died: 16 January 1976
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Eleanor Barbour was an educated woman, with passions in geology, paleontology, and music. She was raised in a scientifically active household, after all. She was the daughter of E.H. Barbour, Director of the Nebraska State Museum at the University of Nebraska. Through her father, she met and later married Harold Cook, son of James Cook. Harold and his father owned and operated the Agate Springs Ranch, home of the fossil beds the Park Service now protects.
She had a distinguished record at the University and had studied abroad. The years that Harold and Eleanor were married and lived in “Agate East,” where the monument sits today were the heyday of fossil collecting at the quarries.
Eleanor threw herself into her complex role at Agate – part housewife and mother, part scientific peer — with intelligence and humor. Later, she taught English, Geology, and Paleontology at Nebraska State Normal College in Chadron (now called Chadron State College). She worked in the field and took her students on excursions to the Agate Fossil Hills. At the request of College President Robert Elliott, she helped gather geologic and paleontological material to open their Museum of Geology. She became curator of that museum, which later became The Eleanor Barbour Cook Museum of Geology, which still inspires and educates college students and the public today.
Harold and Eleanor Cook’s four daughters, Eleanor Jr., Dorothy, Winifred and Margaret were all interested in the fossils found at the ranch and helped the paleontologists in the quarries. Two of them married geologists/paleontologists and Margaret and her husband George ranched on the Niobrara River in sight of the Agate Fossil Hills. Dorothy and her husband Grayson lived in the ranch house in the late 70’s where she wrote The Story of Agate Springs Ranch, History of the Agate Post Office and Heartbags and Handshakes about the Cook Collection. All four girls were educated at the University of Nebraska and were musically inclined.
Eleanor Barbour Cook’s aunt Carrie was a small woman and not very robust and was discouraged against taking college courses so studied at an art school and taught wood carving and china painting. During her free time she assisted at the museum that she and her brother Erwin formed. Fossils fascinated her and through her collaboration with Erwin she became a “preparatory” of fossil specimens that arrived from the field. Working on slabs of sandstone and clay she dug the bones from them, fitting together with expert fingers the shattered fragments of bone. She also wrote articles for scientific journals about the expeditions of the University of Nebraska. She passed away in 1942 after 49 years in the field of paleontology.


Posted in Curator, Education, Science, Science > Paleontology.