Cottonwood Gulch: Hillis Langhorne Howie

Cottonwood Gulch: Hillis Langhorne Howie, Sr.

The Fire Line

“Stand FAST!” he shouted with a resounding baritone that pierced the momentary chaos. The command from Hillis Howie meant that all talking must cease, all personnel froze in place and their attention focused on him. Lightning had struck the Gulch and all hands had to be accounted for. The trekkers and counselors waited for instructions to mobilize. One of the cabins and a cottonwood tree were on fire and the dry creek bed was full with enough branches, which supplied fuel for a conflagration. When all campers “counted off” and assignments were made, Howie led the brigade of counselors and staff members to extinguish the flames in the cabin, cut down the cottonwoods that were smoldering, and make sure the “fire line” was observed by the curious visitors and campers.

Trained as a Boy Scout Master (Troop 18 in Indianapolis), Hillis L. Howie was a man who commanded attention and authority. The responsibility fit him like a leather glove and ranger hat that day and for years to come, as he strategically navigated his experiment in camping for nearly five decades. Youths became adults in circumstances like that fire, and everyone felt empowered to “up our game,” for the good of the community of fellow campers. It is more than a coincidence that the Boy Scout Outdoor Code includes the tenet: Be careful with fire.

HLH Background

Hillis Langhorne Howie was born in 1903 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the oldest child of William P. Howie and Lucy Langhorne. Hillis was an avid boy scout in his youth, and grew up spending a lot of his extra time outdoors with his younger sister, Jean. He attended high school in Indianapolis and later enrolled at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, for two years before returning to his hometown. In 1923 he attended Butler University and pursued an education degree. While a student at Butler, Howie taught part-time at The Orchard School, an independent elementary school in Indianapolis. As a man who loved the study of nature and camping, Howie’s part-time gig paid off. His first post-graduate job in the fall of 1925 was as a shop teacher at The Orchard School. It was the Roaring ‘20s, after all, and ingenuity was everywhere, even in the trees!

Image from The Orchard School archives

The Orchard School

In 1927 Hillis Howie’s curricular inventiveness came into focus as he led students from the classroom to the outdoors. Maple syrup making is a perfect example of Howie and “the Orchard difference.” In the spring season Orchard School students first tapped the local maple trees. After hammering drain taps into 53 maple trees on the campus, students worked with Mr. Howie to produce the sweet elixir. The student harvesters produce maple syrup by boiling off the excess liquid from the original sap to recover the highly concentrated topping for pancakes. That first year, the students produced 500 quarts of delicious syrup. Immediately a tradition was born. Tapping trees in Indianapolis’ Orchard Woods, and making vats of syrup became a legendary fundraiser and student-centered highlight of the school year ever since.

Syrup distillation from The Orchard School archives

Hillis Howie was busy during those early teaching years. In addition to his roles teaching at The Orchard School and serving as a Boy Scout Leader, he was a counselor at the Culver Summer School of Woodcraft for seven years. He also operated the Brer Rabbit Camp near Ft. Harrison, Indiana. The board members at Orchard esteemed Howie for the wonder he encouraged, the curiosity he nurtured and the enthusiasm he fostered as a “born teacher,” who inspired the young with his varied interests.

Another example of Howie’s native curiosity, beyond the maple syrup making, he challenged the Orchard School middle schoolers to consider “the rock problem”: how could the students move a sizable boulder lying in the middle of their future planned playing field? Using science and mathematical principles, the pupils were puzzled by the challenge. After a number of unsuccessful tries, the students arrived at a solution: if they dug a large hole right next to the rock and applied the right leverage with a fulcrum, they could ease the enormous rock out of its quarters and roll it away from the field. Let the games begin! 

When the students returned the favor to Mr. Howie with future challenges, they arrived as a prank. The middle schoolers were known to shout to each other, “Hillis ‘ll killus” if he finds out what we have done wrong.

In 1928 Howie headed to New York City, where he took a one year leave of absence to teach at The Dalton School, an independent K-12 school. A year later he returned to The Orchard School in Indianapolis. Several years after that hiatus Howie was invited to become the second school head at The Orchard School. Collectively, off and on, between 1923 and 1938, Howie was closely pruning and growing The Orchard.

Prairie Trek Expeditions

In the summer of 1926, just one year after college graduation and after his first full year at The Orchard School, the 23 year-old Howie organized a camping expedition for teenage boys. That July-August trip forever changed the trajectory of his personal and professional lives. The nine boys went on that nine week trip traveling in Ford Model T’s with customized Martin-Perry ‘Country Club’ bodies, and adorned with canvas water bags hanging from the rear posts.

During the camping trip, the boys were expected to take responsibility for setting up camp, cooking and clean-up. Howie’s experience as a Boy Scout was instrumental. Campers had opportunities for hiking, mountaineering, bird-watching, and exploring ghost towns and deserted Indian cave-dwellings and pueblos. The boys, proudly called “trekkers” were encouraged to pursue a particular interest on the weeks-long trip; including natural sciences (mammalogy, geology, ethnology, anthropology, ornithology, and herpetology) arts & crafts, archaeology, journalism and photography.

The nearly 6,000 mile expedition traveled on many unpaved roads through Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, before returning to Indianapolis. Howie enhanced the educational component of the subsequent summer trips by connecting the trekkers’ and their discoveries with science: The Children’s Museum in Indianapolis and the Field Museum in Chicago. Those museums began commissioning the Treks as “field expeditions,” which challenged the campers to bring back specimens, photographs and motion pictures of their trips. Ostensibly for scientific purposes, the boys were doing hands-on field research for the curators of the museums. And it was fun! 

Monty Billings mentioned that the stenciled words on the truck driver door which read – “Field Expedition of the Children’s Museum, Indianapolis” – were often transposed by the Indianapolis campers to read “Children’s Expedition, Indianapolis of the Field Museum.” Take that Chicago!

In the summer of 1929, instead of heading on a road trip West of the Mississippi in the duffel trucks and commissary vehicles, Hillis Howie and the trekkers took a detour. They sailed to England for a Boy Scout Jamboree. The trans-Atlantic summer trip, 5 floating days each way, altered the trajectory of Hillis Howie’s bachelor life.

Back in the spring of 1929, when Hillis was in New York City teaching at The Dalton School, he was introduced by a mutual friend, Mary Collicott, to Elizabeth Marshall. They soon started dating. At the time Elizabeth was working on a Master’s degree in Library Science at Columbia University. That summer, coincidentally, they were both visiting the UK and planned a rendezvous. Elizabeth was traveling in England and France with her brother, John, and the Sieberts, her guardian family. Hillis was in London with Troop 18 of the Boy Scouts for the International Jamboree. One afternoon between Scouting events, Hillis invited Elizabeth to join him for a rowboat ride and picnic in London. “Punting on the Thames” was the romantic gesture that won the day. In the fall of 1929, as the fortunes on Wall Street began to burn, the couple’s romance heated up and they became engaged. 

The next year Hillis Howie and Elizabeth Marshall married and they were immediately constant companions. 

Elizabeth Lincoln Marshall & the Howie Family

Elizabeth Lincoln Marshall was born in 1904 in Southeast Asia. Her parents, Harry and Emma Marshall, were missionaries. They had five children, four of whom were born while they were stationed by their church in Burma (now Myanmar). They started their missionary work in Southeast Asia in 1900 and stayed until 1942, barely making it out during the Japanese invasion of Burma.

Elizabeth’s early upbringing, as acquaintances remarked, was intensely cross-cultural. Elizabeth’s siblings were born in Burma and in the U.S., during a furlough stateside. The Marshalls returned Elizabeth to the U.S. for her schooling when she was 6 years old. The church set up guardian homes specifically for the children of missionaries. Fortuitously, the Marshalls met Annie and Wilbur Siebert on a trans-Atlantic trip during one of their year-long furloughs back to the States. The Marshalls approved of the Siebert’s as caregivers for their children instead of the church home. The Sieberts, who lived in Columbus, Ohio, became lifelong friends and “family” with the Marshalls.

After high school, Elizabeth studied at Ohio State University, where she earned a BA in 1925. Wilbur H. Siebert (1866-1961) was a revered History professor there, writing and teaching passionately about the Underground Railroad, a pathway to freedom for slaves from the South. When Elizabeth was on break from college, she lived with the Siebert family in Columbus. After college she earned her MA from Columbia University in New York City. Elizabeth’s home base those years was in Ohio with the Siebert family. She stayed with them until 1930, when she and Hillis were married. That summer the Sieberts held the wedding reception for the newly wed couple at their home in Columbus.

The Howies soon moved to Indianapolis and started a family. Together they raised two sons: John Marshall Howie (b. 1931) and Hillis L. Howie, Jr. (b. 1935). Hillis L. Howie, Sr. rose to be Headmaster of the Orchard School in 1933, where he stayed for five years. Simultaneously he continued to operate the summer camping trips for boys (officially named the Prairie Trek Expeditions). Elizabeth brought the two boys from Indianapolis to some landmark locations starting at a young age. And she brought them to the Trek Base Camp, when cabins were built to accommodate the groups’ housing in other than Baker tents. The Howie brothers became permanent summer fixtures there: campers, helpers and counselors. The Howie family lived by the motto: “Search for what needs to be done, develop a plan and do it.” 

Early interactions between Hillis and Elizabeth Howie proved pivotal in the operations of the Prairie Trek Expeditions and the Cottonwood Gulch property. Hillis Howie had the presence and demeanor of a Teacher and Scoutmaster. His attention to detail in finances and accounting, however, were haphazard at best and dangerous at worst. Counselors remarked that Hillis would return from road trips with fists full of notes and crumpled receipts jammed into his pockets. Elizabeth stepped in and put the appropriate organizational discipline to the cash flows and program finances, setting the books in order. They proved an excellent team.

The Cottonwood Gulch Base Camp

In the early 1930’s, the long, cross-country roadtrips took a physical toll on the equipment and the Trek families. The Howie “experiment” in expedition life was seriously challenging to all parties. Howie started to search the western states for a permanent base camp for his expedition. He considered the Four Corner States (Colorado, Utah, Arizona & New Mexico) as well as Montana and Wyoming. 

In the summer of 1930, Hillis and Elizabeth Howie took the trekkers to the Red Rocks of New Mexico. There on the well-traveled and at times unpaved Route 66, they met Andy Newman at Berton Staples Trading Post in Coolidge. Newman was an employee of the trading post. He introduced the Howies to his step-brother, Tom Henio, even inviting the Howies and the trekkers to the Henio/Silversmith wedding. Two years later, in 1932, Newman learned of some property that might be available for sale, located east of Coolidge, past the Continental Divide. 

The land, adjacent to Bluewater Lake, had been used for ranching, logging and potato farming in its earlier days. The depths of the Depression, though, dragged many of the region’s farming and lumber operations into bankruptcy. The Henios remembered that the ranch had been a milling operation with a natural spring and the seasonal Sawyer Creek running through it. The Navajos called the land To’ Leeh Náá Dli, which translates as “the water flows in and out of the ground.” It looked promising to Howie. 

Newman helped Howie survey the property. It was called the Carrington Ranch, after the previous owner, and consisted of an abandoned saw mill with a few dilapidated cabins and an intermittent creek. It was located south of the town of Thoreau, New Mexico, near the small town of Bluewater. As Howie wrote: 

“My first impression [of the property]–a cold, clear stream of water flowing from a stone building tucked under a grove of shady cottonwoods–stayed with me from August, 1932, all that winter, all the next summer and all the following winter. Intuitively, I considered the search ended. This oasis surrounded by intriguing rock formations was the logical choice.” 

Howie made arrangements to rent the property for the summer. Securing the clear, uncontested deed to purchase the property, however, was another matter entirely. 

After correspondence with “Old Man” Carrington, who was then living with his daughter in Ohio, Howie saw the complications of extracting the property from the Receiver of the Failed National Bank of Gallup. All of the interested parties soon piled up. They included two additional stockholders with Carrington in the McKinley Lumber & Stock Company and the Treasurer of McKinley County, looking to collect delinquent taxes. The resulting real estate sale involved a defunct New Mexico bank, the local county treasurer, a bankrupt company of lumbermen, and the Comptroller of the Currency in Washington, DC.

Howie and a skilled local lawyer from Gallup, Harris Lyle, negotiated a secured deed through what was known as a quitclaim. The legal wrangling was resolved with one check for $2,000 and another for $164 (payment of back taxes). Finally the 460 acre property was resurrected from bankruptcy. Ultimately Howie was victorious in dragging the interested parties to complete a legal settlement. The final permits for water rights and conservation easements dragged on for more than a year, before those matters were settled. 

Howie assembled a board of advisors to formalize and secure the new home base. The advisors consisted of Berton & Rebecca Staples (trading post operators, Coolidge), Harris K. Lyle (lawyer, Gallup), M.L. Woodard (shop owner, Gallup) and Gordon H. Thompson (staff member of the TT, Indianapolis). The land acquisition secured a permanent summer base camp for Howie’s annual summer Expeditions. 

That first summer, while Howie ran the camp programs, Tom Henio and his brother-in-law, Joe Silversmith, used their construction expertise to shore up some shacks on the former ranch. They made it habitable over the summer. One year later, documents were formally drawn up and the property deed was placed in a separate trust account. To this day both the Thoreau Base Camp and the Albuquerque Headquarters operate as the outdoor educational non-profit, Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions, based in New Mexico.

The Summer Program Expands

The camping program continued to expand, including in 1934, when the Board authorized a separate expedition for girls, called the Turquoise Trail (TT). The all-girls group was begun under the leadership of Margaret Jameson. Filling in as counselors and vehicle drivers were Elizabeth Howie, Gordon Thompson and Gene Inglehart, with Elizabeth taking her role as driver for the TT. This new group had plenty of hiking and camping in the deserts and the mountains of New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado and it added some intrinsic Native Arts to the summer curriculum: weaving, pottery, leather working and silversmithing. The Turquoise Trail summers were intermittent in those first few years, and became a regularly featured expedition in the early 1940s. 

In the late ‘40s and early ‘50s there were two boys’ groups, the first was simply called the Howie Group, and then in 1946, when the numbers swelled sufficiently, a second group was led by Rossiter D. “Doc” Olmstead. Howie first met Olmstead at The Dalton School in New York City, where they became solid allies. The groups alternated on road trips and base camp stays. In 1947 one Gulch story unfolded while the Olmstead Group was in Base Camp. The Howie Group was in Colorado on a road loop. Due to camper negligence, a fire broke out in an unattended fireplace. The flames incinerated a cabin, all of the campers’ belongings, a violin, and a rare book on beetles from the Gulch Museum. During those years, there were two certified ham radio operators in the groups. The emergency practice was that one ham operator was assigned to base camp, and the other to the road group. They kept in contact by two-way radio. Howie heard of the fire from the radio operator in his group. After that episode the trekkers doubled down on fire safety protocols. 

Over time the boys’ groups were identified with Roman numerals: Group I, Group II, and Group III. The character and itinerary of the groups were set by Hillis Howie and subsequent group leaders. Other groups were added over the years for older boys who loved geology, spelunking, and excursions (called road loops) deep into the wilds of the Four Corner States. Group III spent the least time in Base Camp, returning only for the loop-ending Rendezvous celebrations.

A separate group for younger trekkers was inspired by an influx of families looking for short-term summer experiences for their younger children. The new group, first called, The Little Outfit, was chartered in 1960. Since that time the Gulch has created affinity groups with different age groups and interests in mind. 

In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the Gulch ethos inspired specific groups focused on mountain climbing, gardening, cooking, geology, music, desert ecology, mountain biking, river rafting, fishing and many other adventures. The program extensions have also had a particularly important outreach to the students of K-12 schools in New Mexico (elementary, middle and high schools). The local Albuquerque and adjacent county families have wanted their children to learn about the enchantment of their home state, and the expeditions expanded to “school groups.” Those school-based groups have flourished, expanding Hillis Howie’s mission to be extraordinary and inclusive. 

Hiring at the Cottonwood Gulch

One of Howie’s keen insights was that hiring the right people to educate children matters. And in the process they have to “show up” and demonstrate their expertise, even in challenging situations. That process extended to Base Camp, where he hired Ruth Allen, long-time Base Camp cook, Doc Olmstead, group leader and museum curator, Wenda Trevathan, TT leader and archeologist, and Jim Sale, the logistics coordinator of Thoreau mail runs and Sexton food deliveries. 

Howie attracted teachers, like himself, to lead the expeditions out of Base Camp: longtime group leaders including Jack VanSickle, Chet Kubit, and Monty Billings. VanSickle and Kubit came to the Trek at the suggestion of Monty Billings’ aunt, Ruth Osborne Martin, who was on the first TT in 1935. They were both teachers at Westlane Junior High on the far North side of Indianapolis and they felt “hand-picked” by Howie for the tasks at hand.

Howie knew, from his Boy Scout Leader days, that the campers’ experience would be more influenced by these closer-in-age adult group leaders and counselors than by his own personality, no matter the strength of his own charisma. He scoured the Indianapolis school districts, the Ivy League and local midwest colleges for interesting leaders and counselors. His instincts were right and the lessons they safely taught their campers proved lifelong and invaluable. Even near-miss lessons were incorporated. Howie hired seasonal college students to serve as counselors, specializing in technical fields such as geology, ornithology, wilderness management, archeology, forestry, herpetology, arts & crafts, and anthropology … These college students developed summer projects which interested themselves and thrilled the campers. Often like Pied Pipers, the counselors created outdoor curricula for activities at Base Camp and on their road loops. The campers joined in and followed in their footsteps, exploring and learning alongside the counselors.

The Howies in the Late ‘30s

From 1938 to 1941, as the European continent was oppressed by the fury of Adolph Hiler, Hillis Howie was refining the Gulch procedures in the summer and taking graduate school classes during the school year. He and his family spent three years in New Haven, Connecticut, while he was a graduate student at Yale. That first year, in the fall of 1938 the Howies were renting a house on the Long Island Sound in Guilford, Connecticut. On September 21st, they experienced some natural fury of their own: the area was slammed by a highly unusual Category 3 hurricane, with sustained winds of 115 mph and gusts up to 150 mph. Without much insulation and no heat, the conditions for the young family were traumatic. 

In the aftermath of the clean-up and coastal recovery, Howie resumed his interests as a graduate student with the Yale School of Education and as a part-time contributor to Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History. 

The World War II Years and Yale’s Peabody Museum

The summer of 1942, the early War Years, Hilly Howie, Jr. recalls, the Trek did not travel far from Base Camp, instead the group explored parts of New Mexico closer to Gallup. 

“The high point of that summer was a horse-drawn wagon trip we took. Organized by Grandfather Tom Henio, we traveled for several days and nights along the base of the Red Rocks. We traveled from the Henio’s ranch in Coolidge to the house of a Navajo relative, who lived off the dirt road to Crown Point. As a young boy, I remember trudging by foot alongside the wagons, and camping at the base of the cliffs.”

Except for the war years, when the Expeditions were suspended, the Howie boys were at Base Camp every summer. They lived in the cabins with their parents. When they were old enough to swing a hammer and saw a log, they worked side-by-side Tom Henio, Joe Silversmith and Hillis Howie on constructing many wooden and adobe structures at Base Camp. All of the buildings at Base Camp have special Howie, Silversmith and Henio touches to them: fireplace icons, mantels, and doorways.

For three years (1943-1944-1945), due to the increasing impact of World War II, Hillis Howie, in consultation with the Board of the Expeditions, paused operations. During those years Hillis and Elizabeth Howie picked up bags and their two children and moved back to New Haven, Connecticut. Hillis was hired by Cornelius Osgood, the curator of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. Osgood had invited Howie to return to Connecticut to help turn-around the educational outreach of the Peabody Museum. The science and research aspects of the museum were well-known and well-endowed, but the community and school engagements, and their important cash flow, were struggling. Museum budgets depended heavily on school buses filled with science teachers and fee-paying students. Osgood wanted the Peabody to learn from the success Howie had instilled while working with the Children’s Museums in Indianapolis and the Field Museum in Chicago. The two midwest museums had both given Howie the highest marks for his creativity and educational focus. 

Howie’s imaginative programs took hold. Since the students couldn’t come to the museum, he inserted key artifacts and lesson plans into boxes, thereby bringing the museum to the classroom. The coordinated community outreach turned around the Peabody financially. In Howie’s concept of “taking the museum to the students,” the seeds of the Trek School Groups were planted. By all accounts the Peabody plan was a success and in the process Howie earned a Master’s degree in Education (1946) at Yale.

Community School, Missouri

Returning to the midwest in 1946 from Connecticut, Howie was a sought-after school administrator. His experience and authority remained through the 1950’s and 1960’s. He was hired as School Head at The Community School, an independent school in Ladue, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Over the next 13 years, many Missouri Gulch families were attracted to the Prairie Trek and Turquoise Trail summer camping trips because of the Howie influence. He was admired at Community School as a builder, teacher, outdoor educator, planner, barrier breaker, and true leader during what was called “The Hillis Howie Era.” 

At the outset of the era, there were constant building projects. They included doubling of the Nursery Building (1947), adding Administration Offices (1948), restoring the Golden Eagle Pilothouse (1948), a barn raising for horses, chickens and a cat (1950), and the enlargement of the Art-Shop Building (1954). In the process, Howie extinguished the debt of the school, raised teacher pay, started teacher pensions and raised seed money for the school’s first endowment account. As an author of the Community School history wrote: Howie was also an authority in many scientific areas: anthropology, geology, and biology (especially desert, plains, and mountain plants and animals). He loved all birds (cardinals and hummingbirds), insects (bees and beetles), mammals (raccoon and opossum). He helped the school community pay closer attention to conservation, kite flying, gardening contests, tree planting, hiking and camping, and he integrated the school with a family outreach to Blacks in greater St. Louis. In a word, he was a force. He also assigned the students with chores to keep up the quality of the cleanliness and order.

In 1959, Howie sent a letter to the Community School saying he wanted to devote his full-time as Executive Director of the Cottonwood Gulch, the summer program he founded.

Hillis Howie remained as the chief recruiter for summer campers and counselors for many years. He was both the Director of the Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions and the Chairman of the Board. Hillis and Elizabeth Howie visited the Base Camp every summer in their station wagon and went on road loops with groups in the early and mid ‘60s. 

Hillis Howie near Shiprock in New Mexico

In 1962 during the school year, Hillis Howie was hired as Headmaster of the Poughkeepsie Day School in Dutchess County, New York. The school was in dire need of a new director, as it abandoned an old campus and constructed a new building on the Vassar College campus. He was drawn to the challenge and signed up for three years. Howie held that leadership position for four seasons until his official school retirement in 1966. That year Hillis and Elizabeth returned to Indiana for their Howie homecoming.

Leadership Change

Monty Billings, who majored in Forest Management at Purdue University, had served in the Navy in the late ‘60s. He had been a Cottonwood Gulch camper, counselor and dendrologist (forest preservation specialist). He had been in Group III for a summer and on staff at Philmont Scout Ranch in NE New Mexico. When Monty returned from the service in 1970, Hillis recruited him to be the Group Leader of the Little Outfit. Hillis Howie stayed in a leadership position and Board Chair with the Expeditions until 1970, when he appointed Monty Billings to ascend to the Executive Director role.

Retirement in Bloomington, IN

Hillis and Elizabeth Howie had always intended to return to Indianapolis for their retirement. In the years since they had called it home, the urban growth and city sprawl had dramatically changed the once-small capitol of Indiana. In the prevailing years it had mushroomed into the third largest city in the midwest (after Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio). The cross-state town of Bloomington, however, provided the amenities of a college campus and a stable small-town atmosphere. Hillis and Elizabeth bought a tract of land in Bloomington in 1961, believing that the zip codes 47401-47408 would appreciate in value over time. They built a house on the tract. Their eldest son, John Howie, lived in the home with his young family, until he landed a teaching job at the University of Missouri. 

Hillis and Elizabeth moved from Indianapolis into their Bloomington house in the fall of 1966. Hillis Howie soon became a member of the Bloomington Unitarian Universalist Church, Psi Upsilon Fraternity, Indiana Academy of Science and the Indiana Historical Society. He stayed involved with these organizations for the rest of his life. Elizabeth stayed active and enmeshed with her family, her church and her Bloomington friends and neighbors for the next twenty years.

Retirement in Bloomington, IN

Hillis and Elizabeth Howie had always intended to return to Indianapolis for their retirement. In the years since they had called it home, the urban growth and city sprawl had dramatically changed the once-small capitol of Indiana. In the prevailing years it had mushroomed into the third largest city in the midwest (after Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio). The cross-state town of Bloomington, however, provided the amenities of a college campus and a stable small-town atmosphere. Hillis and Elizabeth bought a tract of land in Bloomington in 1961, believing that the zip codes 47401-47408 would appreciate in value over time. They built a house on the tract. Their eldest son, John Howie, lived in the home with his young family, until he landed a teaching job at the University of Missouri. 

Hillis and Elizabeth Howie moved from Indianapolis into their Bloomington house in the fall of 1966. Hillis soon became a member of the Bloomington Unitarian Universalist Church, Psi Upsilon Fraternity, Indiana Academy of Science and the Indiana Historical Society. Hillis was the chairman of the Monroe County Museum and helped restore the Carnegie Library within the Museum. He stayed involved with these organizations for the rest of his life. Elizabeth stayed active and enmeshed with her family, her church and her Bloomington friends and neighbors for the next twenty years.

Howie Vision Statement & Epitaph

Hillis Langhorne Howie, Sr. died in Bloomington in 1982, his wife, Elizabeth Marshall Howie, died in 1986. Their eldest son, John, died in 1990. The Howies are survived by their son, Hillis L. Howie, Jr. (Margaret Shaklee), of Evanston, Illinois, three grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

As both an Expedition Vision Statement and a Founder Epitaph, Hillis Howie explained the Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions this way:

The plan is to leave civilization behind and spend the months of July and August in remote and generally unknown regions of the Southwest; to establish temporary camps in sagebrush, pinon, and big timber and at ruin sites, deserted mining towns, and alpine lakes; to investigate the fauna, flora, and geology of each territory; to set a standard of camping which will be a satisfaction to ourselves, and a model to others; and to live a physically vigorous life, with a taste of the hardships which the early explorers expected. From this (ethos) it will be understood that the expedition is n(either) a sightseeing trip nor a deluxe dude ranch.

 – Hillis Langhorne Howie