Ada Hayden:
Prairie Presevationist Pioneer

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This article first appeared in INHF's Winter 2007 magazine.

By Teresa Beer Larson

One hundred years ago, Ada Hayden was a botany student at what was then called Iowa State College (now Iowa State University).  In addition to taking classes, Hayden was honing her passion for prairies and native plants—an interest that persisted throughout her career.

Described as both “eccentric” and “emotionally dedicated to the prairie effort,” this early Iowa conservationist’s legacy to future generations can be spotted in prairie preserves throughout the state—where graceful, tall native grasses bend in the wind and brilliant prairie flowers bloom.

A unique character

Iowa State University Library/Special Collections Department

Water hemlock (Circuta maculata). Ada Hayden drew and colored this specimen, a poisonous native species found on wet prairies.

During her childhood on a farm just north of Ames, Ada Hayden apparently explored some undisturbed prairie on her own. She commented in an interview later in life that she loved to watch the changing of the plants through the seasons as she walked to school along a country road. By the time Hayden graduated from Ames High School in 1904 as an honor student, she had spent many hours observing nature, identifying plants, collecting specimens and laying the groundwork for a passion for prairies.

At a time when few women entered college as science students, Ada Hayden graduated with honors in 1908—while playing on the Senior-Sophomore Basketball team, winning a medal from the Women’s Athletic Association and being involved with the campus yearbook and literary society. She later received her master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a second master’s from Iowa State. In 1918 she became the first woman to receive a doctorate degree from Iowa State College. 

For the most part, Hayden’s professional life was spent at Iowa State, first as an assistant professor of botany and later as the curator of the herbarium. In some respects, Ada Hayden was a colorful character, as colorful as the prairies she liked to describe. 

Dr. Lois Tiffany, a retired botany professor from Iowa State University, was an undergraduate there when Hayden, late in her career, was an assistant professor at the college. Tiffany remembers Hayden as “someone you definitely noticed.  She walked with purpose, rather brusquely.  She did her own thing in her own way.” 

According to the late Duane Isely, who joined Iowa State’s botany faculty in 1944, “Dr. Hayden has been described as determined, fearless, independent, brusque and eccentric. Dr. Hayden was diversely talented and skilled.  Professionally she was a knowledgeable floristic botanist and ecologist.  It is evident that she was both an excellent photographer and an artist.” Another Hayden colleague described her as “the worthy Ada.”

A noble mission

Even by the early years of Hayden’s career, much of Iowa’s original grasslands had been plowed under.  Hayden authored a 1918 scientific paper which noted, “The primeval prairie of Iowa is fast vanishing.”  In this paper, Hayden not only describes prairie plant life, but analyzes the impact of soils, seasonal temperatures, weather records and topographic and geological features.  She makes it clear that prairies are important ecosystems to save.

Hayden’s professional work on prairies reached a high point in the 1940s when she chaired an Iowa Academy of Science committee studying the preservation of natural landscapes.  The Academy awarded her $100 “to survey and to select for potential preserves the best remaining prairies across the state.”  Traveling in her own car, Hayden visited, photographed and catalogued 22 prairie tracts in ten counties. This work led to her landmark publication in 1945: “The Selection of Prairie Areas in Iowa Which Should Be Preserved.”

Not content to just theorize about prairie protection, Hayden then took her case beyond academic realms directly to the people. She spoke to clubs and organizations, urging Iowans to protect and donate any prairie remnants they owned. As she told an interviewer on WOI-Radio in 1946, “It would be especially appropriate to give the state a present of virgin prairie land if you have some….Then there’ll be a preserve for your grandchildren and great grandchildren to enjoy, not as a picnic area—but as a cathedral, a monument to the past.” 

article continued in Part II: A Lasting Legacy

Ada Hayden Introduction Page

The Ada Hayden Herbarium

For more information, e-mail Cathy Engstrom, Director of Communications, or call (515) 288-1846.