William Healey Dall (1845 - 1927)
William Dall was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Charles Henry Appleton Dall and Caroline Wells Healey. In 1863 he became a pupil of Lois Agassiz of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. He met Robert Kennicott at the Chicago Academy of Sciences Museum in Chicago. The Western Union Telegraph Expedition was mounted in 1865 to find a route between the United States and Russia across the Bering Strait. Kennicott was selected as the scientist for the expedition, and he choose Dall as an assistant because of his expertise with invertebrates and fish. Kennicott died while Dall was on an expedition to Siberia in 1866. He finished Kennicott’s work on the Yukon River.1)
Dall explored from Nulato to Fort Yukon and then from Nulato to the sea and along Norton Sound. Dall and Frederick Whymper spent the winter of 1866/67 at Nulato where Dall collected two boxes of specimens. In the spring, Dall and Whymper went up the Yukon River in a skin boat, making extensive notes on the land and people. In June they reached Nuklukayet, the furthest inland place reached by the Russians and the furthest downriver point reached by the Hudson’s Bay Co. They reached Fort Yukon, at the mouth of the Porcupine River on June 22 and a week later met Ketchem and Laberge there. They returned to Nulato and were ordered back to St. Michael where they were told the expedition was cancelled. Dall remained after the others left. He bought some trade goods and received part of the salary due to him. He remained in Alaska until the late summer of 1868, travelling between Nulato and St. Michael at his own expense.2)
Dall catalogued his thousands of Alaskan specimens at the Smithsonian in Washington, and in 1870 published an account of his travels in Alaska and Its Resources.3) This was a 600-page treatise, one-third of which recounted his experiences and the rest became a standard reference to the area for decades.4)
In 1870, Dall was appointed Acting Assistant to the U. S. Coast Survey, renamed the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878. Dall returned to Alaska on several survey missions between 1871 and 1874.5) In 1874, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey sent W.H. Dall and Marcus Baker to make observations for the position and elevation of Mount St. Elias and to make a survey of the coastline in its vicinity. They named the Malaspina Glacier. Malaspina, in the service of Spain, had observed Mt. St. Elias as 17,851 feet in 1791. That was the most accurate measurement until McGrath's work in 1892 when Elias was determined to be 18,024 feet.6)
Dall and Anette Whitney were married in 1880, and they visited Alaska on their honeymoon after which Dall began his final survey season on the Yukon. He left the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1882 and transferred to the U.S. Geological Survey in 1885 as palaeontologist. He was assigned to the U.S. National Museum as honorary curator of invertebrate palaeontology.7)
Dall’s sheep are named for William Dall as is Mount Dall in Denali Park and Reserve.