Roland McMillan Harper

A field botanist for the Geological Survey of Alabama (1905-66), Roland Harper also carried out short-term assignments with the USDA, Florida state census, and the University of Georgia throughout the South. He had wide-ranging interests in plant geography, forestry, photography, and economic botany. During much of his career, Harper recorded “car-window notes” based on train-ride views, including a 20-county survey of east Texas made in 1920. He was then one of the first observers to describe the Big Thicket as a diverse area of transition, shifting from the longleaf pine hills to dense, swampy bottomlands. This understanding of the Thicket as a biological crossroads, recorded before the most intensive era of industrial logging, was key to the argument for its unique value worthy of protection.