Myrl V. Walker Papers

Myrl Vincent Walker was born in Alden, Kansas, on May 20, 1903. He attended college at Southwestern College in Winnifred, Kansas, from 1921 to 1924 and graduated from the Kansas State Teachers College of Hays in 1927 with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Science. He taught for several years and then attended the University of Kansas from 1930 to 1931, where he earned a Master of Arts in Vertebrate Paleontology in 1931.

Walker began collecting fossils in the 1920s as a student of Dr. George F. Sternberg, who developed the natural history museum collections at the Kansas State Teachers College of Hays (now the Fort Hays State University Sternberg Museum of Natural History). Beginning in 1927, Walker and Sternberg worked together for five consecutive summers digging for fossils in Wyoming. Walker also studied paleontology under Dr. Lyman D. Wooster.

From 1933 to 1955, Walker served as a naturalist the U.S. National Park Service. He served in Petrified Forest National Monument, where he discovered fossilized vertebrate tracks. He also served in Zion National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Glacier National Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park. While working for the National Park Service, Walker wrote a variety of scientific and general-interest articles on the National Parks.

In 1955, Walker returned to Fort Hays Kansas State College as a professor in the Geology Department. In 1970, he was appointed Chair of the Department of Earth Sciences. He also served as the Director of the Sternberg Memorial Museum from 1955 until his retirement on July 1, 1973. In 1979, the Myrl V. Walker Scholarship was established in his honor. The award is given each year to a student majoring in geology. Myrl V. Walker died on May 23, 1985, at age 82.