Martin S. Garretson

Garretson was born on the Old Garretson Homestead in Ten Mile Run, New Jersey. As a young man he traveled West to work as a rancher. Garretson witnessed firsthand the disastrous effect of western settlement on the bison herds of the American plains. By the late 1800s, the bison numbers on the plains had dropped to a few hundred animals. In 1905, Garretson joined naturalist W.T. Hornaday (United States, 1855-1937) and others to found the American Bison Society, an organization dedicated to re-establishing the breed in North America. An accomplished rancher and huntsman, Garretson was appointed curator of the National Museum of Heads and Horns at the Bronx Zoo in 1934. He later served as Secretary of the American Bison Society and was considered the world's leading scholar on American bison. During that time, he conducted the majority of the research for his book The American Bison (New York, 1938), which remains a standard reference on the species.