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Gene Field Foster (January 17, 1917 - February 24, 1983) was an American carpenter, artist, archeologist, ornatholigist, and early Glen Canyon river runner.

Early life
Gene Field Foster was born in Tomahawk, Wisconsin to Elmer David and Ruth Gray (Field) Foster. Gene’s mother, Ruth Field Foster, named her daughter for her own father, poet and journalist Eugene Field. Ruth chose the masculine spelling for her daughter’s name.

Gene’s father served in World War I and on his return to civilian life entered into the lumber business with his brother, Herman, creating Foster Brothers Lumber Company. After his brother’s death, Elmer changed the name to simply Foster Lumber Company. Gene learned carpentry from her father; skills that aided her throughout her life. Gene attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then moved to New York City where she made drawings for ad agencies before she established her own business and learned photography skills. In World War II Gene worked in a Connecticut munitions plant where she develop pneumonia. Doctors advised her to go west to regain her health. Gene moved to Prescott, Arizona where she supported herself by utilizing her carpentry skills. In March 1946 she purchased some land and built a house. At some time in the late 1940s, Gene moved to Sedona, Arizona and opened her own carpentry shop.

Explorations
In 1950, Gene was asked by Sedona resident Elmer Purtyman to help with the shuttle for a river trip through Glen Canyon on the Colorado River. When Elmer later showed her film of the river trip she was astounded by the natural beauty of the canyon and became determined to document it.

Flagstaff’s Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) founders Harold and Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, along with MNA archaeologist Katharine Bartlett, hired Gene to build picture frames. This 1951 meeting of Gene and Katharine grew into a personal and professional partnership. They bought a lot in Flagstaff, Arizona and built a small home with plenty of light for Gene’s painting and a large storage area for her Glen Canyon equipment.

The Bureau of Reclamation identified a dam-site in lower Glen Canyon by 1921 and Gene had the foresight to realize if the dam were built, it would destroy countless archeological sites documenting thousands of years of indigenous occupation of Glen Canyon.

She also understood that Glen Canyon archaeology lacked extensive exploration and she decided to document sites along the river and in the side canyons of Glen. Gene took photos during her first river trip in the spring 1952. In her brief summary for the MNA Plateau Magazine of October 1952, she sized up the loss to come: “That this incredibly lovely, unspoiled and almost entirely unexplored canyon country – a wilderness frontier for many kinds of scientific inquiry – would be flooded and destroyed was a sickening prospect.”

She recognized that her lone voice wasn’t enough to save the area and she set out to record archeological sites in Glen Canyon. The archaeological information she gathered was ignored by most scholars who felt the Canyon held little importance. Gene created a Glen Canyon manuscript in which she sketched petroglyphs and habitation sites to organize the data into a cohesive document. This also helped her to identify places that needed further photos or study.

With funding for the construction of Glen Canyon Dam secured in 1956, Gene’s efforts contributed to the decision to explore and document Glen Canyon archeology in a project supported by MNA and funded by the Bureau of Reclamation channeling funds to the National Park Service. Gene received a contract to record archaeological sites on the left bank between the confluence of the San Juan River and Colorado River, an area Gene knew contained very little archeology. Nonetheless, Gene and Katharine concentrated on the assigned area recording sites most likely to be flooded.

Gene oversaw three river trips in Glen Canyon between April and October 1957 with a volunteer crew that included Katharine Bartlett, research associate David M. Brugge, and Flagstaff resident Guy Wilson. When the NPS Glen Canyon Project got underway, however, Gene was not involved in the Museum’s fieldwork as she lacked a degree in archeology. As a result of this and the Museum’s decision to not publish her Glen Canyon report, her work in Glen Canyon is largely unknown.

In the early 1960s, Gene was contracted by Grand Canyon National Park to create a painting of the Tusayan Ruins for a museum exhibit. Her large tempura canvas was displayed in a small museum adjacent to the Ruins.

In the 1960s and 1970s Gene studied the Northern Arizona Pinyon jay population. She set up a feeding station in her backyard in Flagstaff and instituted a banding program, hiring neighborhood kids to document the behavior of the birds. She worked closely with graduate students at Northern Arizona University, helping them with research for their theses and dissertations pertaining to the Pinyon jay.

Gene, like other artists, experienced extreme mood swings as she strived to create with minimal support. She received little credit during her lifetime. Her physical health never fully recovered from pneumonia, and she was a lifelong smoker. She died in 1983 at the age of 66 in Flagstaff and is buried in Tomahawk, Wisconsin.

Legacy
The Gene Field Foster Papers, including over 500 photographs of Glen Canyon, are preserved at the Museum of Northern Arizona archives in Flagstaff, Arizona.