Pratt Museum of Natural History

The Pratt Museum of Natural History opened in the 1940s to house Amherst College's natural history collections after the renovation of the Pratt Gymnasium. (The gymnasium, built in 1883, had been named after its donor, Charles M. Pratt, AC 1879.) Until that time, most of the collections had been held in Webster Hall, and before that in various scientific "cabinets" in various locations on campus. The Pratt Museum's holdings, collected since the 1820s from around the world and comprising about 80,000 objects with historic as well as scientific importance, included vertebrate and invertebrate skeletons and fossils, the college's famous collection of dinosaur tracks (notable for being the world's largest), minerals, geologic phenomena, and anthropological artifacts. Most of the displays in the Pratt Museum were designed and constructed by Professor George Bain and his associates.

Many of the Pratt Museum's skeletons resulted from expeditions led by Professor Frederic Loomis (AC 1896), a vertebrate paleontologist. Loomis came to Amherst in 1899 and taught biology, comparative, mineralogy and geology. He took Amherst students on over 18 digs in the U.S. and South America. Loomis died at a dig in Alaska in 1937.

In 2006, the Pratt Museum moved with the department of Geology to a new building on the east slope of Barrett Hill.

From the guide to the Pratt Museum of Natural History. Records, 1866-2000, (Amherst College Archives and Special Collections)