Trailside Museum: The Legend of Virginia Moe

On October 8, 1930, Charles Cap Sauers, general superintendent of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, wrote a letter to Alfred M. Bailey, director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, about an idea he had. He proposed developing several nature study museums with the support of Bailey and the Academy of Sciences. Bailey eagerly wrote to Sauers that he had the Academy’s full cooperation. By 1932, the Trailside Museum of Natural History was opened in River Forest, Illinois, the first of its kind in the Midwest. Several curators would come and go, but one in particular, Virginia Moe, dedicated more than 50 years of her life to the museum, animals, and people of Cook County. This is truly her story.