Elizabeth Campbell
NPS photo - colorized
Elizabeth Warder Crozer was born in August 1893 into a wealthy Philadelphia family. Her early life was shaped by comfort—big houses, well-kept gardens, and home tutoring in French. At 14, she moved on to a women’s finishing school where, unlike many of her peers being groomed for high society, she was encouraged to prepare for college. That was the end of her formal education, apart from nursing training during World War I.
During the war, she met William "Bill" Henry Campbell, an ambulance driver, at a friend’s wedding. After returning to the front, Bill was exposed to mustard gas, which severely damaged his lungs. Despite her family’s objections, Elizabeth married him in 1920. She assumed she had been disowned.
Looking for a better climate for Bill’s recovery, they moved west—to Pasadena, then to Twentynine Palms, where doctors thought the dry desert air might help his lungs. In 1925, they pitched a tent at the Oasis of Mara, and Elizabeth had her first real view of the southern California desert.
As Bill’s health improved, they decided to stay. They homesteaded a small piece of land and built what Elizabeth described as “a one-car garage with a window on each side.” In 1926, after her father passed, Elizabeth discovered he had quietly left her a trust fund, ensuring her financial security. That modest house would later become the kitchen of a larger stone home. With newfound stability, the Campbells became active in the local community and took up a new passion: desert archeology.
Desert Archeology
Oasis of Mara circ. 1904 - NPS photo, colorized
Elizabeth’s interest was sparked in 1924 when she started collecting arrowheads she found near local sand dunes while gathering firewood. She listened closely to stories told by old prospector Bill McHaney, who spoke of Indian culture and hidden caches of pottery. She began taking notes and recording finds.
As more roads were built and homesteaders moved in, the Campbells worried about damage to local archeological sites. They reached out to the Southwest Museum in Pasadena for guidance and soon partnered with professional archeologists like Charles Amsden and Edwin Walker. Elizabeth’s first articles were simple, but her work matured quickly.
Between 1929 and 1940, she published six articles and three detailed reports. Her 1931 monograph, “An Archaeological Survey of the Twenty Nine Palms Region,” drew heavily on insights from McHaney. In 1932, the Southwest Museum established a desert field station in an outbuilding on the Campbells’ property. Elizabeth handled the writing and lab work. Bill took care of maps, tools, and transportation.
Pinto Basin and Beyond
NPS photo - colorized
In the early 1930s, few archeologists had done serious work in the California desert. But by 1934, the Campbells were studying dry lake beds and the ancient sites found around them.
In 1933, Elizabeth and Bill teamed up with geologist David Schraf and paleontologist Chester Stock of Caltech. They focused on the Pinto Basin, where they discovered a string of surface sites along an old dry stream channel. With no nearby springs, the team concluded that the people who once lived there had relied on now-vanished rivers or streams—probably flowing during the late Ice Age or shortly after.
Their next studies took them to the northern edge of ancient Lake Mojave in 1934. Elizabeth began to see how prehistoric people adapted to changes in their surroundings, especially water availability. In 1936, her paper “Archaeological Problems in the Southern California Deserts” was published in American Antiquity, a major archeological journal.
An Environmental Perspective
Elizabeth realized that the locations of archeological sites often aligned with specific landforms—especially water sources. She proposed that researchers could better understand a site’s age and purpose by looking at how it fit into its environment. This idea of placing artifacts within their physical landscape was new at the time.While many archeologists then focused on tools and their development, Elizabeth was thinking in terms of people’s relationships with the land. She believed environmental factors, especially water, were key to understanding how and where early people lived in the desert.
Legacy
Pinto Basin
Although her ideas were once seen as unconventional, they’re now considered foundational in desert archeology. Her work at the Pinto Basin and Lake Mojave reshaped how archeologists understand the desert’s past.
Elizabeth and Bill Campbell left behind detailed notes, photographs, and thousands of artifacts. Today, their work is preserved at Joshua Tree National Park and the Autry National Center in Los Angeles.
Adapted from a paper by Claude N. Warren, Professor Emeritus, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Source: National Park Service
Elizabeth W. Campbell (1902–1988)
A pioneering archaeologist focused on the Mojave Desert and Southern California.Best known for her work on Pleistocene and early Holocene sites in the region, especially around Lake Mojave and the Pinto Basin.
Co-authored works with William Campbell and others on ancient desert lifeways and tool traditions.
While not an ethnographer, her archaeological research provided a deep-time context for Indigenous habitation, including areas later associated with Chemehuevi territory.
Relevance to authenticity: Her work helps establish the long-standing Indigenous presence in the desert and gives archaeological support to oral traditions of desert peoples.