Pioneer Information
Born in Vandalia, Missouri, Shattuck earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in 1894 and 1898 from Campbell College, where he taught from 1895 to 1903 and held the role of Vice President from 1897 to 1903. In 1904 he began a Ph.D. in Botany from Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, where he concurrently taught natural history. He completed his postgraduate studies in 1908 and began teaching botany and forestry at Clemson College in South Carolina, He spent the summer of 1909 at the Biltmore, North Carolina School of Forestry.
Shattuck was hired by the University of Idaho in 1909 to start the school’s first forestry program. In 1910, with the assistance of nurseryman Clement Price, he began planting a 14-acre weedy slope with hundreds of introduced trees and shrubs. Over time Shattuck’s intensive tree planting efforts spread to the entire campus, eventually transforming the formerly treeless university grounds. Arboretum Hill became his legacy to the school, the first University arboretum in the West.
In 1914 Shattuck was made Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences. The arboretum at the University of Idaho was renamed the Charles Houston Shattuck Arboretum in 1933, two years after his death.