{"id":60301,"date":"2012-08-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-publishes-history-book-about-w-alton-jones-campus-for-50th-anniversary\/"},"modified":"2012-08-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T00:00:00","slug":"uri-publishes-history-book-about-w-alton-jones-campus-for-50th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/08\/uri-publishes-history-book-about-w-alton-jones-campus-for-50th-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 publishes history book about W. Alton Jones Campus for 50th anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tWEST GREENWICH, R.I. \u2013 August 22, 2012 \u2013 On the 50th anniversary of the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s W. Alton Jones Campus, the University has published a book about the history of the campus that includes never-before-seen photographs and details about some rather unusual incidents that have occurred there.<\/p>\n


\n\tRhode Island\u2019s Natural Laboratory: A History of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s W. Alton Jones Campus was written by Todd McLeish, a 溏心vlog免费B站 public information officer, and designed by the 溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Publications and Creative Services. It details in words and pictures how, in the 1920s, the Louttit family of Providence acquired eight farms that would later be sold to oil executive W. Alton Jones, whose death in a plane crash led to the donation of the property to 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cJones was quite a character who walked around everywhere with a $10,000 bill in a money clip in his pocket and another $50,000 in cash in a briefcase,\u201d said McLeish, who has written several books about wildlife. \u201cHe was an imposing figure, but he also gave freely of his money to the less fortunate he met in his travels, including waitresses and golf caddies facing hardships.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tPresident Dwight D. Eisenhower made several visits during the years Jones owned the property (1954-1962), and the king of Nepal stayed there at the end of a month-long tour of the country.<\/p>\n


\n\tWhen Jones died and his wife, Nettie, donated the 2,309-acre property to 溏心vlog免费B站, the University built a Youth Science Center (now called the Environmental Education Center) to host nature camps and educational programs for children. It also turned the homes the Louttits built on the property into the Whispering Pines Conference Center, where 350 conferences and 50 weddings are now held each year.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMy favorite chapter of the book is the compilation of oddball things that have happened there over the years,\u201d McLeish said, \u201clike when the State Police asked to use one of the buildings as a safe house to hide a mob informant. They strung trip wire around the building, and when a maintenance worker accidentally hit it, the police came out armed with machine guns.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe chapter also details the day in 1976 when then-Gov. Phillip Noel\u2019s helicopter crashed on the campus and became impaled on a tree stump. The helicopter\u2019s pilot provided his personal photographs of the crash scene for inclusion in the book.<\/p>\n


\n\t“Todd’s book really pulls together the story of the W. Alton Jones Campus,\u201d said Thomas Mitchell, director of the campus. \u201cWe had pictures in lots of different files and archives, and for the first time this book brings everything together into a fun and very readable history.”<\/p>\n


\n\tOne chapter in the book focuses on the approximately 50 research projects that 溏心vlog免费B站 faculty and students have conducted at the campus. Among the research subjects were salamander migration, fish populations, eels, lilac blooms, soil moisture, caddisfly larva, and colors that elicit avoidance behavior in mallard ducks. The 24-hour BioBlitz event in 2004 counted 1,005 species of wildlife living on the campus. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe undisturbed nature of the campus makes it an ideal site to study wildlife in pristine ecological conditions,\u201d McLeish said.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe book can be purchased in hardcover for $24.95 by contacting Cheryl Conti at the W. Alton Jones campus at 401-397-3302, ext 6043 or cconti@uri.edu.

\n\u201cAn excerpt of the book can be viewed at http:\/\/www.uri.edu\/ajc\/50th\/book\/<\/a><\/p>\n


\nPhoto by Nora Lewis<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEST GREENWICH, R.I. \u2013 August 22, 2012 \u2013 On the 50th anniversary of the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s W. Alton Jones Campus, the University has published a book about the history of the campus that includes never-before-seen photographs and details about some rather unusual incidents that have occurred there. Rhode Island\u2019s Natural Laboratory: A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}