1985 CWHF inductee Hazel Schmoll – Colorado Botanist
Women in STEM – A CWHF portrait exhibit featuring all of our STEM inductees opens December 13, 2016 and runs through March 12, 2017 at the Aurora History Museum.
Featured (top) is inductee Hazel Schmoll who was a Colorado state botanist (inducted 1985) who will also be spotlighted in a lecture at Chautauqua in Boulder on March 7, 2017. Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame board member Wendy Bohling will be speaking about Hazel as well as Mary Rippon in this featured Women of Boulder series.
Hazel Schmoll was born in 1890 in a sod shanty and raised near a mining camp in Ward, Colorado. Hazel grew up riding the high peaks and valleys of the Continental Divide amid the native wild flowers she knew and loved. Later, as Colorado state botanist, she conducted the first systematic study of plant life in Southwestern Colorado. Her research led to the discovery of a rare locoweed variety that was named for her. As board member of the Colorado Mountain Club, Hazel was appointed chief lobbyist to pass a bill for the protection of the Colorado state flower, the lavender Columbine. In Schmoll’s later years she built Rangeview Ranch on land adjoining Rocky Mountain National Park, where she served as a nature guide well into her seventies. Hazel passed in 1990.
