Roy Chapman Andrews

Popular writers still liken him to Indiana Jones; George Lucas never confirmed the link.

He was born in Beloit on January 26, 1884, at 419 St. Lawrence Avenue, then at the city’s edge, the second child of wholesale druggist Charles Ezra Andrews and Cora Chapman Andrews. He hunted and collected in the woods west of the house, taught himself taxidermy at fourteen, and sold mounts to pay for Beloit College. On March 31, 1905, a canoe tipped in spring melt on the Rock River; his friend and instructor Montague White drowned, and Andrews crawled through a flooded meadow to survive. He took an English degree in 1906, vowed not to waste another day, and talked his way onto the museum floor in New York as a taxidermy janitor.

From 1922 to 1930 he led five expeditions—cars and camels—into Mongolia. At the Flaming Cliffs his teams found scientifically recognized nests of dinosaur eggs, new dinosaurs, and mammals that had lived beside them. He later became the museum’s director. He died in Carmel, California, on March 11, 1960, and was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Beloit. The St. Lawrence house still stands; an explorer award is still given in his name in the city.