Don Crabtree - Life and Death

Life and Death

Don E. Crabtree was born in Heyburn, Idaho on June 8, 1912. He finished high school in Twin Falls in 1930, after which he worked for the Idaho Power Company. After a brief period he traveled to California where he enrolled in Long Beach Junior College in the mid-1930s with the intent to major in geology and paleontology. Crabtree was noted as being a thinker-while-doing, highly active, and not enjoying studying; due to this he dropped out of Long Beach Junior College after only one term to go his own route. In 1939 he discovered he had cancer, and this discovery briefly impeded his self-study in archeology. During the war years he met his wife, Evelyn, and married in 1943 while working for the Bethlehem Steel Company in California. Crabtree would spend the next 30 years educating and assisting some of the biggest names in archeology at the time such as Alfred Kroeber. Crabtree was also asked for his advice at influential sites like the Clovis type site. After a highly successful career he died in Twin Falls, Idaho on November 16, 1980 of complications due to heart disease.