On February 18, 1930, a 24-year-old assistant at Lowell Observatory spotted a faint dot that moved between two photographic plates. The man who found Pluto was born on a farm near Streator. Our History of Streator page mentions him briefly; here is the fuller story.
A Streator Childhood
Clyde William Tombaugh was born on February 4, 1906, in Streator, the first of six children of farmer Muron Dealvo Tombaugh and Adella Pearl Chritton Tombaugh. The family worked a farm in the Streator area. His interest in astronomy took off in 1918, when at age 12 he visited Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, home of the world’s largest refracting telescope. An uncle, Lee, an amateur astronomer, encouraged him further. Lee owned a small refracting telescope and gave his nephew several astronomy books.
Leaving for Kansas
Farming was a hard living. Years of bad weather and a poor corn harvest in 1921 left the family short of money, and in 1922 they moved to a new farm near Burdett, Kansas. Tombaugh had to skip a year of high school to help prepare the crops. He graduated in 1925. A hailstorm in 1928 destroyed the family’s crops and his hopes of paying for college.
Homemade Telescopes
Instead of college, Tombaugh built telescopes. Starting in 1926 he ground his own lenses and mirrors, and he dug a pit 24 feet long and 8 feet deep on the farm to test them in steady air. He sent careful drawings of Jupiter and Mars to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the observatory offered him a job. He worked there from 1929 to 1945.
Finding Planet X
Lowell assigned him the tedious job of searching for “Planet X,” a world beyond Neptune that Percival Lowell had predicted. Beginning in April 1929, Tombaugh photographed the same patches of sky several nights apart and compared the plates with a blink comparator, a device that flips between two images so a moving object seems to jump. On February 18, 1930, he found one. The new world was named Pluto, a name suggested by 11-year-old Venetia Burney of England, and it became official on May 1, 1930.
A Long Career
After the discovery, Tombaugh earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kansas, discovered hundreds of asteroids, and later taught at New Mexico State University. He died on January 17, 1997. In 2006 astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet, now seen as the first known member of the Kuiper Belt. That same year NASA launched the New Horizons probe to Pluto, carrying some of Tombaugh’s ashes, and it flew past Pluto in 2015.
How Streator Honors Him
Streator has many tributes to its astronomer. At Anderson Fields Golf Course, a Pluto monument honors him, and each hole on the course carries a Pluto-related name. A 2008 mural by John Betken celebrates him downtown, and a 2018 Walldogs mural added another tribute. In 2025 a corten steel silhouette of Tombaugh stargazing with a young girl was installed outside the Streator Public Library. The Streatorland Historical Society Museum displays a homemade telescope Tombaugh used.
More Streator Firsts
Tombaugh is not the only Streator native whose work became known worldwide. See our page on notable Streator natives for inventors, musicians and artists with local roots.
Related Streator History
- Streator History Overview
- Notable Streator Natives: Inventors, Artists, Musicians and Leaders
- The Vin Fiz in Streator: The First Transcontinental Flight, 1911
- Streator Public Library: The Carnegie Library on Park Street
Sources
- Clyde Tombaugh – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh
- Streator, Illinois – Wikipedia (Notable people; Streatorland museum). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streator,_Illinois
- Streator Public Art – Tombaugh murals and silhouette. https://www.streatorpublicart.com/art
- Streator Public Art brochure (Streator Tourism). https://cms7files.revize.com/streatortourism/Streator%20Public%20Art%20080222.pdf
