In November 1947, at the age of eighty, Miss Annie M. Alexander (1867–1950) of Oakland, California, loaded her Dodge Power Wagon equipped with four-wheel drive, eight forward speeds, a front bumper winch, and a wire body cage and set out with her companions, Louise Kellogg and Annetta Carter, for a three-month collecting trip to Baja California. The trip was one of the last in the long career of an amateur naturalist whose vision, patronage, and collecting work led to the creation, design, and development of research museums for vertebrate zoology and paleontology at the University of California. Annie Alexander contributed personal and purchased collections totaling 20,564 specimens and sponsored every professional and student member of her Museum of Vertebrate Zoology through endowments and direct support from its founding in 1908. The story of her work with Joseph Grinnell (1877–1939), the western naturalist, ecologist, and conservationist who became the first director of the Museum, raises significant questions about the appropriate categories for describing scientific collaboration and challenges some misconceptions of museum science.