 He spent most of his childhood in Lovelock, Nevada, where his lifelong interest in the cultures of Native Americans began.As a young boy, he collected artifacts in and around where he lived, but he did not participate his first archaeological excavation until he was at Sacramento Junior College (1932–34).When he graduated from Lovelock High School (1932) in a class of eleven students, he was not eligible to attend the University of California at Berkeley, as some of the requirements were not offered at Lovelock High.