Smithsonian Police is a national labor union of law enforcement officers and agents. Smithsonian Police The Smithsonian Institution Office of Protection Services is the guard force of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a federal guard force consisting of 850 officers with very limited special police authority tasked with protecting visitors, staff, property, and grounds of the federally owned and managed Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers in Washington, D.C., New York City, at the 2,800 acre Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland as well as oversight of the security operations at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. According to a 1978
Smithsonian Institution Shelter Smithsonian Institution Shelter The Smithsonian Institution Shelter, also known as the Mount Whitney Summit Shelter, was built in 1909 on the summit plateau of Mount Whitney, in the Sierra Nevada within Sequoia National Park, in California. The shelter at the summit was proposed after Byrd Surby, a U.S. Fisheries employee, was struck and killed by lightning on the summit in 1904. The shelter was built to house scientists who used the 14,505-foot summit to study high-altitude phenomena in the time before sustained high-altitude flight was possible. In 1909 the site was used by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory director Charles Greeley Abbot