History of Western section of AUA

Abstract

There has been an active interest in organized urology in the West since the turn of the century. Some evidence of this is that within a year of the meeting at which the American Urological Association was formed from the New York Genito-Urinary Society, on February 22, 1902, five urologists from the West Coast had been voted into membership. * Monthly meetings of the AUA were being held at that time in New York City. Granville MacGowan, in 1913, was the first president of the AUA from the West Coast. Evolution of the geographic boundaries of the Western Section is interesting. The 1907 minutes of the Executive Committee of the AUA and the bylaws of that year indicate that the states and Canadian provinces had been divided into five sections. The Western Section was one of these and included, in addition to the present member states, Colorado, New Mexico, Alaska, and British Columbia. Hawaii and the Philippine Islands were added in 1920. The 1935 bylaws added “Manitoba and provinces west of Manitoba.” In 1940 Colorado had been deleted, and the Canadian provinces included were Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia; Guam and Samoa also had been added. The Sections did not organize and begin to function until twenty years or more after the bylaws were first written. In those early days they called themselves Branches and did not necessarily follow section boundaries prescribed in the bylaws. Although Colorado continued as part of the Western Section until 1940, it was never a part of the Western Branch. In June, 1921, when the Southwestern states petitioned the AUA to form a Southwestern Branch, Colorado was included. The Western Branch was not organized until the following year, thus Colorado was never included. Similarly Utah was part of the Western Section according to AUA Bylaws. However, before the Western Branch was fully organized, Utah was annexed to the Southwestern Branch in 1924. In