Bass became head of the university's anthropology department in 1971, and as official state forensic anthropologist for Tennessee he was frequently consulted in police cases involving decomposed human remains. Since no facilities existed that specifically studied decomposition, in 1972 he opened the department's first body farm. It consists of a wooded plot, surrounded by a razor wire fence. At any one time there will be a number of bodies placed in different settings throughout the facility and left to decompose. The bodies are exposed in a number of ways in order to provide insights into decomposition under varying conditions. Some of the conditions students studied were situations such as a body being locked in the trunk of a car, or being submerged under water, which provided some factual and data driven knowledge to help in many forensic cases. Observations and records of the decomposition process are kept, including the sequence and speed of decomposition and the effects of insect activity. The human decomposition stages that are studied begin with the fresh stage, then the bloat stage, then decay, and finally the dry stage. Over 100 bodies are donated to the facility every year. Some individuals pre-register before their death, and others are donated by their families or by a medical examiner. 60% of donations are made by family members of individuals who were not pre-registered with the facility. Over 1300 people have chosen to pre-register themselves. Perhaps the most famous person to donate his body for study was the anthropologist Grover Krantz, as described by his colleague David Hunt at the Smithsonian. The University of Tennessee Body Farm is also used in the training of law enforcement officers in scene-of-crime skills and techniques. The second human decomposition facility to open in the United States is located at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina and is part of the Western Carolina Human Identification Laboratory. The facility is known as the Forensic Osteology Research Station or more commonly as the FOREST. It was opened in 2006 and is run by WCU's Forensic Anthropology program on a small plot on the rural mountain campus. The facility studies decomposition in the western North Carolina mountain habitat and has been used for cadaver dog training. A Forensic Anthropology Research Facility was commissioned by the Texas State University-San Marcos Department of Anthropology and is under the direction of Dr. Michelle Hamilton, a former student of Dr. Bill Bass. The forensic research facility is fully operational and is part of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS). The forensic facility has received a financial donation of over $100,000 from a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Texas State University, and has started construction of an adjoining million dollar lab to augment the facility.