Van Denburgh was born in San Francisco and enrolled at Stanford University in 1891.

As of 1895, he organized the herpetology department of the California Academy of Sciences.

Subsequently, he practiced medicine in San Francisco, while again serving as curator of the herpetological collections of the California Academy of Sciences.

In 1922, he published the two-volume The Reptiles of Western North America.

[1] Van Denburgh discovered and described at least 38 species or reptiles in a series of papers and books published between 1895 and 1922.