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V
A CENTURY OF GOVERNMENT GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS
By GEORGE OTIS SMITH
Director of the United States Geological Survey
Even a Federal Bureau must be considered a product of evolution: the past of the United States Geological Survey far antedates March 3, 1879. The scope of endeavor, the refinement of method, and especially the personnel of the newly created service of that day were largely inherited from pioneer organizations. Therefore a review of the country’s record of surveys under Government auspices becomes more than a grateful acknowledgment by the present generation of geologists of the credit due to those who blazed the way; it shows the sequence and progress in the contributions made by geologic science to industry.
The earlier stages in industrial evolution mentioned by Hess[[96]]—exploitation, development, and maturity—determine a somewhat similar progressive development in geologic investigation, so that geographic exploration and geologic reconnaissance of the broadest type are the normal contribution of exact science whenever and wherever a nation is in the state of exploitation and initial development of its mineral and agricultural resources. The refinements of detailed surveys and quantitative examinations belong rather to the next stage of intensive utilization, or, indeed, they are the essentials preliminary to full use. Thus regrets that the results of present-day work were not available fifty years ago are largely vain: the fathers may not have been without the vision; they simply did the work as their day and generation needed it done.
Twenty years ago S. F. Emmons, in a presidential address before the Geological Society of Washington, divided the history of Governmental surveys in this country into two periods, separated in a general way by the Civil War. The first of these was the period of geographic exploration, the second that of geologic exploration. Mr. Emmons of course regarded this subdivision as not hard and fast, yet his dividing line seems logical, for not only did the military activities in the East necessarily suspend exploration in the West, but after the war national, political, and economic considerations led naturally to the demand for a more exact knowledge of the vast national domain in the West. Geography and geology are so closely related that Mr. Emmons’s distinction of the two periods is useful only with the limitations inferentially set by himself—namely, that while geologic investigation entered into most of the explorations of the earlier period, the geologist was regarded as only an accessory in these exploring expeditions; on the other hand, in the later surveys the topographic work was developed because it was essential to the geologic investigations.