The year 1818 was a notable one in American geology, first of all in the appearance of the American Journal of Science, itself so perfect a vehicle for geological thought that, as is so well stated by Dr. G. P. Merrill, “a perusal of the numbers from the date of issue down to the present time will alone afford a fair idea of the gradual progress of American geology.” The beginning of publications on New England geology appeared that year in Edward Hitchcock’s first paper on the Connecticut Valley (1, 105, 1818) and the Danas’ (S. L. and J. F.) detailed geologic and mineralogic description of Boston and vicinity; and the “Index” of Amos Eaton (noticed in this Journal, 1, 69) was the first of that long list of notable contributions to American stratigraphy that are to be credited to the New York geologists.
In the present discussion, too, the year 1918 can be regarded as in a way the centennial of Government geologic surveys, for it was in 1818 that Henry R. Schoolcraft began his trip to the Mississippi Valley—perhaps the first geologic reconnaissance into the West—and it was his work in the lead region which served to make him a member of the Cass expedition sent out by the Secretary of War in 1820 to examine the metallic wealth of the Lake Superior region. The earlier Government explorations of Lewis and Clark, in 1803–7, and of Pike, in 1805–7, were so exclusively geographic that geologic work under Federal auspices must be regarded as beginning with Schoolcraft and with Edwin James, the geologist of the expedition of Major Long in 1819–20 to the Rocky Mountains. Both these observers published reports that are valuable as contributions to the knowledge of littleknown regions.
Any description of geologic work under the Federal Government that included no reference to the State surveys would be inadequate, for in both date of execution and stage of development the work of the State geologists must be given precedence. In Merrill’s Contributions to the History of American Geology,[[97]] whose modest title fails even to suggest that this work not only furnishes the most useful chronologic record of the progress of the science on the American continent but is in fact a very thesaurus of incidents touching the personal side of geology, the author by his division of his subject shows that four decades of the era of State surveys elapsed before the era of national surveys began.
Thus the geologic surveys of some of the Eastern States antedate by several decades any Federal organization of comparable geologic scope, and in investigations directed to local utilitarian problems these pioneer geologists working in the older settled States of the East were in fact already conducting work as detailed in type as much of that attempted by the Federal geologists of the later period. Even to-day it is true in a general way that the State geologist can and should attack many of his local problems with intensive methods and with detail of results that are neither practicable nor desirable for the larger interstate investigations or for examinations in newer territory. All this relation of State and Federal work must be looked upon as normal evolutionary development of geologic science in America.
One who reads the names of the Federal geologists of the early days, beginning with Jackson and Owen and following with such leaders in Federal work as Gilbert, Chamberlin, King, R. D. Irving, Pumpelly, Van Hise, and Walcott, may note that these were all connected in their earlier work with State surveys. Nor has the relation been one-sided, for among the State geologists Whitney, Blake, Mather, Newberry, J. G. Norwood, Purdue, Bain, Gregory, Ashley, Kirk, W. H. Emmons, DeWolf, Mathews, Brown, Landes, Moore, and Crider received their field training in part or wholly as members of a Federal Survey. Moreover, under the present plan of effective cooperation of several of the State surveys with the United States Geological Survey, it is often difficult to differentiate between the two in either personnel or results, for it even happens that the publishing organization may not have been the major contributor. The full record of American geology, past and present, can not be set forth in terms of Federal auspices alone.
The three decades preceding the Civil War, then, constitute the era of State surveys, well described by Merrill as at first characterized by a contagious enthusiasm for beginning geologic work, later by a more normal condition in which every available geologist seems to have been quietly at work, and finally by renewed activity in creating new organizations. The net result was that Louisiana and Oregon seem to have been the only States not having at least one geological survey.
From “Contributions to the History of American Geology”
by George P. Merrills.
The first specific appropriation by the Federal Government for geologic investigation appears to have been made in 1834, when a supplemental appropriation for surveys of roads and canals under the War Department, authorized in 1824, contained the item “of which sum five thousand dollars shall be appropriated and applied to geological and mineralogical survey and researches.” In July, 1834, Mr. G. W. Featherstonhaugh was appointed United States geologist and employed under Colonel Abert, U. S. Topographical Engineers, to “personally inspect the mineral and geological character” of the public lands of the Ozark Mountain region. Overlooking the incidental fact that this Englishman—a man of scientific attainment and large interest in public affairs—was never naturalized,[[98]] it must be placed to the credit of this first of United States geologists that within seven months he completed his field work and returned to Washington, and on February 17, 1835, his report was transmitted to Congress. Two years earlier Featherstonhaugh had memorialized Congress for aid in the preparation of a geologic map of the whole territory of the United States, and in connection with this project he suggested that geology as an aid to military engineering should have a place in the curriculum at West Point. This first United States geologist also appears to have combined an appreciation of the practical worth of “the mineral riches of our country, their quality, quantity, and the facility of procuring them,” with an interest in the more scientific side of geology, though his hypotheses regarding both economic geology and stratigraphic and structural geology have not won the endorsement of all later workers in the same regions. In all these respects, however, Featherstonhaugh may stand as a fairly good prototype. His contributions to international affairs subsequent to his scientific service to the United States are of interest; he served as one of Her Majesty’s commissioners in the settlement of the Canadian-United States boundary question in 1839–40 and made an examination of the disputed area, and after the settlement of this controversy he was appointed British Consul for the Department of the Seine, France, where in 1848 he personally engineered the escape of Louis Philippe from Havre.
The Federal geologic work thus started was soon continued in surveys of wider scope and more thorough accomplishment. The position of the Government as the proprietor of mineral lands in the Upper Mississippi Valley led to their examination. These Government lands containing lead had been reserved from sale for lease since 1807, although no leases were issued until 1822. The amount of illegal entry and consequent refusal of smelters and miners to pay royalty after 1834 forced the issue upon the attention of Congress, and in 1839 President Van Buren was requested to present to Congress a plan for the sale of the public mineral lands. In carrying out this policy Dr. David Dale Owen was selected to make the necessary survey.