Publications

This volume, the first of a four-volume study, is concerned with events in the United States before the establishment of the U.S. Geological Survey, during the years in which geology evolved as a science and began to influence economic development and national policy. Subsequent volumes continue the story but focus on the Survey and its role in the events and developments of later years. The metho

Established by an Act of Congress in 1879 and charged with responsibility for "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain," the U. S. Department of the Interior's Geological Survey has been the Nation's principal source of information about its physical resources the configuration and character of the land

One hundred years ago John Wesley Powell and nine adventure-seeking companions completed the first exploration of the dangerous and almost uncharted canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers. By this trip, Powell, a 35-year old teacher of natural history, apparently unhampered by the lack of his right forearm (amputated after the Battle of Shiloh) opened up a large unknown part of continental Unite