Geological Survey Professional Paper 669 The Colorado River Region and John Wesley Powell

Before Powell completed the manuscript on the exploration of the Colorado, Congress had taken note of the rivalry among the four surveys. The immediate cause was the encounter between the Hayden and Wheeler surveys during the summer of 1873, as both prepared to map the same area, but the underlying issue was one of civilian scientist versus military man in the mapping of the West. In April 1874, the House of Representatives asked President Grant to inform them about the surveys operating west of the Mississippi and the practicability of consolidating them, or of defining the geographic limits to be embraced by each.

President Grant, as an old Army man, was naturally sympathetic to the military cause. There was no question, he said, that surveys for sectioning the public lands should be under the control of the Interior Department, but where the objective was to complete the map of the country or to collect information on the unexplored parts of the country, it mattered little which department had control. The choice should depend first on which could do the work best and then on which could do it most expeditiously and economically. However, as exploring expeditions needed military escorts, and as the Engineer Corps was composed of scientific gentlemen who had to be paid whether exploring or not, he thought his conditions could be best fulfilled by having the Army make the surveys.

The President also transmitted the views of officers of the War Department and the Interior Department. The Secretary of the Interior included opinions from both Professor Hayden and Major Powell. Professor Hayden highlighted the issue by pointing out that "much greater efficiency has always been gained where the leader of the survey is himself an ardent worker in geology and science generally." Major Powell took a different approach: "There is now left within the territory of the United States no great unexplored region, and exploring expeditions are no longer needed for general purposes * * *. A more thorough method, or a survey proper, is now needed."

The House Committee on Public Lands held hearings which lasted the better part of 2 weeks and became extremely acrimonious, particularly in exchanges between Lieutenant Wheeler and Professor Hayden. Major Powell was called as the hearings went into the second week. His concern was chiefly with the methods of mapping, or rather, with the efficiency of the mapping. He had brought along a blackboard on which he could draw diagrams, and proceeded to instruct the committee. The meander method, used by the Army, he dismissed as not accurate enough for geological purposes. There were two methods based on triangulation from a base line. Clarence King had used a base line determined by astronomic methods in the early part of the Fortieth Parallel survey but had abandoned it as not sufficiently accurate. The better method was triangulation from a measured base line. This had been King's final method and Powell's method in his work in northern Arizona and southern Utah, and Hayden had adopted it in the past year. Powell disagreed politely with the President; military escorts were not always necessary. They were in fact a hindrance, for the presence of troops always aroused the hostility of the Indians. All surveys for scientific and economic purposes he thought should be in one department, the Interior Department, and should be made by civilians.

In stressing the need for a general survey, or "a survey proper," Powell made a special plea for determining the areas that could be redeemed by irrigation. "All of the country west of the 100th or 99th meridian, except a little in California, Oregon, and Washington Territory, is arid, and no part of that country can be cultivated, with the exceptions I have mentioned; no part of it can be redeemed for agriculture, except by irrigation. When every spring, and stream, and body of water in all that region of country is taken out and used, less than three per cent of the entire area will be under cultivation, so that, under the best circumstances, I believe that of more than two-fifths of the whole area of the United States not more than three per cent can eventually be cultivated. Now, the extent and position of those areas that can be redeemed should be known."

Then he warned them: "Already the land surveys are being extended over broad districts of country which can never be settled, on which no drop of water can be had. Over the country which I have surveyed I have carefully noted the extent of the streams and the extent of the valleys that can be redeemed, and I have the data necessary for the construction of a map showing these facts."

Only a few months before, George Perkins Marsh had told the Congress that irrigation, far from being a panacea, was the source of many problems. Knowledge of western climates and soils was virtually nonexistent. No one knew how much land was irrigable, or whether enough water was available to make irrigation profitable. Before embarking on major irrigation works, the country required a comprehensive hydrographical survey.

The committee considered all the testimony, and the memorials submitted from college faculties and leading scientists, all favoring civilian control of the scientific surveys. It concluded that the surveys under the War Department, insofar as they were necessary for military purposes, should be continued, and that all other surveys for geographic, topographic, and scientific purposes should be placed under the Interior Department. The Powell survey was transferred from the Smithsonian Institution to Interior and was given a larger appropriation than ever before. Nothing was done about the problems of irrigation.

Powell's warning about the extent of the irrigable lands was repeated by the Commissioner of the General Land Office in his report for 1875. West of the 100th meridian, he said, were very limited areas where irrigation made agriculture possible, and throughout most of the area, title could not be obtained honestly under the homestead laws. Vast areas were suitable for grazing, but limiting acquisition to a quarter section, and requiring cultivation, made such use impracticable. Congress responded this time by passing the Desert Land Act on the last day of the last session of the Grant administration. This act made it possible to purchase 640 acres of public land for $1.25 an acre, 25¢ down and $1 in 3 years. Part of the acreage, however, was to be irrigated within the 3 years, and no provision was made for bringing water to the claims or even ensuring that water was obtainable.

A few weeks after passage of the Desert Land Act, Major Powell told the spring meeting of the National Academy of Sciences that the land system of the country, with regard to purchase, preemption, or homestead plans, was not suitable for the arid region. In that region, land as mere land was of no value. The water privilege was what was valuable. Rich men and stock companies had already appropriated all the streams and were charging for the use of water. There was very little land left that a poor man could turn into a farm.

Carl Schurz, a reform-minded senator from Wisconsin, became Secretary of the Interior when Rutherford B. Hayes became President in March 1877, and by fall he had several recommendations for legislative action: for forest conservation, for leasing lands west of the 100th meridian for pasturage where they were not suitable for agriculture, for amending the Desert Land Act so the desert character and quality of the land were established before entry was permitted, and for establishing the office of Surveyor-General, and abolishing the contract system of surveying the public lands.

The Schurz recommendations received scant support in Congress, though the House Committee on Public Lands held hearings in the spring of 1878 on a bill "to provide a more economic and accurate survey of the public lands." Major Powell was the first witness and seemingly was credited with being the author of the bill. He told them that the system of parceling the public lands into townships and sections and the method of measuring these parcels and determining their position had been devised more than 80 years before for the great valley of the Mississippi. They were well suited to that region, but in the great mountain region of the West, some modifications were needed.

His studies indicated that about 2.8 percent of the Territory of Utah was irrigable, in patches along the streams, and that Utah was perhaps slightly below the general average. In Utah, 23 percent of the land was valuable for timber and of no value for agriculture; this percentage was probably a fair average for the arid region as a whole. The timber lands were high on the plateaus and mountains. In between the timber lands and the agricultural lands were those valuable for pasturage only, and as the growth of grass in an arid climate was scant, pasturage farms had to be large, not less than 2,560 acres. Pasturage farms should be laid out with waterfronts on the springs and little streams to prevent a monopoly of the water, and each should have a small tract of irrigable land near the home of the resident. If the pasturage farms were laid out with waterfronts, the homes could be grouped so that schools, churches, and other social institutions would be possible.

The system of surveying should be adapted to the type of land. It was unnecessary to survey timberlands in parcels as small as 160 acres, so a combination of chaining and triangulation would be suitable. Pasturage lands should be laid out in irregular tracts, so triangulation should be used. Mineral claims could be surveyed by chain or tape, but claims should be connected by triangulation. Surveying is properly a question of scientific engineering, and a man so qualified should have charge of the work to protect the interests of the Government and the people alike.

The bill did not get very far. It was drawn to change the method of surveying the public lands, and that was bad enough, but there was a suspicion that it would change the system of parceling the public lands as well, and that idea was anathema.

In his testimony, the Major had given the committee a preview of parts of his "Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States." Two days later he delivered the manuscript to the Commissioner of the General Land Office.

The Major had intended to write a work on the Public Domain, including the swamps of the southeast Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the Everglades, the flood plains of the great southern rivers, and the lake swamplands of the north-central region. All these lands required drainage or protection from overflow. The problem of the arid lands was more pressing, however, as thousands were migrating there every year; he had therefore decided to publish first that part of the whole report that dealt with the arid lands.

It was more than a report; it was a program, including proposed legislation, for orderly development of the West. Within the arid region, which constituted about 40 percent of the country, the annual rainfall was not enough to sustain an economy based on the traditional patterns of the humid regions. Only a small part was irrigable, and cooperative labor or capital was necessary to develop irrigation. Reservoir sites should be selected and reserved so there would be no problem later in increasing irrigation by storage of water. Timber lands could not be used as farmlands; they were valuable for forests only and must be protected from fire. Pasturage lands were of value only in large quantities, and the farm unit there should not be less than 2,560 acres. Pasturage farms needed small tracts of irrigable land and waterfronts; the plots, therefore, should be shaped by the terrain, and residences should be grouped to secure the benefits of local social organizations.

The first edition of the Arid Lands report was printed in August 1878, and a second edition was ordered very soon thereafter, but the reforms called for in the book were controversial and too far in advance of the times to be acted on.

That same spring the Committee on Appropriations, in the face of the continuing depression after the financial crisis of 1873 and the continuing rivalry of the western surveys, had again asked the Secretaries of Interior and War for an accounting of the cost of the surveys and opinions about consolidating them. Secretary Schurz replied with letters from Professor Hayden and Major Powell. The Hayden Survey had received appropriations amounting to $615,000 in the 10 years of its existence. Appropriations for the Powell survey had been only $209,000, but in addition, he had had Army rations for 25 men and the assistance of two Army officers, Captains Clarence Dutton and Garrick Mallery. With his reply, Powell included a map showing the atlas sheets established by the Department of the Interior and the overlap among the various surveys. The Army also submitted a map showing its proposed atlas, on a different basis from that proposed by the Department of the Interior. Of the two Army surveys, the Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel under Clarence King had cost $383,711.85, and the Wheeler survey had cost $368,770.55.

In the ensuing discussions over appropriations for the coming year, during which drastic cuts were proposed, Hayden's friends rose to his defense, and in the closing days of the fiscal year, the Sundry Civil Expenses bill was passed with funds included for both the Powell and the Hayden Surveys. The Wheeler Survey funds came from the Army appropriations. On the final clay of the session, Congressman Abram Hewitt of New York inserted in the Sundry Civil Expenses bill an amendment asking the National Academy of Sciences to advise the Congress on a "plan for surveying and mapping the Territories of the United States on such general system as will, in their judgment, secure the best results at the least possible cost." Congressman Hewitt, a wealthy iron manufacturer and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was one of the founders of the American Institute of Mining Engineering and its president in 1876. He was also a close friend of Clarence King, and it is likely that the idea of asking the Academy's advice had come from King.

The Academy was without a president at the time. Joseph Henry, its distinguished president of many years, had died on May 13, 1878, and it was not until August when the Acting President, Professor O. C. Marsh of Yale, returned from Europe that a committee was appointed. The committee included no member of the existing surveys but was composed of a "distinguished group of scientists who would judge matters objectively": Professor James D. Dana of Yale, Professor William Barton Rogers of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor J. S. Newberry of Columbia, Professor W. P. Trowbridge of Columbia, Professor Simon Newcomb of the Nautical Almanac, and Professor Alexander Agassiz of Harvard. Such a committee was sure to favor civilian control of the surveys and to call for high standards of scientific work.

The committee, in turn, asked the Secretaries of War and Interior for information and opinions. The Secretary of the Interior sent to the committee, without comment, reports from the Commissioner of the General Land Office, who thought that combining a geological and geographical survey with the survey of the public lands might be both beneficial and economical but who went on record as opposed to any change in the rectangular system of surveying; from Professor Hayden, who thought that combining the geological and geographical surveys with the public land surveys would be fatal to the former; and from Major Powell who said: "The prosecution of the work by a number of autonomous organizations is illogical, unscientific, and in violation of the fundamental law of political economy * * *. The work should be unified or integrated by placing it under one general management, and the division of labor should have a scientific basis; that is, it should be differentiated so that there shall be a division for geographical work embracing all methods of mensuration in latitudes, longitudes, and altitudes, absolute and relative; and the representation of the results in appropriate charts. There should be a department of geology embracing all purely scientific subjects relating to mining and agricultural industries. If ethnology, botany, and zoology are to be embraced in the general scientific survey, each subject should have but a single organization, with a single head subordinated to the general plan * * *. The present multiplication of organizations for all of these purposes is unscientific, excessively expensive, and altogether vicious; preventing comprehensive, thorough, and honest research, stimulating unhealthy rivalry, and leading to the production of sensational and briefly popular rather than solid and enduring results."

The Major pleaded for a change in the Land Office surveys which had produced a vast mass of material that was "of imperfect value in the parceling of the lands, of little or no value in the consideration of economic questions, and absolutely valueless for scientific purposes." He went on—"A proper scientific survey embracing the geography of the public domain with the parceling of the lands, and the geology with all the physical characteristics connected with it is necessary for the following reasons: First, to secure an accurate parceling of the public lands and enduring boundary lines. Second, for the proper administration of laws relating to the public lands. Third, for a correct and full knowledge of the agricultural and mineral resources of the lands. And fourth, for all purposes of abstract science.

The Coast Survey already had a transcontinental triangulation survey in progress and had a large number of persons trained in geographical science. As two systems of triangulation were unnecessary, "the one now in progress should be made the basis of all future geographical work in the United States." He thought it would be inadvisable for the Government to sustain and endow research in the various branches of zoology and botany, except in a limited way and for special purposes. Ethnology, on the other hand, should be supported by the General Government, for the work was of great magnitude and the opportunity was fast disappearing because of the rapid change in the Indian population.

The committee's report, approved at a special meeting on November 6, 1878, contained several recommendations. Existing surveys could be grouped under two heads: surveys of mensuration and surveys of geology and economic resources of the soil. The Coast and Geodetic Survey was best prepared to undertake the complete surveys of mensuration; in view of the paramount importance of the public lands, the Coast and Geodetic Survey should be transferred to the Department of the Interior and renamed the "Coast and Interior Survey." An independent organization, to be called the United States Geological Survey, should be established in the Department of the Interior to provide a thorough knowledge of the geological structure, natural resources, and products of the public domain, and a classification of the lands of the public domain. The existing surveys should be abolished. The contract system of surveying the public lands should be discontinued. A commission should be formed to consider codification of laws relating to the survey and disposition of the public domain.

The report was submitted to the Congress on the opening day of the session and was referred to the House Committee on Appropriations. Hayden, King, Powell, and the Engineers began lining up support or opposition. Powell prepared material for the newspapers, lobbied with Senators and Congressmen, and needled others into action. Legislation embodying the Academy plan was incorporated into the Legislative, Executive and Judicial appropriations bill which was introduced on February 10, 1879. To Chairman John D. C. Atkins of the House Committee on Appropriations, the practical question was whether the plan proposed by the Academy promised the best results at the least cost, or whether a modified version of the plan that had been in use deserved approval. On the basis of cost alone, he thought that the new scheme might be justified, though it seemed scarcely necessary to plead for a system that so admirably combined the scientific with the practical and useful.

Major Powell had supplied background material to General James A. Garfield, who spoke in favor of the legislation on the following day. As a general principle, Garfield said, that the United States ought not to interfere in matters of science but should leave its development to the people themselves. The obvious exceptions to this principle were the scientific inquiries necessary to intelligent exercise of the Government's functions, investigations concerning whole classes or all classes of people, and those which could not be successfully made by private individuals because of their great magnitude and cost.

Representative Peter Wigginton of California had also obtained material from Major Powell. He was particularly interested in a radical change in the land survey system. Representatives from the public lands States, however, were opposed.

The climactic speech was that of Representative Abram Hewitt, who urged all to read carefully Major Powell's letter included with the Academy report in order to learn all the advantages of the bill. He then went on to make an eloquent appeal for a survey of the mineral wealth of the country to aid American industry. The geological survey, though, was not the point of contention. It was not until an amendment was proposed making the Coast and Interior Survey responsible for all surveys of position and mensuration, except the public-land surveys, that the bill was acceptable.

The House was concerned with many controversial subjects, pensions and civil rights among them, and did not pass the bill until February 25, 1879. Other appropriations bills were passed more readily, including the Sundry Civil Expenses bill which contained appropriations for the, as yet, unestablished Geological Survey. In the closing hours of the session, both bills came to conference; but as the day went on it became clear that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain agreement on the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial bill, which contained a provision to end Federal supervision of elections on which the House and Senate held opposing views. Representative Hewitt, who was one of the conferees, added to the Sundry Civil Expenses bill the pertinent clauses from the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial bill that would establish the Geological Survey and provide for its publications, abolish the existing western surveys, and create a commission to codify the public-lands laws. This bill was accepted and passed by both houses, and President Hayes signed it into law on March 3, 1879. The third and final session of the 45th Congress came to an end without passing the bill in which the enabling legislation was originally included. The transfer of the Coast Survey to the Department of the Interior and the plan to discontinue the contract system of land-parceling surveys died with the bill.

Once the Survey bill was passed, the appointment of the director became an important issue, for the new director would be a member exofficio of the Commission to Codify the Land Laws. There was considerable sentiment in favor of Hayden, who had been longest in the field, so Powell wrote to Congressman Atkins "If Dr. Hayden is appointed all hope of further reform of the system of land surveys is at an end or indefinitely postponed." Powell himself was not a serious candidate for the office. He had been the principal proponent of change in the land-parceling surveys, and that provision had been eliminated from the bill. His interest in geology was primarily in landforms and land use rather than in the mineral-resource studies that were emphasized in the final legislation; moreover he was very much interested in his ethnological studies, for which an appropriation had also been made in the Sundry Civil bill that included the Survey legislation. Hence, he threw his support to Clarence King, and King was appointed the first director of the United States Geological Survey.

Powell was made a member of the Commission to Codify the Land Laws when it was established on July 1, 1879, and both Captain Clarence Dutton and Joseph Stanley-Brown, who had been the Major's secretary, were made members of the staff. The commission spent the last 5 months of 1879 traveling throughout the West, gathering evidence and opinions. The Arids Lands report was widely distributed, and questionnaires were published in journals and newspapers. The majority of those on the commission accepted Powell's thesis that most of the West was too dry for agriculture without irrigation and too dry to profit from any features of a land system suited to the more humid conditions of the East. They were unwilling, however, to set the system aside and preferred an attempt to adjust it to the special conditions of the West. Powell himself could think of no way of carrying out his plan without halting settlement at least temporarily, and the commission would not sponsor changes that would impede settlement. The legislation that they proposed included a system of classifying the public land, reducing the price of unsold land, and providing for the pasturage homestead that Powell had proposed. The Congress accepted the report and authorized its printing. That was as far as it went.

While Powell was busy with the commission, organizing the Bureau of American Ethnology, and other activities, King set about organizing the Geological Survey. There were ambiguities in the Survey legislation. The Director was charged with responsibility for "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geologic structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain." What kind of classification of the public lands did Congress have in mind? And what was the national domain—the whole United States, or only the public lands? When the difficulty was pointed out, the House passed and sent to the Senate a resolution extending the field of the Geological Survey to the entire United States; but action in the Senate was deferred by a technicality, and eventually the resolution was defeated. Discouraged by the restrictions on the Survey's field of activity, King resigned as soon as James A. Garfield became President in 1881, and John Wesley Powell became the second Director of the Geological Survey.

Powell made no immediate change in the plan of operations or methods of investigation established by King, but in the "Second Annual Report," his first as Director, there was one substantial contribution that was his own. A large amount of material was ready for publication, and in the Director's words, "it seemed wise to adopt a common system of general nomenclature, a uniform color scheme for geographic geology, a system of conventional characters for diagrams, and a form for geologic and topographic charts and atlases." The adoption of nomenclature, he pointed out, was to an important extent an attempt to establish the categories of classification, and every stage in the progress of knowledge is marked by a stage in the progress of classification. There was no attempt to fix permanent categories, for that would be futile in a "nascent" science, but on the other hand, diverse terms for the same classes and distinctions should be eradicated. "A multiplication of means for like purposes in the presentation of scientific subjects is a characteristic of low development, in the same manner as is the multiplication of organs for like purposes in a living being. Economy of time and thought is the goal to be obtained."

The color scheme should represent common usage, should not commit the geologist to distinctions and correlations not warranted by the facts, should be composed of easily distinguishable colors, should be obtainable with the greatest economy in printing, should provide for distinctions needed in different parts of the country, and should make use of all parts of the color scale.

Lithologic characters were also to be shown by conventional signs. "Cartographic colors and diagrammatic characters constitute the geologic alphabet, and its value will depend, first, on simplicity; second, on systematic consistency; third, on general usage." The value of the system described in the Second Annual Report is shown by the fact that, although it has been modified in detail since its adoption, basically it is still in use.

The problem of the field of operations of the Geological Survey was solved the following year. In his first budget, submitted in April 1882, the Director asked for an increase of $100,000 for the work in the Western States and an additional 100,000 to extend the work into the Mississippi Valley and the Appalachian region. The items were not approved in the report of the Committee on Appropriations, but when the bill was submitted to the House in July, Mr. Atkins, who had helped steer through the Survey legislation in 1879, moved to amend the item for the Geological Survey by adding "and continue preparation of a geological map of the United States." When he was challenged that this was an attempt to extend operations, he admitted it, and the amendment was changed to read "of the national domain of the United States." When the Sundry Civil bill was passed on August 7, the additional phrase had been deleted from the amendment, and the Survey's appropriation for the year was nearly $258,000. Demurely, the Director announced in his annual report: "Prior to the beginning of the present fiscal year it was doubted whether the Geological Survey was authorized by law to extend its operations into the eastern portion of the United States, but in the act making appropriations for the fiscal year 1882-'83 the Survey was required to make a geologic map of the United States. Authority, therefore, was given to extend the operations of the Survey over the entire country to the extent necessary for that purpose. The preparation of a geologic map necessitates the preparation of a topographic map, as topography is the basis of geologic representation."

The Major had, at long last, achieved his "survey proper." A. H. Thompson who had been the chief topographer of the Powell Survey, was promptly added to the Survey staff, and the seven districts planned by King came into being. Topographic work was begun in the South Atlantic and South Mississippi districts and three western districts before the end of August 1882.