Charles Doolittle Walcott

Walcott was not an obvious choice for the position in view of the congressional desire for more emphasis on economic geology, but he was a man of unusual administrative and scientific ability. Although he had already established an international reputation in what he chose to call paleontologic geology, as late as 1890 he was one of the lower-paid paleontologists and in 1892 had been on the verge of leaving the Survey to become a professor at the University of Chicago. Walcott, however, had been one of Former USGS Director Clarence King's early appointees, as an assistant geologist at \$600 a year, and had been part of the group that worked with King in New York after King's resignation as Director. Walcott understood the difficulties the Geological Survey faced and the steps that had to be taken. 

Walcott's appointment was greeted with cautious approval by geologists but more or less ignored by the mining fraternity, although King assured them of his administrative ability. Walcott revived the mission orientation of the Geological Survey as outlined by King in 1879 but broadened the mission beyond that envisioned by King. The Survey would aid not just the mineral industry but all industries--in fact any practical objective that could be aided by a knowledge of geology. It would not, however, be limited to practical geology but would undertake basic research whenever research was necessary in the solution of a geologic problem.

Walcott abolished all organizational units within the Geologic Branch and assumed direct control of the work. Mining geology studies were resumed and extended into the Eastern States, and in view of the gold crisis, an intensive study of gold deposits, including exploration for new sources, was begun. The deposits at Cripple Creek, Colorado, a little-understood telluride ore, were studied, as were those at Mercur, Utah, which had become usable through development of the cyanidation process. Studies of gold deposits in Alaska began in 1895. By 1900, the value of gold produced annually in the United States was more than twice what it had been in 1890, and the United States adopted the gold standard as its monetary base. 

Basic science was an integral part of the Geologic Branch program. Fundamental studies were made in the genesis of ore deposits, in paleontology and stratigraphy, in glacial geology, and in petrography. The geologic time scale was revised, new definitions for rock classes were developed, and the first geologic folios were published.

Geology was also extended to include the study of water. Streamflow measurements begun during the Irrigation Survey had been continued in a modest way as part of the topographic mapping program after the Irrigation Survey was discontinued in 1890. In 1895, the work was transferred to the Geologic Branch, and studies of underground water and water utilization were gradually added to the stream gaging. The Irrigation Congress that met in Phoenix in December 1896 reversed the opinions of earlier congresses with regard to the Geological Survey's role in public-land management by recommending establishment of a Public Lands Commission, including the Director of the Geological Survey as a member, to be responsible for preparing a topographic map, determining the water supply, ascertaining the character and value of the timber, and making regulations for the occupation and utilization of the public lands.

The development of the topographic work followed a similar pattern. At the beginning of his directorate Walcott simply announced that topographic map quality would be improved. Within a few months, the topographic corps was placed under Civil Service, thus eliminating some of the difficulties of the Powell era when many with inadequate or no training, including congressional relatives, had been employed. A practical demonstration was made of the advantages of combining topographic surveys and the subdivisional surveys of the General Land Office in Indian Territory. The value of topographic maps for practical purposes was greatly increased by the placement of permanent bench marks showing the exact location and elevation of fixed points.

The Forest Management Act in 1897 placed management of the forest reserves in the Department of the Interior and required that surveys of the "public lands that have been or may be designated forest reserves" be made under the supervision of the Director of the Geological Survey. Survey topographers within the next 3 years mapped more than 32,000 square miles in and adjacent to the reserves, even though most were in wilderness areas. At the same time, a program of topographic mapping on the larger scales needed for more urbanized areas was steadily growing in cooperation with the Eastern States.

In 1900, a bill for establishment of a Department of Mines with the Survey as a nucleus was filed but not acted on. However, when Congress appropriated for the Survey 110 percent of the amount it had requested, the Geologic Branch was reorganized, and a Division of Mining and Mineral Resources was established.

The reorganization of the Geologic Branch on July 1, 1900, was an experiment designed to separate scientific and administrative control. Seven divisions were established, covering specified subject areas, each in charge of a specialist who would prepare plans of work, establish priorities, recommend geologists to undertake particular projects, and review manuscripts. Party chiefs would plan the conduct of the work. The Director would approve plans and make allotments. 

The organization of the Geologic Branch was again altered when Walcott assumed additional duties as Director of the Reclamation Service and Secretary of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1902. Administrative control of five divisions was transferred from the Director to the Geologist-in-charge of Geology and Paleontology, and those five divisions became sections in the Division of Geology and Paleontology. The Division of Physical and Chemical Research and the Division of Mining and Mineral Resources remained under the administrative control of the Director. The Hydrographic Division was separated from the Geologic Branch and became the Hydrographic Branch. In 1903, the Division of Alaskan Mineral Resources, in effect an Alaskan geological survey because it included topographic mapping, was established in the Geologic Branch.

In 1904, the U.S. Geological Survey celebrated the 25th anniversary of its establishment. It had grown from an organization of 38 employees at the end of its first year to one with 491 employees (and another 187 in the adjunct Reclamation Service) in 1904. Its first appropriation had been \$106,000; the appropriation for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 1904, was \$1.4 million. It had become the leading geologic institution in the United States in the view of "American Men of Science," and many of the 100 geologists whose work was considered most significant by their peers, including the first five ranked numerically, were associated with the Survey. 

At the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904, celebrating the centennial of the Nation's first great acquisition of western territory, the Geological Survey was given an opportunity to demonstrate the value of the more comprehensive investigations of coal and coke, which it had been proposing for many years. For the department of mining and metallurgy at the exposition, which the Survey had agreed to organize, appropriations totaling \$60,000 were obtained for analyzing and testing coals and lignites "to determine their fuel values and the most economic method for their utilization for different purposes." The coal-testing program almost immediately began to produce significant results, and after the fair was over, it was extended and became part of the regular Survey program. 

In 1905, the Survey also obtained additional funds to increase its field investigations of iron and coal, the staples of industry, about which there was some concern, and a new program of mapping western coal deposits was started. As the emphasis in the Survey's program in economic geology shifted to nonmetallic resources, specifically fuel resources, a new Section of the Geology of Fuels was set up in the Geologic Branch.Walcott was a paleontologist. He is often noted for his discovery of the Burgess Shale fossils in Canada in the early twentieth century. After his time as USGS Director, he then served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution until his death in 1927.