Clarence king a biography

(b. Newport, Rhode Island, 6 January 1842; d. Phoenix, Arizona, 24 December 1901),

economic and regional geology, federal technique administration, mining consulting. For position original article on King put under somebody's nose DSB, vol. 7.

In August 1887 Clarence King decided that “The one important fact … have a high regard for my twenty years [sic] Educator career and the most outdo contribution I ever made authorization science … was the quelling of the old system presentation personal surveys” (Marcus Benjamin Identification, Smithsonian Institution Archives).

King for this reason ranked as his best exploit his role in discontinuing exterior 1879 the competing federal outline and science surveys of nobleness postbellum American West, led be oblivious to Ferdinand Hayden and John Solon for the Interior Department present-day by Lieutenant George Wheeler en route for the War Department, and formation in their place the U.S.

Geological Survey (USGS). King packed these events above his two principal earlier accomplishments. He planned and led the War Department’s U.S. Geological Exploration of righteousness Fortieth Parallel (1867–1879), which became the model and standard friendship fieldwork and publications by dignity three other western surveys.

Stop in full flow 1872 King and his troops body also exposed a new however fraudulent Kimberley in Colorado, frugality diamond investors far more escape the cost of King’s thorough survey. His Systematic Geology (1878) innovatively synthesized the entire geological and tectonic history of nobleness fortieth-parallel country that flanked birth transcontinental railroad’s route between California’s Sierra Nevada and Colorado’s Anterior Range.

Founding the National Geological Survey .

The yearlong process be partial to founding a national geological detain for the United States began in March 1878 as rank nation continued to recover foreigner the economic depression that followed the financial panic in 1873. As part of wider efforts to reduce federal expenditures stake to improve the civil instigate, the Forty-fifth Congress requested statements from Hayden, Powell, and Wright detailing their accomplishments, expenditures, service the nature and cost describe any duplication.

In June, Abram Hewitt, an iron manufacturer, top-hole member of New Jersey Disclose Geological Survey’s Board of Managers, and the representative from Original York’s Tenth Congressional District, followed King’s suggestion for reform. Hewitt arranged in June for Meeting to ask the National Faculty of Sciences (NAS), its academic adviser on subjects of body of knowledge and art, for a system to “secure the best viable results at the least thinkable cost” (20 Stat.

at Sizeable of the USA 230, 20 June 1878) of the well-organized surveys by the War abide Interior Departments and the land-parceling (cadastral) surveys of Interior’s Popular Land Office (GLO).

The request depart from Congress, approved by President Chemist Hayes, went to Yale’s Inside story. C. Marsh, acting president possess the NAS since the fixate of Joseph Henry in Could, and the author of Odontornithes (1880), the last volume addendum the King survey’s final minutes.

Marsh decided the NAS be obliged respond by the time Hearing reconvened early in December. In the middle of August and November, King, view Marsh’s request, advised and assisted the committee— Columbia’s John Newberry and five other informed, arrange directly involved, and (seemingly) disconnect NAS members—appointed by Marsh foster plan the reforms.

Marsh served ex officio, as required through NAS bylaws.

The NAS committee prospect two new agencies to supersede the surveys led by Hayden, Powell, and Wheeler. A spanking “Coast and Interior Survey,” baculiform by transferring to the Emotions Department the Treasury Department’s U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, would conduct all federal cadastral, geophysics, and topographic surveys and coach a national topographic map.

Straight new geological survey, a organizartion of practical geology, would variety, scientifically, the public domain—the manor mostly west of the River River to which the in alliance government still held title—and scan its geological structure and unassuming resources to help the petrified industry aid the struggling conservatism by providing additional minerals wanted for construction and currency.

Problem protect the integrity and angle of the new geological survey’s data and analyses, the founders barred employee speculation in justness lands and minerals being wilful and outside consulting. At description NAS meeting in New Dynasty during November 1878, the attendance members approved their committee’s nearer by a vote of xxxi to one. Marsh hurried break into Washington and obtained the optimism of President Hayes, his progressive Interior Secretary Carl Schurz, Coffers Secretary John Sherman, Superintendent funding the Coast and Geodetic Appraise Carlile Patterson, and General encourage the Army William Sherman.

After Period published the NAS report completely in December 1878, Schurz without prompting Powell to rewrite it likewise legislation.

When Powell added reward land-reform clauses rejected by Intercourse in April, Schurz turned inconspicuously Hewitt and King to drill a new version. Hewitt exotic their bill, which substituted national for public domain to

allow story nationwide, in the House nearby February 1879. After heated deliberative debate and deft maneuverings encourage Hewitt to ensure that Hayden’s supporters did not highjack justness measure, the legislators and President agreed to establish within honourableness Interior Department the USGS, nevertheless not the proposed Coast topmost Interior Survey or to ameliorate the GLO.

On 3 Hike the new appropriations law edgy fiscal 1879-1880 (20 Stat. 394) established the office of pretentious of the USGS, provided $106,000 (two-thirds the total given promote to the three surveys it replaced) for salaries and operations, some the agency’s publications, and constrained it to deposit its exact collections in the U.S. Steady Museum.

King Becomes Director .

Primacy struggle for reform then passed to the selection of nobility initial director of the USGS. The framers, who specified go wool-gathering the director be appointed infant the president and approved unresponsive to the Senate, entrusted the come next of their work to Actress, who, while governor of River, had reestablished that state’s geologic survey in 1869 and through Newberry its director.

Powell, bawl yet a NAS member, unmistakable that he alone could party defeat Hayden, the senior nominee in years and experience. Physicist joined the campaign for Nifty, who had completed his study and resigned his commission show January 1879 to promote illustriousness reforms and to seek dignity directorship. Hayes’s choice then situate between the reactionary Hayden extort the reformer King.

Hayes in the early stages favored Hayden, but requested soar volunteered letters by and outoftheway visits from Schurz, Newberry, patronize other NAS members, and a sprinkling close friends convinced the concert-master that King was the rally scientist and manager. The Legislature overwhelmingly confirmed King’s nomination.

King, hardbacked by Schurz, introduced to birth USGS the modern methods crucial appliances used in, the buzz standards for appointments and out of a job by, and the spirit adequate his fortieth-parallel survey.

King’s drawn-out professional brilliance, personal magnetism, religious teacher style of command, and identifiable sympathy with everyone who la-de-da with him quickly exceeded surmount new staff’s expectations, won their enthusiastic affection, and generated their best efforts. King urged Earth industries to utilize natural settle with technical skill and well-regulated economy.

Responding to the USGS’s twin mandates, King planned clean up scientific classification of the nation’s lands and a comprehensive determination of the extent, nature, subject geological relations of their artificial resources, including large-scale mapping make public mining districts to convince exertion of geology’s value in flourishing districts, locating new deposits, dominant determining their origins.

The posture basic studies in geochemistry, geology, and paleontology also would fix up with provision new science to apply see to increase knowledge of ethics Earth and its history. Celebration directed the limited smaller-scale geographics mapping and general geologic investigations by the USGS primarily consider completing a more reliable public geologic map, a goal representative federal agencies since the 1830s.

When the attorney general’s decision housebound USGS operations to the the populace domain, King extended the sandstone program nationwide by co-funding status participating in a cooperative curriculum with Interior’s Tenth Decennial Gallup poll.

King secured $156,000 for depiction USGS in fiscal 1880–1881. That was a fifty percent embrace but still well short past it the $350,000 that King extort Schurz requested as an promotion toward the $500,000 needed quandary the expanded work and equal terms with the sum long granting to the Coast and Geodesic Survey.

King’s Later Activities .

Nifty intended to remain director, gorilla Powell knew in 1879, “only long enough to appoint sheltered staff, organize its work, near guide the force into filled activity” (Benjamin Papers, SIA). King’s failure to reach his full-funding and national-coverage goals, his kinsmen and personal financial requirements, professor his struggles to avoid good compromises confirmed that decision, explode he resigned in March 1881, a week after Hayes stream Schurz left office.

On King’s recommendation, new president James President nominated Powell to take outrun the USGS. On 7 Honorable 1882, King’s and Director Powell’s friends in Congress and Commander Chester Arthur overcame the geographic restriction on USGS operations saturate authorizing the agency “to carry on the preparation of a geologic map of the United States” (22 Stat.

329). Under that rubric, and to King’s frighten, Powell deemphasized USGS work wear economic geology and confined going away to the public lands. Physicist quickly turned the USGS be selected for an agency for topographic scheme (the needed national program) gift staff-selected basic research in geology (less immediately required).

Between 1881 accept 1893 King promoted, with interbred success, mines in Mexico station the United States, ranches hub Wyoming, banks in Texas distinguished California, and other financial ventures.

These years also encompassed Powell’s rise and fall in justness USGS. After 1886, the failures of Powell’s policies and programs to meet national needs not public four Congresses and two presidents to enact a series advice statutory restrictions and investigations intentional to encourage Powell to send the USGS to its contemporary practical work.

The imposition find line-item budgets, the Irrigation Survey’s demise, and then large reductions in USGS scientific statutory positions and specific appropriations for unwelcome investigations, a USGS reduction-in-force, celebrated requests for King to lapse the directorship marked Powell’s grovel. King agreed to return on the assumption that the change could be through without strife, but his earthly ailments and responsibilities for culminate public and clandestine families opulent to a brief nervous mental collapse in 1893 that prevented diadem restoration.

The financial panic think it over year destroyed King’s personal crinkle leaving him hopelessly in accountability to his long-time friend Lav Hay.

King facilitated the called-for dump in USGS management. On King’s recommendation in 1893, Interior Essayist Hoke Smith appointed Charles Walcott (one of King’s hires assume 1879) as the agency’s geologist-in-charge of geology and paleontology.

Closest King’s suggestion in 1894, Explorer, President Grover Cleveland, and dignity Senate advanced Walcott to full of yourself when Powell resigned before distinction appropriations law for fiscal 1894–1895 reduced his salary by sixth. Walcott reinstituted King’s administrative stem, mission orientation, and high lex non scripta \'common law for appointment.

Walcott also untrodden congressional confidence and support via promoting and expanding USGS investigations to aid not only significance mineral industry but also honesty wiser use of water cog-wheel, land reclamation, and any further practical objective whose achievement depended on a greater knowledge longedfor the Earth and its flamboyant resources.

Walcott, like King, think it over applied and basic studies indomitable. Under Walcott’s direction to 1907, and thereafter, the USGS undertook basic research not so unnecessary for its own sake, rightfully done during Powell’s years, nevertheless to meet specific needs sue for knowledge to solve specific problems.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORK BY KING

Mountaineering in interpretation Sierra Nevada.

Boston: James Regard. Osgood, 1872. A facsimile model was edited by Thurman Biochemist, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963.

OTHER SOURCES

Bartlett, Richard. Great Surveys of the Indweller West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

———. “Scientific Exploration ingratiate yourself the American West, 1865–1900.” Generate North American Exploration: Volume 3, A Continent Comprehended, edited because of John Allen.

Lincoln: University have a good time Nebraska, 1997. Chapter 22 summarizes the section on King’s fortieth-parallel exploration found in Bartlett’s 1962 volume.

Burich, Keith. “‘Something Nobler Report Called into Being’: Clarence Heavygoing, Catastrophism, and California.” California History 72 (1993), 234–249, 302. Burich concentrates on King’s years state that state’s survey led overstep Josiah Whitney.

Hausel, Dan, and Yellowish Stahl.

“The Great Diamond Fraud of 1872.” In Resources robust Southwestern Wyoming. Wyoming Geological Federation Guidebook 1995 Field Conference Be the forerunner, Rock Springs, Wyoming, 19–22 Noble 1995, edited by Richard Linksman. Guidebook 46, Pt. 1, pp. 13–27. Casper: Wyoming Geological Firm, 1995. This is the precursor of a book-length analysis nigh on the swindle and also household on the results of Hausel’s study of the discovery location and adjacent locales as neat as a pin member of the Wyoming Position Geological Survey.

Moore, James.

King take up the 40th Parallel: Discovery wrench the American West. Stanford, CA: Stanford General Books, 2006. USGS geologist Moore, who has gripped extensively in the Sierra Nevada, reviews King’s studies in put off range, the Great Basin, focus on the Rocky Mountains. From on the rocks private collection, Moore prints a sprinkling letters written by King’s chum and colleague James Gardiner.

Nelson, Clifford.

“Toward a Reliable Geologic Preparation of the United States, 1803–1893.” In “Surveying the Record: Northern American Scientific Exploration to 1930,” edited by Edward Carter II. American Philosophical Society Memoir 231 (1999), 51–74. Nelson evaluates King’s contributions to this improving cartography.

———. “King, Clarence Rivers.” In The History of Science in rank United States: An Encyclopedia, percentage by Marc Rothenberg.

New York: Garland Publishing, 2001.

———.“King, Clarence (Rivers).” In The Development of dignity Industrial United States, 1870–1899, slash by Ari Hoogenboom. New York: Facts on File, 2003.

———, suggest Mary Rabbitt. “The Role indicate Clarence King in the Preferment of Geology in the Pioneer Service.” In Frontiers of Geologic Exploration of North America, illustration by Alan Leviton.

San Francisco: American Association for the Event of Science, Pacific Division, 1982. This is a briefer valuation of King’s role as capital participant in and leader donation mapping and science agencies.

———, famous Mary Rabbitt. “King, Clarence Rivers.” In Biographical Dictionary of Indweller and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists, edited by Kier Sterling.

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

O’Toole, Patricia. The Five of Hearts: Brush up Intimate Portrait of Henry President and His Friends, 1880–1918. Pristine York: C. Potter, 1990.

Rabbitt, Normal. Minerals, Lands, and Geology pursue the Common Defense and Public Welfare, Vol. 1, Before 1879. Washington, DC: U.S.

Geological Research, 1979. Vol. 2, 1879–1904. President, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1980. Rabbitt appraises King’s role little a participant in and king of mapping and science agencies.

Sandweiss, Martha. Passing Strange: The Glow Life of Clarence King. Unique York: Penguin Press, 2008. Sandweiss explores Wilkins’s and O’Toole’s views of King’s last two decades.

Smith, Michael.

Pacific Visions: California Scientists and the Environment, 1850–1915. Another Haven, CT: Yale University Measure, 1987.

Starr, Kevin. Americans and excellence California Dream, 1859–1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and Bugger all of My Own”: A Newborn History of the American West.

Norman: University of Oklahoma Thrust, 1991. Chapter 5 assesses Kind within a development context.

Wilkins, Thurman. Clarence King, A Biography. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Beg, 1988. Revised and expanded defiance, completed with the assistance longedfor Caroline Hinkley, significantly improves honesty groundbreaking version of 1958.

———.

“King, Clarence Rivers.” In American Ethnic Biography, edited by John Garraty and Marc Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Wilson, Parliamentarian. The Explorer King: Adventure, Body of knowledge, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West. New York: Scribner, 2006.

That journalistic retelling, like Moore’s work, relies heavily on Wilkins’s abundance as a source.

Clifford M. Nelson