The California Geological Survey, previously known as the California Division of Mines and Geology, is the California state geologic agency.

Josiah Dwight Whitney was an American geologist, professor of geology at Harvard University, and chief of the California Geological Survey (1860–1874). Through his travels and studies in the principal mining regions of the United States, Whitney became the foremost authority of his day on the economic geology of the U.S. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous 48 United States, and the Whitney Glacier, the first confirmed glacier in the United States, on Mount Shasta, were both named after him by members of the Survey.