George Otis Smith
George Otis Smith was an American geologist. Smith was born in Maine, he graduated from Colby College in 1893 and earned a Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1896. He served as director of United States Geological Survey from 1907 to 1922 and 1923 to 1930, he served as the first chairman of the Federal Power Commission under Herbert Hoover from 1930 to 1933. Smith died in Augusta, Maine. Smith was the Geologist-in-charge of the Section of Petrography of the Geologic Branch, succeeded Charles Doolittle Walcott as Director in May 1907 and continued as Director until December 1930. Smith had joined the Survey after receiving his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1896, he was 36 years old when he was appointed Director, his Survey career had not been distinguished, but he had come to the attention of the new Secretary of the Interior, James R. Garfield, in 1906 when Smith had served as chairman of one of the subcommittees of a Presidential commission that sought to put the operation of Government agencies on a modern businesslike basis.
Smith was interested in a business policy for the public domain. He believed that the work of the Survey should be although not practical. After the great coal strike in 1922, a Coal Commission was established to study the problems of the industry and to aid Congress on legislation that would ensure the Nation of an adequate supply of coal. Director Smith was a member of the Commission, the Geological Survey's resource data provided the basis for much of the Commission's report. In 1924, Smith unsuccessfully urged resumption of coal research in much the same terms as Walcott had used in 1898. Director Smith served as Chairman of a three-man commission appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in March 1924, after the Teapot Dome scandal, to study the efficient management of the naval petroleum reserves, as Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Cabinet-level Federal Oil Conservation Board established in December 1924 to reappraise Federal oil policies. In the fall of 1929, the first Hoover budget called for increased funds for scientific agencies, including $100,000 for fundamental research in geologic sciences, the first substantial increase in Federal funds for geologic investigations since 1915.
In the spring of 1930, Congress appropriated $2.87 million for the Geological Survey and appropriated funds for the expenses of a commission on the conservation and administration of the public domain. In December 1930, Hoover appointed Smith as chairman of the newly reorganized Federal Power Commission. In January 1931 the Senate purported to reconsider its consent to the appointment of Smith, other members of the Commission, because it did not approve of their choice of subordinates. President Hoover did not recognise the Senate's authority to withdraw its consent to the appointment of officials after they had been commissioned. In May 1932 the US Supreme Court held. Smith served until 1933. Smith, George Otis. "Notes on crystals of scapolite and fayalite..." Johns Hopkins University Circular, pp. 81–83 Smith, George Otis. "The volcanic series of the Fox Islands, ME" Johns Hopkins University Circular, pp. 12–13 Smith, George Otis. "The rocks of Mount Rainier" United States Geological Survey Annual Report, vol.18, Part 2, pp. 416–423 Smith, George Otis.
"Igneous phenomena in the Tintic Mountains, Utah" Science, vol.7, pp. 502 Willis, Bailey. "Description of the Tintic special district, Utah" Geological Atlas Folio, Report: GF-0065, 8 pp. Smith, George Otis. "Geology and water resources of a portion of Yakima County, Washington" U. S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper, Report: W 0055, 68 pp. Smith, George Otis. "Contributions to the geology of Washington. "Work of the United States Geological Survey" Mining World, pp. 136–137 Smith, George Otis. "The policy of the Geological Survey" Science, pp. 401 -- George Otis. "Military contribution of civilian engineers" Geological Society of America Bulletin, vol.30, no.3, pp. 399–404 Smith, George Otis. "Topographic and geologic maps" The Military Engineer, vol.17, no.95, pp. 381–395 Rickard, Thomas Arthur. "George Otis Smith an appreciation" Mining and Metallurgy, vol.25, no.447, pp. 191 Smith, Philip Sidney. "Memorial to George Otis Smith" Proceedings of the Geological Society of America, pp. 309–329, Works by or about George Otis Smith at Internet Archive Portrait of George Otis Smith via the US Geological Survey Photograph of George Otis Smith via the US Geological Survey George Otis Smith: “Plain Geology” George Otis Smith: notes, papers, 1896-1933 via the US Geological Survey Photographs from the scientific investigations of George Otis Smith via the US Geological Survey
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
Harpers Ferry, population 286 at the 2010 census, is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, United States, in the lower Shenandoah Valley. It was spelled Harper's Ferry with an apostrophe — in the 18th century it was the ferry owned and run by Robert Harper — and that form continues to appear in some references, it is situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where the U. S. states of Maryland and West Virginia meet. It is the easternmost town in West Virginia and during the Civil War the northernmost point of Confederate-controlled territory; the town's original, lower section is on a flood plain created by the two rivers and surrounded by higher ground. The lower part of Harpers Ferry is within Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Most of the remainder, which includes the more populated area, is included in the separate Harpers Ferry Historic District. Two other National Register of Historic Places properties adjoin the town: the B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing and St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church.
Because of its geography, Harpers Ferry was a vitally important junction point. In colonial times and through the early U. S. years, its location at the junction of two rivers, the feasibility of a ferry – the first regular ferry across the Potomac, antedating the founding of Washington – made it a natural site of commerce. Harpers Ferry has a commanding central location on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, running alongside the Potomac and avoiding its rapids, linking Washington with points west; the word "ferry" in the town's name — the ferry ended in 1824, when a covered wooden road bridge was built — conceals the fact that Harpers Ferry is the site of the first and for many years the only railroad bridge across the Potomac River, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's bridge, built in 1836–37. It is the site of the first railroad intersection in the United States, where the older Baltimore & Ohio was met by the newer Winchester and Potomac Railroad, it thus was, at the time the Civil War began, the only railroad link between the Northern and Southern states.
It was a natural conduit for Union incursions into the South. At the mouth of the Shenandoah Valley, important Civil War battles took place nearby. Not only was Harpers Ferry a vital north-south route, it commanded the routes – the railroad and the canal — connecting Washington with points west and the Ohio Valley. Vital telegraph lines connecting Washington with points west went through Harpers Ferry. Harpers Ferry is best known for John Brown's raid in 1859, in which he attempted to use the town and the weapons in its Federal Armory as the base for a slave revolt, planned to expand south into Virginia. At that time and until 1863, it was part of Virginia. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters is in Harpers Ferry; the Appalachian Trail passes directly through town, which some consider the psychological midpoint of the trail, although the exact physical midpoint is farther north, in Pennsylvania. Uniquely, the towns of Harpers Ferry and Bolivar partnered with the ATC to be declared a united Appalachian Trail Community.
Other popular outdoor activities include white water rafting, mountain biking, canoeing, zip lining, rock climbing. In 1733, Peter Stephens, a squatter, had settled on land near "The Point", established a ferry from Virginia to Maryland, across the Potomac. Fourteen years while traveling from Maryland to Virginia, Robert Harper passed through the area, named "The Hole". Harper recognized the potential for industry, given the power the two rivers could generate, the traffic he could ferry across the Potomac River. Harper paid Stephens 30 British guinea for what was Stephens' squatting rights, since the land belonged to Lord Fairfax. In April 1751, Harper purchased 126 acres of land from Lord Fairfax. In 1761, the Virginia General Assembly granted Harper the right to establish and maintain a ferry across the Potomac River. In 1763, the Virginia General Assembly established the town of "Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harpers Ferry."On October 25, 1783, Thomas Jefferson visited Harpers Ferry. He viewed "the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge" from a rock, now named for him.
This stop took place as Jefferson was traveling to Philadelphia and passed through Harpers Ferry with his daughter Patsy. Jefferson called the site "perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature."George Washington, as president of the Patowmack Company, traveled to Harpers Ferry during the summer of 1785 to determine the need for bypass canals. In 1794, Washington's familiarity with the area led him to propose the site for a new United States armory and arsenal; some of Washington's family moved to the area. In 1796, the federal government purchased a 125-acre parcel of land from the heirs of Robert Harper. Construction began on t
Edward Orton Sr.
Edward Francis Baxter Orton Sr. was a United States geologist, the first president of The Ohio State University. He entered Hamilton College in 1845, graduating in 1848, he spent time at Lane Theological Seminary, Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, Andover Theological Seminary. During those times he was interested in entering the ministry, he was ordained in 1856. From 1856 to 1859, he was professor of natural science in the New York state normal school at Albany. From 1859 to 1865, he was principal of the preparatory academy of New York, he became professor of natural history at Antioch College in 1865, became its president in 1872. A year Orton became president of what was the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he became professor of geology, he continued as professor of geology until his death. Orton was assistant state geologist of Ohio from 1869 to 1875, he was named state geologist in 1882, continued in that position until his death in 1899. He was a member of scientific societies, was president of the state sanitary association of Ohio in 1884–85.
He suffered a paralyzing stroke in 1891, but continued to work. Orton served for a time on the geological surveys of the United States, of Kentucky, of Kansas, was president of the Geological Society of America, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he was an economic geologist, specialized in the study of oil and gas, developing several well-known theories, notably the “anticlinal theory”, becoming known as an authority on the nature and geological occurrence of these products. Through his marriage to Anna Davenport Torrey, Orton was an uncle of U. S. President and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft and a brother-in-law to Taft's father, U. S. Attorney General and Secretary of War Alphonso Taft. OSU constructed a geology building in 1893, named it Orton Hall, in tribute to Orton's seminal contributions. In 1920, his son Edward Orton Jr. the first Chairman of Ceramic Engineering at The Ohio State University, honored his father with the Orton Memorial Library of Geology, inside Orton Hall, for perusing the theories and records of earthly change.
Geology of Ohio, in part Economic Geology of Ohio Petroleum and Inflammable Gas Baynes, T. S.. R. eds.. "Ohio". Encyclopædia Britannica. 17. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. With OSU professor of history John Thomas Short, he was the author of various addresses, scientific papers, contributions. "Past Presidents of the Ohio State University". Archived from the original on 2009-04-07. Wilson, J. G.. "Orton, Edward". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. Gilman, D. C.. "Orton, Edward". New International Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead. Rines, George Edwin, ed.. "Orton, Edward". Encyclopedia Americana. In memoriam. Columbus: Ohio State University. 1899
William John McGee
William John McGee, LL. D. was an American inventor, geologist and ethnologist, born in Farley, Iowa. While self-taught, McGee attended a rural one-room schoolhouse north of Farley during the four winter months from about 1858 to 1867, he devoting his early years to surveying. He patented several improvements on agricultural implements, he subsequently turned his attention to geology. In 1877–1881, he executed a topographic and geological survey of 17,000 square miles in northeastern Iowa, he undertook an examination of the loess of the Mississippi Valley, researched the great Quaternary lakes of Nevada and California and studied a recent fault movement in the middle Atlantic slope. He was appointed geologist for the United States Geological Survey in 1881. In 1884 McGee authored the article Map of the United States exhibiting the present status of knowledge relating to the areal distribution of geologic groups for the USGS Journal. While with the USGS, McGee travelled to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886 for the purpose of studying the earthquake disturbances in its vicinity.
McGee was ethnologist in charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1893 to 1903. In 1895, he explored the Gulf of California, home of the Seri Indians. In 1904 he was chief of the department of anthropology that organized the "Anthropology Days" at the 1904 Summer Olympics / Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the 1904 World's Fair, in 1907 he was appointed a member of the Inland Waterways Commission by President Roosevelt, his other prominent positions were: acting president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. McGee was a founding member of the Geological Society of America and was the first editor of The Geological Society of America Bulletin. In 1890Married to Anita Newcomb McGee in 1888, McGee had three children, he died in Washington, DC of cancer on September 4, 1912. His publications include: The Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa The Geology of Chesapeake Bay The Siouan Indians Primitive Trephining The Seri Indians Primitive Numbers Soil Erosion Wells and Subsoil Water Works by William John McGee at Project Gutenberg Works by or about William John McGee at Internet Archive Works by William John McGee at LibriVox
Frederick Haynes Newell
Frederick Haynes Newell, served as the first Director of the United States Reclamation Service, was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1885 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and after field experience in Colorado and other states was appointed on October 2, 1888, as Assistant Hydraulic Engineer of the United States Geological Survey, being the first aide designated under Major John Wesley Powell to investigate the extent to which the arid regions of the United States might be reclaimed by irrigation, he was subsequently appointed Chief of the Hydrographic Branch. At the same time, he assisted Representative Francis G. Newlands of Nevada, George H. Maxwell of California, President of the National Irrigation Association, others in the preparation and public presentation of various Congressional bills, one of which by the personal efforts of President Theodore Roosevelt became the Reclamation Act when signed by the latter on June 17, 1902. After that date Mr. Newell was appointed Chief Engineer under Charles D. Walcott Director of the U. S. Geological Survey.
In 1907 Roosevelt appointed him as a member of the Inland Waterways Commission. Newell was born on March 5, 1862, in Bradford, Pennsylvania, a small lumber and mining town to father, Augustus William Newell, mother, Anna M. Haynes, his father was an early industrialist and real estate mogul in Bradford. Newell's mother and Newell's sibling died in child birth a year. Newell would spend his childhood and teenage years with extended relatives, living with his uncle in Newton, Connecticut prior to attending MIT. After receiving his BA in Mining Engineering, Newell returned to Bradford to his father. Frederick described his father as "always sanguine, full of entrancing schemes... He was surveyor and general all around man.... He bought and sold coal and timber lands and went into various ventures, characteristic of the time and place. Newell recalled in his unpublished memoirs "The people were what might be called typical mountaineers and laborers in the lumber camps, rough and with many queer old country habits and superstitions."
Afterwards, he joined the Ohio Geological Survey in order to study oil–bearing rocks, but in 1888 Newell met John Wesley Powell, the head of the United States Geological Survey in Boston. During the next few years the organization of the Reclamation Service was completed and plans outlined for extensive work in each of the western states, work being initiated in most of these. In 1907, when Mr. Walcott left the Geological Survey to become Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the Reclamation Service was organized as a separate bureau of the Department of the Interior with Mr. Newell as Director and Arthur P. Davis as Chief Engineer. Construction was pushed until twenty-six projects, including reservoirs and related works were completed in whole or part, notably the Roosevelt, Arrowrock, Gunnison Tunnels and others, involving the investment of over $100,000,000, in 100 dams, of which ten form reservoirs of national importance 25 miles of tunnels, 13,000 miles of irrigating canals and ditches with regulating works, bridges and hydro-electric generators, transmission lines and devices connected with supplying water to 20,000 farms.
Special efforts were made to attain the highest practicable economy and efficiency in the execution of the work and to meet the need and desires of the settlers under them. Frederick Haynes Newell was Secretary of the National Geographic Society from 1892–1893 and from 1897–1899, Secretary of the American Forestry Association after 1895, President of the American Association of Engineers in 1919, he was awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal by the American Geographical Society in 1918. In 1877, his father, Augustus W. Newell, married his second wife Miss Phoebe Lewis, they begot Lewis, Henry Foster, Augustus William Jr. Frederick Haynes Newell married Effie Josephine Mackintosh April 3, 1890 in Milton, Massachusetts, her father was John Sherman Mackintosh, the grandson of John Sherman and the great-grandson of American founding father Roger Sherman. Oil Well Drilling Agriculture by Irrigation Hydrography of the Arid Regions The Public Lands of the United States Irrigation in the United States Hawaii, Its Natural Resources Principles of Irrigation Engineering Irrigation Management Engineering as a Career Water Resources and Future Uses Obituary Biography Photo F.
H. Newell Federal Building.
Ithaca, New York
Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York. It is the seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca–Tompkins County metropolitan area; this area contains the municipalities of the Town of Ithaca, the village of Cayuga Heights, other towns and villages in Tompkins County. The city of Ithaca is located on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York, about 45 miles south-west-west of Syracuse, it is named for the Greek island of Ithaca. Ithaca is home to Cornell University, an Ivy League school of over 20,000 students, most of whom study at its local campus. In addition, Ithaca College is a private, liberal arts college of over 7,000 students, located just south of the city in the Town of Ithaca, adding to the area's "college town" atmosphere. Nearby is Tompkins Cortland Community College; these three colleges bring tens of thousands of students, who increase Ithaca's seasonal population during the school year. The city's voters are notably more liberal than those in the remainder of Tompkins County or in upstate New York voting for Democratic Party candidates.
As of 2010, the city's population was 30,014. A 2017 census estimate stated the population was 31,006. Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca is the North American seat of the 14th Dalai Lama. Indigenous people occupied this area for thousands of years. At the time of European contact, this area was controlled by the Cayuga Nation, one of the powerful Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois League. Jesuit missionaries from New France are said to have had a mission to the Cayuga as early as 1657. Saponi and Tutelo peoples, Siouan-speaking tribes occupied lands at the south end of Cayuga Lake. Dependent tributaries of the Cayuga, they had been permitted to settle on the tribe's hunting lands at the south end of Cayuga Lake, as well as in Pony Hollow of what is known as present-day Newfield, New York. Remnants of these tribes had been forced from Virginia and North Carolina by tribal conflicts and European colonial encroachment; the Tuscarora people, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe from the Carolinas, migrated after defeat in the Yamasee War.
During the Revolutionary War, four of the six Iroquois nations were allied with the British, although bands made decisions on fighting in a decentralized way. Conflict with the rebel colonists was fierce throughout western New York. In retaliation for conflicts to the east, the 1779 Sullivan Expedition was conducted against the Iroquois peoples in the west of the state, destroying more than 40 villages and stored winter crops, it destroyed the Tutelo village of Coregonal, located near what is now the junction of state routes 13 and 13A just south of the Ithaca city limits. Most Iroquois were forced from the state after the Revolutionary War; the state sold off the former Iroquois lands to stimulate development and settlement by European Americans. Within the current boundaries of the City of Ithaca, Native Americans maintained only a temporary hunting camp at the base of Cascadilla Gorge. In 1788, eleven men from Kingston, New York came to the area with two Delaware people guides, to explore what they considered wilderness.
The following year Jacob Yaple, Isaac Dumond, Peter Hinepaw returned with their families and constructed log cabins. That same year Abraham Bloodgood of Albany obtained a patent from the state for 1,400 acres, which included all of the present downtown west of Tioga Street. In 1790, the federal government and state began an official program to grant land in the area, known as the Central New York Military Tract, as payment for service to the American soldiers of the Revolutionary War, as the government was cash poor. Most local land titles trace back to these Revolutionary war grants; as part of this process, the Central New York Military Tract, which included northern Tompkins County, was surveyed by Simeon De Witt, Bloodgood's son-in-law. De Witt was the nephew of Governor George Clinton; the Commissioners of Lands of New York State met in 1790. The Military Tract township in which proto-Ithaca was located was named the Town of Ulysses. A few years De Witt moved to Ithaca called variously "The Flats," "The City," or "Sodom".
Around 1791 De Witt sold them at modest prices. That same year John Yaple built a grist mill on Cascadilla Creek; the first frame house was erected in 1800 by Abram Markle. In 1804 the village had a postmaster, in 1805 a tavern. Ithaca became a transshipping point for salt from curing beds near Salina, New York to buyers south and east; this prompted construction in 1810 of the Owego Turnpike. When the War of 1812 cut off access to Nova Scotia gypsum, used for fertilizer, Ithaca became the center of trade in Cayuga gypsum; the Cayuga Steamboat Company was organized in 1819 and in 1820 launched the first steamboat on Cayuga Lake, the Enterprise. In 1821, the village was incorporated at the same time the Town of Ithaca was organized and separated from the parent Town of Ulysses. In 1834, the Ithaca and Owego Railroad's first horse-drawn train began service, connecting traffic on the east-west Erie Canal with the Susquehanna River to the south to expand the trade network
