Celebrating 100 Years of the National Cooperative Soil Survey — 1899-1999

Spotlight on the Soil Survey

• The soil survey was largely the brainchild of one man -- Milton Whitney. Associated with state agricultural experiment stations in Connecticut, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland, he became the first chief of the Division of Agricultural Soils at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1894. He developed the idea of mapping soil characteristics as a means of promoting agricultural development.
• The first soil surveys were started to find areas for the expansion of agriculture. The surveys in the eastern United States were started to see if certain imported varieties of tobacco could be grown. The western surveys were in areas with very dry climates and were mapped to see if they were suitable for food production under agriculture.
• The first soil survey field operations began in the summer of 1899. The soil survey parties worked in four areas: Pecos Valley, New Mexico; Salt Lake Valley, Utah; Cecil County, Maryland; and the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
• Leadership for the soil survey has always been in the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- always with partners, which today include universities, state agencies, local county governments, private consultants, and other federal agencies.
• Early transportation for soil surveyors was by foot, horse, horse-and buggy, wagon, bicycle, and rowboat. Today, pickup trucks -- many with power augers -- are most commonly used.
• Field work for soil scientists has changed little through the years. They study the land acre by acre, its vegetation and its features. They identify the different kinds of soil by examining the soil layers, usually to a depth of 2 meters. They also determine the slope, possible erosion hazards, the color, the acidity or alkalinity, and the proportions of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter. They classify the soils according to a national system and outline each kind of soil on an aerial map before they leave the field.
• The soil survey continues to be challenged to answer new environmental and agricultural questions. All updated surveys are now digitized into electronic databases. This provides a common format so that users can build geospatial data to visualize the landscape and natural resource information in relation to each other.
• Hugh Hammond Bennett, the father of soil conservation, made his early discoveries of the effects of sheet erosion in 1905 when he was a young soil scientist mapping soils in Louisa County, Virginia. He began a crusade to explain and reduce soil erosion that resulted in a national program to protect natural resources, first in USDA’s Soil Conservation Service, later renamed the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
• The history of soil scientists is rich with their stories of encounters while doing field work -- including countless encounters with angry bulls, bears, rattlers, desperadoes, and moonshiners.
• The sight of a stranger digging in a field arouses a wide range of reactions, former Soil Conservation Service information director D. Harper Simms wrote in his book Soil Conservation Service in 1970. Simms tells of one "unfortunate" soil surveyor in Oregon who had just finished studying the soil profile he had excavated and was filling in a last shovelful of earth when an armed posse arrived. He had to dig out the deep hole again to convince the posse that he was neither a grave-robber nor a murderer trying to dispose of a body.
• Today, soil surveys are completed on about 21 million acres a year -- compared with 720,000 acres 100 years ago.
• Today’s soil surveys are mapped on a scale of 3 to 5 inches to the mile, compared with 1 inch to the mile in 1899.

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