The U.S. Geological Survey Flagstaff Science Center

From Powell to Mars.....

Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of the USGS

John Wesley Powell, Circa 1890's

The U.S. Geological Survey in Arizona

The USGS didn't establish its first permanent field office in Arizona until 1915, but in a cooperative spirit that marks today's endeavors, E.P. Smith, a U of A professor of irrigation engineering, established a gaging station on the Santa Cruz River near Tucson in 1905, and furnished the records to the USGS.

Even before there was a USGS, and when most of Arizona was still an unmapped territory, Major John Wesley Powell, who is generally regarded as the "father of the USGS," wrote of the geological wonders of the American southwest, when he became the first person known to have successfully rafted the course of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, in 1869. During subsequent journeys of exploration, Powell and others who would become part of the USGS after its founding in 1879, investigated the many aspects of this land of red rocks, deep chasms and high deserts.

Powell realized early on that in the western states, water, or the lack of it, was the most important component in future development. It was under his USGS directorship that the Survey's "division of hydrography" was established in 1889, and stream-flow gauging stations, as well as ground-water monitoring sites were established throughout the western states.

Arizona's rich mineral resources were the subject of many early USGS field expeditions and publications that were designed to make mineral-resource information available to mining companies and the general public. The increased demands for minerals created by World War I and the even greater demands of World War II and the post-war atomic age further increased the USGS presence in Arizona.

As America entered the space age, the USGS created its branch of astrogeophysics and celestial mapping, and centered much of that research in its field office on the Northern Arizona University campus in Flagstaff.

That USGS branch's first chief scientist, Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to determine the site for the 1969 Apollo Moon landing. During the next 25 years USGS astrogeologists at Flagstaff would map the surface and subsurface of Mars and Venus, and in association with Arizona's Lowell Observatory, Shoemaker and his wife, Carolyn, would discover and map the orbits of 30 meteorites and asteroids, including the Shoemaker-Levy comet that collided with the surface of Jupiter in 1995.

USGS water-resources and geologic investigations in Arizona, which began with Powell's exploration of the Grand Canyon, expanded through the years to include today's 239 gauging stations. The USGS also played a vital role in pre- and post-flood observations of the Colorado River, attendant to the 1996 controlled flood from Glen Canyon Dam.

In addition to pursuing its own scientific programs in Arizona throughout the past century, the USGS has worked closely with the state government to establish and support topographical, geological and hydrological research in Arizona. The Arizona Bureau of Mines was established within the framework of the University of Arizona, and with the assistance of the USGS, in 1915, and in 1924 the USGS "loaned" the services of Dr. D.H. Darton to produce the first complete geologic map of Arizona. That map was updated in 1960, again, with cooperation from the USGS.

The latest addition to the USGS presence in Arizona is the addition of biologists from the former National Biological Service (NBS) to USGS ranks. The 11 USGS Biological Resources Division (BRD) employees in Tucson and nine more in Flagstaff are working closely with their fellow USGS scientists in integrating data on flora and fauna into many USGS projects and reports.

"John Wesley Powell always referred to his trip through the Grand Canyon as one of the most thrilling and defining times of his life," said Gordon Eaton, past Director of the USGS. "More than a century later, those of us in today's USGS are just as excited and committed as Powell, when it comes to providing sound, credible earth-science information to the people of Arizona and the rest of the Nation."

J.W. Powell's boat the "Emma Dean" with his armchair and life preserver, August 1872

J.W. Powell on horseback during a visit to D.M Riordan in Flagstaff, Arizona, Circa 1891

Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars

Artist's rendition of the Mars Rover