Memorial to Lowell S. Hilpert 1910-1992 ALFRED BUSH U.S
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Memorial to Lowell S. Hilpert 1910-1992 ALFRED BUSH U.S. Geological Survey, (retired), Denver, Colorado RALPH J. ROBERTS U.S. Geological Survey Reno, Nevada J. B. CATHCART, D. L. EVERHART, THOR KIILSGAARD, D. R. SHAWE, E. W. TOOKER Lowell Sinclair Hilpert’s sudden death from a massive heart attack brought great sorrow to his beloved wife, Doris, his daughters, Renee and Michelle, and his four grandchildren, and a sense of loss to his many friends in the fields of geology, western history, music, and the arts. Lowell was bom in Centralia, Washington, on April 9, 1910, and died at the age of 82 in Salt Lake City, Utah, on May 12, 1992. His early years were spent in Centralia, where he developed his lifelong inquiring mind and where he graduated from high school in 1928. His first exposure to practical geology came as a truck driver delivering materials to a quicksilver operation in Washington. His formal geological education at the University of Washington was interrupted because of finances several times before he received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1937. Graduate study there and at Stanford University was similarly interrupted until he received a 1940-1941 fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. He became a mem ber of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1941, at San Jose, California, and retired 34 years later in June 1975, in Salt Lake City. Lowell was first assigned to investigate mercury resources in the California quicksilver dis tricts in the Strategic Minerals Program under Edwin B. Eckel and Aaron C. Waters. He did sur face and underground mapping at New Almaden, at other quicksilver deposits in San Benito and Fresno counties, and particularly in the Mayacmas district in Lake and Napa counties. In mid- 1944 he began work with Thomas S. Lovering in Utah’s East Tintic gold-silver-copper-lead-zinc district. In July 1945 he was transferred to the Section of Military Geology to do terrain analy sis, and in December 1945, he began an 18-month tour of duty in Japan, on detail to General Headquarters for the Allied Powers in Tokyo. Lowell investigated the quicksilver, antimony, and fluorspar resources of Japan. Upon returning to the United States in May 1947, he was appointed assistant chief of the Section of Military Geology. In December 1947, he transferred to the Branch of Mineral Deposits and the Colorado Plateau uranium project in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he began a long period of study of Colorado Plateau uranium deposits. Here he met Doris Ruther ford, and they were married in 1948. For the next six years he was in charge of the Survey’s exploration drilling for uranium deposits in Colorado and Utah. The first significant product of these studies appeared in 1952 when Lowell and Richard P. Fischer published the USGS Bul letin that defined the geology of the Uravan Mineral Belt of southwestern Colorado. 173 174 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA As the level of exploration in Colorado and Utah declined, Lowell began investigations in 1954 into the geologic setting of deposits and resources of uranium in newly active northwest ern New Mexico. During the 1950s and 1960s he published a number of significant reports on the stratigraphy of the Jurassic Morrison and other formations, and on uranium deposits in the southern part of the San Juan basin. In mid-1957, Lowell became regional geologist in Salt Lake City for the Geologic Divi sion, with responsibility for Utah and parts of Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming. During this 17-year assignment he acted as liaison between the USGS and mining and exploration com panies and academic institutions in the eastern Great Basin, and he served as a contact point for field geologists working in the area. One of his principal contributions during his tenure was his work on legal questions regarding state versus federal ownership of the mineral resources on the lands exposed by the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake during a prolonged period of drought. Lowell was active in the Office of Minerals Exploration (OME) program in the 1960s. Backed by his expertise on the region’s geology and mineral resources, he made a number of field examinations of mining properties for OME in Idaho and Utah. During the 1960s, the U.S. Geological Survey prepared a series of state reports on mineral and water resources, responding to requests from each state’s senator. These were multi-author reports by USGS and state geologic specialists; Lowell, a key official in the program, was the coordinator-compiler-editor and, in part, author of the reports for the states of Utah and Arizona. In July 1974, Lowell was asked to serve as a technical advisor to the Saudi Arabian pro gram of the USGS. The Survey, active in Saudi Arabia since World War II, had released a large number of geologic reports and maps, most of which had been sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government. Lowell was asked to bring together the the results of 17 research investigations conducted or initiated by the USGS on a range of topics relating to the Red Sea area. He edited and collated them for Red Sea Research, 1970-1975 a landmark in scientific knowledge of the Red Sea and its environment. After retiring, Lowell served as technical advisor to the U.S. AID program on nonferrous minerals in Brazil in 1975 and 1976. From 1978 through 1981 he again acted as technical advi sor to the USGS Saudi Arabian program. He and Ralph J. Roberts remapped the ancient Mahd adh Dhahab gold deposit, the probable source of King Solomon’s gold; they were able to show that all the gold in the biblical account could have been produced at Mahd adh Dhahab. Lowell compiled the available maps, incorporated unpublished information assembled by Gavin Dirom, a Canadian geologist who had worked there, and wrote the final report. Besides his lifelong love for geology, Lowell was intensely interested in the world around him, his long-term interests being music, art, photography, and history. He had a wide range of expertise, avidly pursued the subjects that fascinated him, and was always closely attuned to the cultural opportunities around him. He knew where the best classical music concerts and plays were being presented. He was widely read on many subjects, and took a great interest in history, especially that of the American West. He was a skilled photographer and collector of fine art objects. He truly was a Renaissance man. His interest in the history of the western U.S. led to his abiding fascination with the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872, and he spent many of his leisure hours in comprehensive research into the attempt by unscrupulous promoters to “salt” a remote area in Colorado with a mixture of dia monds, rubies, garnets, sapphires, and other stones. This unlikely mixture had prompted Clarence King and S. F. Emmons, eminent geologists, to swiftly visit the site and find the pre cious and semiprecious stones in cracks and anthills on a sandstone bed. They then exposed the swindle of the salted claim. This story has been related by several authors (with many errors), but Lowell was not content as others had been to merely review old newspaper accounts and other popular articles. He assiduously sought out original diaries and letters, the relatives of the MEMORIAL TO LOWELL S. HILPERT 175 people involved, and official government documents, and carried out detailed searches for the actual campsites of Philip Arnold and John Slack, the “discoverers” of the “new diamond fields.” Lowell located the “diamond discovery” area and collected a number of semiprecious stones that had been added to the precious stones from Europe and implanted and scattered at the site. Shortly before his death, Lowell completed a manuscript on the hoax for book publication. His interests in the history of the West included tracing the route of the ill-fated Donner party of 1846, tracing old Mormon trails through Utah, and investigating the 1857 Mountain Meadows (Utah) massacre of the immigrants in a California-bound wagon train. Lowell had a host of friends and many of them have contributed to this memorial. Donald L. Everhart first worked with Lowell at New Almaden in 1944: Lowell came to be one of my favorite coworkers on the project. We worked in pairs for the most part, and Lowell and I were partners. I quickly came to greatly admire his skill and meticulous attention to detail as a field geologist. He was a hard worker and in many ways a perfectionist, but it was always a pleasure to spend the long field days with him. He had a stable and pleasing temperament and a wry sense of humor... always upbeat and optimistic. One somewhat chilling aspect of our assignment at New Almaden was the necessity to enter and map several miles of long-abandoned mine workings. In retrospect, this was incredibly dangerous work, and Lowell consistently showed a great deal of physical courage. James Cathcart remembers Lowell as nearly unflappable. They had been mapping a long- forgotten doghole at New Almaden when the afternoon shift shot a face in an upper stope. They heard a thump and realized they had not heard the critical warning, fire in the hole! Retreating posthaste, they found that a slab had dropped from the back at the entrance to their little hole and cut them off. Fortunately it was a chunk of fault gouge (manta) and not very thick, so they were able to pick it apart and get out. Jim was so shaken he needed two hands to light a cigarette, but Lowell was unflapped, although he was relieved! Don Everhart’s recollections of Lowell probably best depict Lowell in the last ten years of his life: “During his long residency in Salt Lake City, Lowell became substantially involved with the Utah Symphony as a sponsor, as a member of the screening committee for prospective young soloists with the symphony, and as a sponsor of the Gina Bachaeur Piano Competitions, again showing his enthusiasm for helping others.