• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Memorial to Roland Blanchard 1891-1966 GEORGE TUNELL Department of Geological Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106 Geological exploration for deposits of metalliferous ores and the application of geology to the development and exploitation of such deposits constituted the life work of Roland Blanchard, in the course of which he investigated many areas of the western United States, southern British Columbia, Mexico, Australia, and New Guinea. Comprehensive and detailed mapping, both surface and underground, was carried out by him at Bisbee, Arizona, in the 1920s, and his reports on this district are regarded as classics by geologists of this district and are still valid after forty years. Blanchard was the first Chief Geologist of Mount Isa Mines Limited, in Queensland, Australia, holding this position from 1931 until 1948. Together with one of the Queensland government geologists, S.R.L. Shepherd, he made a detailed surface and underground geological survey of the Mount Isa leases in the early 1930s, which has been the basis of the tremendous develop­ ments there in the past twenty-five years. Subsequently, he planned the opening up of the copper ore bodies at Mount Isa in the early 1940s. The late S. R. Carter, formerly Exploration Manager of a subsidiary of Mount Isa Mines Limited, stated that under Blanchard’s direction the Geological Department at Mount Isa set an example of day-to-day guidance for the min­ ing operations that was later followed by other mining companies throughout Australia. Roland Blanchard was born in Big Stone City, South Dakota, on December 12, 1891. His heritage was Swiss and German. Roland’s father, a largely self-educated man, was an itinerant Methodist minister. It was on one of these itineraries that he met and later married Elizabeth Gaulke. Roland’s childhood was spent in various small towns in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. When Roland was ten years old, the family was moved to a farming community in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. Here he attended a one-room country school for two years, passing the eighth-grade examinations when he was in the seventh grade. Roland was then sent to live with an uncle, who resided near the town in which Roland began his high school education. At that time he had his first job, that of “buckin’ straw.” Two boys, riding horses that were hitched to the two ends of a long plank, dragged away the straw as it piled up under the blower of a threshing machine. The pay was fifty cents a day, and with the money Roland earned, he bought his mother a meat grinder, an appliance which other women of the community had but which she lacked. The following year the family moved to Thief River Falls, Minnesota, a small lumber­ ing town on the Red River. There Roland completed his high school education. Thief River Falls High School had three teachers, a mandolin club, and a football team. 2 TI Ili GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OE AMERICA Roland played a guitar in the mandolin club, on the football team he was the quarter­ back, and with his teachers he did not always agree on all points. During Roland’s senior year in high school, his father died. Roland had determined that the University of Minnesota was the school where he wanted to continue his education. (Subsequently he told one of his sisters that actually the deciding factor had been the fact that Minnesota had the strongest football team at that time.) To finance his first year at the university, he remained at home and obtained a job as a printer’s devil for the local weekly newspaper, at the same time working part- time in an attorney’s office. Then in 1909 he entered the University of Minnesota. About this time the government was opening arid land in Montana for dry-farming. Anyone could obtain title to 320 acres of this land by living on the plot for three years and putting a certain number of acres under cultivation each year. Roland interrupted his education to take up one of these claims and lived on it for the three required years. When not working on the land, he spent his time writing short stories and studying the geology of the region, carrying out two major interests he had developed at the university. It appears that he really enjoyed those three years, for he was always a pioneer at heart. In this way he obtained the means to finish his university education, and during this period he had some time to think. After proving up his claim, he returned to the Univer­ sity of Minnesota. Under the influence of Professor W. H. Emmons, whom he greatly admired, he decided to make geology his life’s work. At the University of Minnesota his principal courses in geology were those given by Professors Emmons, F. F. Grout, and C. R. Stauffer. When the United States entered World War I, he volunteered for service and was accepted by the United States Army Air Corps, the only branch of the service from which he was not barred because of his small stature. He served as Private First Class from September 18, 1917, to December 4, 1918, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and at Fort Monroe, Virginia. He had been assigned to active service and was about to be sent overseas when the armistice was signed. Blanchard then returned to the University of Minnesota, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1919, and from which he was graduated the same year. From 1919 to 1922 Blanchard was engaged in geological scouting work at many mining properties in the southwestern United States, British Columbia, Alaska, and Mexico for the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company, the General Develop­ ment Company, and the Holly Development Company, in the course of which he made examinations and valuations of many mining properties. He investigated the geology and mining possibilities of the Silver Bell and Bagdad Districts in Arizona for the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company from 1922 to 1924. It was at Silver Bell that Blanchard began to learn how to discriminate leached cappings that overlay ore from leached cappings that overlay barren rock, although the reasons for the observed dif­ ferences had not yet been discovered at that time. Blanchard also prepared a report on the geology and valuation of the Boleo Copper Mine, Santa Rosalia, Baja California, jointly with H. W. Morse, R. Marsh, Jr., and A. Locke during this period. The following account of Blanchard’s work at Bisbee, Arizona, has been contributed by Dr. Augustus Locke: Blanchard moved to Bisbee in the middle 1920s. Development of the ore bodies there had taken place over a period of 40 years, from the surface down the structural slope, by stopes, by penetration into walls and along leads, and now and then by forays into trackless blocks. These actions were controlled by management policy to which elements were added by bosses, engineers, staff geologists, and shrewd miners, all of whom by long familiarity were at home in the workings. The equations of MEMORIAL TO ROLAND BLANCHARD 3 probability had to include wide unknowns: a predominating footage in waste rock was integral to the game of which the strikingly successful outcome was a first-order yield of metal. But now World War I depletion had called for outside help and brought in Blanchard. It is of interest that Blanchard had not been professionally seasoned by the day- to-day prophesy of advances among intricate intrusions, thrusts and slumps; and by the lessons of repeated defeats threatening to smother the occasional victories. More­ over, of conspicuously slight stature, he was in face-to-face competition with the burly, self-assured, competent veterans. In certain other ways, however, he had an advantage, he was exclusively dedicated to the problems of ore position in the rock, which they were not. In addition, he was tireless in the pursuit and endowed with muscle and endurance to match. Even in the first week, when he offered vigorous opinions patently sharper than the evidence, his sincerity was so unmistakable that miners began to accept him. Within a few months, the accumulating data, the cold realities of operational result, and Blanchard’s overarching honesty served to bring his high-powered ideas under control. His reports became notably clear, specific, and convincing. The study, which included four other geologists, lasted two years and yielded no soaring achieve­ ments in discovery. One old miner in friendly extenuation explained, “You know, we did something of a job here before you fellows came. And another thing: your geologist may spot the trap, but he can’t put the stuff in it.” For Blanchard, the result was that these two years carried him a long distance toward the balance between vigor and judgment which served him so well in his long, later, productive career. In 1928 Blanchard was engaged in geological work for the Consolidated Coppermines Corporation at Ely, Nevada, in the course of which he discovered ore-localizing faults with vertical displacements of more than 5,000 feet that had not been recognized previously. In 1929 Blanchard was in charge of a diamond-drilling program for the American Smelting and Refining Company at Gold Gulch, New Mexico. He also spent part of his time during this year examining various properties in Arizona and New Mexico for Asarco. Julius Kruttschnitt, who was then General Manager of Asarco’s Exploration and Mine Operation Division, stated in a letter to Professor Tunell dated October 7, 1968, that: One incident in my long association with [Blanchard] might be of interest to you.

Load more

  8

Copy Link