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The Early Soil Survey: Engine for the Soil Conservation Movement

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The Early Soil Survey: Engine for the Soil Conservation Movement ational December 1999 Issue 9 N ooperative oil C urvey SS Newsletter In This Issue— The Early Soil Survey: uses, potentials, and limitations. This paper examines not only the history of Engine for the Soil soil surveys for soil conservation, but The Early Soil Survey: Engine for Conservation Movement also the relationship of the national soil the Soil Conservation Movement ... 1 By Douglas Helms, Historian, Natural survey program to the broader soil conservation movement. Wait Just One Minute! Where Do Resources Conservation Service, Washington, D.C. You Stand? ..................................... 5 spects of soil conservation and Soil Centennial Song .......................... 7 Soluble Salts: Land Use and A avoidance of land degradation Land Degradation A Soil Survey Centennial are only a few of the interpretations Proclamation .................................. 8 found in soil surveys. Our current level Soil survey cooperators have of knowledge of soils, their use, and the selected 1899 as the year in which the ability to advise land users arose from soil survey effort began in earnest. In several historic developments. First, 1899, the Division of Soils (which had one had to be able to identify and been established in USDA as the describe significant soil characteristics Division of Agricultural Soils in 1894) and to classify soil bodies (at least at sent soil surveyors to work in four the lowest level). Second, land users, locations—Cecil County, Maryland, the soil scientists, and other researchers, Connecticut Valley, the Salt Lake through a combination of empirical Valley of Utah, and the Pecos Valley of Editor’s Note observations and scientific research, New Mexico. At that time, there was a had to learn the factors leading to soil great deal yet to be learned about the Issues of this newsletter are degradation. Finally, they needed to science of the soil and its response to available on the World Wide Web develop recommendations, or management. The ability to map and (www.statlab.iastate.edu/soils/soildiv). interpretations. One interpretation classify soils and to measure Click on NCSS and then on the desired might be the recognition that some soils characteristics had to grow apace with issue number of the NCSS Newsletter. are not suited to particular uses. More the ability of scientists to make You are invited to submit stories for often, the interpretations involved a meaningful interpretations for land future issues of this newsletter to range of management users. In the realm of interpretations for Stanley Anderson, National Soil Survey recommendations. The interpretations soil conservation and good land use, Center, Lincoln, Nebraska. Phone— had to be related to a particular soil perhaps the most accurate and 402-437-5357; FAX—402-437-5336; type. To utilize the recommendations, financially valuable interpretation the email— one needed to identify the soil type on early soil surveyors could make rested [email protected]. the map and on the landscape. on their ability to identify soluble salts In the 100-year history of the in the soil and water of Western states. National Cooperative Soil Survey, soil The information could help guide the scientists have mapped 90 percent of development of irrigation projects. In the Nation’s private land, 48 percent of irrigated areas in dry climates, soluble American Indian land, and 47 percent salts accumulated and crusted on the of the public lands. About 78 percent of surface through capillary action and the total land area of the United States evaporation. Often, the salts also has been mapped. Published soil became concentrated in a raised water surveys consist of maps, tables, and table. Both conditions restricted plant narrative information about soils—their growth but could often be corrected by 1 NCSS Newsletter a drainage system that permitted water repayments should be based in part on Geological Survey in 1883, where he to flush the salts down through the soil differences in soil productivity. The soil published the first generalized geologic profile and into the drainage system. survey was a valuable tool in selecting map of the United States. McGee Identification of the potential problem Western lands for agriculture. followed Powell to the Bureau of called for added expense that needed to American Ethnology when Powell be calculated in the cost of opening Identifying Soil Erosion Phases became director in 1893. McGee land to agriculture. By the time the soil and Promoting Soil eventually published some 30 reports survey began, Eugene W. Hilgard of the Conservation on native peoples from 1894 to 1903. University of California had described He was appointed to the Bureau of most of the processes leading to white The Bureau of Soils (previously the Soils following a stint as director the St. and black alkali. His prescription for Division of Soils) furthered the Louis Public Museum. Whitney reclamation through a drainage system awareness of soil erosion as a problem recommended McGee to the Secretary for leaching, augmented by applications facing American agriculture. The of Agriculture on March 22, 1907, for of gypsum for the black alkali, bureau was also active in the wider the “purpose of enabling the bureau to corrected many situations. Lyman progressive conservation movement take up the important study of soil Briggs, the bureau’s soil physicist, and through William John McGee, one of erosion or wash, and sedimentation Thomas Means and Frank Gardner, the major scientific figures in the which has not hitherto been fully early surveyors in the West, built on the Federal Government in the 19th and investigated for inability to obtain a work of Hilgard in developing methods early 20th centuries. When McGee man with the necessary training and to identify soluble salts. joined the Bureau of Soils in 1907, attainments.” 1 Whitney informed the Local residents or land agents Milton Whitney, the chief of the bureau, Secretary that McGee had only recently sometimes voiced displeasure with placed him in charge of the unit “Soil been appointed by President Theodore surveys that pointed out the limitations Erosion Investigations.” The largely Roosevelt to the Inland Waterways of soils for particular uses. In 1899, self-taught McGee was already a man Commission, where he would be Milton Whitney, first head of the soil of importance in the infant conservation working with the Forest Service, with survey, sent Thomas H. Means and movement when he joined the bureau. the Engineering Department of the Frank D. Gardner to survey the valley At various times he listed his Army, and with the Hydrographic of the Pecos River at the invitation of occupations as geologist, ethnologist, Service of the Department of the local land developers. Their report anthropologist, and hydrologist. He had Interior. This position would afford suggested that, with a drainage system justifiable claims to all of those titles. McGee an “opportunity to push these for the alkali problem, farmers could The son of an Irish immigrant investigations with the assistance and raise alfalfa for livestock but that a farmer, McGee was born on April 17, advice from these other branches of the combination of soil, water, and climate 1853, near Farley in Dubuque County, Government service, whose work is made the area unsuited to vegetables Iowa. He left school at 14 but benefited really dependent upon and made and fruit crops. The Pecos Irrigation from tutoring in Latin, German, necessary to a large extent, by the and Improvement Company, which was mathematics, and astronomy by an erosion of the soil.” 2 His grasp of the then advertising the area as truck crop older brother who had attended college. interrelated nature of resources was and orchard land, requested and He learned blacksmithing and built and advanced for the time. As a member of received an investigation by the Office sold agricultural implements, when not the waterways commission, he pushed of the Secretary of Agriculture into the exploring the countryside with his for a natural resources conference. Pecos Valley report. The report largely brothers. In 1878, he published papers Finding that the Lakes-to-the-Gulf exonerated Whitney. on glacial drift and prehistoric burial Deep Waterways Association planned Some of the early Bureau of mounds. From 1877 to 1881, he carried to call together a score or more Reclamation projects suffered for lack out his own topographic and geological governors for a conference restricted to of attention to soil issues, including survey of 12,000 square miles in alkali problems. Farmers on northeastern Iowa and published “The 1 reclamation projects led the call for Pleistocene History of Northeastern W.J. McGee Personnel File, Selected Personnel Files, RG 16, NA. greater attention to soil when they Iowa.” 2 Milton Whitney to Secretary of Agriculture, testified to the Fact Finding John Wesley Powell hired McGee as March 22, 1907, W.J. McGee Personnel File, Commission of 1923-1924 that a permanent employee of the U.S. Selected Personnel Files, RG 16, NA. 2 NCSS Newsletter waterways improvement needs and produced a Bureau of Soils bulletin on year, noted that cultivating slopes of water resources development, McGee soil erosion that was the bureau’s most Leonardtown loam resulted in “scalds and his colleagues won President complete treatment of the issue at that or washes” which needed permanent Theodore Roosevelt’s pledge to call a point. During the later part of his sod (Bonsteel, 1901). Bonsteel, while Conference of Governors on career, McGee studied ground water, or jointly serving as Professor of Soil Conservation of Natural Resources. what he called subsoil water. The Investigations at Cornell University McGee, while employed in the Bureau bulletins that were published after his early in the century, examined the so- of Soils, and Gifford Pinchot, chief of death correctly identified the need to called worn-out soils around Ithaca. the Forest Service, shaped the view soils and water resources as a unit.
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