The Bulletin of the Geological Society of America CENTENNIAL ARTICLE and Charles Doolittle Walcott ELLIS L. YOCHELSON U.S. Geological Survey (retired) and Research Associate, Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. 20560 ABSTRACT Charles Doolittle Walcott, who became the third Director of the in a hardware store until 1871, when he had had a bellyfull of hardware U.S. Geological Survey and the fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian and of clerking. Institution, was author of a paper in volume 1, number 1, of the The next five years were spent at Trenton Falls with William P. Rust, Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. From 1890 through "farmer and paleontologist." Rust was a skilled collector and, in return for 1906, he published six scientific papers, one abstract, eight discus- his room and board, Walcott helped with farm chores and did much sions, and a presidential address in that journal. Examination of these collecting. Trenton fossils were a profitable sideline to farming; in 1873, four categories of publication helps trace the history of the Society and the Rust-Walcott collection was sold to Louis Agassiz for $5,000, a most the Bulletin through their early years. impressive sum. Walcott, inspired by a few days with Agassiz, began to Walcott made a very few errors of fact and of judgment in the six make the transition from purveyor of fossils to actually studying them. He papers. Notwithstanding those, the quality and breadth of the papers wrote his first paper in 1875, a two-page description of a new Ordovician demonstrate that he was a geologist of wide-ranging interests and trilobite; this transition to science was against a backdrop of his wife's confirm his importance in American geology; only part of his scientific death (she was one of Rust's sisters) after only 16 months of marriage. activities during this 16-year interval were published in the Bulletin. In November 1877, James Hall of Albany offered Walcott a position The subsequent impact of Walcott's scientific papers is included in this as special assistant (Yochelson, 1987). Walcott received $75.00 a month historical review. in his first paid geologic position. He did a variety of jobs for Hall, yet he was the only one of Hall's assistants who published under his own name INTRODUCTION while in Hall's employ. What stands out among these papers is Walcott's discovery of the limbs of trilobites, which he found at the Rust farm by Charles Doolittle Walcott was an eminent administrator in science, sectioning enrolled specimens from the Trenton Limestone and which he the only man to be both Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and pursued independently of his work for Hall. James Hall was a complex Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was also de facto head of the and tough-minded individual addicted to the acquisition and description of Forest Service, Chief of the Reclamation Service, and founder of the fossils; Walcott was equally tough-minded, and ultimately there was National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. He was equally an eminent friction. Late in 1878, Hall did not renew Walcott's contract, but for scientist. Although Walcott is best known as a paleontologist, his publica- months Walcott continued to study fossils and to write in Albany, position tions in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America document a or no position. Prospects for employment in geology were so abysmal that breadth of geologic investigations. in the spring of 1879, he returned to Trenton Falls. On March 3, 1879, the United States Geological Survey was WHO WAS WALCOTT AND WHERE WAS HE IN 1890? founded. Quite unexpectedly, in July, Walcott was hired as a temporary geologist at $600 a year and was sent off to the Colorado Plateau. He was Chas. D. Walcott, as he often wrote his name, was born March 31, a good field man and, in one year earned a permanent position at $1,200. 1850, in New York Mills, New York, just west of Utica; he was the After four years in the West and in the office, which culminated in Paleon- youngest in his family, and his father died when Walcott was two years old tology of the Eureka District (Walcott, 1884), Walcott began investiga- (Yochelson, 1967). Very early in life, he began picking up fossils from the tions in eastern New York and New England, originally to help clarify the Utica Shale (Middle Ordovician). In 1863, he spent a summer at Trenton issue of the Taconic System. The year 1888 was particularly fine for Falls, New York, collecting more and different fossils from the Trenton Walcott, for he remarried and, during a working honeymoon in New- Limestone (Middle Ordovician). Interest in fossils became a passion which foundland, discovered that the Cambrian trilobite sequence there had been lasted all his life. misinterpreted and was essentially the same as the Scandinavian series. Walcott began public school in Utica at age 8 and finished all formal The Walcotts continued on to the International Congress of Geologists in education a decade later. His uncle wanted him to study for the ministry, London, where he reported this new finding. During 1889, Walcott for the sickly youngster who was addicted to rocks was deemed a poor risk plunged more deeply into work on the Cambrian, but he took time to visit to manage the family knitting mills. Walcott refused and worked as a clerk Toronto for the first summer meeting of the new Geological Society of Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 100, p. 3-11, January 1988. 3 Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-pdf/100/1/3/3379331/i0016-7606-100-1-3.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 4 E. L. YOCHELSON America (GSA). On August 29,1889, he presented a talk, "Study of a line spent many a futile day searching for fossils in the Algonkian shales. of displacement in the Grand Cañón, in northeastern Arizona." The last Likewise, nowhere is there any hint that when his field companion became line of his published introduction indicates that it was the manuscript of depressed with the gloomy depths of the canyon and left, and when the the speech; the formal term "reading a paper" certainly applied. cook went for supplies, for days Walcott was alone. The structural work entailed hazardous climbs and was not what he had been sent into the WALCOTT'S FIRST BULLETIN PAPER canyon to investigate (Yochelson, 1967). His study is a fine example of initiative, finding an alternative when the original problem fails. In the first volume of the Bulletin, a fair amount of space is devoted to The time between submission of manuscript and publication early in organizational matters. This is followed by James Hall's presidential ad- 1890 was short. The numerous cross sections required some weeks of dress and some abstracts. Walcott's is the second paper printed, following drafting time. Perhaps Walcott used large cross sections to illustrate his one by James Dwight Dana. To have been on the first scientific program lecture, thereby having the drafting already completed when the manu- and to have his paper published in full demonstrates that Walcott was well script was submitted. A display of lantern slides is mentioned in known to his peers. For whatever the honor is worth, Walcott published connection with the following meeting, but for years they were an un- the first text figures to appear in the Bulletin. common event. Walcott began his paper, The subject is unexpected in that Walcott commonly published the results of his field work promptly, having gotten out a brief note on Paleozoic stratigraphy of the canyon in 1883. It is a reasonable assumption During the summer and fall of 18821 was engaged in studying the Paleozoic rocks that the problems of finishing his monograph on fossils from Nevada, and of southern Utah and northern Arizona, north of the Grand Cañón of the Colorado his subsequent focus on eastern investigations, prevented his writing more River, and in the winter of 1882-'83 in a detailed study of a portion of the Grand Cañón. The area under investigation in the Cañón, included its head, at the foot of on the Grand Canyon for a few years. Marble Cañón, and the Grand Cañón with its lateral cañón valleys on the west, As to the long-term results of this paper, no one followed in Walcott's from Nun-ko-weap valley outlet to the westward turn of the cañón, where it cuts footsteps for nearly half a century. Apart from the work of Edwin McKee through the Kaibab plateau and exposes the Archean rocks in the depths of the in the 1930s, the Grand Canyon, and particularly the north side, was inner cañón. A partial account of the notable sections of Algonkian and Paleozoic strata has been published, but nothing has yet appeared relating to a line of dis- neglected by most geologists. It was not until the uranium boom of the placement whose early history was mainly determined by the study of the stratig- 1950s that structural and stratigraphic investigations of the plateau country raphy within the cañón. To-day I wish to describe this displacement and also to call began in earnest. Although Walcott's paper is almost never cited, it was a your attention to certain conclusions drawn from the consideration of the pheno- useful contribution and, in retrospect, one that was correct. The rocks menon presented by it. (Walcott, 1890a, p. 49) exposed in the Grand Canyon have finally been mapped in detail (Hun- toon and others, 1976), and, fittingly, on the east side of the Walhalla Plateau near where the Colorado River makes almost a right-angle bend, a At the end, he summarized, structural feature is designated as "Walcott graben." The history of the displacement is briefly stated as follows: The East Kaibab move- WALCOTT'S SECOND PAPER ment began in the region of the Grand Cañón as a pre-Cambrian fault displacing the older Algonkian strata, with a downthrow to the west of from 400 to 4,000 feet.