Created by an act of Congress in 1879, USGS has evolved over the ensuing 125 years, matching its talent and knowledge to the progress of science and technology. USGS is the sole science agency for the Department of the Interior. It is sought out by thousands of partners and customers for its natural science expertise and its vast earth and biological data holdings. The USGS serves the Nation by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect our quality of life.
As the Nation's largest water, earth, and biological science and civilian mapping agency, USGS collects, monitors, analyzes, and provides science about natural resource conditions, issues, and problems. Its diverse expertise enables it to carry out large-scale, multidisciplinary investigations and provide impartial scientific information to resource managers, planners, and other customers.
Mary C. Rabbitt authored a history of the relation of geology during the first 110 years of the U.S. Geological Survey to the development of public-land, Federal-science, and mapping policies and the development of mineral resources in the United States. The work is available on the USGS website (see https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1050/) The following are excerpts from that work.
The United States Geological Survey was established on March 3, 1879, just a few hours before the mandatory close of the final session of the 45th Congress, when President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the bill appropriating money for sundry civil expenses of the Federal Government for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1879. The sundry civil expenses bill included a brief section establishing a new agency, the United States Geological Survey, placing it in the Department of the Interior, and charging it with a unique combination of responsibilities: "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain."1 The legislation stemmed from a report of the National Academy of Sciences, which in June 1878 had been asked by Congress to provide a plan for surveying the Territories of the United States that would secure the best possible results at the least possible cost. Its roots, however, went far back into the Nation's history.
The first duty enjoined upon the Geological Survey by the Congress, the classification of the public lands, originated in the Land Ordinance of 1785. The original public lands were the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains claimed by some of the colonies, which became a source of contention in writing the Articles of Confederation until 1781 when the States agreed to cede their western lands to Congress. The extent of the public lands was enormously increased by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and later territorial acquisitions.
The earliest geological surveys were made in support of agriculture, which was the basic occupation in the United States in the early 1800's. Manufacturing was then of importance only in a few areas, and mining was a quite insignificant part of the economy. Farmland in the Eastern and Southern States, however, was beginning to lose its fertility, and farmers were abandoning their holdings and moving westward. The westward migration increased to enormous proportions after the War of 1812.
In 1834, just a year before the Geological Survey of Great Britain was established, Congress authorized the first Federal examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the public lands by permitting the Topographical Bureau of the U.S. Army to use $5,000 of its appropriation for geological investigations and the construction of a geological map of the United States.
The discovery of gold gave great impetus to mining endeavors throughout the country, and this increased activity, combined with the prosperity after the Mexican War, interested several States in the South and the Midwest in establishing State geological surveys. It also made the development of better means of communication and transportation between the Eastern States and the western territories more urgent. In 1853, Congress appropriated $150,000 for surveys to ascertain the most practical and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean and authorized the Secretary of War to employ the Corps of Topographical Engineers to make the explorations and surveys. The Congress also took action on the mineral lands in California, excluding them from the General Land Office surveys, settlement or location on them.
By 1867, the developing industries were making radical demands on the Nation's natural resources. Joseph S. Wilson, the Commissioner of the General Land Office, in his annual report written in the fall of 1866, assessed at some length the mineral resources of the public domain, and afterward stated that the proper development of the geological characteristics and mineral wealth of the country was a matter of the highest concern to the American people. On March 2, 1867, Congress for the first time authorized western explorations in which geology would be the principal objective: a study of the geology and natural resources along the fortieth parallel route of the transcontinental railroad, under the Corps of Engineers, and a geological survey of the natural resources of the new State of Nebraska, under the direction of the General Land Office.
A committee of seven members appointed by the Academy recommended that the Coast and Geodetic Survey be transferred from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of the Interior, renamed the "Coast and Interior Survey," and be given responsibility for geodetic, topographic, and land-parceling surveys in addition to its existing work. The Academy committee also recommended that an independent organization, to be called the U.S. Geological Survey, be established in the Interior Department to study the geological structure and economic resources of the public domain.
The mining geology program began in 1879 with comprehensive studies of the geology and technology of three great mining districts--Leadville in Colorado, and the Comstock and Eureka in Nevada--and the collection of mineral statistics in the Western States. In addition, through a cooperative arrangement with the Tenth Census, mineral statistics were collected in the Eastern States, iron resources in all parts of the country were systematically studied in the field and in the laboratory by a variety of techniques, including microscopic analysis, chemical analysis, and magnetic observations, and an effort was made to trace the continuation of the copper-bearing rocks of Michigan and Wisconsin through northeast Minnesota to the Canadian boundary. The investigations in general geology included the unfinished studies of the earlier surveys in the Colorado Plateau region, on the Quaternary history of valleys in Utah, and on the geology of the Rocky Mountain region north of New Mexico and west of the 94th meridian.
At this critical point in its history, the Geological Survey was out of favor with Congress, with many American geologists, who felt that it had too often acted unilaterally, and with some elements of the mining industry, who felt that economic geology was being neglected. In a mood for economy, Congress in 1892 slashed appropriations for scientific agencies, especially those items which seemed to have little immediate practical purpose. The Geological Survey's appropriations for geologic surveys, paleontology, and chemistry and physics were drastically reduced, and several statutory positions were eliminated.
In 1900, a bill for establishment of a Department of Mines with the Survey as a nucleus was filed but not acted on. However, when Congress appropriated for the Survey 110 percent of the amount it had requested, the Geologic Branch was reorganized, and a Division of Mining and Mineral Resources was established.
In 1904, as the U.S. Geological Survey began its second quarter-century, the United States was in the early stages of a period of profound change just as it had been when the Survey began in 1879, but many of the problems facing the Nation in 1904 were very different from those of 1879. During the Survey's first 25 years, the United States had become an urban industrial world power. The population had increased from 48.9 million in 1879 to 81.8 million in 1904. The number of manufacturing establishments and the value of manufactured products had more than doubled during this period, and the value of the mineral products had increased from $365 million in 1879 to more than $1 billion in 1904. At the same time, settlement of the West had proceeded so rapidly that by 1890 the frontier had disappeared.
World War I reoriented conventional views on mineral resources. When the war began in August 1914, it was assumed that the conflict would last but a short time. The United States was believed to lack a known supply commensurate with its needs of only five minerals of first rank--tin, nickel, platinum, nitrates, and potash. On the other hand, the reserves of mineral fuels and iron were regarded as so enormous that no problems would arise. The Geological Survey, however, immediately increased its geologic mapping to aid the discovery of new oil fields or extension of known fields, but of the five scarce minerals actively sought only potash. The war at first disrupted normal trade relations, but before long, Europe was in urgent need of American agricultural products and then in still more urgent need of American steel, copper, and explosives. Within 2 years, some minerals became difficult to obtain, and the Survey reoriented its work to aid the search for both metals and fuels.
Topographic mapping of strategic areas in accordance with military priorities was begun in 1940. In 1940 also, the State Department allotted funds to the Geological Survey to begin investigations in cooperation with other American republics to identify mineral deposits of potential importance in hemisphere trade.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, abruptly ushered the United States from defense to war and united Americans in a determination to defeat the Axis powers. For the next several years, the Geological Survey bent its entire energies to the war effort. The Geologic, Topographic, Water Resources, and Conservation Branches each made its own special contribution.
By 1950, the Geological Survey began undertaking investigations in new areas to meet the demand for current information. Geologic mapping was needed in fast-growing industrial areas to provide geologic data for the many types of engineering construction. The demand for construction of large dams to impound water for irrigation, power development, flood control, and industrial use focused attention on the need for information on the effect of waterloss by evaporation and the limitation of the useful life of reservoirs by deposition of sediment as well as on stream flow and sediment load. The heavy drain on ground-water resources during the war had resulted in critical conditions in many areas; saltwater encroachment was a subject of special concern in some coastal areas. Efforts to upgrade the Nation's highways required hydrologic data and flood studies to aid highway drainage design. When funds were appropriated for technical assistance programs, Survey scientists and engineers took on assignments in the Eastern Hemisphere, and the Survey extended its in-service training program in geology and the administration of research organizations for promising young scientists of Latin American countries to scientists of the Eastern Hemisphere countries.
For its 75th year, beginning July 1, 1954, the Survey had 7,000 employees, appropriated funds of $27,750,000, and total funds, including those from other Federal agencies and the States, of nearly $48.5 million. Its methods of work had changed markedly in the decade since the end of World War II. The Survey had been given responsibility by the Bureau of the Budget for the National Topographic Map Series of the United States and for exercising government-wide leadership in coordinated planning and execution of mapping activities of the Federal Government
Under the Kennedy-Johnson administration in the early 1960's, appropriations were increased significantly, and total funds available for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1964, for the first time exceeded $100 million, more than double the amount available just a decade earlier. In 1964, the Geological Survey again prepared a long-range plan for its future. Research functions were obviously not susceptible to a definite schedule, but some phases of the work, such as the topographic mapping of the Nation, were planned for orderly progression toward completion.
In 1974, the National Topographic Mapping Program became the National Mapping Program to meet the increasing demand for basic cartographic data in all forms including digital cartographic data. The National Cartographic Information Center was established to provide a focal point for information on U.S. maps and charts, aerial photographs and space imagery, geodetic control, and related cartographic data. The Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agreed on a program to produce topographic-bathymetric editions of the 1:250,000-scale maps for the coastal zones of the United States, including those of the Great Lakes.
Several changes in the Geological Survey's organization were made in fiscal year 1980. In the Office of the Director, the Land Information and Analysis Office was renamed the Office of Earth Science Applications, given more specific responsibilities to coordinate multidisciplinary multidivision programs, and strengthened by the transfer of some elements of the former Publications Division. The National Mapping Division was formed from the Topographic Division, parts of the Publications Division, and the Geography Program of the former Land Information and Analysis Office. The organization of the Conservation Division was modified to separate onshore from offshore program management, increase the number of geographic service areas, and separate royalty management from field operations.