Memoir of p. r. carpenter 49 



teaching again, this time at Fetterman, West Virginia. His engagement, 

 in 1873, to Miss Annette Howe, of Athens, Ohio, became the incentive to 

 another westward journey in search of better fortune. He went to Kan- 

 sas, and later to Denver, Colorado, to make a new start in railroad work. 

 But the panic of 1873 paralyzed all such enterprise, and the young ad- 

 venturer was reduced to the earning of a bare living by washing gold on 

 Spanish Bar, at Idaho Springs, Colorado. There his character and 

 ability were soon recognized, and he was elected mayor and police judge, 

 and afterwards taught school until the fall of 1874, when he removed to 

 Georgetown, where, receiving the mark of 100 in a competitive examina- 

 tion, he obtained the office of principal of schools. On the strength of 

 this achievement he was married December 23, 1874. In 1876 he was 

 elected county superintendent of schools, and retained this position until 

 1878, when he opened in Georgetown an office and rapidly built up a good 

 practice as United States deputy surveyor and civil engineer. Two pieces 

 of his engineering work are worthy of record. In 1881 he made for Cap- 

 tain Berthoud the first survey of the "loop," above Georgetown, and in 

 1882 he located the Loveland Pass tunnel and started work at both por- 

 tals. In 1882 he took a lease on the Corry City mine, with the intention 

 of driving a cross-cut tunnel to tap the lode, but his financial backing 

 gave out and the scheme had to be abandoned to others, who brought it 

 afterwards to a successful issue. 



For a while he returned to his native State — West Virginia — but, hav- 

 ing tasted Western freedom and enterprise, he could not be held long in 

 the East. In 1885 he started for British Columbia, but was taken ill in 

 Minnesota and forced to return. In 1886, however, attracted by the new 

 tin deposits of the Black Hills, he went to Eapid City, South Dakota. 

 His leading work that year was the location through the western part of 

 the Black Hills of a railroad line, which is now occupied by a part of the 

 Burlington and Missouri Railroad. At the same time he made geological 

 observations, which were helpful to him later. 



In December of the same year he was elected dean of the new Terri- 

 torial School of Mines, which he opened in 1887, occupying the chair of 

 geology and mining. The Burlington and Missouri Eailroad Company 

 recognized his ability and made him its mining engineer, a position which 

 he held until his death. In June, 1887, Ohio University conferred upon 

 him the degree of Master of Arts and in 1888 that of Doctor of Phil- 

 osophy. In 1889 he became a Fellow of the Geological Society of America 

 and later a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science. His early reconnoissance of the geology of the Black Hills 



IV — Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 22, 1910 



