South Dakota School of Mines 



17 



among men of science and in 1849, Dr. John Evans in the em- 

 ploy of the government under the direction of David Dale Owen 

 of the Owen Geological Survey visited the region for the pur- 



Figure 3 — Head of an ancestral camel (Poebrotherium), the earliest bad- 

 land fossil described by Dr. Joseph Leidy, of Philadelphia. Pub- 

 lished 1847. 



pose of studying its peculiar features and of collecting addi- 

 tional fossils for the purpose of determining the age of the 

 strata. This visit was of the greatest importance and the re- 

 sults were early published in a most careful scientific manner. 

 The report, chiefly the work of Dr. Leidy, who described the 

 fossils and Mr. Evans who through Mr. Owen reported upon 

 the geography and geology, gave to the world the first authen- 

 tic description of the nature of the badland country. 



Interest in the region heightened and other expeditions 

 were sent out. Most of these during the earlier years confined 

 their attention chiefly to the Big Badlands, but one of the ex- 

 plorers, Prof. F. V. Hayden, who later became head of the Hay- 

 den Survey, officially known as the U. S. Geological Survey of 

 the Territories, found opportunity at various times to study the 

 Black Hills highland and thus he was early able to make known 

 the close geologic and physiographic relationship of the main 

 uplift to the surrounding country. Mr. Thaddeus A. Culbert- 

 son under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution came in 

 1850. In 1853 there were two expeditions, one by F. V. Hay- 

 den and F. B. Meek by direction of Prof. James Hall, of New 

 York, and one by John Evans and B. F. Shumard, who were at 

 the time connected with the Stevens expedition of the Pacific 

 Railroad Survey. Prof. Hayden studied the region again in 



