238 
BAKER. 
situdes continued to this very year, when the work of explo¬ 
ration and survey is, under the stimulus of gold discoveries, 
being conducted on a scale never hitherto attempted there- 
It was in that same year, 1867, that Major J. W. Powell made 
his adventurous voyage down the Colorado river and brought 
the world its first clear knowledge of the Grand Canon, great¬ 
est of all nature’s wonders in our land. It was shortly after 
this that from the Hayden Survey came tidings of that region 
of wonders—the Yellowstone Park. 
In the thirteen years immediately following the civil war 
three national surveys were engaged in the west in gather¬ 
ing information as to the character and extent of the natural 
resources of the western territories—territories for the most 
part then containing few inhabitants except Indians. The 
rise of these surveys was rapid, the results secured interest¬ 
ing and valuable, and their rivalry and clashing inevitable. 
Many thousands of square miles of territory were roughly 
mapped out and many books and reports, both popular and 
scientific, were produced. 
In 1878 a reorganization was proposed and the National 
Academy of Sciences asked to submit a plan. This it did, 
and submitted it to Congress. The outcome was the present 
U. S. Geological Survey, created in March, 1879. It replaced 
the prior organizations familiarly known as the Hayden, Pow¬ 
ell, and Wheeler surveys. 
The work laid out for the newly created Geological Survey 
was geological and its field the national domain. What is 
the national domain f Is it restricted to the territories and 
places actually occupied by the United States, or does it em¬ 
brace every spot where the Stars and Stripes may float ? Con¬ 
gress after a long debate answered this question and author¬ 
ized surveys to be made in every part of our whole Union. 
Again, geological investigations cannot be satisfactorily made 
nor geological results satisfactorily exhibited without maps, 
topographic maps— i. e., maps which show the shapes and 
forms as well as positions on the surface. Such maps did 
not exist. A fragment here and there, to be sure, existed—a 
