FERDINAND VANDEVEER HAYDEN (1829-1887) 
American Geologist, was born at Westfield, Mass., on September 7, 1829. He graduated from Oberlin 
college in 1850 and from the Albany medical college in 1853 where he attracted the attention of Prof. 
James Hall, State geologist of New York, through whose influence he was induced to join F. B. Meek 
in an exploration of the “Bad Lands" of Dakota to make collections of fossils. The next two years 
were spent in a similar exploration of the Upper Missouri under the auspices of the American Fur Co., 
resulting in the discovery of an important collection of fossils, which was afterwards divided between 
the academies of science of St. Louis and Philadelphia. In 1856 Lieut. G. K. Warren appointed him 
one of his assistants in the exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers and of the Black Hills. 
In 1859 he was attached to Capt. W. F. Raynolds' expedition to the upper tributaries of the Yellow¬ 
stone as surgeon and naturalist, one result of which was his Geological Report of the Explorations of the 
Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in 1859-60 (1869). 
During the Civil War Dr. Hayden was actively engaged as surgeon in the Federal army from 1862 
to 1865, resigning to become professor of mineralogy and geology in the University of Pennsylvania^ 
which position he retained until 1872. In 1867 he was appointed geologist in charge of the U. s’ 
geological and geographical survey of the territories and from his twelve years of labor there resulted 
a most valuable series of volumes in all branches of natural history and economic science; and he 
issued in 1877 his Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado. Upon the reorganization and estab¬ 
lishment of the U. S. Geological Survey in 1879, he acted for seven years as one of the geologists He 
died at Philadelphia on December 22, 1887. 
His other publications were: Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery (1870), The Yellowstone 
National Park, illustrated by reproductions of water color sketches by Thomas Moran (1876), The 
Great West; its Attractions and Resources (1880), With F. B. Meek he wrote ( Smithsonian Contribu¬ 
tions, vol. 14, Art. 4) “Paleontology of the Upper Missouri, pt. I, Invertebrate." His valuable notes 
on Indian dialects are in The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1862), in the American 
Journal of Science (1862) and in The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1869). With 
A. R. C. Selwyn he wrote North America (1883) for Stanford’s Compendium. 
Obituary notice of Dr. Hayden read before the American Philosophical Society by Prof. J. P. Leslie. 
He represented in science the curiosity, the intelligence, the energy, the practical business talent 
of the western people. In a few years they came to adopt him as their favorite son of science. He 
exactly met the wants of the Great West. There was a vehemence and a sort of wildness in his nature 
as a man which won him success, cooperation, and enthusiastic reputation among all classes high and 
low, wherever he went. * * * He popularized geology on the grandest scale in the new States and 
Territories. He easily and naturally affiliated with every kind of explorer, acting with such friendli¬ 
ness and manly justice toward those whom he employed as his co-workers that they pursued with 
hearty zeal the development of his plans. 
I think that no one who knows the history of geology in the United States can fail to recognize the 
fact that the present magnificent United States Geological Survey * * * is the legitimate child of 
Doctor Hayden’s Territorial Surveys. 
Extracts from Encyclopaedia Brittanica, New International 
Encyclopaedia, and Merrill’s Contributions to the History of 
American Geology. 
