Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/50

48 scale and a systematic basis. The report sets forth that in order to avoid possible conflicts of jurisdiction, the purpose for which the geological survey was organized under the law creating it, namely, the classification of public lands, and, secondly, the examination of the geological structure and the mineral resources of the public domain, were so construed as not to interfere with the business of the General Land Office, and not to extend the operations of the office over the whole area of the United States, but to confine them to the so-called public land States and Territories.

With regard to the classification of the public lands the report says: “The Public Lands Commission, created by Congress in the same law which organized the geological survey, carefully examined into the question of classification and disposition of the public lands. In the deliberate opinion of that body it has been adjudged impracticable for the Geological Survey or any other branch of the Interior Department to execute a classification in advance of sale without seriously impeding the rapid settlement of the unoccupied lands. I have therefore concluded that the intention of Congress was to begin a rigid scientific classification of the lands of the national domain, not for purposes of aiding the machinery of the General Land Office by furnishing a basis of sale, but for the general information of the people of the country, and to produce a series of maps which should show those features upon which intelligent agriculturalists, miners, engineers, and timbermen might hereafter base their operations, and which would obviously be of the highest value for all students of the political economy and resources of the United States. Studies of this sort entirely aside from the administration of the land office can be made of the highest practical value, and to this end a careful beginning has been made.”

As to the operations of the Geological Survey proper, the practice formerly followed of starting out campaign parties for the West in the spring, to return in the late autumn to Washington, has been abandoned. The Director of the Geological Survey divided the region west of the one hundred and first meridian into four large geological districts, with fixed headquarters. The first of these divisions is that of the Rocky Mountains, embracing within its boundaries Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana, and a small part of Dakota, an area inclosing the whole of the great Rocky Mountain chain. He placed at the head of that division, as geologist in charge, Mr. S. F. Emmons, with his main office at Denver, Col. The second division is that of the Colorado, embracing the remarkable plateau and cañon country which lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin. At the head of this division he placed, as geologist in charge, Capt. C. E. Dutton, United States Ordnance Corps, with headquarters at Salt Lake City. The third division is that of the Great Basin, the tract of country bounded on the east by the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado plateau, and on the west by the country of the Sierra Nevada, Cascade, and Pacific Coast ranges, which lie between