BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History PHOTO COURTESY FREDERICK L. RANSOME The original Bullfrog mine. PHOTO COURTESY FREDERICK L. RANSOME View northeast from Florence Hill, showing Columbia Mountain, Goldfield District. PHOTO COURTESY FREDERICK L. RANSOME The view from Florence Hill, the Goldfield District. PHOTO COURTESY FREDERICK L. RANSOME Montgomery-Shoshone mine, Bullfrog District Advertisement

Geologists and Nye County

We are celebrating an anniversary of some note: the 400th anniversary of the use of the telescope in astronomy. In the spring of 1610, Galileo Galilei, Chair of Mathematics at the University of Padua, Italy, published a short book on his first observations through a telescope. The book presented solid confirmation of Polish Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' theory that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun and not, as Ptolomy of Alexandria, Egypt, had contended 1400 years earlier and as commonly believed in Galileo's time, that the heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth. Through his small telescope, Galileo observed the planet Jupiter, with its moons orbiting about it, move across his field of view. Galileo made watercolors of what he saw and they are on exhibit this summer in Florence, Italy.

Galileo's work led to Isaac Newton, born in 1642, the year of Galileo's death, building a bigger and better telescope, and this, in turn, led to further progress in telescope construction. The Hubble Telescope, recently refurbished by our magnificent NASA astronauts, is but another step in this long series. And we are promised still more powerful telescopes that will soon enable us to see back almost to the beginning of the universe.

All this talk of telescopes and Galileo is but by way of illuminating the wonderful advancements we human beings have made in science over the last 400 years and how those achievements have changed our world. Science is the most dynamic and important force in the world today. Though it is not widely appreciated, there was some very good science going on in America's Far West, including in Nye County, starting not long after the Civil War.

Exploring New Possessions

The United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 and signed the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico in 1848, which ceded to the United States most of what became the American Southwest. Everybody recognized at the time that there was a need to understand the geography, resources, economic potential, and people occupying these new acquisitions. The expeditions of Lewis and Clark (1803-06), Zebulon Pike (1806-07), and John C. Fremont (five expeditions between 1842 and 1854) were early efforts to learn more about the vast area. The U.S. Civil War from 1861 to 1865 interceded and diverted the nation's attention away from seriously exploring its new holdings.

After the Civil War was over, the young nation once again directed its attention to the Far West, that vast and wondrous domain stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. There were four big, government-sponsored geographical and geological surveys, sometimes called the Great Surveys, that covered large areas of the West from 1867 to 1879. They were multi-year affairs and involved collection of geographical and geological data, mapping and photographing, documentation of plant and animal life, and gathering information on the people and cultures occupying the area. These were the F.V. Hayden, Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, and Lt. George M. Wheeler surveys. A large portion of Nevada, including Nye County, was included in the Wheeler Survey's work. Combined, the surveys issued scores of well-written reports on their findings. The expeditions were the beginning of science in the West.

In 1879 the four expeditions were consolidated into United States Geological Survey (USGS) under the U.S. Department of Interior. The USGS has been, since its beginnings with the Great Surveys and remains today, one of the premier science institutions in the world. Over the years, I have spent many happy hours at the library at the USGS Regional Center in Denver, Colo., and never fail to come away with the feeling that this is the way the world should be run: the place is rational, friendly, clean, and dedicated to science and the exploration of human horizons.

Samuel F. Emmons

When, in 1879, the U.S. Geological Survey was organized, Clarence King, leader of one of the Great Surveys, was chosen as its first director. One of King's first acts was to telegraph Samuel F. Emmons, who had been one of King's principal assistants on his big survey. Emmons was both a "cowboy," able to "ride, rope, and brand with the best of them," and a geologist. Born in Boston in 1841, Emmons had graduated from Harvard and studied geology in France and Germany. King appointed Emmons as USGS Geologist in Charge of the Rocky Mountain Division. Emmons soon developed an international reputation and his work was admired not just by geologists but by scientists of all classes.

He helped invent the field of economic geology, which is the application of the principles of the science of geology to the study of mineral deposits, helping to predict where good ore is to be found and how a mine operator, or society in general, might maximize its economic gain from its intelligent use. He died in 1911.

Interestingly, Emmons' first publication, which appeared in 1870 in a volume on findings of King's survey, was on the geology of the Toiyabe Range in Nye County. It appears to be among the first examples of a scientific study, in this case, geology, in Nye County and perhaps even in Nevada.

Frederick L. Ransome

Frederick L. Ransome was another towering figure in the history of geology, with solid ties to Nye County and Nevada. Ransome was born in England in 1868 and his parents moved to this country when he was two. He grew up in San Francisco and obtained his Ph.D. in geology from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1896. He taught for a year at Harvard, then, in 1897, went to work for the USGS. He had the good fortune to serve under the "administrative supervision and inspiring guidance" of Samuel Emmons. In 1912, Ransome was placed in charge of the USGS's work with metal mines in the West. He, like Emmons, became one of the founders of economic geology. Later in his career he taught at University of Arizona and California Institute of Technology.

Among the great and near-great mining camps Ransome studied and prepared reports on while with the USGS were Bisbee, Globe, Miami, Oatman, Ray, and Superior, Arizona; Breckenridge, Cripple Creek, Rico and Silverton, Colorado; and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Ransome also did considerable geological research in Nevada, including Nye County. Between 1907 and 1910 he published seven reports on the geology and mineral deposits at Bullfrog and Round Mountain in Nye County, Goldfield and Hornsilver in Esmeralda County, Yerington in Lyon County, and in Humboldt County. The Bullfrog and Goldfield reports were major USGS publications.

Later in life, Ransome became interested in engineering geology, the study of geologic factors involved in the failure of engineering structures. He was a major participant in the study of alternative sites for construction of Boulder (Hoover) Dam and his advice was a factor in the selection of the Black Canyon option.

Ransome was a prolific writer and published more than 100 books and scientific reports. Documenting research through drawings and photography was an important part of the work of the Great Surveys, and the tradition continued with the USGS. Ransome was an artist with the camera. Throughout most of his career with the USGS he employed a large, 7x5-inch glass negative camera to supplement his work. Many of his shots can only be described as works of art. In this regard, Ransome reminds me of Galileo with his watercolors. Ransome's and Emmons' ability to so brilliantly grasp the geology of an area must have come from the same wellspring as Galileo's capacity to understand what he was seeing through his telescope. Examples of Ransome's photography from Bullfrog and Goldfield are included here. Frederick Ransome died in 1935 when he was nearly 67 years old.

In 1926, while teaching at California Institute of Technology, Ransome wrote, speaking of the university, though his words apply to all of education -- indeed to life generally. Somehow I believe Galileo would have agreed with Ransome:

"The university ideal should be to develop young men and women intellectually, morally, and physically so that they not only know how to use their minds, in [T.H.] Huxley's phrase 'as cold logical engines,' but have the moral and physical strength to apply that knowledge wisely to the affairs of life. The educated man is he who through knowledge of the operations of nature and with a sympathetic understanding of the thoughts, words, and deeds of past generations of his fellows, as expressed in history, literature, and art, is able to think straight, to choose in life the things that are really worth while and to find enjoyment in those pleasures that are noble and lasting -- that leave some permanent good behind them, rather than in those that are merely trivial and evanescent. "