Tertiary history of the Grand Canyon district

Abstract

Created by an act of Congress in 1879 to map the western territories of the United States, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) issued its first publication—a report on the Grand Canyon—in 1882. The author, Clarence E. Dutton, a geologist and army officer, had begun surveying the rugged region of the Colorado Plateau as an associate of explorer John Wesley Powell in 1875. Dutton’s monograph on the Grand Canyon inaugurated a series of USGS studies of the geology, paleontology, and related aspects of the nation’s public lands.