I made some extra notes yesterday as I was going through some of your publications. And what led to your publication in 1939, First Aid to Fossils?
Well, I got wind that people were going out and destroying good fossil localities by not treating them right. When I first went with the state department of geology, Earl Nixon was a very practical economic geologist who had worked for Iron and Steel companies all over the world. He was hired to start this department in 1936, and I was hired in 1937. He said, “John, I’m going to put you over into eastern Oregon in the Baker office and I expect you to visit and examine all the mines in eastern Oregon to write a mines handbook. But there’s two things I want you to remember, all your advancement and promotion will depend on: 1) the number of new ideas you come up with; and 2) the amount of overtime you put in.” Which to my mind is about the best formula for success that I know of and I’ve more or less followed it all my life? In doing these mine examinations and I visited some 300 mines during those two years I was over in Baker before I was called back in the senior geologist in the Portland area. I had a little spare time on the weekends, so I wrote this book on fossils because I saw so many cases of people who were destroying good fossil localities, not taking care of it. That book, by the way, was republished three times and it was used back east in several colleges as a textbook.
I just found it in the OSU library in Corvallis. Warren D. Smith also had something to do with the State’s Department of Geology as one of the people that promoted its creation.
They hired him to supervise mapping the Wallowa Mountains. Nobody had ever mapped the northern Wallowa Mountains. So he got a crew, most of them graduate students, and a couple of geologist from the state survey, myself included. I was his chief assistant because I was a representative of the state survey and he was in charge. The twelve of us mapped the entire northern Wallowa Mountains in one and half season. It was difficult because it takes you till noon before you even get to work, on the top of the ridge where you can see out.
Lostine area?
The southern part had been mapped and a bulletin had been published on it a few years before.
