Because of the mines at Cornucopia?
Yes. Because of the mines. We mapped the northern part and it was a fascinating job. In fact, my most recent publication, which only came out last week, is a result of some of that work. I’ll give you a copy of it; they sent me a whole bunch of extra copies of it.
When we were mapping up there we found gravels way up on top of the mountain.
With some of the work being done over in northeast Oregon at the time, did you have any contact with Luther Cressman and some cooperative projects instigated by John C. Merriam in ’37 and ’38?
No, I didn’t have much contact with them although I did do some of my first teaching from Baker. I ran weekly classes in several towns there because I could time my field trips in other parts of the country every Friday night for maybe six or eight meetings. We’d had a three hour session on how to prospect, and elementary rocks and minerals for prospectors, and this sort of thing. I taught courses for the Extension Division which helped out a little bit.
And that was the beginning of your career as an economic geologist.
That was the beginning of my career as a teacher, too, you see. Theoretically, I was an economic geologist working for the state department of geology, but I was doing this on my own time.
So, it was a lot like extension work?
That’s right, it was extension work.
I was going to ask you about the Geological Society of the Oregon Country, wasn’t that begun about that period?
That was by the end of 1935 and I was not a charter member, but I joined as soon as I got back to Portland in 1938 or ’39. I joined and I was elected president in 1946. I served as editor of the News letter for a year. That is a very unique society; it’s probably the oldest non-professional geological society in this country at the present time. And it’s probably the only one that had a newsletter which has been published continuously all that time.
