This index to the Letters Sent by the United States Geological Survey, 1879-1895, collection provides the dates each reel covers. Government Information MAY NOT hold all of these reels. The record in the library catalog describes the extent of our holdings. For help, or to make an appointment to view a reel, email rad@colorado.edu
On the 29 rolls of this microcopy are reproduced a series of 35 letter books containing transcripts of the outgoing communications of the Office of the Director of the United States Geological Survey, 1879-95, and a 2-volume index to these communications for the years 1879-83. No letter books of later date in this series and no additional index volumes have been found, and it is not believed that any such additional volumes ever existed. The 2 index volumes contain separate alphabetical indexes for each year. These volumes are not filmed separately, but, for the convenience of users, the pertinent index sections have been filmed at the beginning of the rolls that contain the corresponding letter books. Thus the indexes for 1879 and 1880 are at the beginning of the first roll containing the letter books for 1879 and 1880, and so on, as described in greater detail in the introductory notes at the beginning of each roll.
The United States Geological Survey was established in the Department of the Interior by an act of Congress approved March 3, 1879. The Survey, created after four separate surveys (the Hayden, Powell, Wheeler, and King Surveys) had operated in the western Territories, took over certain of the personnel, functions, and records of these earlier agencies. Its functions included the classification of public lands, the examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain, and the issuance of maps and other publications embodying the results of this work.
The records of the Geological Survey are of value not only for a history of that agency but also for the history of geology and related earth sciences, for biographical data concerning many prominent scientists of the period, for the history of mining, irrigation, land use, conservation, and related subjects, and for the history of many regions and localities of the United States.
In 1887 John Wesley Powell, Director of the Geological Survey, wrote briefly of the procedure followed in the Survey with respect to outgoing communications as follows:
Letters sent are commonly prepared by the Director of the Survey, or under his immediate direction; but they are occasionally prepared by other officers of the Survey. All are suitably initialed, and, after examination by the chief clerk, are signed by that officer or by the Director, as the case may be. They are then press-copied and subsequently transcribed in permanent ink in a book of letters sent.
The books containing the transcripts "in permanent ink" are the ones that are reproduced in this microcopy. In the lower left-hand corner of many of these transcripts appear cross-reference numbers to the letters received by the Survey, and, on occasion, to either a series of appointment books maintained by the Survey or to the letterpress copies from which these transcripts were made. Where there are no reference numbers to the letters received there was either no pertinent registered correspondence on file or numbers had not been assigned at the time the transcripts were made. The system of transcribing the outgoing correspondence from press-copy books, then regarded as a temporary record, to bound volumes for a "permanent" record was general in all bureaus of the Interior Department at that time and in many other Government agencies as well. In a number of the bureaus both the press-copy books and the transcribed letterbooks have been preserved, but in the Geological Survey the making of transcripts from the press copies was discontinued in 1895 and the press copies are no longer in existence. Copies of the outgoing correspondence of the Survey, therefore, are not available for 1895-1901.
No record has been found to explain why only two volumes of the index exist. Obviously, this index was not maintained contemporaneously. The volumes were prepared at some undetermined later date, when reference to the growing volumes of correspondence became more and more difficult, but it was found impossible to continue the project. The user of this microfilm, therefore, has no index to aid him for the years 1884-95.
The spreadsheet attached below contains a reel-by-reel description of the complete collection.