In 1930, he published the "Geology of the Capital District".
I found this yesterday while looking through some of my grandfather's things (He passed in 2010 and we are getting ready to sell the house.) and I took the time to look through it. It is amazing. I mean, I know nothing about geology but I watch enough weird things on NetFlix that I have a bit of understanding of the language.
The capital district of New York, comprising four quadrangles (Schenectady, Cohoes, Albany and Troy, in their order from northwest to southeast) covers an area of about 900 square miles (877.90 square miles to be exact). It is situated in the subtriangular inner lowland formed between the Adirondack mountains in the north, the Rensselaer plateau in the east and the Helderberg escarpment and plateau in the south. Its geographic center is formed by the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers, toward which point the greater part of the district can be said to slpe and the drainage is directed.
There is a copy of it available on Google Books but there is not an e-book available. That is unfortunate because there is a supplement section that has some wonderful maps and images of the area from the 1920s, long before the Empire State Plaza.
I love this area, and I love my family, and this made me feel a lot of pride for both of them. Oh, and how cool is it that he was both a geologist and a paleontologist? (I just called my mother to verify something and she said, which the Wikipedia entry does not list, that he also had a Masters in Botany. Even cooler.) (Notice in the above writing sample that there are parentheticals being used well...it is genetic, apparently.)
As an aside, I love that Google Books lists the original as being from The University of California. I wonder in the NYS Museum still has a copy of it.
Cool. Don't think that just because the Google scan came from far away it's not still available in the State Library or elsewhere nearby -- they just tended to vacuum up some very large libraries. A huge amount of Capital District history books I've found were from the University of Michigan, Cornell and other far-off places. The State Library likely didn't partner up with Google.
ReplyDeleteCarl, thanks, I just thought it was a bit odd, especially looking at the scan, as the one that is at my grandparent's home is in a lot better condition that they (meaning the team at Google) wouldn't try to source a better copy of the document to scan.
DeleteThe New York State Library has digitized the New York State Museum Bulletin (including the Geology of the Capital District) up until ~10 years ago. Go to http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/scandocs/museumbulletin.htm and see #285 or go directly to that issue at http://purl.org/net/nysl/nysdocs/4714945. When you open the links to the actual document/images, make sure your pop-up blocker is turned off on your Internet browser. If you have any questions about accessing the digital version, call the State Library at 474-5355. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteMB, Thank you! That is awesome!
Delete(I was worried about reading the paper copy and now I can.)