Erasmus Haworth and the Completion of Geologic Reconnaissance in Kansas

Although Kansas geology was the subject of formal study by state geological surveys in 1864 and 1865, no state survey existed from 1866 to 1889, years that marked some of the most exciting paleontological and mineral resource discoveries in the state's history. In 1889, the state legislature recreated the Geological Survey, placing it at the University of Kansas, though it provided no additional appropriation for the survey's operation. Erasmus Haworth, Samuel W. Williston, and E. H. S. Bailey formed that university incarnation of the Survey, which was essentially limited to their field and laboratory work, along with the volunteer labor of students, mostly from the University of Kansas. Though the Survey received no funding from the state until 1895, it was far from stillborn. Survey scientists published regularly in the University Quarterly, and eventually collected their results in a series of volumes that provided the first detailed, consistent treatment of the state's geology. The members of that Survey formed three separate but equal departments, but Haworth was clearly the leader of the band. He was largely responsible for the production of those first volumes, which included the first photographic plates and geologic maps published by the state survey; these figures were strongly influential in the Survey's presentation of scientific information. Haworth became official director of the Survey in 1895 and led the Survey until 1915, when he left to work with his son Henry as a geological consultant. Among Haworth's credits was much of the field work on geologic structures that led to the discovery of the El Dorado oil field in south-central Kansas.