On the Margins of Science and Civilization: W. K. Gordon's 1895 Geological Reconnaissance in the Trans-Pecos Borderlands

In 1895, self-trained mining engineer William K. Gordon, Sr (1862-1949) conducted a geological reconnaissance trip to far West Texas in search of coal deposits. A report from that trip reveals how Gordon's training in geology (acquired largely through reading) and his intrinsic interest in stratigraphy and geomorphology helped him effectively advise the Texas and Pacific Coal Company about the bleak prospects there. In 2005, using Gordon's never-before consulted field report, the author retraced, or rather re-hiked, Gordon's route. Gordon's report features hand-drawn maps and a geological cross-section that were field checked and compared to later data. The author concludes that Gordon enthusiastically, but often inaccurately, described the complex petrology in the rugged, semi-arid Eagle Mountains. Gordon was evidently vexed by how to identify some of the highly varied extrusive igneous rocks here. Nevertheless, Gordon's work should be recognized as the earliest serious geological reconnaissance in a remote area that would much later (1963) be studied in detail by geologists who had at their disposal considerably better tools to analyze the petrology, and possessed a growing awareness of plate tectonics that were unknown in Gordon's time.