Clarence
King was probably the most well-known American scientist
of his time. It doesn’t hurt that his scientific reputation was built on
exploration of the then still wild west of the United States
of that he could spin a tale. Robert Wilson
recounts the life of the accomplished geologist in The Explorer King.
King was born in 1842. He was raised
in Newport,
Massachusetts. He was educated at Yale’s Sheffield
Scientific School.
As a young man, King was enamored of art
critic
John Ruskin.
Ruskin thought the rugged Alps of Europe to be the
best subject of art for their beauty, colorfulness, ruggedness and variety.
When he met western geologists and mountaineers through mentors at Sheffield,
he wanted to be part of it.
He headed out for California in
1863 and became
part of the state’s geologic survey. He would spend the next decade studying
the geology and geography
of the American west, especially its mountains. He showed great physical
prowess and courage as a mountaineer.
After working on the California survey, he went on to lead surveys. In 1864, he was chosen
to lead a survey of Yosemite.
He built on his reputation from the Yosemite survey to lobby Congress to
fund a survey of the 40th Parallel, roughly the route the
transcontinental railroads
would follow. Though it was under the auspices of the Army Corp
of Engineers, it was the first federally-funded scientific endeavor that
was completely staffed by civilians. While working on this survey, he was the
first to discover active glaciers in the U.S. His team published new methods of
silver smelting to make the mines for productive (the survey’s first report
dealt with mining in order to show the commercial value of their research to
money-conscious Congressmen).
The 40th Parallel survey made King famous, though not
because of the many contributions to science that came from it. King’s team heard
rumors of a diamond discovery in Colorado. It
would have been very embarrassing for them to have walked over such a valuable
mineral resource without observing it. They tracked down the site of the
discovery and determined it was a hoax; the site had been planted with rough
diamonds and other uncut gemstones that the con men had
bought mostly with money from their marks. Stories of massive fraud sells
newspapers, especially when the names of big money men in San Francisco
and New York
are attached to it. King was the hero of the story.
When the U.S.
Geological Survey was created, King was appointed to be its first director.
His career as a scientist was already on the decline. He would turn his
attention to making money in mining, but he would not be successful. He would
have no money when he died.
This leads to an interesting point about King, though it is not the
focus of Wilson’s biography. King had nothing to leave for his secret family.
He was married to a black woman. This was a very unusual thing at the time. To
protect his reputation, he kept the marriage
a secret. He did not even reveal to his wife his real identity until shortly
before he died (she knew him as James Todd).
His friend John
Hay provided for Ada
Copeland Todd (and the five children she had with King) after King died in 1901.
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