The study of geology in North America began long after European efforts in earth science were under way. The earliest American geological research was not surprisingly undertaken in large measure by Europeans. Prior to the American Revolution, several European travelers and explorers included observations on U.S. geological curiosities in their accounts (e.g., Wells, 1963), and in 1787 the first major study of U.S. earth science was published in Germany by the Hessian doctor, Johann David Schopf (1787). Such European efforts demonstrated the numerous possibilities for geological investigation afforded by the vast North American continent, and predictably, by the end of the eighteenth century, Americans had also begun to think and write seriously about the geology of their lands.
Samuel Latham Mitchill, a New York doctor, was one of the first Americans to gain recognition for geological studies. Mitchill's (1789)“Geological Remarks on Certain Maritime Parts of New York” includes what...
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Hazen, R.M. (1988). Geohistory, American founding fathers . In: General Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30844-X_37
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30844-X_37
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