Ferdinand Hayden

    In the middle 1800s, a durable young man named Ferdinand Hayden went on many scientific expeditions of the American west.  The range of these expeditions extended from the Dakota Plains to the northern Rockies of Wyoming and Montana.  In 1854, his expedition was the first in North America to discover dinosaur fossils, at a location near the Missouri River in Montana.  He didn't know these were dinosaur fossils at the time, because none had yet been discovered in the Americas.  These early expeditions required tremendous endurance, as his duty was to map unknown areas like the Badlands and Rocky Mountains, including any vertical strata from excavations.  Hayden's teams were the first to draw such detailed maps of the Northern Rockies. 

    After the Civil War, he was commissioned by Congress to find resources for our ever-expanding industrial sector, which lead to his prominent role in establishing the U.S. Geological Survey.  He is most famous for convincing Congress to pass a bill establishing the first national park in America (let alone the world): a little place called Yellowstone.  This happened in 1872, and it started a much needed global movement in wilderness conservation.  You can appreciate the irony in this development, since the basis for these expeditions was to exploit the environment for resources, not preserve it.  I like to imagine how the beautiful sites of the American west must have inspired him to rattle the American public into supporting their preservation rather than mining them. 

    During his time, dinosaurs were not known to have lived on the North American continent.  Hayden's expeditions helped establish their ubiquitousness, as well as many other species.  Additionally, without his surveys and maps, much of the area he explored wouldn't be known to geologists.  His revolutionary contribution to geology was the establishment of national parks, for without them, places like Yellowstone could have been mined by corporations or settlers, disrupting their unique geology.  It only surprised me that it took until the 1870s to get the ball rolling on wilderness conservation, mainly because the Industrial Revolution had started a full century previously.  The debate continues today on how much of our wilderness should be protected from resource exploitation and other human influences.  We owe it to Hayden for even starting the discussion. 

Sources: 

Encyclopedia.com.  May 23, 2018.  Ferdinand Vandinveer Hayden.  https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/historians-miscellaneous-biographies/ferdinand-vandeveer-hayden 

Levin, Harold.  2013.  The Earth Through Time, p. 25.