Thank you, Nick. Good morning, everyone. If at any time you're unable to
hear me, I want you to stand up, jump up and down, get my attention. I
want to make sure we don't have any problems with hearing this morning.
Eso Thank you for that introduction. First of all, I would like you to
raise your hand if you have education, background and civil engineering or
surveying.
Okay. How many of you consider yourselves to be mount makers? Orca tog ra
furs. Raise your hand. Okay. How many of you have heard of the math of
sevens map? Raise your hand. And if you have, If you are familiar with
that map, have you ever asked yourselves how in the heck did they do there
? In case you probably have, because this was a map made in the early
nineteen hundreds, when the technologies, the instruments that were
available were very, very different from today. Um, I do want to add just
one thing to my introduction. Our son has two degrees in geography from
Arizona State University. So thank you to what was formerly called the
Department of Geography. And thank you, Professor Mike O. B. For being his
advisor. So the Mathis Evans map was truly a fantastic effort. A Herculean
effort to map the Grand Canyon in the early nineteen hundreds. Probably
the most impressive piece of mapping activity ever at the Grand Canyon.
The map was published in
nineteen twenty seven. Uh, the name Mathis Evans comes from the two
topography furs that created the map employed by the U. S. Geological
Survey. Francoise Mathis and Richard T. Evans and Matthew Toro. We'LL talk
later about the pronunciation of Mathis. Uh,
most people know that as Mathis, that's the pronunciation I'm going to use
today. The next top. A graphic map of the Grand Canyon, as was mentioned
earlier, didn't come until the nineteen sixties, so this map was the one
that was in use for quite a long, long period of time.
So what does it take to be a good typographer? I've been thinking about it.
This is my list. If you're good in math, love, geometry and trigonometry
like to camp out seven days a week, twenty miles a day, Khun, deal with
horses and mules and get along with your boss in Washington, D. C. Then
you could be a great typographer. And if you happen to have really good
cursive writing, you could be Francoise Mathis. I've had occasion to read
about a hundred pages of letters in his cursive writing. It was really
quite phenomenal.
We know that the director of the U. S. Geological Survey, Charles Walcott
, visited the Grand Canyon in nineteen o one. That certainly was not his
first time visiting degree on Canyon, but he did visit in nineteen o one.
One of the ways we know that is that he signed the hotel register at
William Wallace Basses Bass Camp, located about twelve or fifteen miles
west of Grand Canyon Village. It was one of the tourist camps or locations
that was visited at the canyon at that period of time. He did sign in on
the register in nineteen o one And maybe he had already decided that we
should have a typographic map of the Grand Canyon. Maybe he decided that
while he was here, we don't know. But shortly thereafter, he appointed
France well. Mathis to be the typographer Teo. Create this new mail.
Mathis head done. Other top a graphic work in the West had mapped three
mountain ranges in nineteen o five, he wrote,
having successfully wrestled with and conquered in turn three tall
mountain ranges in the West. The writer next found himself commissioned
with the survey of a hole in the ground.
Ah, the effort began in March of nineteen oh, too, of the extent of the
math of sevens. Map ran from the mouth of Marble Canyon to the mouth of
Havasu Creek basically covered the footprint of what would become Grand
Canyon National Park many, many years later. In nineteen nineteen,
one hundred five river miles between those two locations, a total of over
eleven hundred square miles in area over six hundred over seven hundred
sixty of those square miles within the canyon.
Now, one of the first things that the topography has had to do was to
determine. Well, Where exactly is the screen canyon? Where is it located?
North, south, East, West. Where is it? Latitude and longitude. And to do
this task, they engaged in a activity called heliotrope ing.
Of there were some known points on the map. Kendrick Peak, Bill Williams
Mountain, Mount Floyd, located down south. The exact locations of those
peaks were known and through triangulation. You could figure out where I
point at the Grand Canyon or points of the Grand Canyon were located. But
those are extremely long distances from those mountains to the canyon rim.
Pretty hard to see those distances, even through a surveyor's instrument
or telescope. Well, they engaged in a process called heliotrope ing, and
this is a device you'LL see on the left of this box. There's a small
mirror and then in the middle on the right hand under the box. Is there
some sites that you can line up with a distant point? Uh, one member of
the team would be in a place like Hopi Point or Comanche Point on the
south rim of the canyon. They would use this mirror, and they would
attempt to reflect sunlight so that it would hit one of those density
takes and then another member of the team. They would have their surveying
instrument there, and they know exactly how many degrees Easter west of
true North. That location on the Canyon Rim Wass. And they did this for
you. A number of points at the Grand Canyon and three triangulation
determined exactly where on the landscape this Grand Canyon was located.
Very interestingly, one of the first things they learned is the Grand
Canyon was about three miles further north and a little bit further West,
but it had been shown on previous maps.
Once they have established some points at the canyon, Uh, then they would
do triangulation on a smaller basis, about twenty six triangulation
stations at various points around the Grand Canyon money of him on the
canyon rim. Also, Summit points away from the canyon rim like Red Butte,
shooting more altar, other locations.
Another early task. You know, we've talked here about, well, where is the
canyon? North, South, East west. But what about elevation
of how high is the rim of the Grand Canyon? There was a known point of
elevation, a benchmark along a railroad track down on Williams that had
been previously determined.
Surveyors had to run a line of levels along the railroad tracks from
Williams up to the Grand Canyon. So you have someone with a surveyor's
transit, or you can look through the telescope horizontally, and then
another member of the team would hold a rod that's so big stick with that
measurements on it, in feet intensive feet, hundreds of feet, they would
have to run all the way up the railroad line from Williams and first
determined a a location at the very under the railroad track. And indeed
there is a benchmark or was the benchmark of thievery under the railroad
track. And then I would use a similar technique to go to other points
along the canyon rim, and then ultimately there were three locations where
they ran lines of levels down into the canyon, calling the bright angel,
the new hands and the north and south past trails. So even today you can
go down along those trails. If you know where to look, you can find some
of those benchmarks. Here is one of the top of the red wall very close to
the bright angel trail.
So I mentioned earlier the math of sevens ma'am was prepared. Just
happened to cover an area that would coincide with, uh, the later Grand
Canyon National Park. The U. S Geological Survey normally has a grid
system for quadrangles. Now this area of the Grand Canyon didn't quite fit
their conventional grid.
You see in green up here the footprint of the future Grand Canyon National
Park. If you used the conventional grid of fifteen minute quadrangles, you
would have quadrangles located like this superimposed on the Grand Canyon.
Now, now day is you will find quadrangles that have been prepared by USGS
for those six quadrangles the name's air shown up there. But that didn't
work exactly right for them in nineteen o two oh three, These air the
locations of the four quadrangles that they prepared and created, and in
fact, separate individual quadrangle maps were originally prepared for
each of those four on later consolidated to create the mouth of sevens
male
and those began with The Bright Angel surveyed in nineteen o two o three.
Mathis is the principal photographer, published in nineteen o six as a
Bright Angel Quadrangle. This New Quadrangle, published in nineteen o
seven. Both Mathis and Evans were involved in surveying that in nineteen o
two oh three, The Sonoma Quadrangle, published in nineteen o eight.
Richard Evans was the topography for and up at the top. I'm showing the
amount of field time that was required for each of these Of the entire map
was a total of thirty eight months of field work. It was not until
nineteen twenty one that they did some work on soup. I and there was a
quadrangle published, um,
in on nineteen twenty one and then a larger soup I that was published in
nineteen twenty three. But even then, you did not quite cover all of the
footprint of Grand Canyon National Park. So then there was some additional
fieldwork in nineteen twenty three to cover the rest of the park. Finally
, it was all completed, and here are examples of each of those individual
quadrangle maps that were published. First was the bright Angel Vishnu
Sonoma on the nineteen twenty three soup I and they were consolidated to
publish the math of sevens Me up in nineteen twenty seven as a two piece
of map east half in west half. Couple of unusual things about this map. It
was pregnant, did a scale of one to forty eight thousand. That's
unconventional, and it was published with fifty foot contour intervals.
That was also a bit unusual. Uh, but Mathis made the case for doing that,
uh, to bring out some highlights in the map run. So is unusual from that
standpoint as well. That map served us until the mid nineteen sixties,
when there were other has mentioned earlier maps that were produced based
on photograph a tree. I want to say a little bit more about triangulation
stations. There were several of these on the rim.
Here is an example. If they had wood locally available that have poles
about twelve feet long created tripod wrap a white sheet around it, Uh,
you wanted to be able to see this from many, many miles away, maybe even
from across the canyon. So there are a couple of examples. Uh, if you were
in the lower elevations where there wasn't locally available, would you
would build a can And this is not hiking Karen like you'd find along the
trail. This is Ah, hiking can that I cannot quite reach the top. When I
stand next to it, they're quite large. I had a really understand
experience last summer. I went out to a location where one of these
triangular relation stations have been set up in nineteen o three. This is
what I found. The wood on the bailing wire is still there. And down in the
middle you can see the benchmark that was originally established,
many places around the canyon where you could find their benchmarks. This
was Cape final in the North Rim, the nineteen or three date.
But you're probably still wondering. How do they create all those counter
intervals? How do you get from something that looks like this when you see
it from the rim and create a map that looks like this
plain table surveying was the method that was used.
If we zoom in here on the plain table, it's about two feet by three feet
in the air size with a sheet of paper on it. There's a telescope
surveyor's instrument, and then there is a brass ruler down on the paper.
The brass ruler will turn as you turn your telescope left and right, so
that when you sighed in on a particular feature, you can draw a line on
the paper, and you are also able to get some vertical angles. Uh, when
you're siding on points in the canyon that you Khun goes through your
trigonometry and calculate elevations when you have vertical angles. But
let's let's just talk about moving left to right horizontally. Uh, you
might be looking out into the canyon
uh, such is this view of Vishnu Temple and see various features out there.
And Vishnu Temple you would run. I described with your pencil on your
paper on your plane table. You would start to sketch in some of the things
that you saw. You would run your scribes to be note cliff faces, for
example, the yellow lines that I have mark to there you begin to sketch
those in. Then there would be more and more of those yellow lines, and
you'd be sketching in more and more of those. And that would give you some
sense of what this terrain looked like from one perspective.
Then you can go around and look at that same feature Vishnu Temple, from
some other point on the canyon rim again trying to pinpoint those
locations where you had those yellow lines in your head.
And then you might find that that that points sticking out there. Maybe it
wasn't really at a it really had to move out to point a one or the one
that was b had to move out to the other B. So the venue were, in essence,
triangulating on all of these individual features out in the canyon. So
when you were all done and when you'd also incorporated your information
about vertical angles to determine elevation, you'd be able to create
something that looked like that.
Um, of course, from a single point, or even from a couple of points on the
canyon rim, you might. You probably would not be able to see everything
within the Grand Canyon. There are temples, buttes, there's ridges,
there's hillsides. In fact, Nicholas Bach has uninterested in presentation
where he takes a historic photographed like this and then shows what is
really the view shed. What is the part of the landscape you can really see
? So, yes, the topography topography has had to go to many, many locations
on the Canyon Rim in order to capture everything. But Mathis wrote that in
the east part of the canyon, um, let's say up river from, uh on Car Delta
, where the canyon is very broad and very wide. They were able to map all
of that part of the canyon without ever setting foot within the can. They
were for any point within the canyon. They could always find at least a
couple of places from which they could do their plane table surveying. Not
true, further downstream. Or you have the inner gorge where it's very
deeply incised into the canyon.
I would've finished up with a handful of different anecdotes related to
the making of the map I had mentioned. Bass Camp located out fifteen miles
Western Grand Canyon Village. William Wallace passes wife Ada Bass kept a
really good diary. She has an account of one night. There was a knock on
the door. Uh, and I'll back up here and tell you why there was a knock on
the door in the middle of the night. One of the U. S. Geological Survey
teams had gone down the bass trail there on the north side of the river.
Surveying they had run out of provisions or getting low, they sent one of
their crew back to basking to try to fetch more provisions. The man's name
was Walker. Uh, he got to the north bank of the river, kneading the cross
to the South Bank and Mr Bass. His boat was on the South Bank. He was on
the North Bank. That was a problem. He took off his clothes, put them on
top of his head and swam across the river. Walker made it across the river
, but his clothes did not
This was early April.
It was cold outside. He walked a couple miles up the trail to a place
called Rock Camp, where he found an old blanket and he found a burrow. He
wrapped himself in the blanket, climbed on the burro and made it out the
bass camp and knocked on his door in the middle of the night. I don't have
photos of the burrow, our mule that was named Brigham or Mr Walker, but
they probably looks something like this.
Uh, unreliable boats were not the only reason that Mathis decided to
purchase a steel about. There were two fellows who drowned attempting to
cross the river in a wooden boat in I believe it was nineteen o three. Ah
Mathis promptly ordered a two piece deal vote sixty eight pounds apiece,
purchased for twenty eight dollars plus shipping that his crews used for
surveying. There's also a really interesting story about one of the Rodman
er in the crew was named George W. Parkins.
This inscription existed along the river for decades and decades and
decades. No one knowing who this guy George W. Parkins wass.
I could give you a twenty minute story of how I researched this and sleuth
it out and finally determined for sure that George W. Parkins was a member
of the surveying team that map to the canyon, working on the Cinema
Quadrangle and around nineteen o five again, there's entries in the Bass
Camp Hotel register documenting the people that were involved Richard T.
Evans, for example. And then finally, there's the story of
uh, doing the line of levels down the new hands trail on a very hot summer
day. I believe it was nineteen. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Don't remember aviso
three year old four six a. M. It was ninety six degrees now. The surveying
instrument that they were using for their line of levels had a bubble in
it, very similar to a carpenter's level. Something like this. As the day
advanced, the level bubble would grow smaller and smaller until by noon it
would vanish altogether in the work had to be stopped. By that time. Also
, the ground was so hot that the level man could not stand still. It is
instrument being obliged to lift his feet in alternation
in order that he not burned them on the hob nails of his shoes.
So I do now want to close a CZ Paul Hurt mentioned earlier. We are
celebrating history of the Grand Canyon right now. The centennial was a
couple of days ago, Uh, Francoise Mathis kept a sort of field notes, but
actually, it's much a personal diary. A zit is field notes. One of the
great historic occasions at the Grand Canyon was a visit by President
Theodore Roosevelt on my six nineteen o three. This is France. Love
Mathis's entry. You know he has field knots for that day.
Exciting day. President Roosevelt's train arrives at the Grand Canyon at
nine a. M. Roosevelt rides to Rouse Point, and that's what we would now
call Hopi Point in the foreign. Yun gives a brief address at eleven a. M,
then starts on a fast ride. Two grand viewpoint. Now you probably know
Grand viewpoint is what ten miles away from Grand Canyon Village? Uh, two
grand viewpoint pants pants guiding Governor Brodie. Governor Brodie was
one of his rough riders in Cuba. Governor Brody's straining his back, and
it comes back home in the carriage, uh, one other. One other takes the
somersault. President Lee is it's six PM but I want to go back to the
address that President gave at eleven o'clock of probably one of the most
meaningful speeches ever given at the Grand Canyon. You said, Leave it as
it is, we cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man
can only mar it. Keep it for your children and your children's children
and all who come after you as the one great site that every American
should see. And I would add that every good geographer said map.
My kid.
I want to steal anybody else's thunder. But I was fascinated to see the
hotel register at the beginning of your presentation. The name underneath
the person was G. K. Gilbert. For those who don't know growth, Carl
Gilbert was one of the most famous of all American geologists. He was
Powells, right hand man on a survey crew through the West in eighteen
seventy four eighteen seventy nine and did a tremendous amount himself. I
couldn't believe the two of them signed in next to each other and that
that that's an ed, adding will be happy to say that's the kind of
wonderful, um, nuggets of gold that you'LL find when you're digging
through the archives. Thank you. Thanks for the comment ball.