Clarence Edward Dutton (1841 (Wallingford, CT) - 1912), American geologist, graduated from Yale University in 1860. After service in the US Army during and after the American Civil War, he became a prominent geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey (1875-91). Working chiefly in the Colorado Plateau region, he wrote several classic papers, including geological studies of the high plateaus of Utah (1879-80), the Tertiary history of the Grand Canyon district (1882), and the Charleston, SC earthquake of 1886. As head of the division of volcanic geology for the USGS, he studied volcanism in Hawaii, California, and Oregon.
Dutton was a close associate of John Wesley Powell and G.K. Gilbert at the USGS. He was an energetic and effective field geologist: in 1875-1877 Dutton's field party mapped 12,000 square miles of the high plateaus of southern Utah, a area of rugged topography and poor access.
Dutton had a distinctive flair for literary description, and is best remembered today for his colorful (and sometimes flamboyant) descriptions of the geology and scenery of the Grand Canyon region of Arizona. "Dutton first taught the world to look at that country and see it as it was... Dutton is almost as much the genius loci of the Grand Canyon as Muir is of Yosemite" -- Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian.
Notable publications
edit- 1880, Report on the Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah. U. S. Geog. and Geol. Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, vol. 32, 307 pp. and atlas.
- 1882, Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District. U. S. Geol. Survey Monograph 2, 264 pp. and atlas.
- 1884, Hawaiian Volcanoes. U. S. Geol. Survey, 4th Ann. Rpt., pp. 75-219.
- 1889, The Charleston Earthquake of August 31, 1886. U. S. Geol. Survey, Ann. Rpt. 9, pp. 203-528.
References
edit[[Category:American geologists [[Category:American writers [[Category:Yale University alumni [[Category:Grand Canyon history [[Category:United States Geological Survey