circa 1000
While numerous aspects of the physical and human geography of America far predate 1000, the date of 1000 seems appropriate to initiate a record of events in geography in America, where the term ‘events in geography’ is taken to include human attempts to discover, record and display (especially with maps), and otherwise take account of, interpret, and explain physical and human geographies separately and in interaction, primarily of that portion of Earth now known as the United States of America, i.e., the academic discipline of geography’s contribution to understanding our world. The timeline also features entries on landmark works by American geographers and others that have significantly impacted American geography more generally, its significant institutions and publications (especially scholarly journals), and topics relating to geography as an approach to understanding aspects of our world such as geography education, aspects of geography exhibited in general culture, and the recent emergence of geography in cyberspace.
      The task of coming to understand the earliest accounts and interpretations of America’s geographies, whether prior to or following initial encounters between Native Americans and Europeans, and whether such accounts are written or cartographic, is fraught with difficulties that include issues associated with evidence and issues involving the very epistemologies individuals bring to interpreting the seemingly same geographic situation. Differences in the conceptualization and meaning of geographic features (neighborhoods, rivers, towns, etc.) and in the relationships among them in conceptual and bio-physical environmental spaces, are often so great among groups as to preclude meaningful communication.
      In geography as in other intellectual domains, such differences can readily lead to one group being dismissive of another’s capacity to contribute to its understanding. Historically, one finds this occurring not only between Europeans (and Euro-Americans) and Native Americans, but also between Europeans and Americans and between Americans and Americans, both during and between time periods. It happens every day in the simple act of asking directions when one is lost. Not withstanding such difficulties, geographic interpretations of this world have been offered, acted upon, recreated, and reinterpreted by Native Americans since their arrival here, in somewhat different ways since the initial Native American-European encounters, whether by Norsemen circa 1000 or by Christopher Columbus in 1492-1504, and in still different ways by each of us today.
      [Alan G. Macpherson. Pre-Columbian Discovery and Exploration of North America. In John Logan Allen. ed. North American Exploration: a New World Disclosed, Vol. 1 of North American Exploration. 3 vols. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. 13-70; R. A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter. The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. Hew Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995; Carl O. Sauer. The Early Spanish Main. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; Carl O. Sauer. Northern Mists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; Karl Butzer. ed. The Americas Before and After 1492: Current Geographical Research. Entire issue of Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (September 1992): 345-568; Samuel Eliot Morison. The European Discovery of America. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971-74; Donald W. Meinig. The Shaping of America: a Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History; Atlantic America, 1492-1800. Vol. 1 of 4 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986; G. Malcolm Lewis. Native North Americans’ Cosmological Ideas and Geographical Awareness: Their Representation and Influence on Early European Exploration and Geographical Knowledge. In John Logan Allen. ed. North American Exploration: a New World Disclosed, Vol. 1 of North American Exploration. 3 vols. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. 71-126; G. Malcolm Lewis. Maps, Mapmaking, and Map Use by Native North Americans. In David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis. eds. The History of Cartography: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies, Vol. 2, Book 3 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. 51-188; G. Malcolm Lewis. ed. Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998; Hugh Honour. The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976; Antonello Gerbi. The Dispute of the New World: the History of a Polemic, 1750-1900. Translated from the Italian by Jeremy Moyle. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973 (1955); Antonello Gerbi. Nature in the New World: from Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Translated from the Italian by Jeremy Moyle. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985 (1975).]

1507
America emerges as a named geographic entity in 1507. The name appears on Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Aliorque Lustrationes (World Map Following the Tradition of Ptolemy and Incorporating the Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci), by German geographer Martin Waldseemüller (circa 1470-1522), published in 1507. It is the first map, in manuscript or printed form, to depict the North and South American landmass as a geographic entity that is separate from Asia. Waldseemüller creates the name America for the new landmass, using the Latinized version of Amerigo Vespucci’s name in honoring him. The cartographic depiction of a second, i.e., western, land-centered hemisphere requires a second world ocean as well, so Waldseemüller’s map is also the first to depict the existence of what we now term the Pacific Ocean.
      The map grows out of an ambitious early 16th century project at Saint-Dié, France to incorporate the outpouring of new place-specific geographic knowledge derived from the voyages of Christopher Columbus and others that extend from the late 15th century through the Amerigo Vespucci voyage of 1501-1502. An edition of 1,000 copies of the 4½ x 8-foot wood-cut printed map is reportedly printed and sold. It is accompanied by a printed introduction, Cosmographiae introductio…. A single known copy of the map survives to the 21st century. It is acquired by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for its permanent collection in 2003.
      [Martin Waldseemüller. Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Aliorque Lustrationes [World Map Following the Tradition of Ptolemy and Incorporating the Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci]. Woodcut map, 137 x 244 cm. (4.5 x 8 feet) overall, printed on twelve 46 x 61 cm. sheets. Strassburg, 1507; Martin Waldseemüller. Cosmographiae introductio: cum quibusdam geometriae ac astronomiae principiis ad eam rem necessaries; Insuper Quattuor Americi Vespucij nauigationes. Vniuersalis cosmographiae descriptio tam in solido [quam] plano, eis etiam insertis quae Ptholom[a]eo ignota a nuperis reperta sunt. Saint Dié, France: Walter et Nikolaus Lud, 1507; www.loc.gov]

1624
John Smith (1580-1631), in his account of British lands in the Americas, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles…, makes the point that it is only to be understood in geographic and historic terms with what becomes a famous quotation - "As Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion, so History without Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certaine habitation." The subsequent record substantiates his claim. Smith’s landmark map, Virginia, discovered and described…, also appears with this volume.
      Smith’s remembered quotation initiates a geographic description of the Summer Isles, present-day Bermuda, introducing the fifth volume – “BEfore we present you the matters of fact, it is fit to offer to your view the Stage whereon they were acted, for as Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion, so History without Geography, wandreth as a Vagrant without a certaine habitation. Those Ilands lie in the huge maine Ocean, and two hundred leagues from any continent, situated in 32. degrees and 25. minutes, of Northerly latitude, and distant from England West South-West, about 3300. miles, some twenty miles in length, and not past two miles and a halfe in breadth, environed with Rocks, which to the North-ward, West-ward, and South-East, extend further then they have bin yet well discovered: by reason of those Rocks the Country is naturally very strong, for there is but two places, & scarce two, unlesse to them who know them well, where shipping may safely come in, and those now are exceeding well fortified, but within is roome to entertaine a royall Fleet: the Rocks in most places appeare at a low water, neither are they much covered at a high, for it ebbs and flowes not past five foot; the shore for most part is a Rocke, so hardened with the sunne, wind and sea, that it is not apt to be worne away with the waves, whose violence is also broke by the Rocks before they can come to the shore: it is very uneven, distributed into hills and dales; the mold is of divers colours, neither clay nor sand, but a meane betweene; the red which resembleth clay is the worst, the whitest resembling sand and the blackest is good, but the browne betwixt them both which they call white, because there is mingled with it a white meale is the best: under the mould two or three foot deep, and sometimes lesse, is a kinde of white hard substance which they call the Rocke: the trees usually fasten their roots in it; neither is it indeed rocke or stone, or so hard, though for most part more harder then Chalke; nor so white, but pumish-like and spungy, easily receiving and containing much water. In some places Clay is found under it, it seemes to be ingendred with raine water, draining through the earth, and drawing with it of his substance unto a certaine depth where it congeales; the hardest kinde of it lies under the red ground like quarries, as it were thicke slates one upon another, through which the water hath his passage, so that in such places there is scarce found any fresh water, for all or the most part of the fresh water commeth out of the Sea draining through the sand, or that substance called the Rocke, leaving the salt behinde, it becomes fresh: sometimes we digged wells of fresh water which we finde in most places, and but three or foure paces from the Sea side, some further, the most part of them would ebbe and flow as the Sea did, and be levell or little higher then the superficies of the sea, and in some places very strange, darke and cumbersome Caves” (passage as it appears at memory.loc.gov).
      [John Smith. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles; with the Names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governours from their First Beginning anno 1584. to this Present 1624; With the Proceedings of Those Severall Colonies and the Accidents that Befell Them in All their Journeys and Discoveries; Also the Maps and Descriptions of All Those Countryes, their Commodities, People, Government, Customes, and Religion yet Knowne. 6 vols. London: Printed by I. D[awson] and I. [Haviland] for Michael Sparkes, 1624; Virginia, discovered and described by Captayn John Smith ,1606 [map]. 1 sheet, approx. 1:1,250,000, 32 x 41 cm. Engraved by William Hole. London, 1624; Electronic version John Smith’s Virginia map and the two-volume 1907 facsimile edition of The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles… published by Macmillan are at the Library of Congress American Memory Internet site - memory.loc.gov]

1749
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), in his proposal to establish an academy in Philadelphia, recommends that geography be included at all levels of the curriculum "by reading with Maps, and being required to point out the Places where the greatest Actions were done, to give their old and new Names, with the Bounds, Situation, Extent of the Countries concern'd, etc." (Franklin 1987, 335). He also proposes that geography be required as an integral component of the study of history and of applied mathematics (with the construction and understanding of maps and globes). In expressing his thoughts on what he terms "a regular education," Franklin warns readers that his proposal may contain new ideas-"some Things here propos'd may be found to differ a little from the Forms of Education in common Use, [and notes that he will cite John Milton, John Locke, Mons. Rollin and George Turnbull as authorities for the basis of his proposals as they] generally complain that the old Method is in many Respects wrong; but long settled Forms are not easily changed. For us, who are now to make a new Beginning, 'tis, at least, as easy to set out right as wrong; and therefore their Sentiments are on this Occasion well worth our Consideration" (Franklin 1987, 324). Geography becomes part of the new Philadelphia Academy's curriculum when it opens. The school evolves into the College of Pennsylvania, precursor of the current University of Pennsylvania. One of the early Philadelphia Academy graduates receiving instruction in geography becomes the distinguished American naturalist William Bartram (1739-1823), who produces a geographic and natural history account of the American Southeast-Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogules or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws (1791).
      Franklin's appreciation of geography is evident throughout his voluminous writings. While serving as minister plenipotentiary to France, he prepares, Information for Those Who Would Remove to America (1784), for a European audience. It describes America in geographic terms and includes explicit geographic comparisons of America with Europe. When Franklin proposes the establishment of what will become America's first learned society, the American Philosophical Society, he calls for the permanent membership of "a Physician, a Botanist, a Mathematician, a Chemist, a Mechanician, a Geographer, and a general Natural Philosopher [with the geographer assuming responsibilities for] Surveys, Maps and Charts of particular Parts of the Sea-coasts, or Inland Countries; Course and Junction of Rivers and great Roads, Situation of Lakes and Mountains, Nature of the Soil and Productions, &c" (Franklin 1987, 296).
      [Benjamin Franklin. Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsilvania [sic] (1749); Idea of the English School (1751); Information to Those Who Would Remove to America (1784); A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantations in America (1743), all in Benjamin Franklin: Writings. New York: Library of America, 1987. Pp. 323-344; 348-354; 975-982; 295-297; William Bartram. Travels through North and South Carolina, etc. In William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings. New York: Library of America, 1996. Pp. 3-425]

1750
Pehr Kalm (1716-1779), Swedish professor of natural history and economy at Åbo, Sweden and student of the renowned botanist Carolus Linnaeus, completes three years of extensive travels in the Mid-Atlantic region of United States and in Canada. Sent by the Swedish Academy of Sciences to observe the botany of North America, Kalm's early account also provides considerable information on its physical environment, settlement and society. The first English-language edition of his travels, En Resa til Norra America, appears in London (1770-71).
      [Peter (Pehr) Kalm. Travels into North America: Containing Its Natural History, and a Circumstantial Account of Its Plantations and Agriculture in General. Translated from the Swedish by John Reinhold Forster. 3 vols. London: Warrington, Eyres, Lowdes, 1770-71; Peter Kalm's Travels in North America: the America of 1750; the English Version of 1770 Revised from the Original Swedish and Edited by Adolph B. Benson, with New Material from Kalm's Diary Notes. 2 vols. New York: Wilson-Erickson, Inc., 1937, and Dover, 1966 & 1987.]

1755
Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays, popularly known simply as Geographical Essays, is published by Lewis Evans (1700?-1756) of Philadelphia. A close associate of Benjamin Franklin, Evans is a surveyor and the first person to be considered a geographer by fellow Americans. He is able to complete only two of what was expected to be an extended series of essays in Geographical Essays. The work as published is found authoritative, however, and includes General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America, which is widely reproduced by others following his death. Evans' Geographical Essays "provides a treatment of the Appalachian Mountains that remains the standard interpretation for over half a century" (Brown 1938), "uses the term 'fall line' for the first time in print as a geographic feature serving to delineate the 'low country' from the 'upland' South" (Brown 1951), and "bears witness to an extraordinary acuteness of observation, and as well to an unusual power of generalization, on the part of the author who must be regarded as an early leader among American geographers" (Davis in Brown 1938). Evans' Geographical Essays and General Map of the Middle British Colonies are revised and reissued in 1776 by Thomas Pownall, colonial administrator (1753- 57) and governor (1757-59) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, following his return to England. Revisions to the 1776 volume that are to be incorporated in a 1784 edition remain unpublished until 1949.
      [Lewis Evans. Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays; the First Containing an Analysis of a General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America, and of the Country of the Confederate Indians. Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1755, with A General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America. 50 x 67 cm., electronic version of map at Library of Congress American Memory Internet site, memory.loc.gov; Lewis Evans. A Map of Pennsylvania, New-Jersey, New-York, and the Three Delaware Counties. 65 x 49 cm. Philadelphia: 1749, revised 1752; Ralph H. Brown. The Land and the Sea: Their Larger Traits. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 41 (1951): 199-216; Ralph H. Brown. Materials Bearing upon the Geography of the Atlantic Seaboard, 1790 to 1810. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 28 (1938): 201-231 (quotes William M. Davis); William Morris Davis. Was Lewis or Benjamin Franklin the First to Recognize that Our Northeast Storms Come from the Southwest. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 45 (1906): 129-130; Ralph H. Brown. Mirror for Americans: Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard 1810. AGS Special Publication No. 27. New York: American Geographical Society, 1943; Thomas Pownell. A Topographical Description of Such Parts of North America as are Contained in the (Annexed) Map of the Middle British Colonies, &c. in North America. London: J. Almon, 1776; Thomas Pownell. A Topographical Description of the Dominions of the United States of America [Being a Revised and Enlarged Edition of] A Topographical Description of Such Parts of North America as are Contained in the (Annexed) Map of the Middle British Colonies, &c. in North America, edited by Lois Mulkearn. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1949; Lawrence Henry Gipson. Lewis Evans, by L. H. Gipson: to which is added Evans' 'A Brief Account of Pennsylvania,' together with Facsimiles of his 'Geographical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays Numbers I and II'...also Facsimiles of Evans' Maps. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1939.]

1757
A Map of South Carolina and a Part of Georgia, a cartographic landmark by William Gerard De Brahm (1718-1799) geographer-surveyor-cartographer-hydrographer, is published by Thomas Jefferys, London's most influential map publisher. De Brahm, who was trained as a military and topographic engineer in Bavaria, arrived in the British colony of Georgia leading a group of Bavarian Protestants to establish the settlement of Bethany in 1751. He prepared this famous map while serving as Georgia's Surveyor General of Lands, a position created for him in 1754. In 1764, De Brahm was appointed Surveyor General for the Southern District of North America and Surveyor of Lands for the British colony of East Florida. From then until 1771 he produced a remarkable set of geographic descriptions, maps, and coastal pilots of British East Florida that he personally presented to Britain's King George III (De Brahm 1971). Numerous individual items were published from these materials, including many by others. The scholarly research of Louis De Vorsey has done much to make this material available; a collection of individual items is held by the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov).
      [William Gerard De Brahm. A Map of South Carolina and a Part of Georgia: Containing the Whole Sea-Coast; All the Islands, Inlets, Rivers, Creeks, Parishes, Townships, Boroughs, Roads, and Bridges; as also, Several Plantations, with their Proper Boundary-lines, their Names, and the Names of their Proprietors. Composed from Surveys Taken by the Hon. William Bull, Esq., Lieutenant Governor, Captain Gascoign, Hugh Bryan, Esq. and the author William De Brahm. 135 x 122 cm. overall, printed on 4 sheets, ca. 1:310,000. London: Thomas Jefferys, 1757; William Gerard De Brahm. Report of the General Survey in the Southern District of North America. Original manuscripts now as four folios in the British Museum, with edited edition that includes an introduction by Louis De Vorsey, Jr. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1971; William Gerard De Brahm. The Atlantic Pilot. London, Printed for the author by T. Spilsbury and sold by S. Leacroft, 1772, and facsimile reproduction of the 1772 edition with introduction and index by Louis De Vorsey, Jr. Gainesville, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1974; Louis De Vorsey. William De Brahm, the South's First Geographer. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 307-317.]

1776
Correspondence between John Adams (1735-1826) and his wife Abigail (1744-1818) provides insight on the status of geography in the United States at the time of America's Revolutionary War. While serving as a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, John Adams writes Abigail-"Geography is a Branch of Knowledge, not only very useful, but absolutely necessary, to every Person of public Character whether in civil of military Life. Nay it is equally important for Merchants...The Board of War are making a Collection of all the maps of America, and of every part of it, which are extant, to be hung in the War Office. [He then describes the maps in some detail.] You will ask me why I trouble you with all these dry Titles, and the Dedications of Maps. I answer, that I may turn the attention of the family to the subject of American Geography. Really, there ought not be a State, a City, a Promontory, a River, an Harbour, an Inlett, or a Mountain in all America, but what should be intimately known to every Youth, who has any Pretensions to liberal Education" (Butterfield 1963, 90-2).
      Later, while serving as America's minister plenipotentiary to France, Adams reveals his preferences for the academic choices offered his children. They are no doubt influenced by concerns for the ongoing education of his sons, John Quincy and Charles, who accompany him to France-"The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politics and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematics and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematics and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelain" (Butterfield and Friedlaender 1973, 341-43). A letter written by the adolescent John Quincy to his father at about the same time indicates that the school he and Charles are then attending in the suburbs of Paris follows a traditional classic curriculum, with instruction in "Latin, Greek, Geography, geometry, fractions, Writing [and] Drawing" (Butterfield and Friedlaender 1973, 307-16).
      [L. H. Butterfield. ed. Adams Family Correspondence. Vol. 2, June 1776-March 1778. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963; L. H. Butterfield and Marc Friedlaender. eds. Adams Family Correspondence. Vol. 3, April 1778-September 1780. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.]

1777
The Continental Congress authorizes George Washington (1732-1799), commander of the Continental Army, to establish a Geographer's Department in the summer of 1777. From the time Washington takes command of the Continental Army in June, 1775, his "knowledge of terrain, gained through year's of practical schooling in surveying, mapping, and geographical exploration, gave him full appreciation of the need for cartographic information...repeatedly he implored the Congress for assistance in finding qualified personnel, and admonished it for a lack of funds to hire good men" (Friis 1958, 187). Washington's understanding of the necessity for good geographic knowledge derives from his previous military service and his career as professional surveyor and land speculator-he surveys over 200 individual tracts of land encompassing over 66,000 acres for clients, surveys 37 tracts encompassing over 69,000 acres of his own properties, prepares his first map as a teenager in 1747, and his last during the final year of his life (Martin 1932). Washington appoints Robert Erskine (1735-1780) to head the newly created Geographer's Department as Geographer and Surveyor General to the Continental Army. When Erskine dies in 1780, he is replaced by Simeon DeWitt (1756-1834), who serves through the end of the war. Captain Thomas Hutchins (1730-1789) joins the Geographer's Department as Geographer to the Southern Army in 1781 and takes the title Geographer to the United States. The Geographer's Department compiles about 200 maps by the time it closes in 1783.
      [Herman R. Friis. Highlights in the First Hundred Years of Surveying and Mapping and Geographical Exploration of the United States by the Federal Government 1775-1880. Surveying and Mapping 18 (April-June 1958): 186-206; Herman R. Friis. Charting a New Land: Mapmaking and the Congress, 1774-1861. Prologue 16 (Fall 1984): 190-198; Lawrence Martin. The George Washington Atlas. Washington: U.S. George Washington Bicentennial Commission, 1932, and Richmond, Virginia: Surveyor's Association, 1995; Albert H. Heusser. George Washington's Mapmaker: a Biography of Robert Erskine, edited by Hubert G. Schmidt. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966 (1928); Peter J. Guthorn. American Maps and Map Makers of the Revolution. Monmouth Beach: Philip Freneau Press, 1966; Lester J. Cappon, Barbara B. Petchenik, John H. Long. eds. Atlas of Early American History: the Revolutionary Era, 1760-1790. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976; George Washington: Surveyor and Mapmaker at the Library of Congress American Memory Internet site, memory.loc.gov.]

1778
1778 Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) serves as an early advocate of geography education when he proposes a bill to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia that includes geography, along with the Greek and Latin languages, English grammar, and "the higher part of numerical arithmetic" as core subjects in a state-wide system of free grammar (elementary)schools. The bill does not pass into law, but portions of it serve as the basis for setting aside tracts for schools whenland in the Northwest Territory is subdivided. Jefferson regularly recommends the study of geography to friends who inquire about a proper education as well. He also includes geography in the proposed curriculum for the university he establishes at Charlottesville, the University of Virginia. His personal library, which exceeds 6,000 volumes by the time he sells it to the U.S. Congress in 1814, provides a particularly striking example of his keen interest in geography-it includes over 300 geography volumes, both ancient and modern, and an unsurpassed collection of books and maps on the human and physical geographies of the American West. Jefferson considers his roles as author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and founder of the University of Virginia to be his most noteworthy accomplishments, but his contributions in many other realms, including geography, also come to be celebrated. Among his most important contributions to geography are his promotion, sponsorship and direction of the geographic exploration of the American West. His Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) is one of the first works by an American in the regional geography tradition. (see Notes on the State of Virginia entry at 1787)
      [Thomas Jefferson. A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge (1778); Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia (1818); Letter to Thomas Turpin (1769); Letter to Peter Carr (1814). In Thomas Jefferson: Writings. New York: Library of America, 1984. Pp. 365-373, 457-473, 739-40 and 1557-1561, and 1346-1352; E. Millicent Sowerby. Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson. 5 vols. Washington: Library of Congress, 1955; James Gilreath and Douglas L Wilson. eds. Thomas Jefferson's Library: a Catalog with the Entries in His Own Hand. Washington: Library of Congress, 1989; Adolphus W. Greely. Jefferson as a Geographer. National Geographic Magazine 7 (August 1896): 269-271; George T. Surface. Thomas Jefferson: a Pioneer Student of American Geography. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 41 (1909): 743-750; Gary S. Dunbar. Thomas Jefferson, Geographer. Bulletin, Special Libraries Association, Geography and Map Division 40 (April 1960): 11-16; Jane Hallisey. Thomas Jefferson, Cartographer: a Father's Legacy to His Renaissance Son. Mercator's World 1 (May-June 1996): 22-27; John Logan Allen. Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975; Silvio A. Bedini. Thomas Jefferson: Statesman of Science. New York: Macmillan, 1990.]

1784
Geography Made Easy, by Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826), initiates the first phase of publication of geography books in the United States. Geography Made Easy and Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller (1783) serve as influential texts in implementing the cultural nationalism of the period's republican educational designs. It appears in 23 editions and sells more than 400,000 copies by the early 1830s. Morse prepares The American Geography (1789) for the general public, which with name changes runs through at least ten editions, and then The American Universal Geography, or, a View of the Present State of All the Empires, Kingdoms, States, and Republicks in the Known World, and of the United States in Particular; Illustrated with Maps and Charts (2 vols., 1793), which runs through at least eight editions. These two volumes provide the first comprehensive account of the regional geography of the United States and the world by an American. The American Universal Geography is one of three early books on geography published in the United States that follows the classical 'universal geography' approach-a region-by-region descriptive accounting of Earth's features employed since the time of Strabo (63?B.C.-24A.D.) and Ptolemy (90-168). By the 1790s, Morse is referred to as the "father of American Geography" for the series of geography books and atlases he produces. Appearing as they do in a period of great enthusiasm for establishing an American identity in the sciences, his numerous works spur much comment and discussion (Greene 1984, Brown 1941 & 1951).
      Prior to Morse's numerous volumes, the only textbooks generally available to American students were spellers, grammars, arithmetics, the Psalter and Christian Bible. Educated professionals, usually clergy (Morse was a Congregational pastor) and lawyers, author books during this period for both the classroom and the educated public. Over 300 geography books, primarily for classroom use, will be published in the United States prior to the Civil War. (see Pinkerton entry at 1804, and Malte-Brun entry at 1824)
      [Jedidiah Morse. Geography Made Easy: Being a Short, But Comprehensive System of that very Useful and Agreeable Science, Illustrated with Newly Constructed Maps, Adapted to the Capacities and Understanding of Children, Calculated Particularly for the Use and Improvement of Schools in the United States. Hew Haven, CT: Meigs, Bowen, and Dana, 1784-1819; Jedidiah Morse. The American Geography; or, a View of the Present Situation of the United States of America. Elizabethtown, MA: Shepard Kollock, 1789-1795; Morse, Jedidiah. The American Universal Geography; or, a View of the Present State of All the Empires, Kingdoms, States, and Republicks in the Known World, and of the United States in Particular; Illustrated with Maps and Charts. 2 vols. Boston: Thomas and Andrews, 1793-1819; Strabo. The Geography of Strabo. Translated by H. L. Jones. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917; Ptolemy. The Geography. Translated and edited by Edward Luther Stevenson. New York: New York Public Library, 1932; Ralph H. Brown. The American Geographies of Jedidiah Morse. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 31 (1941): 145-217; Ralph H. Brown. A Letter to the Reverend Jedidiah Morse Author of the American Universal Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 41 (September 1951): 188-198; R. J. Moss. The Life of Jedidiah Morse: a Station of Peculiar Exposure. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995; John C. Greene. American Geography. In American Science in the Age of Jefferson. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1984, Pp. 188-217; John Rennie Short. A New Mode of Thinking: Creating a National Geography in the Early Republic. In Edward C. Carter II. ed. Surveying the Record: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930. APS Memoirs Vol. 231. Philadephia: American Philosophical Society, 1999. Pp. 19-50; Anon. History of Elementary School Books. The New-England Magazine 2 (June 1832): 473-478.]

Vermont, published by William Blodget, is the nation's first state map. During the next 50 years some 30 additional state maps, depicting internal boundaries, transportation routes and settlements, are produced between the scales of 1:125,000 and 1:500,000.
      [Seymour I. Schwartz and Ralph E. Ehrenberg. The Mapping of America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1980.]

The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke [Kentucky], by John Filson (1747-1788), and its accompanying map, This Map of Kentucke, are among the earliest works by an American in the regional geography tradition.
      [John Filson. The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke: and An Essay Towards the Topography and Natural History of That Important Country; to Which is Added an Appendix Containing, I. The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boone, One of the First Settlers, Comprehending Every Important Occurrence in the Political History of that Province; II. The Minutes of the Piankashaw Council, Held at Post St. Vincents, April 15, 1784; III. An Account of the Indian Nations Inhabiting Within the Limits of the Thirteen United States...; IV. The Stages and Distances between Philadelphia and Several Other Places; the Whole Illustrated by a New and Accurate Map of Kentucke and the Country Adjoining, Drawn from Actual Surveys. Wilmington, DE: printed by James Adams, 1784; John Filson. This Map of Kentucke, Drawn from Actual Observations, is Inscribed with the Most Perfect Respect, to Honorable the Congress of the United States of America and to His Excellcy. George Washington, Late Commander in Chief of Their Army. 51 x 46 cm. Philadelphia: Engraved by Henry D. Pursell and printed by T. Rook, 1784.]

1785
Thomas Hutchins (1730-1789) is appointed Geographer of the United States to direct the rectangular system of surveys, created to dispose of public lands and to document resources and land usage in the territory north and west of the Ohio River (Northwest Territory). During the War of Independence, Hutchins had served as Geographer to the Southern Army (1781-83) and was preparing a geographical description of the United States when called back into federal service (he completes two portions). Hutchins initiates this landmarking task by establishing the east-west Geographer's Line, extending from the Point of Beginning, where the Ohio-Pennsylvania border meets the Ohio River, as the baseline for the Seven Ranges of Townships in eastern Ohio. The township and range scheme of land division, a product of the rectangular system of surveying, becomes a dominant characteristic of much of the American landscape. The geographer title held by Hutchins changes to surveyor general in 1796, and to commissioner when the U.S. General Land Office is created in 1812.
      [Thomas Hutchins. Plat of the Seven Ranges of Townships Being Part of the Territory of the United States, N.W. of the River Ohio; Surveyed in Conformity to an Ordinance of Congress of May 20th, 1785, Under Direction of Thos. Hutchins, Late Geographer of the United States [map]. 61 x 34 cm. Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1796; Thomas Hutchins. A Topographical Description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, Comprehending the Rivers Ohio, Kenhawa, Sioto, Cherokee, Wabash, Illinois, Mississippi; & the Climate, Soil and Produce, Whether Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.... London: Printed for the author, 1778, Cleveland, OH: Burrows Brothers Co., 1904; Thomas Hutchins. An Historical Narrative and Topographical Description of Louisiana and West-Florida, Comprehending the River Mississippi with its Principal Branches and Settlements.... Philadelphia: Printed for the author, 1784, and Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1968; R. M. Robbins. Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain 1776-1970. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976; William D. Pattison. Beginnings of the American Rectangular Land Survey System, 1784-1800. Research Paper No. 50. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1957; Norman J. W. Thrower. Original Survey and Land Subdivision: a Comparative Study of the Form and Effect of Contrasting Cadastral Surveys. AAG Monograph Series No. 4. Chicago: Rand McNally and Co. for Association of American Geographers, 1966; C. Albert White. A History of the Rectangular Survey. U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983; Hildegard Binder Johnson. Order Upon the Land: the U.S. Rectangular Land Survey in the Upper Mississippi. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976; Hildegard Binder Johnson. Toward a National Landscape. In Michael P. Conzen. ed. The Making of the American Landscape. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990. Pp. 127-145; Edward T. Price. Dividing the Land: Early American Beginnings of Our Private Property Mosaic. University of Chicago Geography Research Paper No. 238. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.]

1791
The Washington zero meridian is established by Andrew Ellicott (1754-1820) in laying out the streets and lots of the City of Washington in the District of Columbia according to the plan of Pierre L'Enfant. The Washington prime meridian (0° 0') is drawn through the site of the proposed Capitol, 77° 00' 33".533 west of Greenwich, England. An east-west line, also passing through the Capitol, is established at the same time.
      In 1804, a new Washington meridian is established through the center of the White House that extends north on contemporary 16th Street (source of the names for Meridian Hill and Meridian House, headquarters of the Association of American Geographers). The intersection of this second Washington meridian and Ellicott's east-west baseline is delineated with a stone marker. Although the original marker is subsequently altered, the Jefferson Pier, as it comes to be known, continues to delineate the site today. It serves as a Federal Base Network point (the geodetic control point with the highest level of accuracy in the District of Columbia) and is located 371 feet west and 123 feet north of the center of the Washington Monument. The location of this second Washington meridian is also delineated by The Zero Milestone located between the White House and the Washington Monument, which is established in the 1920s to serve as the point from which highway distances from Washington, D.C. are measured. It provides a contemporary rendering of the Itinerary Column originally proposed by Pierre L'Enfant to measure distances from the capital city to other portions of the continent.
      The White House-centered meridian, along with a third one established in the 1840s at the Old Naval Observatory, serve as zero meridians for numerous American maps throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Zero meridian lines are established for mapping purposes elsewhere in the United States-Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Charlestown, South Carolina among other locales. The United States Congress on September 28, 1850 officially adopts the Old Naval Observatory as the national meridian for astronomical purposes and well-known meridian at Greenwich, England for nautical purposes. (see International Prime Meridian Conference entry at 1884)
      [Joseph Hyde Pratt. American Prime Meridians. Geographical Review 32 (1942): 233-244; Matthew H. Edney. Cartographic Culture and Nationalism in the Early United States: Benjamin Vaughan and the Choice for a Prime Meridian. Journal of Historical Geography 4 (1994): 384-395.]

Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida..., by William Bartram (1739-1823), provides a regional geographic account of his predominantly natural-history focused exploring expeditions in the American Southeast (1773-78). Widely read European editions are republished in England, Ireland, Germany, and France.
      [William Bartram. Travels through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscoculges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Contining an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians. Philadelphia: James and Johnson, 1791; and in William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings. New York: Library of America, 1996.]

1793
The first volume of Erdbeschreibung und Geschichte [Geography and History] von Amerika: die vereinten Staaten von Nordamerika by Christoph Daniel Ebeling (1741-1817) appears. An eighteen-plate Atlas von Nordamerika is planned with geographer Daniel Friedrich Sotzmann, but only ten sheets are published individually. Ebeling, a professor of history and classical languages at the University of Hamburg, compiles these important early geographic accounts of United States through research extending over a half century. Although he never visits the United States, he conducts voluminous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, Jedidiah Morse, Jeremy Belknap, and Noah Webster among numerous other Americans. Ebeling's collection of materials on America numbers in excess of 3,000 volumes and 10,000 maps, at a time when the largest libraries in New York and Philadelphia number 10,000 and 3,000 volumes respectively. Harvard University acquires Ebeling's American materials in 1818, when Israel Thorndike outbids the King of Prussia to purchase them.
      A century and a half later, the historical geographer Ralph H. Brown continues to hold Ebeling's contributions in such high regard that he creates an 'American Ebeling'-the fictional American geographer Thomas Pownall Keystone-to author his classic retrospective regional geography of the Untied States circa 1810 (Brown 1943, xvii).
      [Christoph D. Ebeling. Erdbeschreibung und Geschichte von Amerika: die vereinten Staaten von Nordamerika. 7 vols. Hamburg, Germany: Carl Ernst Bohn, 1793-1816; William C. Lane. Letters of Christoph Daniel Ebeling. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1926; Ralph H. Brown. Early Maps of the United States: the Ebeling-Sotzmann Maps of the Northern Seaboard States. Geographical Review 3 (July 1940); 471-479; Walter W. Ristow. The Ebeling-Sotzmann Atlas von Nordamerika. The Map Collector 14 (March 1981): 2-9; Anon. Professor Ebeling's Library. North American Review 8 (December 1818): 208-212; Ralph H. Brown. Mirror for American: Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard, 1810. Special Publication No. 27. New York: American Geographical Society, 1943.]

1794
The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, by Samuel Williams (1743-1817), is one of the earliest works by an American in the regional geography tradition.
      [Samuel Williams. The Natural and Civil History of Vermont. Walpole, NH: Printed by Isaiah Thomas and David Carlisle Jr., 1794, and 2 vol. 2nd edition. Burlington, VT: Printed by Samuel Mills, 1809.]

1795
In addition to the many geography books prepared by Jedidiah Morse, several other highly successful geography works appear during the initial phase of American book publishing. Most notable are Astronomical and Geographical Catechism by Caleb Bingham (1757-1817), which sells more than 100,000 copies by the early 1830s and passes through at least 22 editions, and Geography, or A Description of the World by Daniel Adams (1773-1864), which sells 80,000 copies during the same period and passes through at least 16 editions. Nathaniel Dwight's A Short but Comprehensive System of the Geography of the World, also introduced at this time, is generally credited with introducing the catechistic approach-memorization of questions and answers-to geography texts. (see Morse entry at 1784)
      [Caleb Bingham. An Astronomical and Geographical Catechism, for the Use of Common Schools and Private Persons. Boston: S. Hall, 1795-1818; Daniel Adams. Geography: or a Description for the World in Three Parts, Geographical Orthography, a Grammar of Geography, a Description of the Earth; Accompanied with an Atlas, to Which is Added an Easy Method of Constructing Maps; Illustrated by Plates; for the use of Schools and Academies. Boston: Lincoln and Edmands, 1814-1838; Nathaniel Dwight. A Short but Comprehensive System of the Geography of the World, by Way of Question and Answer; Principally Designed for Children and Common Schools. Hartford, CT: Hudson and Goodwin, 1795-1814.]

1796
A Sketch of the Soil, Climate, Weather and Diseases of South-Carolina, by David Ramsey is one of the earliest works by an American in the regional geography tradition. Ramsey notes many factors that distinguish South Carolina's upper country from its lower country.
      [David Ramsey. A Sketch of the Soil, Climate, Weather and Diseases of South-Carolina. Charleston, SC: W. P. Young, 1796.]

1802
A View of South-Carolina, as Respects Her Natural and Civil Concerns, prepared by John Drayton (1677-1822) while serving as governor of South Carolina (1800-02), is one of the earliest works by an American in the regional geography tradition and is the first to include a map that delineates explicit regions at the sub-state scale. Drayton uses the fall line to distinguish between the South Carolina's maritime and upland regions, which he finds differ in terms of both natural and human features. A German edition also appears.
      [John Drayton. Letters Written During a Tour through the Northern and Eastern States of America. Charleston, SC: Harrison and Bowen, 1794; John Drayton. A View of South-Carolina, as Respects Her Natural and Civil Concerns. Charleston, SC: Printed by W. P. Young, 1802, and reprinted Spartanburg, SC: Reprint Co., 1972.]

1804
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), German geographer, visits the United States upon completing the first scientific exploration of New Spain (1799-1804). In Washington, Humboldt imparts his unparalleled geographic knowledge of New Spain and the nation's newly acquired Louisiana Territory to President Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Albert Gallatin, and others during the same month Meriwether Lewis and William Clark initiate the Corps of Discovery's landmark geographic expedition to the Pacific Ocean (1804-06). Jefferson seeks details from Humboldt regarding the largely unknown geography of America's newly acquired lands -"the question of the limits of Louisiana between Spain and the United States is this [which he then describes.] Can the Baron inform me what population may be between those lines of white, red or black people? and whether any & what mines are within them?" (Bergh 1907, vol. 11, p. 27).
      Humboldt also visits in Baltimore, in Lancaster-where he spends time with Andrew Ellicott (America's most accomplished surveyor had just trained Captain Meriwether Lewis in mapping techniques) and botanist Gotthilf H. E. Muhlenberg-and in Philadelphia, where he is hosted by members of the American Philosophical Society and sits for a portrait by Charles Willson Peale. Throughout his visit, he describes his 'Humboltian' vision of science, inquires about the emerging American state, and even discusses the possibility of his exploring North America's 'unscrutinized Regions.' The friendships established during his six-week visit, and his intense interest in all forms of geographic investigation within the United States, are maintained through the rest of his life.
      [Herman R. Friis. Alexander von Humboldts Besuch in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika vom 20. Mai bis zum 30. Juni 1804. In Joachim H. Schultze. ed. Alexander von Humboldt: Studien zu seiner universalen Geisteshaltung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1959; Albert E. Bergh. ed. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. 19 vols. Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1907.]

A View of the Soil and Climate of the United States of America, prepared by Frenchman Constantin François Chasseboeuf Volney (1757-1820) following his three-year residence (1795-98) in the United States, appears in an American edition. Volney, who had previously traveled in and prepared a landmark geographic account of the Middle East, is one of the first Europeans to visit the United States with the stated objective of preparing a geographic account in both physical and human terms. His published volume is limited to an account of its physical geography.
      [Constantin F. C. Volney. A View of the Soil and Climate of the United States of America. Translation of Tableau du Climat et du Sol des États Unis d'Amerique by Charles B. Brown. Philadelphia: T. and G. Palmer, 1804 (1803), and New York: Hafner Publ. Co., 1968; Ralph H. Brown. Materials Bearing upon the Geography of the Atlantic Seaboard, 1790 to 1810. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 28 (1938): 201-231; Ralph H. Brown. The Seaboard Climate in the View of 1800. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 41 (1951): 217-232.]

Modern Geography: a Description of the Empires, Kingdoms, States, and Colonies appears as the first of a series of works by John Pinkerton (1758-1826) that are republications of editions originally issued in England. Pinkerton's texts and atlases provide one of three early sets of geography materials published in the United States that follow the classical 'universal geography' approach-a region-by-region descriptive accounting of Earth's features employed since the time of Strabo (63?B.C.-24A.D.) and Ptolemy (90-168). (see Morse entry at 1784 and Malte-Brun entry at 1824).
      [John Pinkerton. Modern Geography: a Description of the Empires, Kingdoms, States, and Colonies. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. Conrad and Co., 1804, with Aaron Arrowsmith's United States of North America [map], 1:3,000,000, 20 x 24 cm.; John Pinkerton. Pinkerton's Geography, Epitomised for Schools. Philadelphia: S. F. Bradford, 1805; John Pinkerton. A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels. 6 vols. Philadelphia: Kimber and Conrad, 1810-12; John Pinkerton. A Modern Atlas, from the Latest and Best Authorities, Exhibiting the Various Divisions of the World, with its Chief Empires, Kingdoms, and States; in Sixty Maps Carefully Reduced from the Largest and Most Authentic Sources. Philadelphia: T. Dobson, 1818, with 61 maps.]

1804-06
Captains Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838), U.S. Army, lead the Corps of Discovery of the Northwest, the first expedition of geographic exploration sponsored by the U.S. federal government. In seeking 'the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce,' this heroic expedition traverses 4,000 miles from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back along the Missouri River, Snake-Columbia Rivers, and their headwater region. The expedition makes a dramatic first installment to what much later will come to be termed Humboldtian science-it conducts the first scientific geographic reconnaissance of the nation west of the Mississippi River; traverses the North America continent north of New Spain-Mexico for only the second time (Alexander Mackenzie's crossing of the British North America-Canada was first); and establishes continental-scale political claims for the fledgling country on the Atlantic seaboard. It returns with an entirely new geographic information that revises the established geographical lore of the American West as will no other single exploring expedition in the history of America.
      [Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen. eds. History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the Sources of the Missouri, Thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean; Performed during the Years 1804-5-6; by Order of the Government of the United States. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1814, with William Clark. A Map of Lewis and Clark's Track, Across the Western Portion of North America from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, by Order of the Executive of the United States, in 1804. 31 x 72 cm., 1 sheet. Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep; Reuben Gold Thwaites. ed. The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806. 8 vols. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904-05; Gary E. Moulton. ed. The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 13 vols. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001; Gary E. Moulton. ed. Atlas of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1983; Donald D. Jackson. ed. Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents. 2 vols. 2d edition. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978; John Logan Allen. Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975; Alexander Mackenzie. Voyages from Montreal through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in 1789 and 1793. 2 vols. Philadelphia: John Morgan, 1802.]

1805
Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains, by the French botanist François André Michaux (1770-1855), appears in English translation. Michaux derives his account from a three-year (1801-01) grand circuit expedition that took him from Charleston, South Carolina north to Philadelphia and New York City, west to the North American interior of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee via Pennsylvania, and back to Charleston. Michaux's account appears in two volumes-one describes the region's flora, The North American Sylva, (Paris 1818-19), the other, its geography, which provides an account of one of America's early frontiers, the region west of the Appalachian Mountains-Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains (Paris 1804). François André Michaux's father, the botanist André Michaux, who also spends time in the United States, had been asked by Thomas Jefferson on behalf of the American Philosophical Society in 1793 to lead a transcontinental expedition, but the offer was withdrawn when it was learned that he was serving as an agent of the French government. The senior Michaux also produces several accounts of native flora.
      [François André Michaux. Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains, in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Back to Charleston, by the Upper Carolinas, in the Year 1802. London: B. Crosby and Co., 1805, and in R. G. Thwaites. ed. Early Western Travels, 1748-1846. Vol 3. Cleveland, OH: A. H. Clark Co., 1904; Henry Savage, Jr. and Elizabeth J. Savage. André and François André Michaux. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1986; Jefferson to Michaux letter. In Donald D. Jackson. ed. Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents. 2 vols. 2d edition. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978.]

1810
James Wilson (1763-1855), a farmer and blacksmith from Bradford, Vermont, produces his first commercial globes after seeing a pair of terrestrial and celestial globes while visiting Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Terrestrial globes are physical models that present a scientific visualization of Earth from space; celestial globes present the view of space, usually constellations of stars, from outer space. The enterprising artisan Wilson, who is self-taught in the skills of cabinetmaking, geography and cartography, establishes America's first commercial globe-making operation, producing 3, 9, 10 and 13-inch globes. Later in the decade he expands his operation by bringing sons Samuel and John into the business, and relocates to Albany, New York, where operations continue into the 1830s. Globes become a standard instrument of geography education and reference in American classrooms by the 1820s.
      [Leroy E. Kimball. James Wilson of Vermont, America's First Globe Maker. Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society n.s. 48 (1938): 29-48; Deborah Warner. The Geography of Heaven and Earth. Rittenhouse Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise 2 (1987-88): 100-103; David Jaffee. James Wilson and the Early American Globe Makers. The Portolan: Journal of the Washington Map Society 56 (Spring 2003): 24-32; American Treasures of the Library of Congress at the Library of Congress internet site, lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures.]

1812
The History of New-Hampshire: Containing a Geographical Description of the State, by Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798), is one of the outstanding early regional geography accounts prepared by an American.
      [Jeremy Belknap. The History of New-Hampshire. 3 vols. Vol. 3, The History of New-Hampshire: Containing a Geographical Description of the State, with Sketches of its Natural History, Productions, Improvements, and Present State of Society and Manners, Laws and Government. Dover, NH: O. Crosby and J. Varney, 1812.]

1813
An essay forthrightly titled Geography, prepared by Jared Sparks (1789-1866) while a student at Harvard College, provides an unambiguous early call for the inclusion of geography in the curriculum of America's colleges. Prepared for presentation at the Aurius Ramus Society, a Harvard College debating group, Sparks begins-"Few studies are more useful, few more easily attained, and none more universally neglected, than that of geography;" proceeds to develop his argument by citing Francis Bacon and contemporary work by the English geographer John Pinkerton among others; notes geography's importance in understanding historical events as well as contemporary commerce and political occurrences at home and abroad; and closes with points calling for the explicit inclusion of geography in the "course of liberal education" rather than leaving students to their own devices to acquire its gifts of understanding. Sparks becomes a historian, editor of North American Review (1824-31), and professor of history (1839-49) and president (1849-54) of Harvard College.
      [Manuscript in Sparks Collection (132, Misc. papers, vol.1, 1808-14), Harvard University; and reproduced in Ralph H. Brown. A Plea for Geography, 1813 Style. Annals of the Association of American Geography 41 (1951): 233-236.]

1815
American editions of Alexander von Humboldt's works appear rapidly after their initial publication in French or German-Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. 2 vols. New York: I. Riley, 1811; Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the Years 1799-1804. Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1815; Aspects of Nature in Different Lands and Different Climates, with Scientific Elucidations. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1849; Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. 5 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1850-59; The Island of Cuba. New York: Derby and Jackson, 1856; Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. New York: Rudd and Carleton, 1860; and The Travels and Researches of Alexander von Humboldt: Being a Condensed Narrative of His Journeys in the Equinoctial Regions of America, and in Asiatic Russia; Together with Analysis of His More Important Investigations by W. Macgillivray; with a Map of the Orinoco and Engravings. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1869. The works are reviewed in the major journals of the day, e.g., American Whig Review 3 (June 1846): 598-610, DeBow's Review 9 (August 1850): 150-58 and (September 1850): 271-75, and Princeton Review 24 (July 1852): 382-97.
     Inspired in part by von Humboldt and his works, geography, or what historians of science have come to call Humboldtian science, plays a prominent role in America's scientific accomplishments throughout the nineteenth century, primarily through the numerous geographic expeditions sponsored by the federal government. The influence of von Humboldt is also seen in the realistic rendering, i.e., scientific visualization, of landscapes by artists.
      Americans honor von Humboldt with the naming of several geographic entities, e.g., Humboldt River in Nevada, and Humboldt Bay and the General Land Office's Humboldt Meridian in California. At least six public memorials are erected to honor him, and at his death, he is memorialized by Arnold Guyot, Alexander D. Bache, Matthew F. Maury, George Bancroft, and others at the American Geographical Society.
      [Herman R. Friis. Alexander von Humboldts Besuch in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika vom 20. Mai bis zum 30. Juni 1804. In Joachim H. Schultze. ed. Alexander von Humboldt: Studien zu seiner universalen Geisteshaltung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1959; Susan Faye Cannon. Humboldtian Science. In Science in Culture: the Early Victorian Period. New York: Science History Publications, 1978; Edmunds V. Bunske. Humboldt and an Aesthetic Tradition in Geography. Geographical Review 71 (April 1981): 127-146; Katherine E. Manthorne. Legible Landscapes: Text and Image in the Expeditionary Art of Frederic Church. In Edward C. Carter II. ed. Surveying the Record: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930. Memoirs of the APS, Vol. 231. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999. Pp. 133-145; Humboldt Commemoration. Journal of the American Geographical and Statistical Society 1 (October 1859): 225-46.]

1816
Map of the United States with the Contiguous British and Spanish Possessions, published by John Melish (1771-1822) in Philadelphia, is the first large American-produced map to depict the United States as a transcontinental geographic entity. It is accompanied by A Geographical Description of the United States. Six editions and at least 24 states of the map are issued through 1823. Melish is the first American publisher to focus exclusively on cartographic and geographic material.
      [John Melish. Map of the United States with the Contiguous British and Spanish Possessions Compiled from the Latest & Best Authorities. 89 x 141 cm., six sheets, and A Geographical Description of the United States, with the Contiguous British and Spanish Possessions Intended as an Accompaniment to Melish's Map of the Countries. Philadelphia: John Melish, 1816-26, reprint 1974; Walter W. Ristow. John Melish and His Map of the United States. The Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 19 (1962): 159-178; Walter W. Ristow. Early American Atlases and their Publishers. In John A. Wolter and Ronald E. Grim. eds. Images of the World: the Atlas Through History. Washington: Library of Congress and New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997. Pp. 301-329; Walter W. Ristow. Maps and Mapmakers: Commercial Cartography in the Nineteenth Century. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1985.]

Dissected maps, which come to be known as map jigsaw puzzles, are first produced in the United States by A. T. Goodrich in New York City. Jigsaw puzzles, first produced in the 1760s when European map publishers glued maps to pieces of wood and cut them into shapes, began to appear in the United States in the eighteenth century. Used for geography education in both classrooms and homes, map jigsaw puzzles receive special attention in the geography education of persons who are blind.
      [Anne D. Williams. Jigsaw Puzzles: an Illustrated History and Price Guide. Radnor, PA: Homestead Book Co., 1990; Ralph Schoenstein. Genetic Mapping. New York Times (April 9, 2000). American Printing House. A Guide to Dissected Maps of Europe and the United States. Louisville, KY: American Printing House for the Blind, 1874]

1818
The United States Military Academy, established in 1802 at West Point, New York, creates a Department of Geography, History, and Ethics, headed by the Academy's chaplain, the Rev. Cave Jones. A comprehensive course in military and topographical engineering is established during the same year by Sylvanus Thayer, Superintendent of the Academy. During the Academy's early years, about ten percent of its students are trained as topographical engineers and numerous graduates enter the U.S. Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers, also established in 1818. Three early graduates of the program accompany Major Stephen H. Long on the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (see Long entry at 1819-20), the first scientific expedition of the American West to include trained topographers, naturalists, and illustrators. The first American texts in topographical drawing are prepared to guide Academy coursework.
     [Hermann R. Friis. Highlights of the Geographical and Cartographical Contributions of Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy with a Specialization as Topographical Engineers Prior to 1860. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the New York-New Jersey Division of the Association of American Geographers 1 (April 1969): 10-29; Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819 and '20, by Order of the Hon. J. C. Calhoun, Sec. of War: Under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long, originally in 1823, and edited by Edwin James as vols. 14-17 in Reuben Gold Thwaites. ed. Early Western Travels, 1748-1846. Cleveland: Clark, 1905; Lieutenant Seth Eastman. Treatise on Topographical Drawing. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1837; Lieutenant Richard S. Smith. A Manual of Topographical Drawing. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1854-85.]

Major Issac Roberdeau (1753-1829) heads the newly created Topographical Bureau within the Engineer Department of the U.S. Army. Two years earlier, the first systematic topographic and hydrographic surveys had been undertaken by the Board of Engineers for Fortifications within the War Department. In 1829, Roberdeau is succeeded by Colonel John J. Abert (1786-1863), a council member of the American Geographical Society and member of the Geographical Society of Paris. In 1838, the Topographical Bureau is transformed into the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, constituting "an unnamed but nonetheless apparent Corps of Geographers" for the military (Friis). The Corps of Topographical Engineers operates as an extremely influential independent branch of the U.S. Army until the Civil War. It merges with the Corps of Engineers in 1863, and "the age of exploration [within the United States] is at an end and the age of detailed survey is at hand" (Gilbert 203).
     [Frank N. Shubert. ed. The Nation Builders: a Sesquicentennial History of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, 1838-1863. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office of History EP 870-1-37. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988; Hermann R. Friis. Highlights of the Geographical and Cartographical Contributions of Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy with a Specialization as Topographical Engineers Prior to 1860. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the New York-New Jersey Division of the Association of American Geographers 1 (April 1969): 10-29; William H. Goetzmann. Army Exploration in the American West 1803-1863. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959; E. W. Gilbert. The Exploration of Western America 1800-1850: an Historical Geography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1933; Mary M Thomas. John James Abert. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 1, pp. 42-43.]

1819-20
Major Stephen Harriman Long (1784-1864), topographic engineer in the newly created U.S. Army Topographical Bureau, leads the first scientific geographic exploration of the Louisiana Territory that includes trained naturalists and artists. The expedition makes use of the first dip circle (a geomagnetic instrument to measure the inclination angle between the horizon and Earth's magnetic field) made in the United States (Good). The expedition follows the Platte River to the Rocky Mountains, turns south and passes to the east of the Front Range, and returns east via the Canadian River to Fort Smith on the Arkansas River. Long finds as little to commend in the treeless and sparsely watered Central and Southern Plains as had Lieutenant Zebulon Pike when his geographic expedition crossed the Central Plains in 1805-07.
      [Edwin James. ed. Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819 and '20, by Order of the Honorable J.C. Calhoun, Sec. of War: Under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long. Washington, 1823; Stephen H. Long. Map of the Country Situated Between the Meridian of Washington City and the Rocky Mountains Exhibiting the Route of the Late Exploring Expedition Commanded by Maj. Long, Together with other Recent Surveys and Explorations by Himself & Others. manuscript, 139 x 125 cm. Washington: Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, National Archives; Howard E. Evans. Natural History of the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains 1819-1820. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; Major Zebulon Montgomery Pike. An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi, and Through the Western Parts of Louisiana.... Philadelphia, 1810; Donald D. Jackson. ed. The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, with Letters and Related Documents. 2 vols. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966; Gregory A. Good. The Unseen Magnetic Forces of the Earth and the Forgotten Instruments of their Revelation. Rittenhouse: the Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise 1 (February 1987): 40-45.]

1820s
History enters American primary and secondary schools as a separate subject with increasing momentum during the 1820s, first in classical academies, and by the time of the Civil War, at least one course is taught in most secondary schools. The emergence of historical geography texts, designed to accompany the study of ancient, medieval, modern, and American history, parallel this trend. They are often prepared by authors of general geography texts who are also preparing history texts-Joseph E. Worcester, Emma Hart Willard, and Samuel G. Goodrich among others. This form of historical geography textbook remains popular into the post-Civil War era, and continues much later in schools that follow a classical curriculum. Numerous historical geography texts of Palestine emerge in the 1830s to support Christian Bible studies.
     [Joseph E. Worcester. Elements of Geography, Ancient and Modern, with an Atlas. Numerous editions. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard and Co, 1817-44, and his Elements of History. Numerous editions. Boston: Hilliard, Gray and Co. 1833-64; Emma H. Willard. Ancient Geography, as Concerned with Chronology and Preparatory to the Study of Ancient History. Hartford, CT: Oliver D. Cooke, 1822, and her A System of Universal History in Perspective; Accompanied by an Atlas, Exhibiting Chronology in a Picture of Nations, and Progressive Geography in a Series of Maps; Designed for Schools and Academies. Hartford, CT: F. H. Huntington, 1835-58; Samuel G. Goodrich. Peter Parley's Method of Telling about Geography to Children. Hartford, CT: H. and F. J. Huntington, 1829-37, and his Peter Parley's Universal History on the Basis of Geography; Illustrated by Maps and Engravings. 2 vols. New York: M. H. Newman, 1837-73, and Peter Parley's Common School History: Illustrated by Engravings, a Pictorial History of the World, Ancient and Modern, for the Use of Schools. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler and Co., 1849-59; George H. Callcott. History Enters the Schools. American Quarterly 11 (Winter 1959): 470-483.]

1820s-30s
From 1803 when the United States purchases the Louisiana Territory, St. Louis serves as America's gateway to the West, from which federally sponsored geographic expeditions embark (e.g., Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, Zebulon Pike, and Stephen Long) and the fur trade receives goods from resource regions in the West and prepares them for consumer markets in the East (a place of trade articulation). By the 1820s, scores of independent American free trappers venture into a region that America intensely contests with Great Britain to the north, and with Spain, and then Mexico, to the south. Free trappers seek a livelihood primarily from beaver pelts, but cognizant of the market instability for such commodities, they constantly survey these new lands for alternate economic opportunities. Those who lead parties that successfully trap beaver and efficiently transport their pelts to St. Louis become economically successful and heroes of the age-men such as William Henry Ashley, Jedediah Strong Smith, Jim Bridger, and Joseph Walker. By initiating economic enterprises in these rapidly evolving regions at a time when federal government interest in the West wanes, mountain men advance America's control of the land through the acquisition and extension of basic geographic information and by their very presence.
      The fur trade industry serves to provide geographic information "to the American public relatively quickly through newspapers, personal correspondence, and word of mouth from the waterfront taverns in St. Louis and other frontier cities" (Allen, 134). It leads to important alterations and extensions of official and private geographic understanding of the West-perhaps best expressed in a round of freshly revised maps, but also in the creation of heroes in the popular culture through the novels of Washington Irving and others.
      [John Logan Allen. The Invention of the American West: Fur Trade Exploration, 1821-1839. In John Logan Allen. ed. North American Exploration: a Continent Comprehended, Vol. 3. of North American Exploration. 3 vols. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. 132-189; Hiram M. Chittenden. The American Fur Trade of the Far West. 3 vols. New York: F. P. Harper, 1902; David J. Wishart. The Fur Trade of the American West, 1807-1840. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1979; Washington Irving. Astoria; or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1836; Washington Irving. The Rocky Mountains; or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West, Digested from the Journal of Captain B. L. E. Bonneville and Illustrated from Various Other Sources. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1837.]

1820
Rudiments of Geography, on a New Plan, Designed to Assist the Memory by Comparison and Classification; Accompanied with an Atlas Exhibiting the Prevailing Religions, Forms of Government, Degrees of Civilization, and the Comparative Size of Towns, Rivers and Mountains, appearing in 1820 and authored by William Channing Woodbridge (1782-1851) and Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870), introduces America's second phase of geography textbook production. Most successful textbooks and supporting materials from the 1820s on will typically be authored by teachers. Woodbridge and Willard seek to incorporate many of the approaches promoted by Swiss education reformer Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827) in their many books-avoiding memorization, emphasizing discovery from within the student's existing knowledge base by beginning with material that is familiar to the student (local area) and progressing to the unknown (rest of the world), and providing developmentally appropriate (grade-specific) texts.
      [William C. Woodbridge and Emma H. Willard. Rudiments of Geography, on a New Plan, Designed to Assist the Memory by Comparison and Classification; Accompanied with an Atlas Exhibiting the Prevailing Religions, Forms of Government, Degrees of Civilization, and the Comparative Size of Towns, Rivers and Mountains. Numerous editions. Hartford, CT: G. S. Good, 1820-1833; Anne Firor Scott. What, Then, is the American: This New Woman? Journal of American History 65 (December 1978): 679-703; Daniel H. Calhoun.1984. Eyes for the Jacksonian World: William C. Woodbridge and Emma Willard. Journal of the Early Republic 4 (Spring 1984): 1-26; Alma Lutz. Emma Willard: Daughter of Democracy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929; Susan Grigg. Emma Hart Willard. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 23, pp. 408-410; Edward L. Lach, Jr. William Channing Woodbridge. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 23, pp. 790-791.]

1821
Travels in New-England and New-York, by Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), president of Yale College, is published posthumously as a four-volume work. It is an outstanding early regional geography and is soon republished in England (1823).
      [Timothy Dwight. Travels in New-England and New-York. 4 vols. New Haven, CT: T. Dwight, 1821-22, and reprinted, Barbara Miller Solomon with Patricia M. King. eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.]

1823
The New American Atlas, by Henry Schenck Tanner (1786-1858), appears in a complete edition (the first of its five folios had been issued in 1818). The atlas is immediately hailed as a major contribution to American geography-"No branch of study has been gaining ground more rapidly and successfully among us, during the last few years, than that of geography...as an American Atlas [italics original], we believe Mr. Tanner's work to hold a rank far above any other, which has been published. The authentic documents to which he had access, the abundance of his materials, the apparent fidelity, with which they are compiled, the accurate construction of his maps, and the elegance with which they are executed, all these afford ample proofs of the high character of the work, of its usefulness as a means of extending the geographical knowledge of our own country" (North American Review). The same high regard continues to hold-"The New American Atlas [is] a towering landmark in American mapmaking" (Conzen).
      Tanner's atlas continues to be considered a landmark publication in American geography for the quality of its maps, the result of Tanner's engraving skills; because it provides maps of the states at a uniform scale (1:940,000) for the first time; and because it provides an accurate representation of the rapidly evolving interior region of the nation. A Geographical Memoir, included with the atlas, details its information sources. Tanner, a leader in establishing commercial map publishing in the United States, produces numerous other atlases, wall maps, and geographic reference and guide volumes.
      [Henry S. Tanner. The New American Atlas: Containing Maps of the Several States of the North American Union, Projected and Drawn on a Uniform Scale, from Documents Found in the Public Offices of the United States and State Governments, and Other Original and Authentic Information [with a Geographical Memoir]. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1823-1939, reviewed in North American Review 18 (April 1824): 382-390; Henry S. Tanner. An Atlas of Ancient Geography: Comprehended in Sixteen Maps, Selected for the Most Approved Works, to Elucidate the Writings of the Ancient Works, Both Sacred and Profane. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1826; Henry S. Tanner. A New General Atlas Consisting of Maps of the Several Grand Divisions of the Known World. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1828; Henry S. Tanner. A New Pocket Atlas of the United States, with the Roads and Distances, Designed for the Use of Travellers. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1828; Henry S. Tanner. A New and Elegant Universal Atlas. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1833-46; Atlas of the United States: Consisting of Maps of the Several States of the North American Union. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1826-35; Henry S. Tanner. Map of the Canals and Railroads of the United States. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1830; Henry S. Tanner. The American Traveller. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1834; Henry S. Tanner. A New and Elegant Universal Atlas. Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1836-46; Michael P. Conzen. Henry Schenck Tanner. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 19, pp. 308-309.]

1824
Précis de la Géographie Universelle, ou description de toutes les parties du monde, sur un plan nouveau (Paris, 6 vols., 1810-1829), Danish geographer Conrad Malte-Brun's (1775-1826) grand compendium of world geography, is translated and appears in its first American edition in 1824. It is one of three early geography books published in the United States that follow the classical 'universal geography' approach-a region-by-region descriptive accounting of Earth's features employed since the time of Strabo (63?B.C.-24A.D.) and Ptolemy (90-168). Malte-Brun first provides a 'theory of geography'-mathematical, physical and human principles for subdividing Earth-then divides Earth into continents, countries, and regions within large countries, and provides an accounting of attributes within each of those geographic entities. Three other multi-volume translations appear during the next two decades, as well as several derivative school textbooks based on the larger text. (see Morse entry at 1784 and Pinkerton entry at 1804)
      [Conrad Malte-Brun. Universal Geography, or a Description of All Parts of the World, on a New Plan, According to the Great Natural Divisions of the Globe; accompanied with Analytical, Synoptical, and Elementary Tables; Improved by the Addition of the Most Recent Information, Derived from Various Sources. 5 vols., 3,038 pages. Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1824-26; Strabo. The Geography of Strabo. Translated by H. L. Jones. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917; Ptolemy. The Geography. Translated and edited by Edward Luther Stevenson. New York: New York Public Library, 1932.]

1825
Atlas of the State of South Carolina, published by Robert Mills (1781-1855), is the first atlas produced in the United States to depict a single state. It contains twenty-eight maps, all at the scale of 1:126,700, which are prepared by the distinguished early American engraver Henry Schenck Tanner (1786-1858). Two years earlier, Tanner had completed the highly acclaimed The New American Atlas. Robert Mills, one of America's first professionally trained architects, is also responsible for designing the Treasury and Patent Office buildings in Washington, D.C. and the Washington Monuments in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. He also produces a regional geographic account of South Carolina while serving as architect and engineer for the state of South Carolina (1820-38).
      [Robert Mills. Atlas of the State of South Carolina. Columbia, SC: Robert Mills, 1825, revised, 1838, facsimile, Columbia, SC: Lucy Hampton Bostick and Fant H. Thornley, 1938, and reprint, Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1980; Robert Mills. Statistics of South Carolina, including a View of Its Natural, Civil, and Military History, General and Particular. Charleston, SC: Hurlbut and Lloyd, 1826, and reprint, Spartanburg, SC: Reprint Co., 1972.]

1826
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio offers its first courses in geography, 'Ancient Geography' and 'Modern Geography,' taught by John E. Annan. The university's Department of Geography, initially chaired by George Wilson Hoke, is established in 1906. The first Bachelors degree with a major in geography is awarded in 1925, and a graduate degree program is established in 1927. The department currently offers the Bachelors degree in geography and in urban and regional planning and the Masters degree in geography.

1830s
The decade of the 1830s witnesses two events of significance in American geography education-(1) the first geography textbooks are embossed for blind readers, and (2) two grade-specific series of geography textbooks are introduced that will prove to be among the early geography textbook best-sellers. Some of these textbooks will remain in print for a century.
      The first geography textbooks embossed for blind readers are prepared by the noted educator of blind students, Samuel Gridley Howe, at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts (it relocates to Watertown, Massachusetts in 1912). Each of the embossed geography textbooks use the ‘Boston line’ system-all lower case raised letters based on the Roman alphabet, and one of several systems of raised letters that precede the Braille system. They are among the earliest books embossed in the United States for the blind readers (the first, Gospel According to St. Mark, appeared in 1833).
     [Perkins School for the Blind. Howe’s Geography. Boston, MA: Perkins School for the Blind, 1836; Perkins School for the Blind. Howe’s Atlas of the United States. Boston, MA: Perkins School for the Blind, 1837; Perkins School for the Blind. Atlas of the Principal Islands of the Globe. Boston, MA: Perkins School for the Blind, 1838; Perkins School for the Blind. Howe’s General Atlas. Boston, MA: Perkins School for the Blind, 1847.]

The first of two popular series of geography textbooks that appear during The 1830s is authored by Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793-1860), whose many works are produced under the pseudonym Peter Parley. His most popular Geography textbook, Peter Parley's Geography, sells more than 2,000,000 copies. Another of his geography textbooks sells more than 1,000,000 copies, and one is translated into French.
      [Samuel G. Goodrich. Peter Parley's Method of Telling about Geography to Children. Hartford, CT: H. and F. J. Huntington, 1830-37; Samuel G. Goodrich. A System of School Geography: Chiefly Derived from Malte-Brun, and Arranged According to the Inductive Plan of Instruction. New York: F. J. Huntington, 1830-39; Samuel G. Goodrich. The Child's Book of American Geography: Designed as an Easy and Entertaining Work for the Use of Beginners; with Sixty Engravings and Eighteen Maps. Boson: Waitt and Dow, 1831-37; A System of Universal Geography, Popular and Scientific, Comprising a Physical, Political, and Statistical Account of the World and its Various Divisions; Embracing numerous Sketches from Recent Travels, and Illustrated by Engravings of Manners, Costumes, Curiosities, Cities, Edifices, Remarkable Animals, Fruits, Trees, and Plants. Numerous editions. Cincinnati: Roffe and Young, 1832-42; Samuel G. Goodrich. A National Geography for Schools. New York: Huntington and Savage, 1845-52; and other.]

The second popular series of geography textbooks to appear during the 1830s is created by Samuel Augustus Mitchell (1792-1868), and includes more than a dozen titles. Mitchell's most popular text, A System of Modern Geography, is revised and remains in print for a half century. His other geography works include several series of graded texts, atlases, maps, and instructor's manuals. Mitchell becomes America's best selling author of geography textbooks during the nineteenth century. Some of his works continue in use into the 1930s.
      [Samuel Augustus Mitchell. A System of Modern Geography: Comprising a Description of the Present State of the World, and its Five Great Divisions, Embellished by Numerous Engravings, and Illustrated by an Atlas of Maps Drawn and Engraved to Accompany the Work. Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait, and Co., 1839-92; Samuel Augustus Mitchell. Mitchell's Primary Geography, or, An Easy Introduction to the Science of Geography: Designed for the Instruction of Children in Schools and Families: Illustrated by One Hundred and Twenty Engravings, and Fourteen Maps. Philadelphia: A. Cowperthwait and Co., 1840-66; Samuel Augustus Mitchell. Mitchell's Ancient Geography: Designed for Academies, Schools, and Families; a System of Classical and Sacred Geography Embellished with Engravings of Remarkable Events, Views of Ancient Cities and Various Interesting Antique Remains; Together with an Ancient Atlas Containing Maps Illustrating the Work. Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait and Co., 1845-72; Samuel Augustus Mitchell. Mitchell's School Atlas: Comprising the Maps and Tables Designed to Accompany Mitchell's School and Family Geography. Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait and Co., 1839-93; Samuel Augustus Mitchell. An Accompaniment to Mitchell's Map of the World on Mercator's Projection: Containing an Index to the Various Countries, Cities, Towns, Islands, &c., Represented on the Map, and So Connected Therewith that the Position of Any Place Exhibited on It May be Readily Ascertained; also a General Description of the Five Great Divisions of the Globe, America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceanica, with Their Several Empires, Kingdoms, States, Territories, & c. Philadelphia: Hinman and Dutton, 1837-44; Samuel Augustus Mitchell. A Key to the Study of the Maps Comprising Mitchell's Atlas, in a Series of Lessons Designed as Exercises for Young Beginners. Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait and Co., 1841; and numerous other works.]

1830s-1880s
Travel lectures are one of the few ways Americans encounter the physical and human geographies of locales beyond their immediate home worlds throughout most of the nineteenth century. They account for one of the most requested topics offered at the popular public lectures delivered at local Lyceums. The Lyceum movement emerges in the 1830s, will continue into the 1880s, and is hugely popular. By the 1840s, Lyceum societies exist in some 4,000 American communities, mostly in northern states. Conceived of as entertaining but purposeful public-improvement projects, one can conceive of today’s counterpoint - community residents converging on a large-screen multiplex cinema to view public television programs weekly throughout the winter months. Popular lecturers on the ‘Lyceum circuit’ include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Horace Greeley, Mark Twain, and for travel lectures, Bayard Taylor.
      Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), dubbed the Laureate of the Gilded Age and a natural geographer, is also King of the Travel Lecture. He invents travel writing as a profession in America, and is intimately involved in the affairs of the American Geographical Society, and for a time, its librarian. Traveling to make first-hand observations of current acquisitions of place-specific geographic knowledge, Taylor manages to be the only writer on Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, visits Alexander von Humboldt and August Petermann while in Europe, and visits extensive portions of Africa, the Middle East, India, the Arctic, and the western regions of the United States, solely for the purpose of producing books about those places and lecturing. During the 1854-55 lecture season, he delivers 128 lectures in towns ranging from Bangor, Maine to Baltimore, Maryland and from Boston, Massachusetts to Davenport, Iowa. New editions of his writings appear into the 1930s.
      [Carl Bode. The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956; Donald M. Scott. The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-Nineteenth Century America. Journal of American History 66 (March 1980): 791-809; Robert C. Bredeson. Landscape Description in Nineteenth-Century American Travel Literature. American Quarterly 20 (Spring 1968): 86-94; Bayard Taylor. At Home and Abroad: a Sketch-Book of Life, Scenery, and Men. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1860; Larzer Ziff. Return Passages: Great American Travel Writing, 1780-1910. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000; Richmond C. Beatty. Bayard Taylor, Laureate of the Gilded Age. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1936; Cary Wolfe. Bayard Taylor. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.]

1832
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), Office of Indian Affairs’ agent to the northern tribes, and Lieutenant James Allen, U.S. Army, locate and map the ‘veritable source’ of the Mississippi River and rename it Lake Itasca (from the Latin veritas caput). It is one of numerous expeditions to the Upper Midwest by Schoolcraft while serving in the role of both geographic explorer and Indian agent. (see Nicollet entry at 1836-40)
      [James Allen and Henry R. Schoolcraft. Letter from the Secretary of War, Transmitting a Map and Report of Lieut. [James] Allen and H. B. [sic] Schoolcraft’s Visit to the Northwest Indians in 1832. 23rd Congress, 1st Session, House Doc. 323, Serial 257. Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1834, which includes Map of the Route Passed Over by an Expedition into the Indian Country in 1832 to the Source of the Mississippi by Lieut. J. Allen U.S. Inf. 1:364,320, 39 x 48 cm.; Henry R. Schoolcraft. Narrative of an Expedition Through the Upper Mississippi to Itasca Lake, the Actual Source of this River, Embracing an Exploratory Trip through the St. Croix and Burntwood (or Brule) Rivers, in 1832. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1834; Henry R. Schoolcraft. Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820; Resumed and Completed by the Discovery of Its Origin in Itacsa Lake in 1832, by Authority of the United States. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Co., 1855, and Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint Co., 1973; Philip P. Mason. ed. Schoolcraft’s Expedition to Lake Itasca: the Discovery of the Source of the Mississippi. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1958; Henry R. Schoolcraft. History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. 6 vols. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Co., 1851-57, and New York: Paladin Press, 1969.]

1836-40
Joseph Nicolas Nicollet leads the first geographic expedition of the newly created U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers to the upper reaches of the Mississippi River and as far up the Missouri River as Fort Pierre. In conducting the first truly scientific topographic survey of the nation's interior region, the expedition discovers that the area is in fact a single geographic drainage basin. On locating the source of the Mississippi River, Nicollet records-“The honor of having first explored the sources of the Mississippi, and of introducing a knowledge of them into physical geography, belongs to Mr. Schoolcraft and Lieutenant Allen. I come only after these gentlemen; but I may be permitted to claim some merit for having completed what was wanting for a full geographical account of these sources. Moreover, I am, I believe, the first traveller who has carried with him astronomical instruments, and put them to profitable account along the whole course of the Mississippi from its mouth to its sources” (Nicollet 1843). The expedition’s final report includes an outstanding description of the region’s physical and human geography and the map, Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River From Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information. A half century after the expedition’s findings are reported, the American Geographical Society, Royal Geographical Society, and the International Geographical Congress all play roles in serving as arbiters to the veracity of claims by Henry Schoolcraft and Joseph Nicollet to having discovered the source of the Mississippi River (Hurlbut).
      [Joseph N. Nicollet. Report Intended to Illustrate a Map of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River. 26th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Executive Document 237, Serial 380. Washington, 1843, which includes Joseph N. Nicollet and Lieutenant John C. Frémont. Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River From Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information [map]. 1:1,200,000, 94 x 78 cm. Washington, 1843; Joseph N. Nicollet. [Nicollet] Exhibited His Original Map of the Northwestern Territory of the United States, Made from Personal Observations, and Read an Announcement of His Geographical Exploration of the Sources of the Mississippi. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 3 (1843): 140-142; William H. Goetzmann. Army Exploration of the American West, 1803-1863. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959; Martha C. Bray. Joseph Nicollet and His Map. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1980; Martha C. Bray. Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies: the Expeditions of 1838-39, with Journals, Letters, and Notes on the Dakota Indians. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1993; George C. Hurlbut. The Pretended Discovery of the Source of the Mississippi River. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 23 (1891): 378-385, which includes J. V. Brower. Detailed Hydrographic Chart of the Ultimate Source of the Mississippi River [map]. 1:190,080, 66 x 45 cm.]

1837
The U.S. Post Office Department (POD), predecessor to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), creates the Office of the Topographer to maintain and utilize the geographic information it collects for the delivery of mail. Henry A. Burr serves as the agency’s first Topographer. The Office of the Topographer provides one of the nation’s earliest examples of a federal government agency formally grappling with the issues involved in creating, maintaining, and utilizing geographic information nationwide. It is an operational environment requiring geographic information that is readily useable on a daily basis as well as for planning purposes. Other agencies of the federal government addressing extensive geographic information requirements by this time are the War Department, in conjunction with military operations, and the Census Office, in conducting the decennial census.
      The demand for accurate geographic information to facilitate mail delivery existed in the United States prior to creation of the Post Office Department’s Office of the Topographer. Such demands existed for each of the various private efforts and Great Britain’s Royal Post of the colonial era, and for the private and governmental efforts during subsequent Continental Congress and Confederation of States periods. The work of Abraham Bradley, Jr. (1731-1824) represents the first organized effort by the emerging nation’s federal government to address this demand for the delivery of mail. His landmark A Map of the United States: Exhibiting Post Roads and Distances, the first important cartographic representation of the developing postal service, is issued in 1796. It depicts the nation’s network of post roads, towns, political jurisdictions, etc., and new versions are issued through the 1820s. In 1839, David H. Burr (1803-1875), Geographer to the U.S. House of Representatives, prepares another landmark publication regarding postal geographic information, The American Atlas, a folio of thirteen postal maps.
      In 1865, the by now renamed Division of Topography expands its operations to publish and maintain two separate map series at vastly different scales - small-scale post route maps for states or groups of states depicting post offices, permanent mail routes between offices, and route distances, and large-scale maps that depict individual rural door-to-door delivery routes. With numerous alterations in conceptualizing the process of moving postal items from senders to addressees, radical restructuring of systems resulting from technological innovations, and the evolving challenges presented in structuring, storing, and cartographically expressing geographic information itself, the use of geographic information systems to improve postal services continues to evolve.
      [Virginia W. Mason. The U.S. Post Office Department, Division of Topography: the Conception, Production, and Obsolescence of Postal Mapping in the United States. Unpublished M.S. thesis. Madison, WI: Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002; Abraham Bradley, Jr. A Map of the United States: Exhibiting Post Roads and Distances. 1:2,400,000, 42 x 55 cm., 2 sheets. Georgetown, DC, 1796; David H. Burr. The American Atlas: Exhibiting the Post Offices, Post Roads, Railroads, Canals, Physical and Political Divisions of the United States of North America; Constructed from Government Surveys and Other Official Materials. London: J. Arrowsmith, 1839, electronic version at memory.loc.gov; Richard R. John. Spreading the News: the American Postal Service from Franklin to Morse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.]

Horace Mann (1796-1859), often referred to as the father of American public education, champions a series of education reforms that include geography education while serving as secretary of the Massachusetts' Board of Education (1837-1848). Common schools, the cornerstone of the reforms he promotes, are a system of free universal non-sectarian educational facilities for children in primary and elementary grades that-are publicly supported by citizens through taxes; are lead by professionally trained classroom teachers; bring together students of different religious, social, and ethnic backgrounds in the same classroom; and conduct instruction free of harsh punishments. While touring Europe to gain perspectives on alternative teaching techniques, Mann consults with Carl Ritter (1779-1859), Germany's leading academic geographer, and discovers the extraordinary wall maps of German cartographer Heinrich Berghaus (1791-1884).
      Of the Prussian classroom instruction in geography, Mann writes, "the children were [first] initiated into the ideas of space, without which we can know no more of geography than we can of history without the idea of time, ...[beginning] with objects perfectly familiar to the child-the schoolhouse with the grounds around it, the home with its yards or gardens, and the street leading from the one to the other." Using wall maps and the delineation of landforms on the blackboard, teachers actively engage students in discovering process geomorphology including the connections of landforms "with commerce, manufactures, and history" (Mann's Annual Report for 1843, 1891, Vol. 2, pp. 332 and 335).
      Mann promotes his approach to geography education in his many publications, including Lectures in Education (1845) and Common School Journal, and in convincing Arnold Guyot, soon to be professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton University, to conduct summer workshops in Massachusetts' normal schools and teacher institutes (1849-55). In response to his interaction in presenting new forms of geography instruction with teachers, Guyot will author numerous textbooks and create innovative teaching aids for the new common schools (see Guyot entry at 1866).
      One other response to Mann's education reforms proves consequential for geography education-the creation of normal schools, i.e., teacher's colleges. The nation's first Normal School is established at Lexington, Massachusetts, and after moving to Framingham, Massachusetts, becomes Framingham State College. Geography, orthography (spelling), English grammar, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and the theory and practice of teaching, are all subjects of instruction in these early professional schools for teachers. William B. Fowle's Practical Geography and its accompanying Atlas are among the initial required texts for instruction in Massachusetts' normal schools, and Fowle goes on to produce several geography textbooks for use in the new common schools (Barnard).
      [Horace Mann. Life and Works of Horace Mann, edited by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann. 5 vols. Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard, 1891; J. G. Reardon. ed. Horace Mann Centennial, 1837-1937. Boston: Walter A. Smith for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Department of Education, 1937; William B. Fowle. Practical Geography, as Taught in the Monitorial School. Boston: T. P. and J. S. Fowle, 1824; William B. Fowle. Common School Geography. Boston: W. B. Fowle and N. Capen, 1843; William B. Fowle. An Elementary Geography for Massachusetts Children. Boston: Fowle and Capen, 1845; Henry Barnard. Normal Schools, and Other Institutions and Agencies for the Professional Education of Teachers. 2 vols. Hartford, CT: Case, Tiffany and Co., 1851.]

Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts includes geography in its curriculum from its founding by Mary Lyon (1797-1849) in 1837. Geography serves as an essential component of Mount Holyoke’s liberal arts curriculum, as a bridge between the social and natural sciences through its human and physical realms, and as a core set of classes for the college’s major in International Relations. The Department of Geography and Geology, which offers separate majors in geography and geology from 1930, evolves into the current Department of Earth and Environment. www.mtholyoke.edu
      [Peter M. Enggass. Geography at Mount Holyoke Seminary and College, 1837-1984. In John E. Harmon and Timothy J. Rickard. eds. Geography in New England. New Britain, CT: New England-St. Lawrence Geographical Society, 1988. Pp. 25-29; Willystine Goodsell. ed. Pioneers of Women’s Education in the United States: Emma Willard, Catherine Beecher, Mary Lyon. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1931.]

1838-42
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) of the U.S. Navy leads the United States Exploring Expedition, a contingent of nearly 500 persons (including nine civilian scientists) and six vessels, on the first overseas expedition of exploration sponsored by the federal government. The expedition's circumnavigation of Earth carries it 87,000 miles through the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Antarctic Oceans. Among the 241 maps and charts the expedition produces are ones that record improved oceanic wind and current information, and dramatically improved nautical charts, including a 1,500-mile plot of the Antarctic coastline confirming that the southern landmass is of continental size. The expedition's Map of the Oregon Territory, 1841 establishes the first accurate American representation of the Pacific Northwest coastline. The map enables the somewhat later continental geographic expedition lead by Lieutenant John C. Frémont in 1843-44 to precisely position its western terminus, where the Columbia River enters the Pacific Ocean.
      [Charles Wilkes. Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842. 5 vols. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845; Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis. Magnificent Voyagers: the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1985, esp. Ralph E. Ehrenberg, John A. Wolter, and Charles A. Burroughs. Surveying and Charting the Pacific Basin. Pp. 164-187.]

1842-49
Lieutenant John C. Frémont leads four U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers' geographic expeditions to the Rocky Mountains, Washington, Oregon, and California over a period of several years. Three of them will prove to be of major importance in providing reliable geographic information about the American West. The expedition Frémont leads during the summer of 1842 scientifically maps territory that extends from Kansas City to South Pass in Wyoming-what is already coming to be known as the Oregon Trail-and Frémont climbs what he believes to be the highest peak in Wyoming's Wind River Range (and North America), naming it for himself.
      The next season's expedition (1843-44) connects the remainder of the Oregon Trail with the Pacific Ocean and the geographic information available from the earlier U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838-42, which had already mapped the northwest coastline and a portion of the Columbia River. It ascertains that the Rio San Buenaventura, long believed to drain the region south of the Columbia River, is a geographic myth and does not actually exist. It also determines that the region that comes to be termed the Great Basin is in fact an area of interior drainage. The expedition also discovers that the source region of the Missouri, Columbia, and Green Rivers is more than 300 miles north of the source region of the Platte, Rio Grande, and Arkansas Rivers, thus dispelling the long-held notion that the West possessed one grand headwater region for all of its rivers. The scientific contributions to geographic information, and dispelling of geographic myths, brought about by these two expeditions are graphically expressed in two landmark maps that are the product of field traverse, scientific observation, and use of the most advanced surveying and topographic mapping techniques available. One-Map of an Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-1844-is the first scientifically based map of a large portion of the West; the second-Topographical Map of the Road from Missouri to Oregon Commencing at the Mouth of the Kansas In the Missouri River and Ending at the Mouth of the WallahWallah in the Columbia-connects the nation's central region (from Kansas City) with the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
      The nation's war with Mexico intercedes into the third expedition lead by Frémont (1845-48) with numerous complications, but it still produces the scientifically useful [Topographic] Map of Oregon and Upper California. Among many other activities during Frémont's long and adventuresome career, he serves as vice president of the American Geographical Society.
      [John C. Frémont. Report on an Exploration of the Country Lying Between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, on the Line of the Kansas and Great Platte Rivers. Washington, 1843; John C. Frémont. Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-44. Washington, 1845; Charles Preuss. Topographical Map of the Road from Missouri to Oregon Commencing at the Mouth of the Kansas In the Missouri River and Ending at the Mouth of the WallahWallah in the Columbia. seven sheets. Baltimore: E. Weber and Co., 1846; John C. Frémont. Geographical Memoir upon Upper California in Illustration of His Map of Oregon and California. 30th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Misc. Document No. 148. Washington, 1848, with Charles Preuss. Map of Oregon and Upper California From the Surveys of John Charles Frémont and other Authorities. 1:3,000,000, 69 x 87 cm. Baltimore: E. Weber and Co., 1848; John C. Frémont. The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California; to which is Added a Description of the Physical Geography of California. Buffalo, NY: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1854; Leroy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen. eds. Frémont's Fourth Expedition: a Documentary Account of the Disaster of 1848-1849, with Diaries, Letters, and Reports by Participants in the Tragedy. Glendale, CA: A. H. Clark Co., 1960; Charles Preuss. Exploring with Frémont: the Private Diaries of Charles Preuss, Cartographer for John C. Frémont on His First, Second, and Fourth Expeditions to the Far West. Edited and translated by Erwin G. Gudde and Elizabeth K. Gudde. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958; Donald D. Jackson and Mary Lee Spence. eds. The Expeditions of John Charles Frémont. 3 vols. with map portfolio. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1970-84; Allan Nevins. Frémont: Pathmaker of the West. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1939; Pamela Herr. John C. Frémont. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 8, pp. 459-462.]

1846-53
Lieutenant William Hemsley Emory (1811-1887) of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers accompanies Colonel Stephen W. Kearny on one of several expeditions undertaken to collect geographic information in conjunction with the nation's war with Mexico. Emory travels from Bent's Fort in what is now Colorado to San Diego via Sante Fe and the Gila River, and produces Military Reconnaissance of the Arkansas, Rio del Norte, and Gila Rivers, the first accurate cartographic representation of what is now the American Southwest. Following the war, Emory's geographic work in the Southwest continues with the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey (1849-53), for which he produces an improved map of the Southwest and a geographic description of the area.
      [Adrian G. Traas. From the Golden Gate to Mexico City: the U.S. Army Topographical Engineers in the Mexican War, 1846-1848. Washington: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Center for Military History, 1993; William H. Emory. Notes of a Military Reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth in Missouri, to San Diego in California Including Parts of the Arkansas, Del Norte [Rio Grande], and Gila Rivers, with Military Reconnaissance of the Arkansas, Rio del Norte, and Gila Rivers [map], drawn by Joseph Welch. 30th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document 7. Washington, 1847-48; William H. Emory. Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1850-53. 34th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document 108. 3 vols. Washington, 1857-58; John Russell Bartlett. Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, Connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission during the Years 1850, 1851, 1852, and 1853. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1854; Norman J. W. Thrower. William H. Emory and the Mapping of the American Southwest Borderlands. Terrae Incognitae 22 (1990): 41-91; L. David Norris, James C. Milligan, and Odie B. Faulk. William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1998; Paula Rebert. La Gran Línea: Mapping the United States-Mexico Boundary, 1894-1857. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2001]

1847
U.S. Expedition to Explore the Dead Sea and Jordan River, commanded by Lieutenant William Francis Lynch (1801-1865), U.S. Navy, is undertaken during 1847-48. The land portion of the expedition, which lasts three weeks, includes astronomical, topographic, and botanical observations, and produces several maps of the Dead Sea area. The publicly-stated mission of the expedition is to measure the difference in elevation between the Mediterranean and Dead seas, and no doubt ‘show the American flag’ in the Middle East, but Lynch also seeks verification of the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah. The narrative of the expedition produced privately by Lynch is extremely popular. It is issued and reprinted seven times in United States, printed twice in Great Britain, and appears in a German-language edition (Leipzig: Dyk’sche Buchhandlung, 1850), all prior to issuance of the official U.S. government report in 1852.
      [William F. Lynch. Narrative of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1849; William F. Lynch. Official Report of the United States Expedition to Explore the Dead Sea and River Jordan. Baltimore, MD: Printed by John Murphy and Co., 1852; William F. Lynch. Commerce and the Holy Land. Philadelphia: Printed by King and Baird, 1860; Robert E. Rook. The 150th Anniversary of the United States’ Expedition to Explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan. Amman, Jordan: American Center or Oriental Research, 1998.]

1848
Physical Geography, by Mary Somerville (1780-1872) of England and originally published in London, appears as the first explicit physical geography textbook to be published (republished) in the United States. At least two other editions are republished in the United States (1850 and 1853). Several other physical geography textbooks appear prior to the Civil War, including works by George W Fitch, with at least a dozen printings/editions between 1855 and 1869, and David M. Warren (1820-1861), whose texts will be revised by others and remain in print to 1908. Another two-dozen physical geography texts appear prior to 1900.
      [Mary Somerville. Physical Geography. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1848, with numerous London editions, 1848-77; Marie Sanderson. Mary Somerville: Her Work in Physical Geography. Geographical Review 64 (July 1974): 410-420; George William Fitch. Outlines of Physical Geography. New York: J. H. Colton and Co., 1855; David M. Warren. System of Physical Geography: Containing a Description of the Natural Features of the Land and Water, the Phenomena of the Atmosphere, and the Distribution of Vegetable and Animal Life; to which is Added a Treatise on the Physical Geography of the United States; the Whole Embellished by Numerous Engravings, and Illustrated by Twenty Copper-plate and Electrotyped Maps and Charts. Philadelphia: Cowperthwait and Co., 1856.]

1849
Earth and Man, by Arnold H. Guyot (1807-1884), is published and widely reviewed in the American press. It is viewed by contemporaries as an American contribution to the geography research tradition defined by Humboldt's Cosmos and Ritter's Erdkunde, often referred to as the 'new geography' during the second half of the nineteenth century. Guyot serves as professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton University (1854-84), becomes a charter member of the National Academy of Sciences, and produces numerous innovations as a leader in geography education reform, including lecturing to classroom teachers during six summers for Horace Mann's Massachusetts' Board of Education, slated map drawing cards, wall maps, and over a dozen textbooks that include a series of grade-level texts and one in the Dakota language. Guyot Hall at Princeton University, completed in 1909 and home of Princeton’s Museum of Natural History (started by Guyot in 1856), is named to honor him.
      [Arnold H. Guyot. Earth and Man: Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography, In Its Relation to the History of Mankind, translated from the French by C. C. Felton. Boston: Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln, 1849-1863, with reviews in North American Review 69 (July 1849): 250-56, New Englander and Yale Review 8 (August 1850): 365-78, Southern Quarterly Review 3 (April 1851): 420-455, and American Whig Review 14 (September 1851): 195-208; Daniel Coit Gilman. Humboldt, Ritter, and the New Geography. New Englander and Yale Review 18 (May 1860): 277-306; William Libbey, Jr. The Life and Scientific Work of Arnold Guyot. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 16 (1884): 194-221; James D. Dana. Memoir of Arnold Guyot. Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 2 (1886): 309-347.]

1850s
Comprehensive series of grade-level geography textbooks that include integrated text, figures, and maps, emerge in the decade prior to the Civil War. Sarah S. Cornell produces one of the first series of explicitly graded texts prepared by a single author. The Cornell Series of Geographies is a series of three graded geography texts that is eventually also includes a physical geography text. The first volume, Cornell's Primary Geography, sells 40,000 copies within a year of issuance and the series remains in print for over three decades. Cornell publishes supplemental materials for geography instruction as well, including atlases, globes, and wall maps.
      [Sarah S. Cornell. Cornell's Primary Geography, Forming Part First of a Systematic Series of School Geographies. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1854-88, Sarah S. Cornell. Cornell's Intermediate Geography, Designed for Pupils Who Have Completed a Primary and Elementary Course of Instruction in Geography. Numerous editions. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1855-88; Sarah S. Cornell. Cornell's High School Geography, Forming Part Third of a Systematic Series of School Geographies, Comprising a Description of the World; Accompanied by a Large and Complete Atlas. Numerous editions. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1856-72; Sarah S. Cornell. Physical Geography: Accompanied with Nineteen Pages of Maps, a Great Variety of Map Questions, and One Hundred and Thirty Diagrams and Pictorial Illustrations; and Embracing a Detailed Description of the Physical Features of the United States. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1870-88; Sarah S. Cornell. A Key to Cornell's Outline Maps: Designed for the Use of the Instructor. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1960-64; Sarah S. Cornell. Comprehensive [or Companion] Atlas to Cornell's High School Geography: Comprising a Complete Set of Maps, Designed for the Student to Memorize, Together with Numerous Maps for Reference, etc. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1856-64; Sarah S. Cornell. Cornell's Patent Terrestrial Globe. Rochester, NY: S. S. Cornell and E. Darrow and Bros., 1850s; Sarah S. Cornell. United States [map]. 31 x 51 cm., 1 sheet. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1855.]

1851
American Geographical Society, originally American Geographical and Statistical Society of New York, is established in New York City "for the collection and diffusion of geographical and statistical information" (Wright 1952, 18). It is the first geographical society to be established in the United States, and among the first ten in the world (Wright 1957).
      [John K. Wright. Geography in the Making: The American Geographical Society 1851-1951, New York: American Geographical Society, 1952; John K. Wright. The Field of the Geographical Society. In Griffith Taylor. ed. Geography in the Twentieth Century: a Study of Growth, Fields, Aims and Trends. 3rd edition. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957. Pp. 543-565.]

1852
Bulletin [and Journal] of the American Geographical Society, a journal of the American Geographical Society, begins publication. Publication continues through 1915, when it is succeeded by the Geographical Review (vol. 1, 1916). (see American Geographical entry at 1851)
      [Arthur A. Brooks. Index to the 'Bulletin of the American Geographical Society' 1852-1915. New York: American Geographical Society, 1918.]

1853-55
Opening the American West to occupation and settlement, one of the paramount geographic topics of interest to all Americans at mid-century, had appropriately formed the agenda of the first meeting of the newly established American Geographical Society in November 1851-a presentation by Asa Whitney on the Pacific Railroad (Whitney, Harriman et al., Wright, Goetzmann, Meinig). Following much public and private discussion in settings similar to the American Geographical Society's first meeting, the federal government creates the Office of Explorations and Surveys in the U.S. War Department in 1853. It is charged with undertaking a systematic geographic investigation of four routes between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean that will inform its decision to select the most practicable route for the nation's initial intercontinental railroad link. Popularly termed the Pacific Railroad Surveys, these five great geographic reconnaissances-four east-west traverses from California to eastern railheads and one within California-employ the resources of topographers from the Corps of Topographical Engineers and more than a hundred civilian scientists to undertake broad research agendas in the tradition of Humboldtian science.
      Official reports of the Pacific Railroad Surveys are published in thirteen volumes that include written descriptions, images of the physical and cultural landscapes along the routes, and numerous maps, most importantly the Map of the Territory of the United States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Compiled by Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, this remarkable map encompasses the entire American West and represents the first reasonably accurate and comprehensive landform-topographic map when judged by current scientific standards. With periodic updates, this map remains the standard cartographic interpretation of physical landforms in the American West for a quarter century and continues to be reissued into the twentieth century. Henry Gannett's review of topographic mapping in the United States through the close of the nineteenth-century declares it "the first map of the western United States which was in any way worthy of the name of map" (Gannett 1892, 105). Within a decade of the Pacific Railroad Surveys, California is linked to the rest of the nation by transcontinental telegraph service in 1861 and transcontinental railroad service in 1869.
      [Asa Whitney. A Project for a Railroad to the Pacific. New York: Printed by G. W. Wood, 1849; E. Roland Harriman et al. The Golden Spike: a Centennial Remembrance. AGS Occasional Publication No. 3. New York: American Geographical Society, 1969; John K. Wright. Geography in the Making: the American Geographical Society 1851-1951. New York: American Geographical Society, 1952. Pp. 25-27; William H. Goetzmann. The Pacific Railroad Surveys, and The Savants and the Surveys. In Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1959. Pp. 262-337; Donald W. Meinig. Forging the Iron Road. In Transcontinental America 1800-1915, Vol. 2 of The Shaping of America: a Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. Pp. 4-28; U.S. War Department. Report of the Secretary of War Communicating the Several Pacific Railroad Explorations. 2 vols. 33d Congress, 1st Session, House Document 129. Washington, 1855-56; U.S. Secretary of War. Reports of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Vols. 1-11. 33rd Congress, 2d Session, House Document No. 91 and Senate Document No. 78. Washington, 1855-60; U.S. Secretary of War. Reports of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Vol. 12, parts 1 and 2. 36th Congress, 1st Session, House Document No. 56, and 35th Congress, 3d Session, Senate Document No. 46. Washington, 1860; Gouverneur K. Warren. Map of the Territory of the United States From the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 1853-57. 1:3,000,000, 114 x 121 cm., 2 sheets, and Memoir to Accompany the Map of the Territory of the United States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, Giving a Brief Account of Each of the Exploring Expeditions since A.D. 1800, with a Detailed Description of the Method Adopted in Compiling the General Map. In Vol. 11 of Reports of Explorations and Surveys.... Washington, 1860, electronic version of map is at the Library of Congress American Memory Internet site, memory.loc.gov; Henry Gannett. Mother Maps of the United States. National Geographic Magazine 4 (March 1892): 101-116, with United States: Showing Estimates of the Map Value of Existing Mother Maps [map]. 1:11,875,000, 26 x 39 cm., 1 sheet; George L. Albright. Official Explorations for Pacific Railroads. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1921.]

1855
The Physical Geography of the Seas (1855) and the series of charts-Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean (first issued in 1847)-bring international acclaim to Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873). Both publications are products of years of research on the morphology of sea beds and the global patterns of ocean currents and winds, a research tradition that is generally termed oceanography and meteorology in the twenty-first century, but at the time is considered as accounting for the ocean portion of the physical geography of Earth. Their utility for extending the geographic domain of U.S. commerce was immediately understood (Auld). Maury's remarkably productive and unusual career includes service as an officer in the U.S. Navy (1825-61) where he directs the Depot of Charts and Instruments, out of which emerges the Naval Observatory and the Naval Hydrographic Office; returning to his native Virginia to serve in the government of the Confederate States of America (1961-65); and finally serving as professor at the Virginia Military Institute (1868-73) where he organizes the first physical survey of Virginia and prepares numerous successful geography textbooks for schools. He promotes the creation of, and then represents the United States at, the initial meeting in 1853 of what becomes the International Hydrographic Bureau.
      An exemplary practitioner and director of Humboldtian science at the global scale, Maury and Humboldt engage in lively scientific intercourse. He receives numerous awards from foreign governments, including the Kosmos Medal from the King of Prussia, but is shunned by the federal government of the United States following the Civil War. He comes to be known as the Pathfinder of the Seas and is eventually honored in the United Sates with the naming of the Maury River in Virginia and Maury Hall at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and erection of memorials in Richmond, Virginia and at Goshen Pass, east of Lexington, Virginia. The historian of geography and cartography, Herman Friis, considered him "one of the country's foremost crusaders for scientific geographical exploration, thematic mapping, and geographical analysis during the nineteenth century. It was Maury who, in the late 1850s, urged international cooperation in scientific exploration and investigation of Antarctica, one hundred years before the International Geophysical Year activities on that vast continent (1956-58)" (Friis, 41-42). An active member of the American Geographical Society, he contributed its first Annual Address (1854) and served as vice president. (see Maury entry at 1866)
      [Matthew Fontaine Maury. The Physical Geography of the Seas. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1855, with multiple U.S. and overseas editions through 1871, reissue of 1861 edition edited by John Leighly. The Physical Geography of the Seas and its Meteorology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, and in electronic version at Making of America, moa.umdl.umich.edu; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Wind and Current Chart: Atlantic Ocean, North. Series A, Track Charts. 1 sheet, 90 x 61 cm. Washington, 1847, and Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts. In Notice to Mariners. Washington, 1850, with numerous editions; J. B. Auld. The Geography of Commerce. DeBow's Review: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources 15 (October 1853): 385-400; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Physical Survey of Virginia. 2 vols., Physical Survey of Virginia: Geographical Position of [Virginia], Its Commercial Advantage, and National Importance. Richmond, VA: W. A. R. Nye, 1868, New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1869, and Physical Survey of Virginia: Her Resources, Climate, and Productions; with Notes and Additions by His Son, Richard L. Maury, July 1, 1877. Richmond, VA: N. V. Randolph, 1878; Frances Leigh Williams. Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the Sea. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963; Hermann R. Friis. The Role of Geographers and Geography in the Federal Government 1774-1905. In Brian W. Blouet. ed. The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981. Pp. 37-56; John K. Wright. Geography in the Making: the American Geographical Society 1851-1951. New York: American Geographical Society, 1952; Norman J. W. Thrower. Matthew Fontaine Maury. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 14, pp. 743-744.]

The Growth of Cities: a Discourse, presented at an American Geographical Society meeting by Henry P. Tappan (1805-1881, first president of University of Michigan, 1852-63), is the first publication addressing urban settlement issued by an American geographical organization.
      [Henry P. Tappan. The Growth of Cities: A Discourse. New York: R. Craighead, 1855, as publication No. 3 in [American Geographical Society] Papers Read 1853-1868, and in electronic version at Making of America at moa.umdl.umich.edu.]

1860
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, offers its first courses in geography-'Geography' and 'Descriptive Geography.' The university's first full-time geography professor, Paul T. Post, joins the faculty in 1927. He is joined the following year by Richard J. Russell, and by Fred B. Kniffen in 1929. The university establishes a Department of Geography in 1931 with Richard J. Russell as chair; awards its first Masters degree in 1935 to Helen Bowie and its first Doctors degree in 1938 to John Kyser. In 1940, the Department of Geography hosts the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers on the Louisiana State University campus. In 1944, the university creates the joint Department of Geography and Anthropology, which continues to the present. The Coastal Studies Institute, which is closely affiliated with the Department of Geography and Anthropology, is established in 1954. In 1986, the Department of Geography and Anthropology and several other academic departments occupy the expanded and newly dedicated Howe-Russell Geoscience Complex, which is named to honor the geologist H. V. Howe and the geographer Richard J. Russell.
      [Fred Kniffen. A Distinguished Department and How It Grew. LSU Alumni News (October 1978): 2-6; Kent Mathewson and Vincent Shoemaker. Louisiana State University's Department of Geography and Anthropology: a Selective History. Southwestern Geographer 1 (1997): 62-84; Michael K. Steinberg and Paul Hudson. Cultural and Physical Expositions: Geographic Studies in the Southern United States and Latin America. Geoscience and Man, Vol. 36. Baton Rouge, LA: Geoscience Publications, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, 2002; H. Jesse Walker. Richard Joel Russell, 1895-1971. Geographers: Biobiblographical Studies 4 (1980): 127-38. Kent Mathewson and Vincent J. Shoemaker. Louisiana State University Geography at Seventy-Five: “Berkeley on the Bayou” and Beyond. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 245-267.]

Humboldt, Ritter, and the New Geography, an essay by Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908), honors the passing of German geographers Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter as founders of the new geography and celebrates the publication of a new edition of Arnold Guyot's Earth and Man. Gilman, then serving as librarian of Yale University, shortly becomes professor of physical and political geography in Yale's Sheffield Scientific School (1863-72) and during a long career, achieves his greatest distinction as an innovative administrator-second president of the University of California at Berkeley (1872-75), first president of Johns Hopkins University (1876-1901), and first president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (1902-04).
      Though most of his career is spent as an administrator, Gilman supports the new geography, epitomized for him by the work of von Humboldt, Ritter, and Guyot, through advocacy for improved geography education (Gilman 1891), promotion of a national atlas, and participation in an international boundary arbitration, among numerous other contributions (Flexner and Wright). In 1909, he is honored with the naming of the major academic building of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as Gilman Hall.
      [Daniel C. Gilman. Humboldt, Ritter, and the New Geography. The New Englander and Yale Review 18 (May 1860): 277-306; Daniel C. Gilman. On the Study of Geography. The Atlantic Monthly 67 (June 1891): 815-820; Fabian Franklin. The Life of Daniel Coit Gilman. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1910; Abraham Flexner. Daniel Coit Gilman: Creator of the American Type of University. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946; John K. Wright. Daniel Coit Gilman, Geographer and Historian. Geographical Review 51 (1961): 381-399; Francesco Gordasco. Daniel Coit Gilman. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 9, pp. 56-59.]

1860s-1900
Numerous graded geography textbook series compete for usage in schools following the Civil War. More than 200 texts and atlases appear by the turn of the century as individual texts or as integrated series of texts for elementary through secondary grades. They include new series by such major publishers as Harpers, Appleton, and Rand McNally; are translated into languages other than English, including several Native American languages, German, Polish, Spanish and French; and appear as texts crafted explicitly for schools sponsored by the Roman Catholic church, e.g., William Pinnock's Catechism of Geography: Revised and Adapted for Use in This Country for Use of the Schools of the Christian Brothers (1853) and William H. Sadlier's 3-volume adaptation of the popular series by James Monteith, Sadlier's Excelsior Geography (1875-80).

1861-1865
At least three geography textbooks are published in the Confederate States of America for classroom use during the War Between the States.
      [John H. Rice. A System of Geography: Compiled from Various Sources and Adapted to the Present Condition of the World. Atlanta, GA: Franklin Printing House, 1862; Miranda Branson Moore. The Geographical Reader for the Dixie Children, with Maps. Raleigh, NC: Branson, Farrar, and Co., 1863; Rev. Kensey Johns Stewart. A Geography for Beginners. Richmond, VA: J. W. Randolph, 1864, with review in North American Review 101 (July 1865): 264-266.]

1863
National Academy of Sciences is chartered by the federal government as an independent organization to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art." An honorary society, members are elected to the Academy annually. (see National Research Council entry at 1916)
      The first geographer to become a member is Arnold H. Guyot (1807-1884, professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton), who is one of the Academy's fifty charter members. Other early members include-Cleveland Abbe (1839-1916, meteorologist) and George Davidson (1825-1911, geographer-geodesist); eight charter members of the Association of American Geographers-Reginald A. Daly (1871-1957, geomorphologist), William Morris Davis (1850-1934, geomorphologist), Grove Karl Gilbert (1843-1918, geomorphologist), Clinton Hart Merriam (1855-1942, biologist), Raphael W. Pumpelly (1837-1923, geomorphologist), Harry F. Reid (1859-1944, geomorphologist), Leonhard Stejneger (1851-1943, biologist), Bailey Willis (1857-1949, geologist); and three foreign associates-Albrecht Penck (1858-1945, geomorphologist), Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905, geomorphologist), and Eduard Suess (1831-1914, geomorphologist).
      The group of early members is followed by-Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950, human geographer) elected to membership in 1930, Richard J. Russell (1895-1971, geomorphologist) in 1959, Gilbert F. White (human geographer) in 1973, Brian J. L. Berry (human geographer) in 1975, Robert W. Kates (human-environment geographer) in 1975, John Borchert (1918-2001, human geographer) in 1976, Julian Wolpert (human geographer) in 1977, Waldo R. Tober (mathematical cartographer) in 1982, Walter Isard (regional scientist) in 1985, M. Gordon Wolman (geomorphologist) in 1988, Thomas Dunne (geomorphologist) in 1988, Billie Lee Turner (human-environment geographer) in 1995, Karl W. Butzer (human-environment geographer) in 1996, Akin L. Mabogunje (human geographer and foreign associate from Nigeria) in 1999, Susan E. Hanson (human geographer) in 2000, Michael F. Goodchild (geographic information scientist) in 2002, Roger E. Kasperson (human-environment geographer) in 2003. All current members of the National Academy of Sciences are in the Human Environmental Sciences section, except Walter Isard (Economics), Thomas Dunne (Geology), and Jared M. Diamond (Environmental Sciences and Ecology).
      [www.nas.edu]

Geographical Studies, by German geographer Carl Ritter (1779-1859), is issued in its first American edition and is widely reviewed. American editions of two other works by Ritter appear shortly thereafter-Comparative Geography and The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula. At his death, Ritter is memorialized by Arnold Guyot at a meeting of the American Geographical Society.
      [Carl Ritter. Geographical Studies, translated from the German by William L. Gage. Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1863, with reviews in North American Review 98 (April 1864): 498-519 and New Englander and Yale Review 23 (January 1864): 184-187; Carl Ritter. Comparative Geography. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1865, reviewed in North American Review 101 (July 1865): 267-269; Carl Ritter. The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula. 4 vols. New York: Appleton, 1866, reviewed in North American Review 104 (April 1867): 636-639; William L. Gage. The Life of Carl Ritter. New York: Scribner, 1867; Arnold Guyot. Carl Ritter: an Address to the Society. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 2 (July 1860): 25-63.]

Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, chartered as Kansas State Agricultural College under the federal government’s Morrill Land Grant Act, offers its first courses in geography-Geography, Ancient Geography, and Physical Geography-in 1863, all taught by Jennie Platt. After a twenty-five year hiatus, geography reemerges in 1918 with Economic Geography being offered in the Department of Economics and Sociology. Karl Stacey becomes the university’s first professor trained as a geographer in 1943 when he joins the Department of Zoology to teach Principles of Geography and Political Geography.
      Geography instruction transfers to the newly created Department of Geology in 1946, which changes its name to Department of Geology and Geography under the headship of Arthur B. Sperry in 1951. The B.S. degree in geography is approved in 1955 and the first geography bachelor’s degree is awarded to Nadine Burns in 1957. The M.S. degree in geography, approved in 1959, is first awarded to Jack E. Harding and Han Sik Lee in 1961. The local chapter of Gamma Theta Upsilon, the international honor society in geography, is established in 1959.
      A separate Geography Division with William R. Siddall as chair is created within the Department of Geology and Geography in 1966, and the M.A. degree in geography replaces the M.S. degree. An independent Department of Geography is established with William R. Siddall as head in 1970. The Ph.D. in geography is approved in 1995 and the first doctoral degrees are awarded to J. M. Shawn Hutchinson, Bradley C. Rundquist, and Thomas C. Schafer in 2000. The department, which was first housed in Thompson Hall, relocates to Dickens Hall in 1982, and then to Seaton Hall in 2001.
      [Huber Self. A History of Geography at Kansas State University, Rev. edition. Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University, Department of Geography, 1991.]

1864
Man and Nature, by George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882), provides the first modern synthesis of the role of humans in altering Earth's physical environment and stands as a landmark in geography's human-environment research tradition. The work is widely reviewed and discussed, and is influential from the time of its issuance. Marsh situates his contribution within the existing body of geographic scholarship-"whereas Ritter and Guyot think that the earth made man, man in fact made the earth" (Marsh 1864, 187). The work's demonstration, through historic empirical examples, of the multifold consequences of the destruction of woodlands in other lands and in the United States initiates America's initial natural resource conservation efforts.
      [George Perkins Marsh. Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1864, with reviews in North American Review 99 (July 1864): 318-20, Atlantic Monthly 14 (August 1864): 261-63, and reprinted with an introduction by David Lowenthal, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965, and 1869 edition as electronic version at Making of America, www.umdl.umich.edu/; George Perkins Marsh. The Earth as Modified by Human Action. rev. edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1874, with reviews in Scribner's Monthly 9 (November 1874): 119-24, International Review 2 (1875): 120-125, and others noted in David Lowenthal. Man and Nature: the Meaning, Chapter 14 of George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. Pp. 290-312; William M. Davis. Memoir of George Perkins Marsh. Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 6 (1909): 73-80; Sylvia B. Larson. George Perkins Marsh. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 14, pp. 535-537; David Lowenthal. George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.]

University of Maine at Farmington, Maine, which is established as the Farmington Normal School in 1864 to provide professional training for teachers, includes geography in its curriculum from the outset. Geography is maintained in the institution's curriculum through subsequent transitions to Farmington Teachers College in 1945 and University of Maine at Farmington in 1968. Charles Preble becomes the University of Maine's first professor to have received formal training in geography (at Wesleyan and Clark University) when he joins the faculty in 1921. In 1965, the Department of Geography is established, which grows to three members in 1966 and enables the College to offer instruction in geography education at both the Bachelors and Masters levels, a major in geography, and an applied program in land planning. Reorganization of the university's smaller departments in the early 1980s places the geography program in the Department of Social Sciences and Business and allows it to continue offering majors in geography and in environmental planning and policy, and a concentration in geography education.
      [Paul B. Frederic. Geography at a Northern Outpost: the College at Farmington, Maine. Occasional Publications in Geography. Farmington, ME: Geography Program, University of Maine at Farmington, 1999.]

1866
Common-School Geography; or, The Earth and Its Inhabitants (1866) by Arnold Guyot, and The World We Live In (1868) by Matthew Fontaine Maury, are America's first geography classroom textbooks written by experts in geography. Guyot and Maury will both prepare textbooks in physical geography as well.
      [Robert L. Anstey. Arnold Guyot, Teacher of Geography. Journal of Geography 57 (December 1958): 441-449.]

Arnold Henry Guyot (1807-1884), who worked and studied with Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter prior to moving to the United States, is professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton University (1854-84). He produces more than a dozen textbooks including ones in graded series, one for physical geography, and one in the Dakota language. While geography textbooks are among the earliest books embossed for blind readers (appearing during the 1830s), Guyot’s Primary Geography, Intermediate Geography, and Physical Geography are the first to be reissued in embossed form (1869-73). Guyot’s Physical Geography will continue to receive attention into the twenty-first century when he is championed as a ‘creation scientist.’(see Guyot entry at 1849)
      [Arnold H. Guyot. Common-School Geography, or, The Earth and Its Inhabitants New York: Charles Scribner's and Co., 1866-79; Arnold H. Guyot. Primary, or, Introduction to the Study of Geography. New York: Charles Scribner and Co., 1866-96; Arnold Guyot. Elementary Geography for Primary Classes. New York: Charles Scribner's and Co., 1868-79, and Maka-oyakapi, a Dakota language edition, 1876; Arnold H. Guyot. The Earth and Its Inhabitants: Common School Geography. New York: Charles Scribner’s and Co., 1866-70; Arnold H. Guyot. The Earth and Its Inhabitants: Intermediate Geography. New York: Charles Scribner's and Co., 1867-74; Arnold H. Guyot. Grammar School Geography. New York: Ivison, Blakeman, and Taylor, 1880-82; Arnold H. Guyot. Physical Geography. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co.; American Book Co., 1873-1901, and facsimile reprint of 1885 edition, Palo Cedro, CA: American Christian History Institute, www.achipa.com]

Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873) spends a career in the U.S. Navy (1825-61) during which time he establishes the Naval Observatory and Hydrographic Office and authors the first modern oceanographic text-The Physical Geography of the Sea (1855), serves in the government of the Confederate States of America (1961-65), and is a professor at the Virginia Military Institute (1868-73). Several of his general geography texts remain in print into the 1930s. (see Maury entry at 1855)
      [Matthew Fontaine Maury. The World We Live In. New York: Richardson and Co., 1868-71; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Elementary Geography. New York: University Publishing Co., 1870-1931; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Manual of Geography: a Complete Treatise on Mathematical, Civil, Physical and Political Geography. New York: University Publishing Co., 1870-1925; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Map-Drawing for Maury's Revised Manual of Geography; also, Diagrams for Drawing the Whole Earth, by C. E. Bush. New York: University Publishing Co., 1881; Matthew Fontaine Maury. New Complete Geography. New York: University Publishing Co., 1906-31; Matthew Fontaine Maury. New Elements of Geography for Primary and Intermediate Classes. New York: American Book Co., 1907-31; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Orographic Views of Central Asia, Central Europe, United States [wall graphic]. New York: University Publishing Co., 1870; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Africa Europe, North America, Asia, South America, United States and part of Canada, The World [set of wall maps]. New York: University Publishing Co., 1872; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Political, Physical and Commercial Map of the World [wall map]. New York: University Publishing Co., 1872; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Map of the Principal Vegetable Growths; Map Showing Lines of Equal Magnetic Declination; Chart of Volcanoes; Chart Showing the Distribution of the Races; Map Showing the Geographical Distribution of Certain Minerals; Map of the Rivers and Mountains of the United States; Map of the World on the Globular Projection; Chart of the Principal Industrial Pursuits; Map Showing the Geographical Distribution of Beast, Birds, and Fishes. New York: University Publishing Co., 1873; Matthew Fontaine Maury. Physical Geography. London, UK: Longmans and Co., 1864, and New York: University Publishing Co., 1873-1903.]

1868-1879
Four large-scale geographic-geologic-natural Humboldtian-science surveys of the American West form the final phase of the federal government's sponsorship of independent research parties in the American West. Collectively referred to as the Great Surveys, their staffs include geographers, geologists, artists (photographers and painters), and a range of natural scientists, all working to amass as much information as possible about the West prior to its occupation and settlement by advancing Euro-Americans. Two surveys operate within the War Department-U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (1867-72) led by Clarence King (1842-1901); and U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the Hundredth Meridian (1871-79) led by Lieutenant George M. Wheeler (1842-1905). Two are in the Department of the Interior-U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories (1868-79) led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (1829-1887); and U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region (1869-79) led by John Wesley Powell (1834-1902).
      Staffed largely by civilian scientists, the four surveys address important geographic research questions that will remain familiar-they reveal the land to the public with written descriptions, photographs, spectacular paintings, and topographic maps, including some of America's geographically most spectacular areas, e.g., Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, the Colorado Rockies, and the Yellowstone area; they use scientific mapping practices to eliminate the last 'geographic unknowns' from the West; they stimulate interest in geomorphology and make significant contributions to it; they classify significant portions of land in terms of its economic uses; and they raise important questions about rainfall, the use of irrigation, and the capacity of Western lands to sustain Eastern-style agricultural settlement. These Great Surveys are popular with both elected officials and the public, but it becomes apparent through Congressional hearings and a National Academy of Sciences' inquiry that four scientific field expeditions in the American West, operating independently of each other, are at least several too many. In 1879, the three existing federal surveys are consolidated into the U.S. Geological Survey or their functions are abandoned.
      [General works-Richard A. Bartlett. Great Surveys of the American West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962; Richard A. Bartlett. Scientific Exploration of the American West, 1865-1900. In John Logan Allen. ed. North American Exploration: a Continent Comprehended, Vol. 3 of North American Exploration. 3 vols. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. 460-520; William H. Goetzmann. Exploration and Empire: the Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966; Laurence F. Schmeckebeir. Catalogue and Index of the Hayden, King, Powell, and Wheeler Surveys. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904. King Survey-Annual Report of Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War. 8 vols. Washington, 1870-80, and in electronic version at Making of American, moa.umdl.umich.edu; Monographs include Clarence King. Systematic Geology. Washington, 1878; Samuel F. Emmons and Arnold Hague. Descriptive Geology. Washington, 1877; and 5 other volumes; Geological and Topographical Atlas Accompanying the Report of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel. Washington, 1878; Thurman Wilkins with Caroline Hinkley. Clarence King. 2nd edition. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. Wheeler Survey-Report on the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian in Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War 15 vols. Washington, 1875-84; Map of the United States West of the Mississippi River Showing Drainage Areas. 1:6,000,000; 74 sheets of topographic maps, 21 sheets of geologic maps, and 36 sheets of land classification maps in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho; Lieutenant George M. Wheeler. Western Exploration. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 6 (1874): 233-252, and Lieutenant E. H. Ruffner. Explorations of the Territories. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 6 (1874): 253-259. Hayden Survey-Annual Report, U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. 12 vols. Washington, 1867-83; Monographs. 12 vols. Washington, 1873-90; Bulletins. 26 vols. Washington, 1874-82; Miscellaneous Publications. 12 vols. 1873-80; Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado and Portions of Adjacent Territory. Washington, 1877 & 1881; Henry Gannett. Report on the Arable and Pasture Lands of Colorado. Washington, 1878; Cyrus Thomas and Henry Gannett. Lists of Elevations Principally in that Portion of the United States West of the Mississippi River. Washington, 1872-77; Henry Gannett. Hypsometric Map of the United States. 1:7,500,000, 60 x 81 cm. Washington, 1877 & 1880; Ferdinand V. Hayden. Our Great West, and the Scenery of Our Natural Parks. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 6 (1874): 196-211; Mike Foster. Strange Genius: the Life of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. Niwot, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1994. Powell Survey-Monographs. Washington, 1876-80; Grove Karl Gilbert. Report on the Geology of the Henry Mountains. Washington, 1877 & 1880; Captain Clarence E. Dutton. Report on the Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah. Washington, 1880; John W. Powell. Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah. Washington, 2d edition. 1879, and electronic version of 1875 1st edition. at Making of America, moa.umdl.umich.edu; Contributions to North American Ethnology. 8 vols. Washington, 1877-1893; Wallace Stegner. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954.]

1870
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, adopts physical geography as a new admissions requirement and begins providing courses in it in 1870. Prior to the 1870s geography was required for admission, and existed within the college curriculum, intermittently throughout Harvard’s long history (Morris, Morison). During the decade following the close of the Civil War, Harvard faculty members providing instruction in geography include the distinguished constellation of Josiah D. Whitney (1819-1896), Raphael Pumpelly (1837-1923), Nathaniel S. Shaler (1841-1906) and Charles F. Hoffman (Block, Champlin, Livingstone). The program trains geographers William Morris Davis and Henry Gannett among others. The university soon adds William Morris Davis (1850-1932) to its faculty, whose landmark career at Harvard will extend to 1912 (Chorley et al.). Geography is dominated by instruction in physical geography, particularly geomorphology, Davisian physiography, and climatology with its Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory.
      Following World War I, Harvard’s geography program, along with others in the nation, begins to incorporate human geography. In 1928 the regional and political geographer Derwent S. Whittlesey (1890-1956) joins the Department of Geology and Geography as its first full-time human geographer. A year later, Harvard creates the independent Institute for Geographical Exploration, directed by Alexander H. Rice (1875-1956) and with Erwin J. Raisz (1893-1968) providing instruction in cartography. It operates through 1952. Following World War II, the geography program adds two additional appointments in human geography, Edward A. Ackerman (1911-1973) and Edward L. Ullman (1912-1976). A dispute over funding the creation of a Department of Geography that would be independent of Geology in 1948 leads to a decision by the university to eliminate geography as an academic program. Instruction in geography at Harvard University terminates with Derwent S. Whittlesey’s death in 1956 (Martin, Smith).
      The Harvard Map Collection, initiated in 1818 with acquisition of the remarkable Daniel Christoph Ebeling collection of some 10,000 maps and books on the United States (entry at 1793), is the oldest and one of the largest in the United States.
      [Rita M. L. Morris. An Examination of Some Factors Related to the Rise and Decline of Geography as a Field of Study at Harvard, 1638-1948. Unpublished D.Ed. dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, 1962; Robert H. Block. The Whitney Survey of California, 1860-74: a Study of Environmental Science and Exploration. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Los Angeles: Department of Geography, University of California at Los Angeles, 1982; Peggy Champlin. Raphael Pumpelly: Gentleman Geologist of the Gilded Age. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1994; David N. Livingstone. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the Culture of American Science. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1987; Richard J. Chorley, Robert P. Beckinsale, and A. J. Dunn. The History of the Study of Landforms; or, the Development of Geomorphology. Vol. 2, The Life and Work of William Morris Davis. New York: John Wiley, 1973 ; Geoffrey J. Martin. The Emergence and Development of Geographic Thought in New England. Economic Geography (Special issue 1998): 1-13; Neil Smith. ‘Academic War Over the Field of Geography’: the Elimination of Geography at Harvard, 1947-1951. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (June 1987): 155-172, and commentaries. 78 (March 1988): 144-163; Samuel Eliot Morison. Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636-1936. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936; www.harvard.edu.]

1871
The Earth: a Descriptive History of the Phenomena of the Life of the Globe and The Ocean, Atmosphere, and Life, by French geographer and radical anarchist Jean Jacques Élisée Reclus (1830-1905), appears in the United States as a two-volume translation of his La Terre. Reclus studies geography briefly with Carl Ritter (1779-1859) at the University of Berlin; engages in six years of geographic field studies during the 1850s that includes two years in the United States as a tutor for the children of a plantation owner in Louisiana; corresponds with George Perkins Marsh after Marsh's Man and Nature appears in 1864; visits the United States again in 1889 and 1891 to collect material for his Nouvelle Géographie Universalle; associates with Michael Bakunin (1814-1876) and Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842-1912); and is twice expelled from France for promoting anarchism.
      In his monumental Nouvelle Géographie Universalle: la Terre et les Hommes, Reclus produces the last global-scale encyclopedic compendium of Earth, "probably the greatest individual writing feat in the history of geography" (Dunbar). It appears in the United States as The Earth and its Inhabitants (19 volumes). His last great work, L'Homme et la Terre, remains untranslated into English.
      [Élisée Reclus. The Earth: a Descriptive History of the Phenomena of the Life of the Globe. Vol. 1. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1871, and The Ocean, Atmosphere, and Life. Vol. 2. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873; and Élisée Reclus. A New Physical Geography. 2 vols. New York; D. Appleton and Co., 1886-94-both of these editions are two-volume translations of La Terre (1867-68), reviews appear in Scribner's Monthly 3 (February 1872): 508, and Charles Nordhoff. Sea and Shore. Harper's Magazine 46 (April 1873): 704-721; Élisée Reclus. The History of a Mountain. Translation of Historie d'une Montagne (1880). New York: Harper and Brothers, 1881; Élisée Reclus. The Earth and its Inhabitants. 19 vols. Translation of Nouvelle Géographie Universalle: la Terre et les Hommes (1875-94). New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1882-95, Les États Unis, Vol. 16 of Nouvelle Géographie Universalle (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1892), is reviewed by George C. Hurlbut. Élisée Reclus on the United States. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 24 (1892): 379-390; Élisée Reclus. L'Homme et la Terre. 6 vols. Paris: Librairie Universelle, 1905-08; Élisée Reclus and George P. Reclus-Guyou. On a One-Scaled Atlas. Bulletin of the American Bureau of Geography 2 (September 1910): 199-204; Obituary. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 37 (1905): 496-97; Jacques Élisée Reclus. In Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson. eds. Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. 15 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1930-35, Vol. 13, Pp. 164-165; Gary S. Dunbar. Élisée Reclus: Historian of Nature. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1978; John P. Clark. The Dialectical Social Geography of Élisée Reclus. In Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith. eds. Philosophy and Geography: Space, Place, and Environmental Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Pp. 117-142.]

1874
Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Results of the Ninth Census, 1870, with Contributions from Many Eminent Men of Science and Several Departments of the [Federal] Government is produced under the direction of Francis A. Walker, superintendent of the ninth (1870) census. It is America's first national atlas and the first of six atlases produced by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in conjunction with the nation's decennial censuses from 1870 through 1920. Atlases after the 1870 census are prepared by the geographers Henry Gannett, 1880-1900, and Charles S. Sloan, 1910 and 1920. The 1870 and 1880 atlases incorporate topic discussions and thematic maps representing the nation's physical and human geographies. From 1890 through 1920, only topics in human geography are included. Each atlas issued from 1870 through 1910 also includes maps of the intensity of settlement from the earliest (1790) census. It is this series of maps that the historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932) uses to declare the 'settlement frontier to be closed' following the 1890 census.
      [Francis A. Walker. Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Results of the Ninth Census, 1870, with Contributions from Many Eminent Men of Science and Several Departments of the [Federal] Government. New York: Julius Bien, 1874; Mark Monmonier. The Rise of the National Atlas. In John A. Wolter and Ronald E. Grim. eds. Images of the World: the Atlas Through History. New York: McGraw-Hill and Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1997. Pp. 369-399; Donald C. Dahmann. Visualizing U.S. Geographies: the Statistical Atlas Breakthrough of 1870 and Today’s Opportunities. The Portolan: Journal of the Washington Map Society (Winter 2002-2003): 42-58; electronic versions of atlases produced in conjunction with the censuses of 1870, 1880, and 1890, and introductory essay, Census Atlases: Presenting the Nation's Cultural Geography, are at the Library of Congress American Memory Internet site, memory.loc.gov.]

1879
Geography program is established in the U.S. Census Office (now U.S. Bureau of the Census) for the tenth (1880) census under the direction of Henry Gannett (1846-1914). Responsibilities include geographic planning for the census enumeration, direction of enumeration field operations, and geographic work associated with post-enumeration publications. A Geography Division is created for the eleventh (1890) census and continues to the present.
      [Margo J. Anderson. The American Census: a Social History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.]

1880s
Dramatic increases in the quantity of information about American landforms during the 1880s, most notably the new U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps with relief shown by contour lines, lead to better scientific visualization and communication techniques. Based on the emerging body of topographic maps, techniques for producing three-dimensional raised-relief maps (or relief models) come to be perfected. Their production increases dramatically in the 1890s. Contemporary research on these new forms of scientific visualization includes assessing their effectiveness in communicating technical information.
      Relief models become an extremely popular medium for communicating the current state of geographic knowledge of landforms in schools, in museums and public exhibitions, as well as in books as photographs of models. In 1891, Daniel Coit Gilman describes a relief model of the city of Baltimore, Maryland prepared by Cosmos Mindellef as "an admirable piece of geographical apparatus [and added that if] relief models like this, representing districts of special significance and importance, were common in our schools and colleges, the value of geographical study would quickly be recognized. When the full meaning of such maps is perceived, they will be found valuable as accessories for the prosecution of many branches of science" (Gilman 817). Displays at the famous 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago include some 100 raised-relief models; the model of Yosemite Valley prepared for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915 measures 3.7m (12') by 1.8m (6') feet with a height of 0.46m (1.5'). By 1910, devices to construct relief models are promoted for instruction in geography laboratory classes (Hobbs). Three-dimensional representations of portions of Earth's surface, now termed terrain models, are used extensively in the two World Wars.
      This particular form of scientific visualization of Earth's surface features continues to be produced, formed most often of molded plastic, but also of cut foam or other material.
      [Cosmos Mindeleff. Topographic Models. National Geographic Magazine 1 (July 1889): 254-270; Cosmos Mindeleff. Geographical Relief Maps: Their Use and Manufacture. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 32 (1900): 367-380; Daniel Coit Gilman. On the Study of Geography. The Atlantic Monthly 67 (June 1891): 815-820; Marcus Baker. Relief Maps. Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington 12 (1892-94): 349-367; William H. Hobbs. The Modelling of Physiographic Forms in the Laboratory. Journal of Geography 8 (June 1910): 225-228; Harrison P. Reed. The Development of the Terrain Model in the War. Geographical Review 36 (October 1946): 632-652; Walter W. Ristow. Three-Dimensional Maps: an Annotated List of References Relating to the Construction and Use of Terrain Models. Washington: Library of Congress, 1951; Solid Terrain Modeling at www.stm-usa.com]

Substantial national-scale regional geographies of the United States begin to appear during the 1880s following the issuance of German geographer Friedrich Ratzel's Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika. They are intended for colleges, libraries, and the educated public.
      [Friedrich Ratzel. Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika. 2 vols. Munich, Germany: R. Oldenbourg, 1878-80; Ferdinand V. Hayden. North America. London: E. Stanford, 1883; Josiah D. Whitney. The United States. Boston, 1889 & 1894; Nathaniel S. Shaler. ed. The United States of America. 3 vols. New York: Appleton and Co., 1894; Henry Gannett. The United States. Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott and New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898; William Morris Davis. two articles-North America and United States. In H. R. Mill. ed. The International Geography. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1899-1920. Pp. 664-678 and 710-773; Israel C. Russell. North America. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1904; Richard E. Dodge. Geography of North America. Chicago: Rand, McNally and Co., 1914 (1924); Albert Perry Brigham. The United States of America: Studies in Physical, Regional, Industrial, and Human Geography. New York: Oxford University Press and London: University of London Press, 1927 (reprint, New York: B. Franklin, 1971).]

1882
Geography program is established in the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington, D.C. under the direction of Henry Gannett (1846-1914). The new program immediately begins the large-scale topographic mapping of the nation. The U.S. Geological Survey was established as a civilian agency of the federal government in 1879, largely through the closure and consolidation of the so-called 'Great Surveys' of the American West, which had been led by Clarence King, Ferdinand V. Hayden, John W. Powell, and Lieutenant George M. Wheeler.
      The geography program's first topographic map sheets appear in 1882. The program becomes the Division of Geography in 1885 and produces the first topographic map sheets in the General Atlas of the United States in 1886. U.S. topographic maps are today produced in the Geological Survey's National Mapping Division.
      [A. Hunter Dupree. Science in the Federal Government: a History of Politics and Activities to 1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957; Thomas G. Manning. Government in Science: the U.S. Geological Survey 1867-1894. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1967; Mary C. Rabbitt. Minerals, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defence and General Welfare[: a History of the U.S. Geological Survey from Before 1879 through 1939]. 3 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979-86; Morris M. Thompson. Maps for America: Cartographic Products of the U.S. Geological Survey and Others. 3rd edition. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988; William B. Meyer. Henry Gannett. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 8, pp. 675-676.]

International Polar Year, the first coordinated international research project in polar regions, collects scientific data and conducts research in geographic exploration and mapping, meteorology, geomorphology, geomagnetism, and human habitation. Multi-year efforts of the International Polar Commission result in the participation of research teams from twelve countries. The United States participates with two arctic expeditions organized by the Office of the Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army. It is the first time that the United States participates in an internationally coordinated exploring expedition.
      One American party establishes a station at Point Barrow, Alaska and makes the first detailed studies of Eskimos residing on Alaska's North Slope; contributes to the joint-studies of polar sea ice conditions; and rescues the crew of a whaling vessel that had been crushed by sea ice. The Barrow party is headed by Lieutenant P. Henry Ray of the U.S. Army and includes seven scientists plus support staff (Ray, Murdoch).
      The second American party, composed of 26 men and headed by Lieutenant Adolphus Washington Greely of the U.S. Army (1844-1935), explores and maps considerable 'new land,' particularly Ellesmere Island, and conducts observations of the weather, tidal movements, and auroral phenomena. The expedition is actually in the field from 1881-84 and reaches latitude 83° 24' North, surpassing the 'farthest north' mark set by the British five years earlier. It is best remembered for its tragic return at the conclusion of its planned two years in the Arctic-the inability of the pickup vessel to reach the expedition forces an unplanned wintering over, which takes the lives of seventeen men (Greely 1886, Guttridge). Greely rises to the rank of Major General and becomes the U.S. Army's chief signal officer (directing the laying of 21,500 miles of telegraph lines and cables in U.S. overseas possessions from 1898-1906), chief of the U.S. Weather Service, a founding member of the National Geographic Society, and is awarded medal by the American Geographical Society, Royal Geographical Society and Société de Géographie (Paris).
      [P. Henry Ray. ed. Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1885; J. Murdoch. Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition. U. S. Bureau of American Ethnology, 9th Annual Report. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1892. Pp. 3-441; Adolphus W. Greely. Three Years of Arctic Service: an Account of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881-84 and the Attainment of Farthest North. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, (1886) 1894; Adolphus W. Greely. ed. Report on the Proceedings of the United States Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1888; Leonard F. Guttridge. Ghosts of Cape Sabine: the Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2000; William Barr. Geographical Aspects of the First International Polar Year, 1882-1883. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73 (December 1983): 463-484; Adolphus W. Greely. American Weather. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1888; Adolphus W. Greely. Handbook of Polar Discoveries. 5th edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., (1896) 1910; Adolphus W. Greely. Handbook of Alaska: Its Resources, Products and Attractions. New York: Charlse Scribner's Sons, (1909) 1925, reprinted Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970; Adolphus W. Greely. Polar Regions in the Twentieth Century: Their Discovery and Industrial Evolution. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1928; Adolphus W. Greely. Reminiscences of Adventure and Service: a Record of Sixty-Five Years. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927.]

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), founded in 1848, responds to the increasing complexity of American science and changes its organizational structure of specialties. Geography and geology form Section E as one of nine new sections-mathematics and astronomy, physics, chemistry, mechanical science, geology and geography, biology, histology and microscopy, anthropology, economic science and statistics. The nine new sections replace chemistry, microscopy, anthropology, and entomology.

1883
1883 The U.S. Census Office (now U.S. Bureau of the Census) publishes the federal government's first delineation of sub-national regions in the United States that is used to tabulate statistical information. It places all of the conterminous states and territories into three first-order regions-Western or Cordilleran, The Great Valley or Central, and Atlantic, and five second-order regions-Western or Cordilleran, Northern and Southern Central as sub-regions within The Great Valley, and North and South Atlantic as sub-regions within the Atlantic. The same sub-national regionalization continues to be used until 1940 when it evolves into the four first-order regions-West, Midwest (first termed North Central), South, and Northeast-used to the present.
      [Henry Gannett. Subdivisions of the States and Territories [into Regions] for Statistical Purposes. Census Bulletin No. 277. Washington: Census Office, 1883; Fletcher W. Hewes and Henry Gannett. Scribner's Statistical Atlas of the United States. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1883.]

1884
The International Conference for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day is convened in Washington, D.C. Representatives of 26 nations respond to the invitation of the United States government to establish a universal prime meridian and resolve the confusion produced by the use of numerous zero meridians and competing standards of time. Demands for the coordination of railroad schedules in Great Britain led to establishing Greenwich Mean Time as the standard time for England, Scotland, and Wales in 1848. In the United States, Charles F. Dowd (1825-1904), principal of Temple Grove School in Saratoga Springs, New York, presents his idea of a standard time zone system of unvarying longitudinal divisions fifteen degrees apart based at Washington, D.C. and its mapped representation to six railroad superintendents in 1869. With railroads in North America operating on about 100 different standards of time during the 1870s, the idea grows among rail companies, which establish the Time-Table Convention in 1872. Cleveland Abbe (1839-1916), director of the Weather Service (then part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps), and Sandford Fleming (1827-1915), chief engineer of the Dominion of Canada, independently propose universal standards of time in 1878. The American Geographical Society and American Meteorological Society, among other groups, petition the United States Congress to support a standardized time system in 1882, and on October 13, 1883 the railroads of the United States and Canada adopt the General Time Convention, the world's first uniform system of time based upon globally referenced time zones and Greenwich Mean Time serving as the base for calculating time. On November 18, 1883, the railroads began operating on standard time, and most activities in the United States accept the new standard.
      As the new North American time standards are based on Greenwich Mean Time, which only the United Kingdom officially recognizes, the railroads and others petition the U.S. Congress to act upon accepting Greenwich time as a standard. In 1884, the Congress authorizes President Chester A. Arthur to invite governments of other nations to Washington "for the purpose of fixing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoned throughout the globe." The conference adopts the meridian passing through the center of the transit instrument at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England as a universal prime meridian, and 24 standard time zones that span the globe.
      [International Conference for the Purposes of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. Protocols of the Proceedings. 48th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives Ex. Doc. No. 14. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884; Helen M. Strong. Universal World Time. Geographical Review 25 (1935): 479-484; James J. Parsons. Before Greenwich: the Canary Islands, El Hierro and the Dilemma of the Prime Meridian. In Shue Tuck Wong. ed. Person, Place and Thing: Interpretative and Empirical Essays in Cultural Geography. Geoscience and Man, Vol. 31. Baton Rouge, LA: Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University. Pp. 61-78; Ian R. Bartky. Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.]

1885
Report Upon the Third International Geographical Congress and Exhibition at Venice, Italy, 1881, by U.S. Army Captain George M. Wheeler (1842-1905), adds an American contribution to the documentations of progress toward one of geography's long-held global-scale dreams-the scientifically reliable visual representation of Earth's surface with topographic maps at the largest scale possible. Wheeler's report describes actions taken and exhibits appearing at the 3rd International Geographical Congress, and provides a 500-page review of the status of large-scale mapping of Earth's land masses and oceans. Similar reports appearing in Europe during this period reveal the rising sense that 'a map of Earth' is feasible. This sentiment culminates in the proposal to map Earth at a uniform scale of 1:1,000,000 at the International Geographical Congress of 1891. (see George M. Wheeler entry at 1868-79 and International Map of the World entry at 1904)
      [George M. Wheeler. Report Upon the Third International Geographical Congress and Exhibition at Venice, Italy, 1881, Accompanied by Data Concerning the Principal Government Land and Marine Surveys of the World. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1885; War Office. Notes on the Government Surveys of the Principal Countries. Intelligence Branch, Q.M.G. Department. London: H.M.S.O., 1882]

1888
National Geographic Society is established in Washington, D.C. "for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge" (Bryan, 24).
      [C.D.B. Bryan. The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery. New York: Abrams, 1987.]

National Geographic Magazine, a journal of the National Geographic Society, begins publication. Its publication continues to the present. (see Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor entry at 1943)

1889
The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania, a research paper by William Morris Davis (1850-1934), geomorphologist at Harvard University, is published in National Geographic Magazine in 1889. In its first paragraph, Davis sets the paper’s agenda – “No one now regards a river and its valley as ready-made features of the earth’s surface. All are convinced that rivers have come to be what they are by slow processes of natural development, in which every peculiarity of rive course and valley form has its appropriate cause. Being fully persuaded of the gradual and systematic evolution of topographical forms, it is now desired, in studying the rivers and valleys of Pennsylvania, to seek the causes of the location of the streams in their present courses; to go back if possible, to the early date when central Pennsylvania was first raised above the sea, and trace the development of the several river systems then implanted upon it from their ancient beginnings to the present time.”
      In this article, Davis first proposes that landforms are the result of a consequence of structure, process and time. It introduces a remarkably productive research career in geomorphology that produces a generation of ‘Davisian geomorphologists.’ (see Davis entry at 1899)
      [William M. Davis. The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania. National Geographic Magazine (1889): 183-253. also in Douglas W. Johnson. ed. Geographical Essays. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1909, and New York: Dover Publications, 1954, Pp. 413-484; Robert P. Beckinsale. The International Influence of William Morris Davis. Geographical Review 66 (October 1976): 448-466; Richard J. Chorley, Robert P. Beckinsale, and Antony J. Dunn. The History of the Study of Landforms; or The Development of Geomorphology. Vol. 1. Geomorphology Before Davis, Vol. 2. The Life and Work of William Morris Davis, Vol. 3. Historical and Regional Geomorphology 1890-1950. London: Methuen, 1964-91.]

Dramatic increases in the quantity of information about and the understanding of landforms during the 1880s raises new questions regarding the visualization and communication of new forms of geographic information. Techniques for producing three-dimensional relief maps (or models) come to be perfected and their production increases dramatically as the 1880s turn into the 90s. Scholarly analysis of them includes assessments of their effectiveness as a means of communicating scientific information. Relief maps become a popular medium for communicating the current state of geographic knowledge in schools, museums, and major public exhibitions, and in books as photographs of models. Displays at the famous Columbian World Exposition of 1893 in Chicago included some 100 relief maps. The largest relief map of the United States ever produced, the so-called Great Relief Model (1:250,000), measured 65 feet east-west and 45 feet north-south. It was completed under the direction of Wallace W. Atwood of Clark University in 1940 for Babson College in Wellsley, Massachusetts. On view to the public for many years, it was demolished in 1997. Commonly termed raised-relief maps today, relief maps are produced by numerous companies, mostly of molded plastic.
      [Cosmos Mindeleff. Topographic Models. National Geographic Magazine 1 (July 1889): 254-270 and Geographical Relief Maps: Their Use and Manufacture. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 32 (1900): 367-380; Marcus Baker. Relief Maps. Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington 12 (1892-94): 349-367; Wallace W. Atwood, Jr. The Giant Relief Model of the United States. Journal of Geography 40 (May 1941): 169-172.]

'Physiography of North America' and 'Effect of the Physiography of North American on Men of European Origin', by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841-1906), introduce the fourth of the eight volumes in Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America. The two essays provide an account of the relationship between events in the history of the United States and the physical environment of the North American continent, and are the first of many contributions Shaler makes in geography's human-environment tradition over the next twenty years. He also makes numerous contributions to geomorphology while serving as professor of paleontology and geology and as dean of the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University. Shaler is described by David N. Livingstone as "a geologist by profession, but a geographer by inclination" (1987), and by Carl O. Sauer as "one of the greatest geographers of America" (1927). In the numerous works Shaler prepares for both educated general-public and scholarly audiences, he incorporates his belief in a designed world-incorporation of God, nature, humanity, and science into a harmonic holism-and his response to the then-revolutionary notions of unplanned transformation (evolution), in treating human-environment relationships at the societal level as an evolutionary process in which human progress is determined by the response of individuals to their environment.
      [Nathaniel S. Shaler. Introduction-Physiography of North America, and Effect of the Physiography of North America on Men of European Origin. In Justin Winsor. ed. Narrative and Critical History of America. 8 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884-89, Vol. 4, Pp. i-xxx; Nathaniel. S. Shaler. Nature and Man in America. New York: Scribner's Sons, 1891; Nathaniel S. Shaler. The Story of Our Continent: a Reader in the Geography and Geology of North America. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1892; Nathaniel S. Shaler. The Interpretation of Nature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1893; Nathaniel S. Shaler. ed. The United States of America. 3 vols. New York: Appleton and Co., 1894; Nathaniel S. Shaler. Sea and Land: Features of Coasts and Oceans with Specific Reference to the Life of Man. New York: Scribner's Sons, 1894; Nathaniel S. Shaler. Outlines of Earth's History: a Popular Study of Physiography. New York: Appleton and Co., 1898; Nathaniel S. Shaler. Man and the Earth. New York: Fox, Duffield and Co., 1905, New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1971, electronic version at American Memory Library of Congress, memory.loc.gov; David N. Livingstone. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the Culture of American Science. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1987; David N. Livingstone. Environment and Inheritance: Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the American Frontier. In Brian W. Blouet. ed. The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981, Pp. 123-138; Carl O. Sauer et al. Geography of the Pennyroyal: a Study of the Influence of Geology and Physiography upon the Industry, Commerce, and Life of the People. Kentucky Geological Survey Ser. 6, Vol. 25. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1927 (p. ix).]

When Slippery Rock University, in the town of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, opens for classes in 1889 as Slippery Rock Normal School, all students are required to take at least one of three geography courses. The three courses, Geography of the U.S. and Europe, Physical Geography, and Political Geography, are offered by Maude Bingham, with the top-selling texts of the day by Harper’s and Edwin J. Houston as required reading. The Normal School portion of Slippery Rock’s name will change several times during ensuing decades, first to Slippery Rock State Teachers College in 1927, to Slippery Rock State College in 1960, and then to Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania in 1983, but geography’s presence in its curriculum remains constant throughout.
      Warren Thoburn Strain, with a Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin, joins the faculty for the 1936-37 academic year to chair the College’s newly created Department of Geography. The geography curriculum includes twelve courses, eight regional and four systematic ones, which are offered on a multi-year schedule. Professor Strain, who chairs the geography department through the 1950s, is honored by the university in its naming of the Strain Behavioral Science Building.
      By the mid-1970s, Slippery Rock State College’s geography faculty of nine offer both an independent geography major with concentrations in rural and urban planning, human ecology, and liberal arts geography, and a program for majors in geography education. Paul Rizza joins the geography faculty in the early 1970s and chairs the department for most of the next 25 years. Following his retirement in 1998, he becomes the second geographer to be honored by the university when West Hall, built in 1900, is renovated and renamed the Paul and Carolyn Carruth Rizza Hall for Paul and his mother-in-law.
      During the 1990s the department’s program evolves to offer a B.A. in geography with concentrations in environmental planning and liberal arts geography, and a B.S. with concentrations in applied geography and environmental planning. An administrative reorganization in 2001 results in the current Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment, with programs leading to the B.S. degree in Applied Geographic Technology and Environmental Studies and to the B.A. degree in Liberal Arts/Geography.
      [Harper and Brothers. Harper's School Geography: with Maps and Illustrations Prepared Expressly for this Work by Eminent American Artists. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876 and new editions through 1898; Harper and Brothers. Harper’s Introductory Geography: with Maps and Illustrations Prepared Expressly for this Work by Eminent American Artistsi. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1877 and new editions through 1905; Edwin James Houston. The Elements of Physical Geography: For Use of Schools, Academies, and Collegesi. Philadelphia: Eldredge and Brother, 1875 and new editions through 1916; www.sru.edu.]

1890s
Textbooks devoted to commercial and economic geography appear for the first time in the United States during the 1890s, spurred by the appearance in 1889 of Handbook of Commercial Geography, by British geographer George C. Chisholm (1850-1930). The desire to bring the challenges and opportunities associated with overseas empire into the classroom play its part as well. One secondary-school text at the turn of the century states this new perspective-"Great care has been taken to acquaint the pupil with the world-wide interests that are now before us, and to prepare him to take his part in the advance that we must make in all the practical arts of life. With the outreach of our country, through its vast outlying possessions on both sides of the world, opening the way to unlimited commercial expansion, the new geography has forced to a point of view which necessitates a thorough recognition of its commercial and business aspect" (Roddy, 2).
      [George C. Chisholm. Handbook of Commercial Geography. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889 (18th edition., 1966); H. Justin Roddy. Complete Geography. New York: American Book Company, 1902; John N. Tilden. Commercial Geography, for Academies, High Schools, and Business Colleges. Boston: Leach, Shewell, and Sanborn, 1891; Edward K. Gonner. Commercial Geography. New York: Macmillan, 1894; Jacques W. Redway. Commercial Geography: a Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges. New York: Charles Scribner's and Sons, 1901; Spencer Trotter. The Geography of Commerce. New York: Macmillan, 1903; Henry Gannett, Carl [Charlotte] L. Garrison, and Edwin J. Houston. Commercial Geography. New York: American Book Company, 1905; Trevor J. Barnes. 'In the Beginning was Economic Geography' - a Science Studies Approach to Disciplinary History. Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001): 521-544.]

1890
1890 U.S. Board on Geographic Names is created as an agency of the federal government by executive order of President Benjamin Harrison. Its mission is to establish and maintain the uniform set of names of places and geographic entities used by the federal government. Current information on the Board of Geographic Names and the names of geographic entities in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is available at mapping.usgs.gov/www/gnis/bgn.html.
      [Meredith F. Burrill. 1890-1990: a Century of Service, United States Board on Geographic Names. Miscellaneous Publication 1484. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Forest Service, 1990; The United States Board on Geographic Names, 1890-1990: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Meridian: a Journal of the Map and Geography Round Table of the American Library Association 8 (1992): entire issue; Meredith F. Burrill. The Language of Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 58 (March 1968): 1-11; Henry Gannett. The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States. Geological Survey Bulletin 197 and 257. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1902, 1905; George R. Stewart. Names on the Land: a Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1945; Richard R. Randall. Place Names: How They Define the World-and More. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.]

1891
Exhibition of Geographical Appliances Used in Schools or Libraries is organized by Cyrus C. Adams (1848-1928), head, Department of Geography at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn, New York. It is the first such museum exhibition held in the United States devoted explicitly to geography, and occurs at a time when the number of such public exhibitions, and the establishment of permanent museums to display objects of all kinds, are experiencing dramatic successes.
      First presented at the Brooklyn Institute, the Exhibition of Geographical Appliances displays some 2,500 objects—maps, atlases, relief models, globes, telluria, textbooks, works of reference, books of travel, and 150 geographic pictures for school use. The objects are collected from European and American publishers, federal government agencies, state surveys, and the like. Some 37,000 persons visit the initial exhibition, which then travels to Boston, where it is displayed under the auspices of the Appalachian Mountain Club, and expanded to include materials from the geography and geology laboratories at Harvard University. There it is viewed by 12,000 visitors. Following Boston, it is displayed in New York City under the sponsorship of the American Museum of Natural History, where it is viewed by an additional 14,000 visitors before permanently returning to the Brooklyn Institute’s Museum.
      Similar, though typically smaller, exhibits to the one organized by Cyrus C. Adams, are devoted to materials communicating geographic information, such as maps, atlases, and gazetteers, or to facilitating geography education, and appear elsewhere around the turn of the century (Anon. 1899, Adams 1908, Anon. 1908). This particular form of public exhibition of geographic materials diminishes when associations of scholarly, academic, and professional geographers come to be established following the turn of the century, which then convene their own meetings that include exhibits. (see Geography museums entry at 1900s)
      [Cyrus C. Adams. Catalogue of the Exhibition of Geographical Appliances Used in Schools or Libraries Collected from Various Countries and Exhibited by the Department of Geography of the Brooklyn Institute [of Arts and Sciences] . Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Institute, 1891; Anon. The Geographical Exhibition of the Brooklyn Institute. Goldthwaite’s Geographical Magazine 1 (1891): 195-196; Anon. The Geographical Exhibition in Boston. Goldthwaite’s Geographical Magazine 1 (1891): 346-347; Anon. An Exhibition of Geographical and Geological Material. Science n.s. 9 (May 12, 1899): 691; Cyrus C. Adams. Catalogue of Typical Wall Maps, Atlases, and Text Books Used in Schools for Geographical Education, Collected and Exhibited by the American Geographical Society [in 1908]. New York, 1908; Anon. The Society’s Geographical Exhibition. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 40 (December 1908): 746-747; W. L. G. Joerg. Memoir of Cyrus Cornelius Adams. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 21 (September 1931): 171-178.]

Goldthwaite’s Geographical Magazine begins publication as the nation’s first popular monthly magazine-journal devoted to geography. Published in New York City, initially under the editorship of Cyrus C. Adams (1849-1928), the journal features seven sections-Talk about Explorers, Discovery and Books, Suggestions for Travellers, Things for the Library and School, Questions and Answers, Record of Geographical Progress, and Hints for Teachers. The Hints for Teachers section provides the first instance of an American journal devoting regular attention to geography education. It ceases publication in 1895.

1893
The influential Committee on Secondary School Studies of the National Education Association (NEA), popularly known as the Committee of Ten (chaired by Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University), issues a report that significantly impacts America's geography education. The report, which responds to an earlier NEA report on the lack of "uniformity in school programs and in requirements for admission to college" in the United States, proposes that nine subject areas comprise the curriculum for America's college preparatory secondary schools: Latin; Greek; English; other modern languages; mathematics; physics, astronomy and chemistry; natural history (biology including botany, zoology, and physiology); history, civil government and political economy; and geography (physical geography, geology, and meteorology).
      In producing the report, the NEA conducts several conferences that examine the status of individual secondary-school subjects. The conference on geography is composed of Thomas C. Chamberlin, University of Chicago (chair), George L. Collie, Beloit College, William Morris Davis, Harvard University, Delwyn A. Hamlin, Rice Training School in Boston, Mark W. Harrington, U.S. Weather Bureau, Edwin J. Houston, Central High School in Philadelphia, Charles F. King, Dearborn School in Boston, Francis W. Parker, Cook County Normal School in Chicago, and Israel C. Russell, University of Michigan. Charged with addressing physical geography, geology, and meteorology in the primary and secondary school curriculum, the conference of geography concludes-that geography should provide a broad treatment of Earth, its inhabitants and institutions in the early primary grades, that its focus turn more to physical geography in the later primary grades, and that a course in 'physiography' (physical geography with an emphasis on process) should provide the capstone secondary school experience in geography. "In examinations for admission to college, the Conference suggests that physiography be given preference over other branches of geography, and that political geography be required in connection with history." Meteorology and geology courses are recommended only for schools capable of providing proper instruction. The conference also emphasizes the use of maps in classrooms and produces a separate book to assist teachers in that regard.
      These conclusions, which support the rising interest in physical geography as a scientific research discipline, prove controversial within geography, most particularly because of the rapid advancements then occurring in human geography (which this proposal largely excludes from the secondary school curriculum) and in the emergence of social studies in primary and secondary school curriculums (where human geography is welcome). Primary and secondary school geography education (both physical and human components) also receives explicit support from the Committee of Ten conference on history, civil government and political economy, which resolves "that the study of history should be constantly associated with the study of topography and political geography, and should be supplemented by the study of historical and commercial geography, and the drawing of historical maps...and constant use [of] wall-maps and historical atlases." The NEA's subsequent Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Education presents arithmetic and mathematics, geography, history, grammar, and literature and art as the "five branches upon which the disciplinary work of the elementary [school should be] concentrated." Termed the 'five windows of the soul' by William Torrey Harris (1835-1909), U.S. Commissioner of Education at the time, these subjects are viewed as promulgating the essential lessons of Western civilization in the elementary-school curriculum. The NEA report describes geography as "following arithmetic... the second study in importance among the branches that correlate man to nature."
      Numerous subsequent NEA committees address the conflict between physical and human geography as alternative goals for secondary-school training in geography-Committee on Physical Geography in 1897, Committee on Secondary School Geography in 1908, and Committee on Commercial Education in Business Education in 1917. The Association of American Geographers appoints a Committee on Geography for Secondary Schools in 1908, and hears a presidential address on the topic in 1915. Numerous articles appearing in the Journal of Geography throughout the period discuss the issues involved.
      [National Education Association. Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies Appointed at the Meeting of the National Education Association July 9, 1892, with the Reports of the Conferences Arranged by this Committee and held December 28-30, 1892. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1893 (Geography is covered at pp. 204-249; History, civil government, and political economy at pp. 162-201.), and as Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies, with Reports of the Conferences Arranged by the Committee. New York: American Book Co., 1894; National Education Association. Report of the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary [Grades 1-8] Education, with Reports of the Subcommittees. New York: American Book Co., 1895; William M. Davis, Charles F. King, and George L. Collie. The Use of Government Maps in Schools. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1894; Robert M. Butler. The Reform of Secondary Education in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly (March 1894): 372-384; Israel C. Russell. Reports of a Conference on Geography. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 27 (1895): 30-41; Albert P. Brigham et al. Preliminary Report of the Committee on Physical Geography to the Natural Science Department of the National Education Association. Journal of School Geography 2 (September 1898): 248-262; James F. Chamberlain. Report of the Committee on Secondary School Geography. Proceedings of the National Education Association, 1909; James F. Chamberlain. Report of the Committee on Secondary School Geography. The Journal of Geography 8 (September 1909): 1-9; J. Paul Goode. Report of the N.E.A. Committee on Commercial Geography as an Element in Business Education. Journal of Geography 15 (April 1917): 272-274; Richard E. Dodge. Report of Committee on Geography for Secondary Schools. Journal of Geography 8 (March 1910): 159-165; Richard E. Dodge. Some Problems in Geographic Education with Special Reference to Secondary Schools. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 6 (March 1916): 3-18.]

The Conference of American and European Geographers, the first meeting hosted by American geographers to include geographers from other countries, is held as part of the Education Congress of the Columbian World Exposition in Chicago, July 27-28, 1893. The meeting is organized by the National Geographic Society and includes a dozen presentations. Geography education is explicitly addressed in presentations by William B. Powell (1836-1904), superintendent of schools in the District of Columbia and advocate of progressive education reform, Francis W. Parker (1837-1902), leader in progressive education reform and head of Cook County Normal School, and Thomas C. Chamberlin (1843-1928), professor at the University of Chicago and chair of the National Education Association's Committee of Ten Conference on Physical Geography, Meteorology, and Geology, meeting that same summer. Geographers contribute to other Exposition meetings-Cleveland Abbe to the International Meteorological Congress, Cyrus C. Adams to the Congress on Africa, Henry Gannett to the International Statistical Institute-as well as to its exhibitions.
      [Francis W. Parker. The Relations of Geography to History; William B. Powell. Geographic Instruction in the Public Schools; and Thomas C. Chamberlin. The Relations of Geology to Physiography in Our Educational System. Pp. 125-131; 137-153; 154-160. In Proceedings of the International Geographic Conference in Chicago. National Geographic Magazine 5 (January 1894): 97-256; Charles T. Conger. Geography at the World's Columbian Exposition. Geographical Journal 3 (February 1894): 130-134; Cyrus C. Adams. Tropical Africa as a Factor in Civilization. Our Day 13 (1894): 5-15; Henry Gannett. The Geographical Distribution of the Population of the United States. Publications [Journal] of the American Statistical Association 3 (1892-93): 551-553; Marcus Baker. Relief Maps. Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington 12 (1892-94): 349-367; World's Columbian Exposition. Official Catalogue of Exhibits: United States Government Building. Chicago: W. B. Conkey, 1893.]

The first U.S. commemorative postage stamps with a geography theme are issued in conjunction with the Columbian World Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas. The set of 16 Columbian Exposition stamps depicts phases of Columbus' career associated with expeditions to the Americas, with face values ranging from $0.01 to $5.00. Christopher Columbus' voyages to the Americas are celebrated again a century later in the set of 4 Voyages of Columbus stamps ($0.29, 1992).
      Numerous geography topics appear on U.S. postage stamps after 1893, including exploration, human settlement, territorial expansion, landscapes, conservation, and map images. Explorers celebrated with commemorative stamps in addition to Christopher Columbus are-Admiral Richard E. Byrd ($0.03, 1933); Meriwether Lewis and William Clark ($0.03, 1954); John W. Powell ($0.05, 1969); Captain James Cook (two $0.13, 1978); a set of 4 Arctic Explorers stamps-Elisha Kent Kane ($0.22, 1986), Adolphus W. Greely ($0.22, 1986), Vilhjalmur Stefansson ($0.22, 1986), and Robert E. Peary & Matthew Alexander Henson ($0.22, 1986); a set of 4 Antarctic Explorers stamps-Nathaniel Palmer ($0.25, 1988), Lt. Charles Wilkes ($0.25, 1988), Richard E. Byrd ($0.25, 1988), and Lincoln Ellsworth ($0.25, 1988); Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo ($0.29, 1992); and two in the set of 20 Legends of the West stamps-Jim Bridger ($0.29, 1994) and John C. Frémont ($0.29, 1994). A modern form of exploration in acquiring geographic information of Earth is depicted on Landsat Satellite Above Earth ($0.29, 1991) in the set of 10 Space Exploration stamps.
      One of the most explicitly geographic sets of images on early commemorative stamps appear in the set of 9 Trans-Mississippi Exposition stamps issued in 1898 to commemorate that year's Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska. Each stamp depicts a scene of human occupancy in the American West-Jacques Marquette on the Mississippi ($0.01), Farming in the West ($0.02), Indian Hunting Buffalo ($0.04), John C. Frémont on the Rocky Mountains ($0.05), Troops Guarding Wagon Train ($0.08), Hardships of Emigration ($0.10), Western Mining Prospector ($0.50), Western Cattle in a Storm ($1.00), and Mississippi River [Eads] Bridge at St. Louis ($2.00).
      Beginning in 1999, composite representations of archetypal geographic environments, which incorporate numerous images of flora and fauna in a single page-size image, appear in the Nature of America series. Printed in souvenir sheet format, three sets of stamps appear-10 stamps in the Sonoran Desert pane ($0.33, 1999), 10 stamps in the Pacific Coast Rain Forest pane ($0.33, 2000), and 10 stamps in the Great Plains Prairie pane ($0.34, 2001).
      Each of the states is represented with a unique set of images for the first time in the 50 Greetings from America stamps ($0.34, 2002).
      The first U.S. postage stamp to incorporate a map image displays a map of the United States highlighting the territory included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. It appears in the set of Louisiana Purchase Exposition stamps issued to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis (the map appears on the $0.10 stamp in the set of 5 stamps with values ranging from $0.01 to $0.10, 1904). Numerous other stamps include maps, most often to depict U.S. territorial expansion, but other themes as well, e.g., the Republic of Marshall Islands stamp ($0.25, 1990) includes a stick navigation chart of the Pacific Ocean, and the Love stamp ($0.29, 1991) features a map of Earth using a cordiform, or heart-shaped, projection centered on the Greenwich Prime Meridian.
      [James E. Kloetzel. ed. Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue. Sidney, Ohio: Scott Publishing Co., 2001.]

Bulletin of the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, a scholarly journal of the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, begins publication. The journal changes its name to reflect the organizational name change to Geographical Society of Philadelphia in 1898. It ceases publication with volume 36 (Winter 1938-39).

Around the World, published in New York City and edited by Angelo Heilprin (1853-1907) in Philadelphia, begins publication as a monthly magazine-journal devoted to geography. Carrying the subtitle-An Illustrated Magazine of Tours, Travels and Explorations, Devoted to a Knowledge of the Earth and of its Inhabitants-it focuses on travel, exploration, and geography, and features numerous illustrations. It ceases publication in 1895.

Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana establishes a Department of Geography, Geology, and Anthropology in 1893 and its graduate program in geography in 1963.
      [ www.indstate.edu]

1896
The History of Mankind appears, the only work by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) to be published in the United States during his lifetime. A year earlier, the second edition of his Politische Geographie der Verinigten Staaten von Amerika (Munich, 1893) had received a glowing review in The Atlantic Monthly 75 (January 1895): 124-128. His major work, Anthropo-Geographie (1882-91), is reinterpreted by Ellen Churchill Semple in her Influences of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography (1911). After traveling in the United States during 1873 and 1874, Ratzel produces Städte- und Culturbilder aus Nordamerika (1876, 1988), which focuses on the nation's rapidly urbanizing settlement system, and Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika (1878-80), a regional geography.
      [Friedrich Ratzel. The History of Man, translated from the second German edition by A. J. Butler with an introduction by E. B. Tylor. 3 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1896-1898; Friedrich Ratzel. Sketches of Urban and Cultural Life in North America, translated from the German by Stewart A. Stehlin. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988; Friedrich Ratzel, translated from the German by E. C. Semple. Studies in Political Areas. American Journal of Sociology 3 (November 1897): 297-313, 3 (January 1898): 449-463, and 4 (November 1898): 366-379; Martha Krug Genthe and Ellen Churchill Semple. Tributes to Friedrich Ratzel. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 36 (1904): 550-553; Carl Sauer. The Formative Years of Ratzel in the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61 (June 1971): 245-254.]

1897
Library of Congress creates the Hall of Maps and Charts, headed by Philip Lee Phillips (1857-1924), when the Library relocates from the Capitol to its own structure (current Thomas Jefferson Building). Maps and atlases are among holdings of the Library of Congress from its inception in 1800. Appeals made across the decades for a federal commitment to maintaining a comprehensive collection of geographic information in Washington include ones by Edward Hunt of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, and geographers Johann Georg Kohl (1808-1878) and Daniel C. Gilman (1831-1908), among others. Not until 1897, however, is an independent administrative unit created within the Library of Congress to explicitly handle its geographic collection, which then includes 47,000 maps and 1,200 atlases. The Hall of Maps and Charts becomes the Map Division and eventually the Geography and Map Division. Library of Congress collections currently consist of 119 million items, including a cartographic collection of over 4.6 million maps, 65,000 atlases, 300 globes, 13,000compact disks of digital data and raster images, manuscript materials of interest to geographers, and an Internet site with more than 5,500 cartographic objects scanned from the collection.
      [Richard W. Stephenson. Congress' First Map Collection, and Clara E. Le Gear. Early Years in the Map Division, Library of Congress. In Richard W. Stephenson. ed. Federal Government Map Collecting: a Brief History. Washington: D.C. Chapter, Special Libraries Association, 1969. Pp. 7-19 & 20-28; Edward B. Hunt. Projects of a Geographical Department of the Library of Congress. Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 7 (1853): 171-175; Johann G. Kohl. Substance of a Lecture Delivered at the Smithsonian Institution [The History of American Geography, during winter of 1856-57] on a Collection of the Maps and Charts of America. In Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1856. 34th Congress, 3d Session, Misc. Doc. No. 54. Washington: A. O. P. Nicholson, 1857. Pp. 93-146; Daniel C. Gilman. Annual Address: the Last Ten Years of Geographical Work in this Country. Journal of the American Geographical Society 3 (1872): 111-133 (at 114-5); Library of Congress Geography and Maps: an Illustrated Guide. Washington: Library of Congress, 1996; Library of Congress Internet sites: general-www.loc.gov; Geography and Map Division-lcweb.loc.gov/rr/geogmap.]

The scholarly journal Journal of School Geography begins publication. The journal, published from 1897 to 1901 (five volumes), combines with Bulletin of the American Bureau of Geography in 1902 to become the Journal of Geography.

Some Geographic Causes Determining the Location of Cities, by Ellen Churchill Semple 1863-1932), is the first article written by an American geographer to address the topic of urban settlement in a scholarly geography journal.
      [Ellen Churchill Semple. Some Geographic Causes Determining the Location of Cities. Journal of School Geography 1 (1897): 225-231.]

1898

University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California establishes a Department of Geography in 1898. The department’s Ph.D. program is established in 1923. The University of California, Berkeley awards its first M.A. degree in geography to Earle G. Linsley in 1908, and the first Ph.D. in geography to John B. Leighly in 1927. The department’s Dickinson Library, co-located with the department in McCone Hall, consists of a collection of geographic works based on the bequeathed collections of Robert E. Dickinson (1905-1981) and John B. Leighly (1895-1986). The department-sponsored Carl Sauer Memorial Lectures recognizes Carl Sauer (1889-1975), America’s best-known cultural geographer and a member of the department (1923-1957).
      [www.berkeley.edu; John Leighly. Drifting into Geography in the Twenties. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 4-9; James J. Parsons. The Later Sauer Years. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 9-15; James J. Parsons. 60 Years of Berkeley Geography, 1923-83. Supplement to The Itinerant Geographer. Berkeley, CA: Department of Geography, University of California at Berkeley, 1983.]

Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut initiates a strong program of instruction and research in geography in 1898. Herbert E. Gregory (1869-1952), chair of the Department of Geology, promotes geography with an outstanding group of faculty members that includes Hiram Bingham, Avard L. Bishop, Theodore H. Boggs, Isaiah Bowman, Angelo Heilprin, Ellsworth Huntington, George T. Surface, and Leonardo M. Tarr. This flowering of geography fades when financial support declines in 1915.
      Prior to the period of Gregory’s leadership, geography is included in the curriculum of Yale University in a variety of ways throughout its long history. As early as the 1770s, Yale students are required to read William Guthrie’s New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar. Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826), a 1783 graduate of Yale College, serves as tutor in geography beginning in 1786, prior to his completing American Geography (1789) and the assumption of a full-time pastorate in the Congregational church. Morse’s geography books are used for instruction into the 1820s. Thereafter, geography fades from the curriculum until Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908) is appointed professor of physical and political geography in Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School in 1863 (see Gilman entry at 1860 and elsewhere). Gilman, who vigorously promotes the geography of Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter in America, departs Yale’s faculty in 1872, but various forms of geographic research and training continue with William H. Brewer, professor of agriculture (forestry) from 1864, who lectures on physical geography through the close of the century, and Francis A. Walker, professor of political economy and history who offers courses on regional and statistical geography beginning in 1872 (see Walker entry at 1873). Brewer and Walker are also closely connected to geographic research conducted by the federal government throughout this period.
      In 1943 Stephen B. Jones (1903-1984) joins Yale’s Institute of International Studies, and becomes chair of the university’s newly created Department of Geography in 1948. The department focuses on political geography and area-regional studies programs, which flourish following World War II. When interest in area studies programs subsequently declines, the department is abolished in 1967.
      [Geoffrey J. Martin. Geography, Geographers, and Yale University, c. 1770-1970. In John E. Harmon and Timothy J. Rickard. eds. Geography in New England: a Special Publication. New Britain, CT: New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, 1988. Pp. 2-9; John K. Wright. Daniel Coit Gilman, Geographer and Historian. Geographical Review 51 (1961): 381-399; Geoffrey J. Martin. Ellsworth Huntington: His Life and Thought. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1973; Geoffrey J. Martin. The Life and Thought of Isaiah Bowman. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981; Stephen B. Jones. Boundary-making: a Handbook for Statesmen, Treaty Editors, and Boundary Commissions. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945; George W. Pierson. Yale College: an Illustrated History, 1871-1921 and Yale: the University College, 1921-1937. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952 and 1955.]

Geographic Society of Chicago is founded by Zonia Baber of the Cook County Normal School with the support of J. Paul Goode and Rollin D. Salisbury, both of the Department of Geography, University of Chicago.
      [William D. Pattison. Rollin Salisbury and the Establishment of Geography at the University of Chicago. In Brian W. Blouet. ed. The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981. Pp. 151-165.]

1899
The Geographical Cycle, the landmark research paper by William Morris Davis (1850-1934), geomorphologist at Harvard University, appears in The Geographical Journal in 1899. Davis begins the article – “All the varied forms of the lands are dependent upon—or, as mathematicians would say, are functions of—three variable quantities, which may be called structure, process, and time.” To a large degree, this piece establishes the research agenda in American geomorphology for the first half of the twentieth century.
      The article features a series of diagrams that provide a visual representation of his argument that landforms evolve through an orderly progression of stages - youthful, mature, old age. Each stage is characterized by a suite of landforms that vary in drainage density, valley floor width, smoothness of the channel’s longitudinal profile, and the ability of meanders to adjust. In the five decades that follow, Davis and his followers alter the basic cycle to account for landforms in contrasting environments, e.g., arid, glacial, karst, coastal, savanna, periglacial. Davis' work comes under heavy criticism as the quantitative revolution begins in the mid-20th century, and eventually the paradigm is dropped, but depictions of the cycle continue to appear in some textbooks in the current century.
      [William M. Davis. The Geographical Cycle [of Erosion]. The Geographical Journal 14 (November 1899): 481-504, also in Douglas W. Johnson. ed. Geographical Essays. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1909, and New York: Dover Publications, 1954, Pp. 249-278.]

John Dewey (1859-1952), philosopher, psychologist, educator, and a leader in America's progressive movement of education reform declares-"The unity of all the sciences is found in geography. The significance of geography is that it presents the earth as the enduring home of the occupations of man. The world without its relationship to human activity is less than a world. Human industry and achievement, apart from their roots in the earth, are not even a sentiment, hardly a name" (Dewey, 1899). Dewey used these words to situate geography's role in his understanding of human achievement, and thus also its role in his educational philosophy of 'continuous reconstruction of experience' for elementary and secondary school children.
      His influential Democracy and Education notes that "to 'learn geography' is to gain in power to perceive the spatial, the natural, connections of an ordinary act...[f]or what is called geography as a formulated study is simply the body of facts and principles which have been discovered in other men's experience about the natural medium in which we live, and in connection with which the particular acts of our life have an explanation...[It] has its educative influence in a counterpart connection of natural facts with social events and their consequences. The classic definition of geography as an account of the earth as the home of man expresses the educational reality" (Dewey, 1916).
      The challenge of incorporating Dewey's conceptualizations of geography and education within the elementary and secondary school curriculum are addressed by Francis W. Parker (1837-1902), principal of Cook County [Chicago] Normal School and a progressive education reform leader, and Martha Krug Genthe (1871-1945), teacher in Connecticut and founding member of the Association of American Geographers, among others. Dewey's progressive education ideas actively influence geography education in the United States and overseas well into the 1930s and continue their influence into the twenty-first century. (Ikeda, Makiguchi, and see Lucy Sprague Mitchell entry at 1934 and High School Geography Project entry at 1969-70).
      [John Dewey. The School and Society: Being Three Lectures by John Dewey Supplemented by a Statement of the University Elementary School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1899; John Dewey. The Significance of Geography and History, Chapter 16 in Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan, 1916; Francis W. Parker. How to Study Geography. Vol. 10 in International Education Series. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1890; Jack K. Campbell. Colonel Francis W. Parker: the Children's Crusader. New York: Teachers College Press,1967; Martha Krug Genthe. Geographical Text-books and Geographical Teaching. Journal of Geography. 2 (May 1903): 227-243 and 2 (September 1903): 360-368; Daisaku Ikeda. John Dewey and Tsuesaburo Makiguchi: Confluences of Thought and Action. www.siu.edu/~deweyctr; Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. Jinsei Chirigaku [The Geography of Life]. Tokyo: Seikyo Bunko, 1980.]

1900s
Geography museums and exhibitions are promoted at a time when large public museums of many types are being established and international exhibitions held, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Geographic exhibitions are encouraged from the scale of the classroom to entire sections of the National (Smithsonian) Museum in Washington, D.C. (Betts, De Riemer, Ridgley, Semenov-Tian-Shansky, Reinhard); even statisticians recognize and promote the power of maps to communicate geographical data (Storey). No geography museums/exhibitions in the United States, however, approach the lines of those realized or suggested by the Scotsman Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) with his Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, several civic exhibitions, and Institute for Geography (Geddes).
      Significant components of many of the international exhibitions-world’s fairs held in the United States during this period are quite explicitly geographic. The United States Centennial Exhibition, the nation’s first important international fair, held at Philadelphia in 1876, attempts to spatially array exhibits in global-scale geographic order to assist visitors encompassing all of Earth’s human geographic diversity within the single locality of the fairgrounds. Objects included in the United States federal government’s exhibition are models of pre-historic Native American settlements in the Southwest, prepared by the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories (Hayden Survey), and a copy of the Statistical Atlas of the United States, the nation’s first national atlas, which includes the magnificent series of maps depicting the geographic evolution of Euro-American settlement from 1790 through the census of 1870 (see Statistical Atlas entry at 1874).
      As American industry turns from the North American continent to seek global-scale markets, one museum/institution in particular emerges with a strong economic geography theme. The Philadelphia Commercial Museum is characterized as “a catalogue raisonné of the world, from the point of view of the American exporter” (Branford). Initiated by Professor William P. Wilson, University of Pennsylvania, it incorporates some 24 railroad car loads of objects from Chicago’s Columbian World Exhibition of 1893; sponsors classes and special and touring exhibits, including the permanent Philadelphia Panorama; and establishes a global network of nearly 100,000 agents feeding information back to Philadelphia.
      The Philadelphia Commercial Museum opens in 1897 to great fanfare, complete with an address by William McKinley, President of the United States – “The Museum is inaugurated on broad and progressive lines; its authors and promoters mean that the conditions for international commerce shall be directly promoted by systematic study, and demonstrated by scientific methods” (Conn). Among its remarkable achievements prior to fading in the mid-1920s, the museum hosts an International Commercial Congress in 1899 that attracts over 1.2 million visitors and official delegations from over 30 foreign governments (Branford, Betts, Conn).
      [Ernest Ingersoll. The Making of a Museum. The Century 29 (January 1885): 354-369; Alicia De Riemer. The Educational Value of Geographical Museums. Journal of Geography 2 (March 1903): 136-143; Douglas C. Ridgley. The School Excursion and the School Museum as Aids in the Teaching of Geography Journal of Geography 3 (September 1904): 322-333; Benjamin Semenov-Tian-Shansky. The Geographical Museum. Geographical Review 19 (1929): 642-648; Rudolf Reinhard. The Museum of Regional Geography in Liepzig. Geographical Review 24 (April 1934): 219-231;Charles J. Storey. The Technique of Public Statistical Exhibits. Publications of the American Statistical Association 14 (March 1914): 49-53; Patrick Geddes. Nature Study and Geographical Education. Scottish Geographical Magazine 18 (October 1902): 525-536; Patrick Geddes. Civic Observatory and Laboratory in the Outlook Tower in Edinburgh. In Cities in Evolution. London: Ernest Benn, 1915. Pp. 321-327; Patrick Geddes. Note on Draft Plan for Institute of Geography. Scottish Geographical Magazine 18 (March 1902): 142-144, with comments by J. G. Bartholomew. A Plea for a National Institute of Geography. Scottish Geographical Magazine 18 (March 1902): 144-148, and others by others in Proposed National Institute of Geography [letters from James Bryce, Clements Markham, Archibald Geike]. Suggested Plan for a National Institute of Geography. Scottish Geographical Magazine 18 (April 1902): 217-221; Bruno Giberti. Designing the Centennial: a History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2002; Allen Pred. Spectacular Articulations of Modernity: the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 73B (1991): 45-84; Robert W. Rydell All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; Victor V. Branford. The Philadelphia Commercial Museum. Scottish Geographical Magazine 18 (May 1802): 243-252; W. Colgrove Betts. The Philadelphia Commercial Museum. Journal of Political Economy 8 (March 1900): 222-233; Steven Conn. The Philadelphia Commercial Museum: a Museum to Conquer the World. In Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. 115-150, 276-281.]

1900
The scholarly journal Bulletin of the American Bureau of Geography begins publication. Published from 1900 through 1901 (two volumes), the journal combines with the Journal of School Geography in 1902 to become the Journal of Geography.

1902
The scholarly journal Journal of Geography begins publication when the Journal of School Geography and the Bulletin of the American Bureau of Geography combine. Publication of the Journal of Geography, which in 1920 is assumed by the National Council of Geography Teachers (later renamed National Council for Geographic Education), continues to the present.

1903
Geographic Influence in American History by Albert Perry Brigham (1855-1932) and American History and Its Geographic Conditions by Ellen Churchill Semple (1863-1932), two landmark publications in American geographic scholarship, are published in the same year. The two books provide initial accounts by geographers of the role of physical geography, and in Semple's case both physical and human geography, in the historical development of the United States. They are viewed by contemporaries as updating the numerous works produced in the United States throughout nineteenth-century that relate geography and history during western civilization's Biblical, ancient, medieval, modern and American periods.
      The historian Albert Hart Bushnell notes in his review of the two works-"Professor Brigham's [book] is the work of an expert scientific man who loves the face of his country and who wants his countrymen to see how much it affects national life... Miss Semple's book is much less precise and authoritative, but it brings together for the service on the student and general reader a wealth of material hitherto unclassified and often unavailable, upon the function of man in overcoming the obstacles which nature set to the occupation of this continent... It is a book extremely useful to shoe who have been in the habit of thinking of their country in the flat, of seeing on the map only artificial subdivisions which you cross over as you travel, without being aware of them. She takes America as part of the earth surface, connected rather than divided by great oceans, with lands to the eastward and to the westward."
      Commenting on Semple's book in 1933, Charles C. Colby indicates that the book "won wide acceptance as a text in courses in the historical geography of the United States and still is in active use." Demand for the book results in a revised edition in a collaboration between Semple and Clarence F. Jones appearing three decades after initial issue, which is accompanied by a Manual, prepared by Jones that includes questions, exercises, and maps to assist classroom instruction.
      [Albert Perry Brigham. Geographic Influence in American History. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1903; Ellen Churchill Semple. American History and Its Geographic Conditions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1903; Albert Bushnell Hart. Review [of Geographic Influences in American History and American History and Its Geographic Conditions]. American Historical Review 9 (April 1904): 571-572; Review [of American History and Its Geographic Conditions and Geographic Influences in American History]. Political Science Quarterly 19 (September 1904): 501-502; Frederick J. Turner. Geographical Interpretation of American History. Journal of Geography 4 (January 1905): 34-37; Ellen Churchill Semple. American History and Its Geographic Conditions. Revised in collaboration with the author by Clarence F. Jones. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1933; Clarence F. Jones. Manual to Accompany American History and Its Geographic Conditions. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1933.]

University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois establishes a Department of Geography, the first independent geography program granting the Ph.D. degree in the United States, in 1903. The department becomes the Committee on Geographical Studies in 1986. The department’s landmark monograph series, Research Papers, is initiated in 1948, and continues as the University of Chicago Geography Research Papers, a publication of the University of Chicago Press. Over 230 monographs are published by 2000.
      [www.uchicago.edu; Alice Foster, Charles C. Colby, Robert S. Platt, Jesse H. Wheeler, Jr., C. W. Sorensen. In A Half Century of Geography—What Next? Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1955; William D. Pattison. Rollin Salisbury and the Establishment of Geography at the University of Chicago. In Brian W. Blouet. ed. The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981, pp. 151-163; Chauncy D. Harris. Geography of the University of Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 21-32; Harold M. Mayer. Urban Geography and Chicago in Retrospect. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 114-118.]

University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama establishes a Department of Geography in 1903. The first geography course taught at the university, Geography, was offered the same year the university was established in 1831. [www.ua.edu]

1904
Association of American Geographers is established in Philadelphia. The purpose of the organization, according to its constitution, is "the cultivation of the scientific study of geography in all its branches, especially by promoting acquaintance, intercourse and discussion among its members, by encouraging and aiding geographical exploration and research, by assisting the publication of geographical essays, by developing better conditions for the study of geography in schools, colleges, and universities, and by cooperating with other societies in the development of an intelligent interest in geography among the people of North America."
      [Preston E. James and Geoffrey J. Martin. The Association of American Geographers: The First Seventy-Five Years 1904-1979. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1978. Pp. 221.]

Eighth International Geographical Congress, the first to be convened in the United States, meets September 2-22 in five American cities-Washington, Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, and St. Louis-with a stopover at Niagara Falls. The first International Geographical Congress was convened in Antwerp in 1871. While in St. Louis, site of that summer's Olympic Games, International Geographical Congress geographers attend the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair and participate with scientists from around the world in sessions of the Exposition's International Congress of Arts and Science.
      [Henry Gannett. ed. Report of the Eighth International Geographic Congress, Held in the United States, 1904. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1905; Geoffrey J. Martin. One Hundred and Twenty Five Years of Geographical Congresses and the Formation of the International Geographical Union: or, from Antwerp to The Hague. Bulletin of the International Geographical Union 46 (1996): 5-26; Howard J. Rogers. ed. Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904. 8 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905-07; David R. Francis. The Universal Exposition of 1904. 2 vols. St. Louis: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1913; A. W. Coats. American Scholarship Comes of Age: The Louisiana Purchase Exposition 1904. Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (July-September): 404-417.]

United States joins with other countries to produce the International Map of the World (IMW) at the scale of 1:1,000,000. First proposed by Albrecht Penck (1858-1945) of the University of Vienna at the fifth International Geographical Congress held in Berne in 1891, this multi-nation undertaking calls for mapping the world at a uniform scale, requiring nearly 1,000 map sheets. Though much discussed at subsequent congresses, little substantive progress is made until the eighth International Geographical Congress in Washington, D.C., when Henry Gannett is selected to chair a committee charged with preparing mapping standards for the project. Standards are prepared and accepted at the ninth International Geographical Congress held in Geneva in 1908, and subsequently revised several times. The U.S. Geological Survey issues its first IMW sheet in 1912, but prepares only twelve of the 60 land-surface sheets required to cover the United States. The U.S. Army Map Service (currently National Imaging and Mapping Agency) eventually prepares all 60 of the U.S. land-surface sheets in close conformity with the IMW standards. The American Geographical Society contributes the 107-sheet Map of Hispanic America to the IMW project (see American Geographical Society entry at 1922). With just over 850 of the 974 sheets required to cover the world's land surface completed, the United Nations terminates the IMW project in 1987 (Winchester).
      [Albrecht Penck. The Construction of a Map of the World on a Scale of 1:1,000,000. Geographical Journal 1 (1893): 253-261; Anon. Map of the United States on a Scale of 1:1,000,000. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 37 (1905): 730-732; Anon. The Ninth International Geographical Congress. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 40 (November 1908): 679-681); Maps of the United States at the Scale of 1:1,000,000. Washington: U. S. Geological Survey, 1968; Michael Heffernan. Geography, Cartography and Military Intelligence: the Royal Geographical Society and the First World War. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers n.s. 21 (1996): 504-533; Simon Winchester. Taking the World's Measure: Cartography's Greatest Undertaking Survived Wars and Bureaucratic Snarls Only to Die When It Was Nearly Done. Civilization 2 (November/December 1995): 56-59.]

The nation’s first automobile-age road map, the landmark The Country round New York, is prepared in 1904 by Rand McNally and Co. for automobilists, the term then applied to weekend motorists who toured the countryside outside cities. The American Automobile Association, founded just two years earlier in Chicago, produces its first road map, depicting Staten Island, New York, in 1905. Rand McNally and Co., American Automobile Association, and numerous other firms and organizations will come to produce thousands of individual maps, guides, road map atlases, and digital electronic atlases, all aimed at assisting motorists to discover the geographic features of America.
      The nation’s first road map, in the sense of a map featuring roads, predates automobile-age efforts by over a century. Christopher Colles (1738-1816) receives this honor for his atlas of maps, A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America, published in 1789. This landmark atlas of 83 maps presents a rich array of geographic information along roads that connect Albany, New York and Annapolis, Maryland.
      [Andy Newman. First Came the Car; Then the Wrong Turn; Voilà: the Map. New York Times 11 October 2000; Christopher Colles. A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America, edited by Walter W. Ristow. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, original atlas of 83 maps at a scale of approximately 1:35,000 was published in New York in 1789; Walter W. Ristow. American Road Maps and Guides. The Scientific Monthly (May 1946): 397-406; Douglas A. Yourke, Jr. and John Margolis. Hitting the Road: the Art of the American Road Map. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1996; www.randmcnally.com ; www.aaa.com .]

The Geography of the Louisiana Purchase, a topical issue of the Journal of Geography featuring articles by Albert Perry Brigham, Nelson H. Darton, Spencer Trotter, Ellen Churchill Semple and others is prepared in celebration of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the National Education Association's 1904 annual meeting in St. Louis.
      [Journal of Geography 3 (June 1904): entire issue.]

1906
The first Ph.D. degree in geography education awarded in the United States is granted to David Gibbs at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Gibbs’ dissertation, prepared under the supervision of psychologist and Clark University president G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924), appears as The Pedagogy of Geography. It reviews previous approaches to geography education, describes contemporary classroom practices (based upon interviews with both teachers and students), and concludes that the pre-collegiate teaching of geography should-incorporate a Heimatkunde (home geography) orientation, stress elements of human geography prior to those of physical geography, feature maps as learning devices, and emphasize techniques of observation and sense perception. Gibbs, who had been a school-district superintendent in the Philippines, prepares a series of school textbooks for Philippine schools based upon Heimatkunde.
      [David Gibbs. The Pedagogy of Geography. Pedagogical Seminary 16 (1906): 39-95; William A. Koelsch. G. Stanley Hall, Child Study and the Teaching of Geography. Journal of Geography 101 (January-February 2002): 3-9.]

Gannett Peak, of the Wind River Range and highest elevation in the state of Wyoming (4,207 m./13,804 ft.), is named by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names for Henry Gannett (1846-1914), first director of geography programs at the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the U.S. Geological Survey, co-founder and president of the National Geographic Society, and founding member of the Association of American Geographers.

University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska establishes a Department of Geography in 1906 and its graduate program in geography the same year. The geography program is currently housed in the Department of Anthropology and Geography. [www.unl.edu]

1907
University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio establishes a geography program in its newly created Department of Geology and Geography, chaired by Nevin M. Fenneman (1865-1945). Fenneman also presents the university's first course in geography, Geography for Teachers, in 1907. In 1959, the geography program detaches from the Department of Geology and Geography to form the Department of Geography and Regional Planning, chaired by Peter H. Nash. In 1963, the department is renamed Department of Geography and is initially chaired by Robert B. McNee. Programmatically the department emphasizes an urban-economic-historical triad of academic courses and research. During the mid-1980s the department returns to an emphasis on physical geography and adds geographic information systems (GIS) to the curriculum in 1990. The university awards its first B.A. (1923), M.A. (1931), and Ph.D. (1964) degrees in geography to William Wachs. Currently the department’s academic programs lead to the B.A., M.A., joint M.A.-M.C.P., and Ph.D.      
      [ www.uc.edu; Bruce Ryan. Seventy-Five Years of Geography at the University of Cincinnati. Cincinnati: Department of Geography, University of Cincinnati, 1983.]

Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio establishes a Department of Geography in 1907 and its graduate program in geography the same year. [www.ohio-state.edu]

A Geographic Interpretation of New York City, by Frederick V. Emerson, is the first doctoral dissertation completed in the United States addressing the topic of urban settlement. It is also the first doctoral dissertation awarded in geography by the University of Chicago.
      [Frederick V. Emerson. A Geographic Interpretation of New York City. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 40 (1908): 587-612, 40 (1908): 726-738, and 41 (1909): 3-21.]

1908-09
Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920), U.S. Navy, leads the Arctic expedition that is generally credited with being first to reach the North Pole. The expedition’s final assault party travels from a camp at 87° 47’ north (1 April 1909); arrives at/near the pole (6 April); and returns to Cape Columbia, Ellesmere Island (23 April). The party consists of Robert E. Peary, Matthew A. Henson (1866-1955), four Inuits—Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo, Ooqueah, and 40 sled dogs.
      The egoism and nationalism, among numerous other ‘isms’ common among geographic expeditions seeking to ‘discover’ or ‘conquer’ Earth’s extremities receive full expression in Peary’s address upon returning to Cape Columbia, “My life work is accomplished. The thing which was intended from the beginning that I should do, the thing which I believed could be done, and that I could do, I have done. I have got the North Pole out of my system after twenty-three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations, more or less suffering, and some risks. I have won the last great geographical prize, the North Pole, for the credit of the United States. This work is the finish, the cap and climax of nearly for hundred years of effort, loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes by the civilized nations of the world, and it has been accomplished in a way that is thoroughly American. I am content” (Peary).
      Peary’s two decades of Arctic exploration prior to his ‘conquest of the pole’ include extensive exploration of Greenland; wintering in the Arctic with his wife Josephine; and three other attempts to reach the pole. The numerous honors Peary receives for his geographic exploration of the Arctic include recognition from the U.S. Congress, Gold Medal and Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society, Cullum Geographical Medal and Charles P. Daly Medal of the American Geographical Society, Elisha Kent Kane Medal of the Philadelphia Geographical Society, Helen Culver Medal of the Chicago Geographical Society, Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (UK), King Humbert Medal of the Royal Italian Geographical Society, Nachtigall Medal of the Imperial German Geographical Society, Légion d’Honneur from France, president of the Eighth International Geographical Congress in Washington, D.C., and honors at the Tenth International Geographical Congress in Rome. Peary also serves as president of the American Geographical Society (1903-06).
      Matthew Henson, who spends two decades working with Peary and travels with him to the pole, receives the Helen Culver Medal of the Geographic Society of Chicago as “the first Negro in this country to be honored for scientific achievement in the geographical field,” recognition from the U.S. Congress in 1944, and Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society (posthumously).
      Efforts to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ whether the Peary Expedition “won the last great geographical prize, the North Pole” continue. Peary and Henson are buried near each other in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
      [Robert E. Peary. The North Pole. New York: Frederick A Stokes, 1910; Matthew A. Henson. A Negro Explorer at the North Pole. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912; Josephine Diebitsch Peary. My Arctic Journal. New York: Contemporary Publishing Co., 1893; William H. Hobbs. Memoir of Robert Edwin Peary. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 11: 93-108; Wally Herbert. The Noose of Laurels: Robert E. Peary in the Race for the North Pole. New York: Doubleday, 1989; Robert M. Bryce. Cook and Peary: the Polar Controversy, Resolved. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997; www.northpole1909.com; academic.bowdoin.edu/arcticmuseum.]

1909
Report of the [U.S.] National Conservation Commission, America's first comprehensive inventory and assessment of natural resources, is prepared for the U.S. National Conservation Commission, a presidential commission appointed by Theodore Roosevelt. Prepared under the direction of Henry Gannett (1846-1914), the report marks an important step in the federal government's involvement in America's conservation movement and in terms of the scientific analysis of the balance among availability, demand, and use of natural resources in the United States. Only a few hundred copies of the report are produced when a political struggle between Congress and the Presidency results in no funds being allocated for its printing (Marcy). Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States, by Charles Van Hise (1857-1918) then president of the University of Wisconsin, is based on the suppressed report and does much to promote the study of conservation in American universities during the next two decades.
      [Henry Gannett. ed. Report of the [U.S.] National Conservation Commission, with Accompanying Papers. 3 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909; Carl Marcy. Presidential Commissions. New York: King's Crown Press, 1945; Charles R. Van Hise. Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1910, and revised by Loomis Havemeyer, Gar A. Roush, and Frederic H. Newell as Conservation of Our Natural Resources. New York: Macmillan, 1930.]

East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, originally the East Carolina Teachers’ Training School, offers geography courses from the day it opens for classes in 1909. Professor Herbert E. Austin, who received his graduate training in geography at Clark University, insures that all prospective teachers receive training in geography, and is honored at his death in 1929 when the administration building is renamed the Austin Building. The Department of Geography is created in 1921, which currently offers the B.A. degree in geography, B.S. in applied geography, M.A. in geography, and M.A. in geography with planning concentration.
      [www.ecu.edu; Ronald L. Mitchelson. “Map This!” A History of the Geography Department at East Carolina University. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 268-287.]

1910
University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona offers a preparatory course in physical geography annually from the 1910-11 academic year, a course that was first offered in 1892. Melvin E. Hecht, the university’s first professor trained as a geographer, joins the faculty on a continuing basis in 1956. The university awards its first B.S. degree in Business Administration with a major in area development in 1958. Geography is first offered as a major to students in the College of Liberal Arts in 1959 and the first B.A. degrees in geography are awarded in 1961. The geography program achieves departmental status when the Department of Geography and Area Development is created in the College of Business and Public Administration in 1961, with Dan Stanislawski becoming the first head of department in 1963. The Department of Geography and Area Development merges with the Committee on Urban Planning in 1973 to create a Department of Geography, Area Development, and Urban Planning. When the planning faculty is dissolved in 1979, the department name becomes the Department of Geography and Regional Development. In 1980, the department moves from the Business and Public Administration Building to the fourth floor of Harvill Building. A final administrative adjustment transfers the department from the College of Business and Public Administration to the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1983. The Department of Geography and Regional Development currently awards the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in geography and the B.S. in regional development.
      [www.geog.arizona.edu]

The emergence of American research universities and their doctoral training programs late in the nineteenth century produces a dozen Ph.D. degrees in geography by the close of the next century’s first decade. Half are awarded by the University of Pennsylvania; the other half by Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, University of Chicago, and Cornell University combined. By the close of World War II, more than 300 doctorates in geography are awarded.
      [Derwent Whittlesey. Dissertations in Geography Accepted by Universities in the United States for the Degree of Ph.D. as of May, 1935. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 25 (December 1935): 211-237; Leslie Hewes. Dissertations in Geography Accepted by Universities in the United States and Canada for the Degree of Ph.D., June, 1935, to June 1946, and Those Currently in Progress. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 36 (December 1946): 215-247.]

1911
Influences of Geographic Environment, on the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-geography, a landmark book by Ellen Churchill Semple (1863-1932), is published in 1911. Semple’s work, inspired by the first volume of Fredrich Ratzel’s Anthropo-Geographie: Grundzüge der Anwendung der Erdkunde Verbreitung des Menschen (1882), documents the “influences of geographic environment” on four aspects of humans and their activities - (1) “direct physical effects” on human physiology; “psychical effects” on human activities such as religion, laws, and language; “the economic and social development of a people by the abundance, paucity, or general character of the natural resources, by the local ease or difficulty of securing the necessaries of life, and by the possibility of industry and commerce afforded by the environment;” and “the movements and ultimate distribution of mankind” (Semple 33-50). It becomes the most influential volume in human geography published by an American during the first part of the twentieth century.
      [Ellen Churchill Semple. Influences of Geographic Environment, On the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-Geography. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1911, New York: Russell & Russell, 1968; Contemporary reviews include, Anon. Nature 88 (1911): 101, George G. Chisholm. Miss Semple on the Influence of Geographical Environment. Geographical Journal 39 (1912): 31-37, Ray H. Whitbeck. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 43 (1911): 937-939, and Anon. Journal of Geography 10 (1911): 33; John K. Wright. Miss Semple’s Influences of Geographic Environment: Notes Toward a Bibliobiography. In Human Nature in Geography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. Pp. 188-204; Carl Sauer. Ellen Churchill Semple. In Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson. eds. Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, 1934. Vol. 13, pp. 661-662; Charles C. Colby. Ellen Churchill Semple. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 23 (December 1933): 229-240; Judith Conoyer Bronson. Ellen Semple: Contributions to a History of American Geography. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. St. Louis: Department of History, Saint Louis University, 1973; Kathleen E. Braden. Regions, Semple, and Structuration. Geographical Review 86 (July 1996): 377-384.]

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, a scholarly journal of the Association of American Geographers, begins publication. Its publication continues to the present. (see Association of American Geographers entry at 1904)
      [Electronic version available from JSTOR, the scholarly journal Internet archival service, www.jstor.org]

1912
The Transcontinental Excursion of 1912 is sponsored by the American Geographical Society in celebration of its sixtieth anniversary and the occupancy of a new building at 156th and Broadway in New York City. The grand two-month field expedition, primarily by train, is composed of a party of 43 European and 90 American geographers that is lead by William Morris Davis (1850-1934). The expedition's 13,000-mile route extends from New York City across the Midwest and Northern Plains to the Pacific Northwest, south to San Francisco, and returns to the Eastern Seaboard and New York City via Colorado, the Southeast, and Washington, D.C.
      [William M. Davis. Guidebook for the Transcontinental Excursion of 1912. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1912; Memorial Volume of the Transcontinental Excursion of 1912 of the American Geographical Society of New York. Special Publication No. 1. New York: American Geographical Society, 1915; Geography in European and American Universities: a Symposium Held at Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, October 12, 1912. Reprinted from Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of the University of Virginia 1 (1915): 99-134; with Preface by Gary S. Dunbar. Charlottesville, VA: Department of Geography, University of Virginia, 1965.]

University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi establishes a Department of Geography in 1912 and its graduate program in geography in 1966. [www.usm.edu]

1913
University of California Publications in Geography begins publication. Twenty-eight volumes are issued by the time it ceases publication in 1988.

1914
The Conference on the Delineation of Physiographic Provinces in the United States is conducted and a committee on the same topic is formed by the Association of American Geographers to delineate and describe a standard set of physiographic (also termed landform, geomorphic, or physical) regions of the United States. Chaired by Nevin M. Fenneman (1865-1945), the committee builds upon previous work (Powell, Gannett, Bowman, Joerg, and Fenneman 1914) and deliberately avoids delineating holistic or multi-factor natural regions (Matthes and Herbertson). To facilitate relating the physiographic regions to statistics on human habitation, the new regions utilize the same small-area political boundaries that the U.S. Bureau of the Census uses for its statistics. Fenneman spends the 1915-16 academic year working in Washington with the U.S. Geological Survey's Physiographic Committee and the completed set of physiographic regions appears in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Fenneman 1916). Fenneman spends another decade working with the Geological Survey's Physiographic Committee to produce a hierarchy of "major divisions, provinces, and sections" and to refine the original map and the written descriptions of each region (Fenneman 1928). He subsequently provides a far more detailed (1,200-pages) regional physiographic description of the United States (Fenneman 1931 & 1938).
      Fenneman's final 1928 delineation of physical regions quickly becomes an accepted standard and is used in numerous subsequent publications, including regional physiographic studies (Atwood and Thornbury) and The National Atlas of the United States of America (Gerlach). It continues in use to the present.
      [John W. Powell. Physiographic Regions of the United States. Washington: National Geographic Society, 1894; Henry Gannett. A Discussion of Area and Population. Census Bulletin No. 149. Washington: Census Office, 1902; Isaiah Bowman. Forest Physiography: Physiography of the United States and Principles of Soils in Relation to Forestry. New York: John Wiley, 1911; W. L. G. Joerg. The Subdivision of North America into Natural Regions: a Preliminary Inquiry. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 4 (1914): 55-83; Nevin M. Fenneman. Physiographic Boundaries within the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 4 (1914): 84-134; Nevin M. Fenneman. Physiographic Divisions of the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 6 (1916): 19-98; F. E. Matthes. The Conference on the Delineation of Physiographic Provinces in the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 5 (1915): 127-129; A. J. Herbertson. The Major Natural Regions: an Essay in Systematic Geography. Geographical Journal 25 (1905): 300-312; Nevin M. Fenneman. Physiographic Divisions of the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 18 (1928): 261-353, which includes Nevin M. Fenneman with the Physiographic Committee of the Geological Survey. Physical Divisions of the United States [map]. 1:7,000,000, 45 x 72 cm., which is also issued separately as Physical Divisions of the United States [map] with descriptive pamphlet. Washington: U.S. Geological Survey, 1928; Nevin M. Fenneman. Physiography of Western United States. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931; Nevin M. Fenneman. Physiography of Eastern United States. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938; Wallace W. Atwood. The Physiographic Provinces of North America. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1940; William D. Thornbury. Regional Geomorphology of the United States. New York: John Wiley, 1965; Arch C. Gerlach. ed. The National Atlas of the United States of America. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970.]

Kent State University in Kent, Ohio establishes a Department of Geography in 1914 and its graduate program in geography in 1935. [www.kent.edu]

San Diego State University in San Diego, California establishes a Department of Geography in 1914 and its graduate program in geography in 1956. [www.sdsu.edu]

University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee establishes a Department of Geography in 1914 and its graduate program in geography in 1928.
      [www.utk.edu; Sidney R. Jumper. Geography at the University of Tennessee: 1794-2003. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 226-244.]

1915
Gilman Hall, named for Daniel Coit Gilman, first president of Johns Hopkins University, is dedicated as the major academic building on that university's campus. Gilman was professor of physical and political geography in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University (1863-1872), president of the University of California at Berkeley (1872-1875), president of Johns Hopkins University (1876-1901) and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (1902-04).
     [John K. Wright. Daniel Coit Gilman, Geographer and Historian. Geographical Review 51 (1961): 381-399; Abraham Flexner. Daniel Coit Gilman: Creator of the American Type of University. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.1946.

National Council for Geographic Education, originally the National Council of Geography Teachers, is established under the guidance of George J. Miller (1880-1973).
      [James W. Vining. The National Council for Geographic Education: the First Seventy-five Years and Beyond. Indiana, PA: National Council for Geographic Education, 1990.]

Memorial Volume on the Transcontinental Excursion of 1912 is the first volume of the American Geographical Society’s distinguished Special Publications to be issued. The thirty-nine volumes in the Special Publication series include a wide range of topics in geography-exploration, human settlement, geomorphology, natural resources, historical and regional geographies, literature, and new techniques for visualizing Earth and geographic information. The last volume in the series is issued in 1971.
      [Memorial Volume of the Transcontinental Excursion of 1912 of the American Geographical Society of New York. Special Publication No. 1. New York: American Geographical Society, 1915; Isaiah Bowman. The Andes of Southern Peru: Geographical Reconnaissance Along the Seventy-Third Meridian. Special Publication No. 2. New York: Henry Holt for the American Geographical Society, 1916; Leon Dominian. Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe. Special Publication No. 3. New York: John Holt for the American Geographical Society, 1917; Willis T. Lee. The Face of the Earth as Seen from the Air: a Study in the Application of Airplane Photography to Geography. Special Publication No. 4. New York: American Geographical Society, 1922; Pioneer Settlement: Comparative Studies. Special Publication No. 14. New York: American Geographical Society, 1932; J. Harlan Bretz. Grand Coulee. Special Publication No. 15. New York: American Geographical Society, 1932; James T. Adams. ed. New England’s Prospect: 1933. Special Publication No. 16. New York: American Geographical Society, 1933; Environment and Conflict in Europe: Eighteen Basic Maps [maps and text in portfolio format]. Special Publication No. 24. New York: American Geographical Society, 1939; Ralph H. Brown. Mirror for Americans: Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard 1810. Special Publication No. 27. New York: American Geographical Society, 1943; John Aldrich Christie. [Henry David] Thoreau as World Traveler. New York: Columbia University Press with American Geographical Society, 1965; Kenneth J. Bertrand. Americans in Antarctica, 1775-1948. Special Publication No. 39. New York: American Geographical Society, 1971.]

1916
Geographical Review, a scholarly journal of the American Geographical Society, begins publication, succeeding the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society. Its publication continues to the present. (see American Geographical Society entry at 1851)
      [Wilma B. Fairchild. The Geographical Review and the American Geographical Society. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 33-38. Electronic version available from JSTOR, the scholarly journal Internet archival service, www.jstor.org]

The National Research Council (NRC) is created in Washington, D.C. in 1916 as a sister organization of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to act as the operating agency of the Academy. Through a system of committees, the National Research Council conducts the active investigations called for in the Academy's charter-to further knowledge and advise the federal government. The NRC's original Division of Geology and Geography, which includes eleven members of the Association of American Geographers among its twenty-one members, contributes significantly to research on the availability of minerals and resource during World War I. In 1933, Isaiah Bowman becomes the first geographer to chair the National Research Council.
      During the ensuing years, the National Research Council supports numerous publications that explore geography as a research discipline-American Geography: Inventory and Prospect (1954), The Science of Geography (1965), Geography: Report of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Survey (1969), Rediscovering Geography: New Relevance for Science and Society (1997). Its numerous committees address a variety of geography-related research topics and their own publications-Social and Economic Aspects of Natural Resources (1963), Geographical Perspectives and Urban Problems (1973), Population Redistribution in the United States in the 1970s (1977), Population Redistribution and Public Policy (1980). Geography is currently represented in the research agendas of at least three of the National Research Council's five major program areas-Division on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, Division on Earth and Life Sciences, and Transportation Research Board. www.nas.edu. (see National Academy of Sciences entry at 1863, American Geography: Inventory and Prospect entry at 1954, and The Science of Geography entry at 1965)
      [Ronald C. Tobey. The American Ideology of National Science, 1919-1930. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971; Robert Kargon and Elizabeth Hodes. Karl Compton, Isaiah Bowman, and the Politics of Science in the Great Depression. Isis 76 (1985): 301-318.]

Ralph S. Tarr (1864-1912) is honored by the placing of a memorial granite boulder on the campus of Cornell University. He was a professor of geology and physical geography at Cornell (1892-1912) and author of several textbooks that respond to the demand for new classroom materials for teaching physical geography following the 1893 report of the National Education Association's Committee of Ten.
      [Ralph S. Tarr. Elementary Physical Geography. New York: Macmillan, 1895; Ralph S. Tarr. New Physical Geography. New York: Macmillan, 1904; Ralph S. Tarr. College Physiography. New York: Macmillan, 1914.]

University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin establishes a Department of Geography in 1916 and its graduate program in geography in 1963. The American Geographical Society Collection, composed of 450,000 maps, 200,000 volumes, 200,000 LANDSAT images, 160,000 photographs, 7,600 atlases, 70 globes, related geographic materials, and the archives of the Association of American Geographers is housed in the university’s Golda Meir Library. [www.uwm.edu]

1917
Colonel Edward M. House organizes a group of experts at the New York Public Library in April 1917 to compile information for the American delegation in anticipation of peace negotiations that will bring World War I to an end. The group, which comes to be known as the Inquiry, moves to the American Geographical Society building at 156th and Broadway in November 1917. Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950, then director of the American Geographical Society) assumes leadership of the group in August 1918. From November 1917 to December 1918, the Inquiry prepares materials for the Peace Conference with a staff of about 150 persons, including the geographers Nevin M. Fenneman, Mark Jefferson, Armin K. Lobeck, Lawrence Martin, and Ellen Churchill Semple, geomorphologists Bailey Willis and Douglas W. Johnson, historians, economists, and statisticians among others.
      The Inquiry engages in "a map-making program hitherto without precedent in this country... [with maps] made to visualize not only all manner of territorial boundaries but distribution of peoples, populations and their local densities, religions, economic activities, distribution of material resources, trade routes, both historic and potential strategic points, etc. [plus] a series of base maps and block diagrams [i.e., landform maps]" (Anon 4-5). The War Department issues a set of about 30 of these base maps (at scales ranging from 1:250,000 to 1:26,500,000) and 5 landform maps for distribution to colleges and universities throughout the United States with Students Army Training Corps programs.
      Materials prepared by the Inquiry travel to France in December 1918 with the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. The American Commission includes a Geography Section and geographers Isaiah Bowman (Chief Territorial Specialist of the American delegation Executive Officer of the Section of Economic, Political, and Territorial Intelligence), Mark Jefferson (Geographer and Cartographer of the American Commission), Lawrence Martin, and Armin K. Lobeck, each of whom works in a variety of roles. The work continues through December 1919. (see Office of the Geographer, U.S. Department of State entry at 1920)
      It is estimated that half of the 100 or so members of the Association of American Geographers are engaged in some form of active war service during World War I, including service within the military, especially Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff, as well as with the Inquiry, War Trade Board, Shipping Board, Division of Geology and Geography of the newly created National Research Council, and numerous Student Army Training Corps' programs in colleges and universities.
      [Anon. The American Geographical Society's Contribution to the Peace Conference. Geographical Review 7 (January 1919): 1-10; Charles H. Haskins and Robert H. Lord. Some Problems of the Peace Conference. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920; Edward M. House and Charles Seymour. eds. What Really Happened at Paris: the Story of the Peace Conference, 1918-1919, by American Delegates. New York: Scribner's Sons, 1921; James T. Shotwell. At the Paris Peace Conference. New York: Macmillan, 1937; Lawrence E. Gelfand. The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917-1919. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963; Arthur Walworth. America's Moment: 1918, American Diplomacy at the End of World War I. New York: Norton, 1976; Arthur Walworth. Wilson and his Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. New York: Norton, 1986; Geoffrey J. Martin. The Inquiry and Paris Peace Conference. In A Life and Thought of Isaiah Bowman. Hamden CT: Arcon Books, 1980, Pp. 81-98; Geoffrey J. Martin. Map Making: the Inquiry and Paris Peace Conference. In Mark Jefferson: Geographer. Ypsilanti, MI: Eastern Michigan University Press, Pp. 167-198; James B. Rhoads. Preliminary Inventory of the Cartographic Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace (Record Group 256). U.S. National Archives Preliminary Inventory No. 68. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives and Records Service, 1954; Nevin M. Fenneman. The Circumference of Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 9 (1919): 3-11; Anon. War Services of Members of the Association of American Geographers. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 9 (1919): 53-70; Paul J. Goode. What the War Should Do for Our Methods in Geography. Journal of Geography 18 (1919): 179-184; Charles Redway Dryer. Genetic Geography: the Development of the Geographic Sense and Concept. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 10 (1920): 3-16.]

1919
American Geophysical Union is established in 1919 to promote the scientific study of Earth and to promote cooperation among scientific organizations involved in geophysics and related disciplines. It is created by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and remains affiliated with the National Research Council until it is incorporated as an independent organization in 1972. Membership grows to include over 38,000 members residing in over 100 countries. Among its numerous publications are Eos and Journal of Geophysical Research.
      [ www.agu.org]

1920s
Human geography emerges with its own independent identity in geography education, with textbooks appearing for elementary and secondary schools and for colleges. Two multi-volume series of graded school textbooks are prepared by Harlan H. Barrows (1877-1960) and Edith P. Parker (1886-1961), and by James Fairgrieve (1870-1953) and Ernest Young. The 'Journeys in Distant Lands' series prepared by Barrows and Parker attempts "to guide pupils in gaining useful understandings concerning relationships of man to his natural environment and in developing various abilities, habits, and attitudes which are inherent in the practice of sound geographical thinking." Texts appearing for college instruction include books by Jean Bruhnes, Ellsworth Huntington and Sumner W. Cushing, Joseph Russell Smith, and Paul Vidal de la Blache.
      [Harlan H. Barrows and Edith P. Parker. Geography: Journeys in Distant Lands (1924), Geography: Europe and Asia (1927), Geography: Southern Lands (1929), Geography: Journeys in Distant Lands and the United States and Canada (1930), all published in New York by Silver, Burdett and Co.; James Fairgrieve and Ernest Young. Human Geography by Grades. 6 vols. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1923-27; Jean Bruhnes. Human Geography: An Attempt at a Positive Classification; Principles and Examples, translated from the French by I. C. LeCompte and edited by Isaiah Bowman and Richard E. Dodge. Chicago: Rand, McNally and Co., 1920; Ellsworth Huntington and Sumner W. Cushing. Principles of Human Geography. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1921; Joseph Russell Smith. Human Geography. 2 vols. plus teacher's manual. Chicago: John C. Winston Co., 1921; Paul Vidal de la Blache. Principles of Human Geography, translated from the French by Millicent Todd Bingham and edited by Emmanuel de Martonne. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1926.]

1920
Office of the Geographer is established in the U.S. Department of State. The office is created to maintain the geographic expertise in international boundary delineation and regional analysis that had been developed within the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, which represented the United States at the Paris Peace Conference concluding World War I. It is also to maintain the geographic information-initially the hundreds of original maps prepared by the Commission-required to sustain the office’s geographic analysis functions.
      Colonel Lawrence Martin (1880-1955), a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, becomes the first Geographer. His first task is delimiting the southern and western boundaries of Armenia at the request of the Allied Forces. Martin heads the Office of the Geographer until 1923. Subsequent heads include S. Whittemore Boggs (1924-54), G. Etzel Pearcy (1957-69), Robert D. Hodgson (1971-79), Lewis M. Alexander (1979-84), and George J. Demko (1984-89).
      The Office of the Geographer addresses a broad range of geographic questions over the years, most particularly ones relating to international boundary issues. In 1940, the U.S. Congress raises the question of whether Greenland is part of the Western Hemisphere for purposes of the Monroe Doctrine. S. Whittemore Boggs responds by defining the Western Hemisphere as consisting of North America (including Central America, the West Indies, and Greenland), South America, all islands appertaining to the two continents, and to include the westernmost islands of Alaska’s Aleutian Peninsula, he suggests utilizing the International Date Line as the hemisphere’s western limit. Among many projects undertaken during World War II, the Office of the Geographer takes the lead in producing the Atlas of World Maps for the Study of Geography in the Army Specialized Training Program.
      The Office of the Geographer addresses questions concerning international territorial waters for many decades. During the 1970s its attention focuses particularly on the emerging United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea, eventually adopted by the United Nations in 1982. At this time, the Department of State establishes an ad hoc Committee on Delimitation of the United States Coastline, also known as the Interagency Baseline Committee, to review lines that are drawn to enclose bays and to depict the outer limits of the U.S. territorial sea and contiguous zone. Among other contributions, the committee delimits the extent of the exclusive economic zone claimed by the United States in 1983.
      [Letters from A. A. Adee to Secretary of the Interior (20 September 1920) and from J. B. Payne to Secretary of State (24 September 1920) in U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State (Record Group 59), Records of the Geographer; Lewis M. Alexander. Samuel Whittemore Boggs: an Appreciation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 48 (September 1958): 237-243; S. Whittmore Boggs. Problems of Water-Boundary Definition. Geographical Review 27 (1937): 445-456; S. Whittemore Boggs. International Boundaries: a Study of Boundary Functions and Problems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940; U.S. Department of State Office of the Geographer, Office of Strategic Services, and American Geographical Society. Atlas of World Maps for the Study of Geography in the Army Specialized Training Program. With 48 maps, 1:75,000,000 to 1:150,000,000, 27 x 55 cm. U.S. Army Service Forces Manual M-101. Washington: Army Service Forces, Army Specialized Training Division, 1943; S. Whittmore Boggs. This Hemisphere. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945; S. Whittemore Boggs and Dorothy C. Lewis. Classification and Cataloging of Maps and Atlases. New York: Special Library Association, 1945; G. Etzel Pearcy. Measurement of the U.S. Territorial Sea. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959; Lewis M. Alexander. Offshore Geography of Northwestern Europe: the Political and Economic Problems of Delimitation and Control. Monograph Series No. 3. Chicago: Rand McNally and Co. for the Association of American Geographers, 1963; Robert D. Hodgson. Islands: Normal and Special Circumstances. Washington: Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State, 1973; Robert D. Hodgson and Lewis M. Alexander. Towards an Objective Analysis of Special Circumstances: Bays, Rivers, Coastal and Oceanic Archipelagos and Atolls. Kingston, RI: Law of the Seas Institute, 1972; Jonathan I. Charney and Lewis M. Alexander. International Maritime Boundaries. 3 vols. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1993-98; Michael W. Reed, Shore and Sea Boundaries, with Special Reference to the Interpretation and Use of Coast and Geodetic Survey Data. 3 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000.]

University of Hawai`i offers its first geography courses in 1920, which are taught by the geologist Harold S. Palmer in the Department of Geology and Geography. The university establishes an independent Department of Geography in 1931, chaired by John Wesley Coulter (1893-1967) who had joined the faculty in 1928. During World War II, staff of the University of Hawai`i largely turns to contributing to the war effort. The geography and geology departments merge and Harold S. Palmer teaches all of the courses offered in both subjects. A Department of Geography is reestablished in 1947 with Curtis Manchester as chair, and the M.A. degree is reestablished in 1948.
      Statehood for Hawai`i in 1959 results in dramatic improvements to the University of Hawai`i’s programs and facilities, and in 1964, Roland Fuchs begins what will become two decades of leadership as chair of the department. Close ties are established with the university’s well-known East-West Center, and the department’s rapidly expanding graduate program awards its first Ph.D. degrees to Anthony Hughes and Prem Prasad in 1971. Under the direction of Warwick Armstrong, the Atlas of Hawai`i appears in 1973 and becomes a best seller; subsequent editions appear in 1983 and 1998. From 1978 to 1987 the university’s Hawai`ian Studies Program is housed in the Department of Geography. In 1989 the Hawai`i Geographic Alliance, directed by Bryce Decker and Thomas Ohta, is founded with the support of National Geographic Society to promote geography education.
      Department faculty direct and host two significant meetings during the 1990s—XVII Pacific Science Congress, directed by Nancy Lewis in 1991, with the theme ‘Towards a Pacific Century: the Challenge of Change;’ and the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Waikiki in 1999, with the special publication Hawai`i: New Geographies, edited by Deborah W. Woodcock and articles by many faculty members.
      [www.uhm.hawaii.edu; Brian Murton. ed. Fifty Years of Geography at Manoa: a Sketch. Manoa, HI: Department of Geography, University of Hawai`i, n.d; Warwick Armstrong. ed. Atlas of Hawai`i. Honolulu: University Press of Hawai`i, 1973; Deborah W. Woodcock. ed. Hawai`i: New Geographies. Honolulu: Dept. of Geography, University of Hawai`i-Manoa, 1999.]

1921
Physiographic Diagram of the United States, by Armin K. Lobeck (1886-1958), is the first national-scale scientific visualization of the landforms of the United States. The technique of graphically representing landforms with hand-drawn perspective views used by Lobeck is derived from the practice of representing individual landforms with block diagrams. It is further developed and systematized by Erwin J. Raisz (1893-1968) and others. Computer-generated landform maps of the United States are issued in 1991 by the Geological Survey and in 1992 by Raven Maps and Images.
      [Armin K. Lobeck. Physiographic Diagram of the United States [map]. 1:3,000,000. Chicago: A. J. Nystrom, 1921; Armin K. Lobeck. Block Diagrams and Other Graphic Methods Used in Geology and Geography. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1924; Guy-Harold Smith. Armin Kohl Lobeck, Geomorphologist and Landscape Artist. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49 (March 1959): 83-87; Erwin J. Raisz. Landforms of the United States [map]. 1:4,500,000, 64 x 101 cm. In Physiographic Provinces of North America, by Wallace W. Atwood. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1940; Erwin J. Raisz. The Physiographic Method of Representing Scenery on Maps. Geographical Review 21 (April 1931): 297-304; Gail P. Thelin and Richard J. Pike. Landforms of the Conterminous United States--A Digital Shaded-Relief Portrayal [map]. 1:3,500,000, 89 x 138 cm. Miscellaneous Investigations Map I-2206. Washington: U.S. Geological Survey, 1991; Stuart Allan. The United States [map]. Hypsometric tints, 1:3,500,000, 94 x 147 cm. Medford, Oregon: Raven Maps and Images, 1992; Peirce Lewis. Introducing a Cartographic Masterpiece: a Review of the U.S. Geological Survey's Digital Terrain Map of the United States, by Gail Thelin and Richard Pike. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (June 1992): 289-300; Richard J. Pike and Gail P. Thelin. Visualizing the United States in Computer Chiaroscuro. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (June 1992): 300-302; Stuart Allan. Design and Production Notes for the Raven Editions of the U.S. 1:3.5 Million Digital Map. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (June 1992): 303-304.]

Helen M. Strong (1890-1973) becomes the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Chicago in 1921. Two years later she joins the Bureau of Federal and Domestic Commerce, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. Strong serves as the chief of the Geography Division, where she promotes the utility of geography to business by providing information to manufacturers, agricultural organizations, and trade groups until 1933. During her long career, she also holds senior positions in several other federal agencies, publishes business and scholarly works, and edits several readers for use in geography and social studies classes.
      [Helen M. Strong. The Geography of Cleveland. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1921; Helen M. Strong. Cleveland: a City of Contacts. Economic Geography 1 (July 1925): 198-205; Helen M. Strong. Distribution of Agricultural Exports from the United States. U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce Trade Information Bulletin No. 177. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1924; Helen M. Strong. Relation Between Value and Volume of Agricultural Products. U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce Trade Information Bulletin No. 271. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1924; Helen M. Strong. Entrepot Markets for Tropical and Other Exotic Products. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 15 (December 1925): 180-186; Helen M. Strong. Regionalism: Its Cultural Significance. Economic Geography 12 (October 1936): 392-410; Helen M. Strong. Regions of Manufacturing Intensity in the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 27 (March 1937): 23-43; Helen M. Strong. ed. America’s Oil; America’s Minerals; Soil, Water, and Man; and Our American Forests. New York: Row, Peterson and Co., 1941; Helen M. Strong. Adventures in Geography. Unpublished dinner speech, April 18, 1958, to the Chicago Group, Society of Woman Geographers. Manuscript in Strong files, Society of Woman Geographers Archives, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.]

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is established in 1921 to “lay the foundations for training democratic citizens… from a carefully developed and adequately supported system of teaching in the elementary and secondary schools” (Dawson). NCSS emerges from efforts by the National Education Association (NEA) during the nineteen-teens to develop a unified curriculum for the study of human activities, i.e., social studies, to compliment established curriculums for the physical and biological sciences.
      An advisory board, composed of economists, geographers, historians, political scientists, and sociologists, is created to direct the new organization. Other scholarly domains, including anthropology, psychology, and law, are subsequently linked to social studies as well. Today, NCSS publishes the professional journal Social Education, and serves as an umbrella organization for a network of more than 110 affiliated state, local, and regional councils and associated groups that focus on social studies education in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools.
      [Edgar Dawson. National Council for the Social Studies. American Historical Review 27 (April 1922): 491-492; Franklin L. Burdette. ed. Education for Citizen Responsibilities: the Roles of Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1942; Preston E. James. ed. New Viewpoints in Geography. Twenty-ninth Yearbook. Washington: National Council for the Social Studies, 1959; Paul R. Hanna, Rose E. Sabaroff, Gordon F. Davies, and Charles R. Farrar. Geography in the Teaching of Social Studies. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1966; Phillip Bacon. ed. Focus on Geography: Key Concepts and Teaching Strategies. Fortieth Yearbook. Washington: National Council for the Social Studies, 1970; John M. Ball, John E. Steinbrink, and Joseph P. Stoltman. eds. The Social Sciences and Geographic Education: a Reader. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1971; Charlotte Crabtree. Social Studies Education, Elementary Schools, and John J. Patrick and Charles S. White. Social Studies Education, Secondary Schools. In Marvin C. Alkin. editor. Encyclopedia of Educational Research. 4 vols. New York: Macmillan. 1992 (1941). Pp. 1229-1236, 1238-1244; Stanley P. Wronski and Donald H. Bragaw. eds. Social Studies and Social Sciences: a Fifty Year Perspective. Bulletin No. 78. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1986; Salvatore J. Natoli. ed. Strengthening Geography in the Social Studies. Bulletin No. 81. Silver Spring, MD: National Council for the Social Studies, 1988; National Council for the Social Studies. Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Silver Spring, MD: N.C.S.S., www.ncss.org]

Council on Foreign Relations is established in 1921. An organizational response to the many disappointments experienced by British and American advisors at the Paris Peace Conference concluding World War I, the Council on Foreign Relations addresses the challenge of expanding the geographic horizon of America’s public opinion leaders, business elites, and elected officials, from one that is centered within the United States (a nationalist-isolationist perspective) to the global scale (an internationalist-interventionist perspective). It hopes to influence actions of influential Americans in this realm through the creation of formal and ongoing collaboration and idea exchanges. A parallel British organization, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), was organized a year earlier.
      Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950), geographer and director of the American Geographical Society, plays an instrumental role in founding the Council and is intimately involved in the affairs of the organization during its initial two decades. The Council on Foreign Relations begins publishing the influential journal Foreign Affairs in 1922.
      [Neil Smith. Bowman’s New World and the Council on Foreign Relations. Geographical Review 76 (October 1986): 438-460; Neil Smith. American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003; Robert Argenbright. Bowman’s New World: World Power and Political Geography. Unpublished M.A. thesis. Berkeley, CA: Department of Geography, University of California at Berkeley, 1985; Isaiah Bowman. The New World: Problems in Political Geography. 4th edition. New York: World Books, 1928 (1921); Thomas R. Dye. Oligarchic Tendencies in National Policy-Making: the Role of the Private Policy-Planning Organization. The Journal of Politics 40 (May 1978): 309-331; Robert D. Schulzinger. The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984; www.cfr.org]

Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts establishes the Graduate School [Department] of Geography and its graduate program in geography, in 1921. The first American Ph.D. in geography education, awarded to Jefferson R. Potter in 1906, indicates the early leadership provided by university president, G. Stanley Hall, in the teaching of geography.
      The new School of Geography’s first decade sees the granting of the university’s first M.A. and Ph.D., both in 1922; creation of the New England Geographical Conference, now the New England/St. Lawrence Valley Division (NESTVAL) of the Association of American Geographers, in 1922; inception of the scholarly journal Economic Geography in 1925 and of the popular journal Home Geography Monthly 1931. A second scholarly journal, Antipode: a Radical Journal of Geography, is established here in 1969. Both Economic Geography and Antipode continue serving as vital voices of geographic scholarship. The George Perkins Marsh Institute, dedicated to research on the fundamental question - What is and ought to be our relationship with nature? - is created at the centennial of Clark University in 1990. As of the Graduate School of Geography’s sixtieth anniversary in 1981, it has awarded nearly 300 Ph.D. degrees.
      [www.clarku.edu; Saul B. Cohen. ed. Fifty Years of the Graduate School of Geography. Worcester, MA: Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, 1971; Merle C. Prunty. Clark in the Early 1940s. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 42-45; William A. Koelsch. Wallace Atwood’s “Great Geographical Institute.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70 (December 1980): 567-582; William A. Koelsch. Geography at Clark: the First Fifty Years, 1921-1971. In John E. Harmon and Timothy J. Rickard. eds. Geography in New England: a Special Publication. New Britain, CT: New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, 1988. Pp. 40-48; Janice Monk. The Women Were Always Welcome at Clark. Economic Geography A.A.G. Annual Meeting Special Issue (1998): 14-30; William A. Koelsch. G. Stanley Hall, Child Study, and the Teaching of Geography. Journal of Geography 101 (January-February 2002): 3-9; William A. Koelsch. Clark University 1887-1987: a Narrative History. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1987.]

1922
American Geographical Society initiates work on the Map of Hispanic America at the scale of 1:1,000,000. It conforms closely to International Map of the World (IMW) standards. This monumental 107-sheet map provides complete land coverage of Central America, South America, and the West Indies. It is completed in 1946. (see United States entry at 1904)
      [Raye R. Platt. The Map of Hispanic America on the Scale of 1:1,000,000. Geographical Review 36 (January 1946): 1-28.]

New England Geographical Conference is established as the nation’s first regional professional geography society. It becomes the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, today’s New England-St. Lawrence Valley Division of the Association of American Geographers. Proceedings, New England/St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, a compilation of papers presented at the division’s annual meeting, begins publication in 1971 and continues to the present.
      [William A. Koelsch. Before NESTVAL: the New England Geographical Conference. Proceedings, New England/St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society 2 (1972): 23-33; Harold Meeks. The New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society: a Short History. Proceedings, New England/St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society 5 (1975): 74-78]

Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts establishes a Department of Geography in 1922. [www.bu.edu]

1923
Geography as Human Ecology, the landmark presidential address to the Association of American Geographers by Harlan H. Barrows (1877-1960) of the University of Chicago, is published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers in 1923. The essay argues that relationships between humans and the physical environment, i.e., human ecology, should serve as the principle object of research in geography, both in terms of the adaptations people make in the ways they utilize land and in terms of the adjustments that are made to the physical environment to accommodate these varying uses. Barrows more particularly calls for a focusing of research on understanding the land utilization process in physically hazardous environments, e.g., in areas subject to flooding, drought, earthquakes, etc.
      Research on relations among people residing in small-scale physical environments emerges as community studies within sociology during the same decade. This sociological research tradition comes to adopt the same ‘human ecology’ terminology as well. For sociologists the ‘ecology’ term more closely equates to the term ‘spatial’ as it is employed by geographers today. Within this research tradition, the focus is on the investigation of human relations in local communities. Its largest and best known body of research, broadly referred to as the Chicago school, focuses on social dynamics in urban areas.
      [Harlan H. Barrows. Geography as Human Ecology. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 13 (1923): 1-14; Robert E. Park, Edward W. Burgess, and Roderick D. McKenzie. The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925; Ernest W. Burgess. ed. The Urban Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926; Robert E. Park. Human Communities. Volume 2, The Collected Papers of Robert Ezra Park. New York: Free Press, 1952; Roderick D. McKenzie. Demography, Human Geography, and Human Ecology. In L. L. Bernard. ed. The Fields and Methods of Sociology. New York: Ray Lang and Richard Smith, 1934, and in Amos H. Hawley. ed. Roderick D. McKenzie on Human Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; J. Nicholas Entriken. Robert Park’s Human Ecology and Human Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70 (March 1980): 43-58; William Norton. Human Geography and the Geographical Imagination. Journal of Geography 88 (September-October): 186-192.]

1925
The scholarly journal Economic Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.
      [Raymond E. Murphy. Economic Geography and Clark University. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 39-42. Electronic version available from JSTOR, the scholarly journal Internet archival service, www.jstor.org]

Society of Woman Geographers is established in New York City by women who are seeking a medium of intellectual exchange among traveled women engaged in geography and allied fields such as ethnology, archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, biology, natural history, sociology, and folklore.
     [Gertrude E. Dole. Vignettes of Some Early Members of the Society of Woman Geographers in New York. New York: New York Group, Society of Woman Geographers, 1978; Edith M. Ker. Honors Winners and Flag Carries 1932-1991. Washington: Society of Woman Geographers, 1992; www.iswg.org]

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation is established by Simon and Olga Hirsch Guggenheim to provide fellowships for professionals, usually in their 30s or 40s, who have demonstrated distinguished achievement in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, or creative arts. The financial resources of a Guggenheim fellowship are meant to enable an individual to devote a specific period of time to research or other creative endeavor. The first Guggenheim fellowships in geography are awarded to Glenn T. Trewartha (1926 and 1943), Edwin M. Loeb (1928), Owen Lattimore (1930 and 1932), John E. Orchard (1931), and Carl O. Sauer (1931). By 2002, 100 Guggenheim fellowships are awarded in geography.
      [www.gf.org]

University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota establishes a Department of Geography in 1925. [www.umn.edu]

1926
Dictionary of American Biography (20 volumes), prepared under the sponsorship of the American Council of Learned Societies, provides the United States with its first authoritative biographical dictionary. Publication continues for 70 years (including the 10 supplementary volumes) and will include biographical sketches of 20,000 persons. Numerous geographers, cartographers, geomorphologists, topographic engineers, and persons in other occupations closely allied with the geographic enterprise in America are recognized. Biographical sketches of geographers whose careers were spent primarily in colleges or universities include Wallace W. Atwood, Albert P. Brigham, Ralph H. Brown, Henry C. Cowles, William M. Davis, Nevin M. Fenneman, Daniel C. Gilman, John P. Goode, Arnold H. Guyot, Ellsworth Huntington, Mark S. W. Jefferson, Douglas W. Johnson, Carl O. Sauer, and Ralph S. Tarr. Persons with careers spent primarily in the federal government include John J. Abert, Oliver E. Baker, Marcus Baker, Alfred H. Brooks, George Davidson, Robert Erskine, Henry Gannett, Thomas Hutchins, Matthew F. Maury, Charles A. Schott, William Tatham, and George M. Wheeler. Persons known for their contributions to geography during the nineteenth century include George Perkins Marsh, Samuel A. Mitchell, Jedidiah Morse, Edward Robinson, Emma Hart Willard, and Joseph E. Worcester. Persons known primarily for preparing maps and atlases as surveyors, cartographers, or publishers include Julius Bien, William G. De Brahm, William Darby, Lewis Evans, Augustine Herman, August Hoen, John Melish, John Pory, and Henry Schenck Tanner among others.
      [Allen Johnson et al. eds. Dictionary of American Biography. 30 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons for the American Council of Learned Societies, 1926-1996.]

A Plea for the History of Geography, the landmark essay by John Kirtland Wright (1891-1969) appears in Isis, the journal of the History of Science Society, in 1926. Its eloquent call is taken up sporadically with regard to the rich history of geography in the United States. The Geography in America Timeline contributes to the ongoing enterprise of discovering this record.
      [John K. Wright. A Plea for the History of Geography. Isis 8 (1926): 477-491; also in John K. Wright. Human Nature in Geography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966, pp. 11-23, and in John Agnew, David Livingstone, and Alisdair Rogers. eds. Human Geography: an Essential Anthology. Blackwell Publishers, 1996.]

1927
Geography among the Earth Sciences, by Albrecht Penck (1858-1945), represents geography in the memorial volume celebrating the 200th anniversary of the founding of the American Philosophical Society, America's oldest learned society. He describes geography as a science of the surface of Earth at the global scale that analyzes the physical processes that produce regional landscapes, "Naturlandschaft," and in a subordinate manner, the physical and human processes that result in "Kulturlandschaft."
      [Albrecht Penck. Geography among the Earth Sciences. The Record of the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Philosophical Society. Proceedings, Vol. 66. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1927. Pp 621-644.]

Arizona State University establishes a Department of Geography with Jonas W. Hoover as chair in 1927. Geography was alive at Arizona State University prior to creation of a department-two courses, ‘Geography’ and ‘Geography Methods,’ were offered as early as 1888 by Robert L. Long and the Geographic Society, later to become the eighth chapter of Gamma Theta Upsilon (1932), emerged in 1924. In 1930, the department becomes the Division of Geography and Geology in the Department of Science, and then reverts to the Department of Geography in 1957. ASU’s Laboratory of Climatology is established in 1973, and becomes part of the Department of Geography in 1986. The M.Ed. with a specialty in geography is established in 1939, the M.A. and Ph.D. degree programs in geography in 1962 and 1972 respectively. The first Ph.D. degree is awarded in 1977. A departmental support group, Friends of Geography, is created in 1991, and the department begins its support of the Arizona Geographic Alliance in 1994.
      [Malcolm L. Comeaux. One Hundred and One Years of Geography at Arizona State University. Publication Series No. 2. Tempe, AZ: Department of Geography, Arizona State University, 1987.]

University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado establishes a Department of Geography in 1927 and its graduate program in geography in 1930. [www.colorado.edu]

1928
The United States becomes the seventeenth member nation of the International Geographical Union (IGU), which was established in 1922 to provide a permanent body to organize international meetings of geographers. Ten previous International Geographical Congresses had been convened between the first Congress of Geographical, Cosmographical, and Commercial Sciences in Antwerp in 1871 and the massive disruptions wrought by the First World War in Europe terminated the existing order of cooperation. Since 1928, the International Geographical Union, independently and through its association with the International Council of Scientific Unions (beginning in 1931) and the International Social Science Council (beginning in 1951), has expanded to promote international scientific cooperation among geographers in over 80 countries.
      Several geographers from North America are honored by the International Geographical Union—the Laureat d'Honneur is awarded Chauncy D. Harris, University of Chicago (1976), Gilbert White, University of Colorado (1992), Leslie Curry, University of Toronto (2000), and Yi-Fu Tuan, University of Wisconsin (2000). The Planet and Humanity Medal, honoring individuals who have made outstanding contributions to addressing environmental issues is awarded Al Gore, Vice President of the United States (1996).
      [ www.igu-net.org; Geoffrey J. Martin. One Hundred and Twenty Five Years of Geographical Congresses and the Formation of the International Geographical Union: or, from Antwerp to The Hague. International Geographical Union Bulletin 46 (1966): 5-26.]

Pan American Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH) - Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia (IPGH) is established at the 6th International Conference of American States in Havana, Cuba in 1928. PAIGH, a constituent organization of the Pan American Union, is created to promote and coordinate studies and cooperation among member states (countries) on topics in geography, history, cartography, and geophysics. Member states include the United States of America, 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries, and 4 observer countries. In 1949, PAIGH transfers to the Organization of American States (OAS) - Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA), successor organization to the Pan American Union. Preston E. James (1899-1986) heads the U.S. delegation to the 1st Consultation (meeting) of PAIGH at the time of transfer.
      PAIGH is currently organized in four separate commissions-geography, cartography, history, and geophysics, and it publishes a series of journals-Revista Geográfica del Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia (beginning in 1941), Revista Cartográfica, Revista Historia de América, Revista Geofísica, Boletín de Antropología, Revista de Arqueología, Folklore Americano, and other topical items. The Geography Commission conducts a wide range of projects over the years, including the Regional Geography Committee (chaired by Preston E. James, 1949-52), Committee on Land Classification and Land Use (also chaired by Preston E. James, 1952-65), and the Status of Mapping in the Americas index of maps, now termed the Atlas of the Americas Project.
      In 1935, the United States hosts the 2nd General Assembly of PAIGH, which meets in Washington, D.C., and in 1952, hosts the 3rd Consultation of the PAIGH, which also meets in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the 17th International Geographical Congress and the annual meeting of the U.S. National Council of Geographic Education. Wallace W. Atwood (1872-1949) serves as the first President of PAIGH, from 1932 to 1935, and at least two Americans are honored by PAIGH-Clarence F. Jones (1893-1991) receives the first Pan American Gold Medal Geographic Award in recognition of his work on the Puerto Rico Rural Land Classification Program in 1952 (Jones et al., Jones and Picó), and Preston E. James receives the Pan American Medal in 1959.
      The headquarters of PAIGH, established in 1930, is located in Mexico City, Mexico. Its permanent address-Secretary General of PAIGH, Ex-Arzobispado No. 29, Col. Observatorio 11860, Mexico City, Apartado Postal 18879, MEXICO. PAIGH. (www.ipgh.org.mx and sites.maxwell.syr.edu/paigh/geocomm.htm.)
      [Pan American Institute of Geography and History. Proceedings of the Second General Assembly. U.S. Department of State Series Conference No. 28. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1937; Wallace W. Atwood. The Protection of Nature in the Americas. PAIGH Publication No. 50. Mexico City: PAIGH, 1940 (Spanish edition, 1941); Clarence F. Jones et al. The Rural Land Classification Program of Puerto Rico. Studies in Geography No. 1. Evanston, IL: Department of Geography Northwestern University, 1952; Clarence F. Jones and Raphael Picó. eds. Symposium on the Geography of Puerto Rico. Río Pedras, Puerto Rico: University of Puerto Rico Press, 1955.]

Gamma Theta Upsilon (GTU) is established as an honor society for college geography students in 1928 and becomes a national organization in 1931. Its primary goals are to further professional interest in geography by affording a common organization for those interested in the field; to strengthen student and professional training through academic experiences in addition to those of the classroom and laboratory; to advance the status of geography as a cultural and practical discipline for study and investigation; and to encourage student research of high quality and promote publication. Among other programs, it publishes the scholarly journal The Geographical Bulletin twice a year and provides funds for the Visiting Geographical Scientist Program, which enables geographers to visit college campuses.
      [perth.uwlax.edu/gtu]

University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin establishes an independent Department of Geography, when the geography program separates from geology in 1928. Coursework in geography had been presented in the university for several decades - the first course, General and Geographic Geology, was presented by Rollin D. Salisbury (1858-1922) during the 1891-92 academic year. The graduate program in geography is also established in 1928. Vernor C. Finch (1883-1959) who had received the university's first Ph.D. in geography (1916), serves as the new department's first chair.
      The department, located in Science Hall, incorporates a 60,000 volume geography library, the Arthur H. Robinson Map and Air Photo Library, a large Cartographic Laboratory, and soils and geomorphology laboratories. It offers programs leading to the B.A., B.S., M.S. (geography, cartography and geographic information systems), and Ph.D. (geography) degrees, and a Graduate Certificate in G.I.S.
      [www.wisc.edu; Glenn T. Trewartha. Geography at Wisconsin. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 16-21; Glenn T. Trewartha. Geography at the University of Wisconsin. Madison, WI: Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, 1978.]

1929
Geographical Cross-Word Puzzle Book, by Armin Lobeck, is the first published set of geography crossword puzzles in the United States. Interest in geography crossword puzzles continues for pedagogical purposes and for fun.
      [Armin K. Lobeck. Geographical Cross-Word Puzzle Book. New York: The Geographical Press, 1929; for contemporary geography crossword puzzles, query an internet search engine by entering the words "geography crossword"]

Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida establishes a Department of Geography in 1929, and a graduate program in geography offering the M.A. degree in 1930 and the Ph.D. in 1995.
      [www.fsu.edu; Morton D. Winsberg. A Short History of Florida State University’s Department of Geography. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 291-306; Edward A. Fernald. Geography as the Catalyst for an Applied Research/Service Program: the Florida State University Example. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 373-377.]

1930s
The examination of regions as explicit and unique geographic entities emerges as a major research focus among American geographers during the 1930s. Questions addressed include the conceptual basis of regions; historical justification of regions as a core concept in geography; methodological questions concerning regionalization criteria and the cartographic delineation of regions; the utility of regional approaches in economic development; and the role of regions in understanding relationships between humans and the local physical environments in which they dwell. Research themes developed during this period remain active into the current century.
      [Editor. Conventionalizing Geographic Investigation and Presentation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 24 (1934): 77; Preston E. James. The Terminology of Regional Description. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 24 (1934): 78-92; Wellington D. Jones. Procedures in Investigating Human Occupance of a Region. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 24 (1934): 93-112; Vernor C. Finch. Written Structures for Presenting the Geography of Regions. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 24 (1934): 113-122; Editor. A Conference on Regions. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 25 (September 1935): 121; Robert B. Hall. The Geographic Region. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 25 (September 1935): 122-136; George T. Renner. A Statistical Approach to Regions. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 25 (September 1935): 137-152; Robert S. Platt. Field Approach to Regions. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 25 (September 1935): 153-174; U.S. National Resources Committee. Regional Factors in National Planning and Development. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1935; Richard Hartshorne. The Nature of Geography: a Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past. Lancaster, PA: Science Press Printing Co. for Association of American Geographers, 1939; J. Nicholas Entriken and Stanley D. Brunn, eds. Reflections on Richard Hartshorne’s ‘The Nature of Geography.’ Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 1989; Derwent Whittlesey et al. The Regional Concept and the Regional Method. In Preston E. James and Clarence F. Jones. eds. American Geography: Inventory and Prospect. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press for Association of American Geographers, 1954, Pp. 19-68; E. W. Gilbert. Geography and Regionalism. In Griffith Taylor. ed. Geography in the Twentieth Century: a Study of Growth, Fields, Techniques, Aims and Trends. 3rd edition. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957 (1951). Pp. 345-371.]

The Southern Regional Committee, established by the Social Science Research Council and directed by Howard W. Odum, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, also promotes a flowering of inquiry into regions and ‘regionalism’ during the 1930s. Research led by this group, which consists mostly of sociologists but includes economists and political scientists, examines the physical and human bases for the creation of regional identities at the sub-national, usually multi-state, scale; the roles performed by such regions within national social, economic, cultural, and political systems; and how to promote regional economic development, particularly in the American South. These regionalism investigations parallel and compliment the research agenda pursued by geographers in their regional geography.
      [National Research Council’s Division of Anthropology and Psychology and Social Science Research Council. Conference on Regional Phenomena, April 11-12, 1930. Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1930; Hedwig Hintze. Regionalism. In Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson. eds. Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. 15 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1930-35, Vol. 13, pp. 209-218; Rupert B. Vance. Human Geography of the South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1932; Howard W. Odum. Southern Regions of the United States. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1936; Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore. American Regionalism: a Cultural-Historical Approach to National Integration. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1938; Lewis Mumford. The Regional Framework of Civilization. In The Culture of Cities. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1938, Pp. 300-347; Merrill Jenson. ed. Regionalism in America. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951.]

1930
The landmark 15-volume Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences highlights the increasing research in human geography during the first decades of the twentieth century. The volume's editors note that the "interdependence of the social sciences has come to be recognized [during the 1920s] as a concept necessary to their progress. The older sciences had such a great mass of phenomena to arrange and to interpret that each of them was busy in pursuing its own problems. The newer sciences found enough to do in staking out their respective fields [with] the result that all the sciences continued in water-tight compartments...but there has come a slow realization that, while there are all kinds of associations and many angles from which human contacts can profitably be studied, it is a mistake to separate them permanently into independent sections" (vol. 1, xvii). In this context, human geography is described as being "in an excellent position to analyze the interaction between man and his social heritage, on the one hand, and the natural environment, on the other. Through this description and analysis it is of great importance to the social sciences, enabling them to explain the regional peculiarities of human societies and institutions" (vol. 1, 7).
      The status of human geography is surveyed in three overview articles-Cultural Geography by Carl Sauer, Human Geography by Camille Vallaux of France, and Economic Geography by Karl Sapper of Germany. Additional topics addressed by geographers include-Land Utilization by Oliver E. Baker, Agriculture and Climate by J. Russell Smith, Acclimatization by Ellsworth Huntington, and Soils by Curtis F. Marbut. Several geographers receive biographical sketches-Pierre D'Ailly, Adriano Balbi, A. F. Büsching, Samuel deChamplain, Henry the Navigator, Al-Idrisi, J. Élisée Reclus, Oskar Peschel, Friedrich Ratzel, Karl Ritter, Ellen Churchill Semple, Petr Petrovich Semenov, Paul Vidal de la Blache, Alexander von Humboldt, and Yaqut. (see International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences entry at 1968 and International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences at 2001)
      [Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson. eds. Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. 15 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1930-35.]

South America, by Clarence F. Jones (1893-1991), is the first regional geography of South America published in English.
      [Clarence F. Jones. South America. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1930.]

Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan offers its first course in geography, Elements of Geography, taught by Edward C. Prophet in the Department of Geology and Geography. An independent Department of Geography is established in the College of Science and Arts, with Lawrence M. Sommers as head and a faculty of six, in 1955. The department transfers to the College of Social Science in 1961, and eventually grows to over 30 faculty members, with offices in the Natural Science Building. The university’s first M.A. degree in geography is awarded in 1954, and its first Ph.D. degree in geography in 1957 to Yasuo Masai of Japan. By spring 2003, the department awards a total of 472 M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Separate professional programs administered by the department in landscape architecture and urban and regional planning lead to the degrees of B.L.A. and M.U.R.P. A masters degree program in Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) is initiated in fall 2002, with four degrees completed and seven enrolled in May 2003.
      In 1961, the department hosts the last annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers to be held on a college campus. During 1963-68, the department participates in the Michigan Inter-University Community of Mathematical Geographers (MICMOG) jointly with Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. Discussion meetings held in Brighton, Michigan, are attended by faculty and graduate students from the three institutions and 12 issues of Discussion Papers of the Michigan Inter-University Community of Mathematical Geographers are produced.
      In 1977, the Atlas of Michigan, directed by Lawrence M. Sommers and involving more than sixty Michigan State University students and faculty, is produced and sells more than 33,000 copies. Also in 1977, an Applied Geography Symposium is held at MSU’s Kellogg Center, with fifteen papers contributed by geography faculty and graduate students applying their specializations. Many geographers from the Midwest attend this first applied geography symposium held in the United States (Winters and Winters).
      In 1992, Michigan State University switches from quarter to semester-length terms resulting in numerous geography course content changes and fewer course offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 1996, the department establishes the Basic Science and Remote Sensing Institute to focus research from several academic disciplines on land use/land cover change at the global scale. It becomes the Center for Global Change and Earth Observation, an independent unit within the university that remains linked with the Department of Geography, in 2002.
      [www.geo.msu.edu; Lawrence M. Sommers. ed. Atlas of Michigan. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, and distributed by W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977; Harold A. Winters and Marjorie K Winters. eds. Applications of Geographic Research: Viewpoints from Michigan State University. East Lansing, MI: Department of Geography, Michigan State University, 1977.]

1931
Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950), director of the American Geographical Society (1915-35) and president of Johns Hopkins University (1936-48), becomes the first American to serve as president of the International Geographical Union, which was established in 1922. Other Americans who come to serve as president of the International Geographical Union are George B. Cressey (1896-1963) and Roland J. Fuchs. Americans who come to serve as Secretary-General of the International Geographical Union are George H. T. Kimble, Chauncy D. Harris, and Ronald F. Abler. (see United States entry at 1928)
      [Geoffrey J. Martin. One Hundred and Twenty Five Years of Geographical Congresses and the Formation of the International Geographical Union: or, from Antwerp to The Hague. Bulletin of the International Geographical Union 46 (1996): 5-26.]

Home Geographic Monthly, a journal of the Home Geographic Society, begins publication in January 1931. The Home Geographic Society is promoted by W. Elmer Ekblaw and the geography faculty at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and by academic geographers and professional educators located elsewhere. Its major purpose is the creation and promotion of interest in geography among youth. The journal includes articles written by university professors and numerous illustrations, but does not attract a wide audience and ceases publication at the end of its second year with Volume 2 (December 1932).

Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York establishes a Department of Geography in 1931. The university first offered a graduate degree in geography in 1926. The department is part of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Policy, and is the only U.S. Department of Geography to offer a joint M.A. degree in Geography and Public Administration. The department’s Dell Plain Chair in Latin American Geography is the first named professorship in Latin American Geography. [www.syr.edu]

1932
Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, a landmark publication in American scholarship, is published in 1932. The atlas’ 600-plus maps and 145 pages of text provide a comprehensive geographic perspective on the nation’s past with maps, cogent commentaries and interpretations, and source references. Topics include-natural environment, early exploration and geographical knowledge, native people, land claims, Euro-American settlement, numerous aspects of human geography, military campaigns, etc. It appears in an edition of 5,600 and is out of print by 1949.
      This extraordinary work was conceptualized in 1903 by J. Franklin Jameson, who had received his academic training in history and geography at Johns Hopkins University and was then a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Production of the atlas was directed by Charles O. Paullin in the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Division of Historical Research from 1913 through 1927, and completed by the geographer John K. Wright, then librarian of the American Geographical Society in New York, beginning in 1929. The expertise of numerous geographers and historians was called upon throughout its nearly three-decade emergence. Considered the most comprehensive historical atlas of any country at issuance, it receives the prestigious Loubat Prize from Columbia University in 1933 for a work on North America printed and published in the United States, and three decades later is selected for inclusion in the President’s Library at the White House (Wright 1965).
      [Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright. Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. Washington and New York: Carnegie Institution of Washington and American Geographical Society, 1932; Ralph H. Brown. Review of Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. Journal of Geography 32 (1933): 177-178; Charles O Paullin. The Carnegie Institute’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. Journal of Geography 14 (1915): 108-109; John K. Wright. Sections and National Growth: an Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. Geographical Review 22 (July 1932): 353-360, plus map; John K. Wright. J. Franklin Jameson and the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. In Ruth Anna Fisher and William L. Fox. eds. J. Franklin Jameson: a Tribute. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1965. Pp. 66-79.]

University of Southern California (USC) located in Los Angeles, California offers its first classes in geography (World Regional Geography, Geography of Europe, Geography and Geology of California, and Physical Geography), all of which are presented by Malcolm Havens Bissell. During the 1930s, the Department of Geography is established with Bissell as chair in 1936; undergraduate majors and minors in geography are offered; and the department transfers from the Division of Physical Sciences to the Division of Social Sciences in 1938. Like so many other academic geographers during World War II, Malcolm Bissell is called to Washington, D.C. to work in the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS).
      In 1949, John W. Reith joins the USC faculty as chair of the Department of Geography, a position he holds until 1968. The university awards about ten M.A. degrees during the early 1960s but both the B.A. and M.A. degree programs in geography are dropped by the mid-1960s. The program continues through the 1970s providing undergraduate service courses.
      In 1979, John C. Weaver, former president of the University of Wisconsin System, joins the USC faculty as Executive Director of the Center for the Study of the American Experience and Distinguished Professor of Geography. The following year he moves to the Department of Geography and serves as chair until retiring in 1985, when Curtis C. Roseman joins the faculty and is appointed chair of the department (he chairs the department until 1992).
      Other new faculty are hired in the 1980s and early 1990s including Douglas J. Sherman, Michael J. Dear, Bernard O. Bauer, and Jennifer Wolch. The department experiences dramatic changes; the undergraduate curriculum is completely revised and new major and minor program programs approved, first in 1987 and then in 1999; new M.A., M.S., and Ph.D. programs are approved in 1990 and the first Ph.D. degree is awarded to James A. Tyner in 1995; the department relocates to new quarters in Kaprielian Hall in 1989; new university programs (Environmental Studies in 1993 and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Sustainable Cities in 1999) are initiated with the support of geography faculty; and geography faculty direct the university’s newly established Southern California Studies Center in 1995, and its new Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Laboratory in 1997.
      [ www.usc.edu/dept/geography]

1933
Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces in Urban Geography, a landmark study in American urban geography by Charles C. Colby (1884-1965), is published in Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Based upon empirical analyses conducted during the 1920s that appeared in theses, dissertations, and other studies completed at the University of Chicago, research on New York City prepared by the Regional Plan Association for its Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs project, and Colby's own investigation of 22 cities, the paper provides an interpretation of the spatial restructuring of the "modern city...[as] a dynamic organism constantly in process of evolution." Colby delimits each urban settlement into three spatial units of analysis-"an inner or nuclear zone, a second or middle zone, and an outer or peripheral zone"-and concludes that the spatial reorganization of urban functions such as residences, transportation, and employment among the three zones are best understood in terms of "centrifugal forces which impel functions to migrate from [a city's] central zone toward, or actually to or beyond, its periphery" and "centripetal forces which hold certain functions in the central zone and attract others to it."
      Colby recognizes centrifugal forces, subsequently described in terms of suburbanization, decentralization, etc. as a locational analysis process consisting of tradeoffs between the "uprooting tendencies" and "attractive qualities" of sites in monocentric core-dominant urban settlements. While Colby addresses processes that we would recognize as economic, social, cultural, etc., he does not use these terms, preferring instead to focus on their spatialized dimensions-centrifugal and centripetal forces (processes)-operating with reference to the settlement core.
      [Charles C. Colby Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces in Urban Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 23 (March 1933): 1-20, and reprinted in Harold M. Mayer and Clyde F. Kohn. eds. Readings in Urban Geography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.]

University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina establishes a Department of Geology and Geography in 1933, when the university’s first trained geographer, Samuel T. Emory, joins the geology faculty. Geography was a presence in the university community well before this however - the university’s primary geologist from 1892 to 1934, Professor Collier Cobb, taught an occasional course in physical geography and was a member of the Association of American Geographers; and graduate degrees in geography were awarded as well, with the first M.S. and M.A. in 1926 and the first Ph.D. in 1932. By the time an independent Department of Geography is created in 1962, five geographers have served on the faculty, and Samuel T. Emory has chaired the joint geology-geography department, 1949-57.
      In fact, geography as a component of the curriculum at the University of North Carolina dates from the university’s inception. The 1795 Plan of Education for the university included a Professor of Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, and Geography; and the initial year’s curriculum (1796) included geography, complete with “the use of Globes, the Geometrical, political and commercial relations of the different nations of the earth… [and] out of about forty students in the University proper the Geography and Arithmetic classes had about ten students each” (Battle 95, 108-109). With some certainty, these eighteenth century origins enable the University of North Carolina to claim title to providing the earliest college geography instruction of any public university in the nation.
      Geography experiences significant growth at the University of North Carolina during the 1960s, beginning with the creation of an independent department chaired by John D. Eyre in 1962; publication of the Atlas of North Carolina, edited by Richard E. Lonsdale, in 1967; and expansion to a faculty of ten members by 1969. Revision of the university’s undergraduate curriculum eliminates science laboratory credit for the department's physical geography course in 1970, dropping student enrollments sharply and diminishing funds for graduate students. In the same year, the department launches its monograph series, Studies in Geography, and faculty offices are relocated to the geographically disadvantageous Nash Hall. Nonetheless, the ensuing decade sees the addition of new faculty members; Barry Moriarty establishes the Institute for Economic Development and begins a ten-year term as director in 1972; organization of a major symposium on medical geography in 1974; relocation to Saunders Hall in the center of campus in 1978; and several faculty members become engaged in activities of the Association of American Geographers at both the regional and national levels.
      Programmatic improvements continue to the present - major improvements are made in the department’s Geographic Information Science (GIS) program beginning in 1986 and within a few years the creation of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory with an additional staff position for an applied cartographer and information technologies manager; and the department is quite fortunate to receive financial support for its program from several donors: departmental alumnus Andrew McNally IV endows the McNally Award for Excellence in Geography, annually awarded to an outstanding senior; Dr. Voit Gilmore (M.A. 1985, Ph.D. 1987) endows both a distinguished professorship and a travel fund in 1989; Mr. and Mrs. William H Rogers III endow the Samuel T. Emory Travel Fund in honor of the university’s first geographer in 1991; and Andrew McNally establishes the McNally Fund for general program support. Current departmental programs prepare students for B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in geography.
      [www.unc.edu; Kemp P. Battle. History of the University of North Carolina, from Its Beginnings to the Death of President Swain, 1789-1868. Raleigh, NC: Edwards & Broughton Printing Co., 1907; Richard E. Lonsdale ed. Atlas of North Carolina. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1967; John Douglas Eyre. Geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 198-217.]

1934
Rectangular Statistical Cartogram, an article by the cartographer Erwin J. Raisz (1893-1968), stands as a landmark in American cartography for introducing the first cartogram to be published in the United States. A cartogram is a stylized, as opposed to a realistic, representation of a specific geographic entity. The cartograms Raisz introduces in this article feature representations of the United States that take the shape of a rectangle. These rectangular cartograms of the United States are filled with rectilinear representations of individual states that are proportionate in size to their land area (square miles) or to the size of their resident population. Somewhat similar graphic representations of comparative statistical data for states appeared in the United States as early as Francis A. Walker’s Statistical Atlas of the United States, produced in conjunction with the decennial census of 1870, but these graphic representations incorporated no spatial or geographic relationships among the units of analysis, i.e., individual representations of states were not formed into a representation of the entire country. (see Statistical Atlas entry at 1874)
      [Erwin J. Raisz. The Rectangular Statistical Cartogram. Geographical Review 24 (April 1934): 292-296.]

Young Geographers: How They Explore the World and How They Map the World, by Lucy Sprague Mitchell (1878-1967), offers a pioneering ecological approach to the study of geography for young children. This classic book provides creative curricular ideas for elementary and nursery school teachers that simultaneously roots children in, and teaches them to critically engage, their own lifeworlds. Mitchell, a feminist, leader in progressive education reform, author of the famous Here and Now Story series, and a founder of Bank Street College of Education in New York City, writes and prepares the maps for several other innovative books to open the world of geography to children. Her work continues to be timely and important for its developmental approach to education, its relational conception of geography, and its exuberant fostering of the critical capacities of children by focusing on both understanding and questioning the worlds in which they dwell.
      [Lucy Sprague Mitchell. Young Geographers: How They Explore the World and How They Map the World. New York: John Day Co., 1934, and New York: Basic Books, 1963; Lucy Sprague Mitchell. Here and Now Story Book. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1921-48; Lucy Sprague Mitchell. North America: the Land They Live In for the Children Who Live There. New York: Macmillan,1931; Lucy Sprague Mitchell. Manhattan: Now and Long Ago. New York: Macmillan, 1934; Lucy Sprague Mitchell. My Country 'tis of Thee: the Use and Abuse of Natural Resources. New York: Macmillan, 1940; Joyce Anther. Lucy Sprague Mitchell: the Making of a Modern Woman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.]

1935
University of Washington in Seattle, Washington establishes an independent Department of Geography when the geography program is removed from the existing Department of Geology and Geography in 1935. The presence of geography faculty and course offerings at the University of Washington actually date from around 1890. The Department of Geography offers a graduate degree program from its inception, and its first graduate degree had been awarded in 1928. By 2002, the department has awarded 429 M.A. degrees and 247 Ph.D. degrees in geography.
      Prior to the arrival of G. Donald Hudson (1897-1989) as departmental chair in 1951, the department focuses on college teaching and geography education. With Hudson chairing the department, its focus alters to emphasize research, foreign area studies, cooperative relationships with other departments within the university, and an exclusive devotion to human geography that does however include a strong resources-environment track.
      The mid-1950s usher in what becomes a 25-year emphasis on quantitative analytic approaches to research. During this period, the department plays a major role in initiating the quantitative revolution within American geography; publishes the informal Discussion Paper series (1958-1963); and nurtures a remarkable coterie of doctoral students studying with William L. Garrison, who pioneer the use of statistical analysis and modeling in American geography.
      During the 1980s, the department incorporates broader more critical perspectives and geographic information systems (GIS) into both the curriculum and research, and supplements spatial analysis with a resurgence of field work and the utilization of qualitative methods. These changes take place in an atmosphere of remarkable collegiality. An emphasis on theory bridges the various transitions made by the department and unites the faculty, as does the tradition of intense involvement by faculty and students in local issues. The share of women students and faculty increases dramatically during the latter period as well.
      Beginning in the mid-1990s, an increased emphasis on undergraduate education significantly raises the number of students enrolled in geography courses and doubles the number of undergraduate students majoring in geography.
      Throughout the last 50 years, strengths in four thematic domains consistently characterize the department’s teaching and research: economic geography-transportation (scale, movement, and critical development studies), cartography-GIS (representation), urban-social-political-population-medical (citizenship, access, social justice, and globalization); resources-environment (sustainability). Russia, Asia, and more recently Latin America and Africa, as well as the United States and the local Pacific Northwest region are long-term regional emphases. The department currently offers B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degree programs in geography.
      [Joseph Velikonja. Geography at the University of Washington. Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 56 (1994): 140-171; www.washington.edu.]

The Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG), the nation’s second regional association of professional geographers (the first was the New England Geographical Conference in 1922) is established. It takes on the additional role of serving as the Pacific Coast Regional Division of the Association of American Geographers in 1952. The APCG initiates publication of the scholarly annual, Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, in the same year. Its publication continues to the present. www.csus.edu/apcg

Mapparium, a large globe designed and built by Chester Lindsey Churchill, a Boston architect, is installed at the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston in 1935. This 30-foot diameter globe provides a unique approach to the visualization of Earth—it is viewed from inside! Visitors literally walk inside this spherical world map on a clear bridge that passes through the globe. The globe’s map, constructed at a scale of 1:866,140 (one inch equals about 22 miles), is comprised of 605 curved stained-glass sections and includes political boundaries current to the 1930s and selected physical features such as rivers and large urban settlements. It is illuminated from behind (outside the globe) by over 200 programmable light emitting diodes. Mapparium and associated exhibits located in the Mary Baker Eddy Library of the Christian Science Plaza are open to the public.
      [www.marybakereddylibrary.com]

1936
Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950) is the first geographer to be portrayed on the cover of Time Magazine. The cover-story article focuses on the challenges Bowman faces upon becoming president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and notes that "the University whose headship Geographer Bowman assumed was not the unique institution it had been when Geographer [Daniel Coit] Gilman was leading it into unexplored fields of knowledge [as the university's first president]" (Time Magazine).
      [Time Magazine 27 (March 23, 1936): cover and 39-43 (quote on p. 40); Geoffrey J. Martin. The Life and Thought of Isaiah Bowman. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980.]

Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural, the landmark textbook for introductory college geography courses by Vernor C. Finch (1883-1959) and Glenn T. Trewartha (1896-1984), both at the University of Wisconsin, is published by McGraw-Hill Book Co. in 1949. A remarkably successful textbook, subsequent editions appear for three decades, including one issued specifically for training officers during World War II and a final sixth edition in 1967. More than a quarter-million copies are sold. It achieves its greatest impact during the 1950s.
      Prepared for an initial, typically large-enrollment first-year college course, Elements of Geography takes a topic by topic instructional approach to both physical and human geography. Emphasis is, as Marvin Mikesell, University of Chicago, would write in 2002, on “the ‘elements’ or ‘features’ of geography [that are] observable and mappable manifestations of nature and culture. Physical or natural features include climate, surface configuration and drainage, vegetation, soils, and earth resources. Cultural or manmade features include population, houses and settlements, agriculture, manufacturing, extractive industries and transportation facilities.”
      Representing the generally held view of the basic, i.e., foundational, elements of academic geography in the 1930s, Elements of Geography’s first edition devotes over 90 percent of its 750 pages to physical geography topics. By its third edition (1949), 78 percent of the now 650 page text is devoted to physical geography. For the most part, introductory college geography textbooks following the demise of ‘Finch and Trewartha’ devote themselves to preparing students in either physical geography (with field and laboratory exercises) or human geography, but not both. Finch and Trewartha, along with M. H. Shearer, produce a textbook exclusively for courses in physical geography during this same period – Earth and Its Resources: a Modern Physical Geography.
      [Vernor C. Finch and Glenn T. Trewartha. Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1936; one antecedent edition - Vernor C. Finch. 1935. Elements of Geography. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, Inc., 1935; multiple subsequent editions - Vernor C. Finch and Glenn T. Trewartha. Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1942; Vernor C. Finch and Glenn T. Trewartha. Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. 2 vols. Madison, WI: McGraw-Hill Book Co. for U.S. Armed Forces Institute, 1942; Vernor C. Finch and Glenn T. Trewartha. Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. 3rd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1949; Vernor C. Finch, Arthur H. Robinson, and Edwin H. Hammond. Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. 4th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1954; Vernor C. Finch, Glenn T. Trewartha, Arthur H. Robinson, and Edwin H. Hammond. Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. 5th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967; Subsequent commentary by Marvin Mikesell. Textbooks that Moved Generations: Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. Progress in Human Geography 26 (June 2002): 401-404; Vernor C. Finch, Glenn T. Trewartha, and M. H. Shearer. Earth and Its Resources: a Modern Physical Geography. 3rd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959 (1941).]

The Geographical History of America, by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) declares, "In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is." The words provide what no doubt remains the best two-sentence 25-words-or-less encapsulation of the nation's human geography ever written. Stein employs this statement to summarize the conclusion of her exploration into the relation of human nature (the identity of self) to the human mind (creative-expression), namely that creativity in America is grounded in the geographical settings of its residents. That the setting of essentially all fictional literature is geographically grounded, i.e., possesses a sense of place, is explored in the general and American cases (Mallory & Simpson-Housley, Kazin, Turner, and Conn) and cartographically in literary maps (Hopkins and Buscher).
      [Gertrude Stein. The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind. New York: Random House, 1936, and in Gertrude Stein: Writings 1932-1946. Literary Classics of the United States, No. 100. New York: Library of America, 1998; William E. Mallory and Paul Simpson-Housley. eds. Geography and Literature: a Meeting of the Disciplines. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987; Alfred Kazin. A Writer's America: Landscape in Literature. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988; Frederick Turner. Spirit of Place: the Making of an American Literary Landscape. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1989; Peter Conn. Literature in America: an Illustrated History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989; Martha E. Hopkins and Michael Buscher. Language of the Land: the Library of Congress Book of Literary Maps. Washington: Library of Congress, 1999.]

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland establishes a Department of Geography and Environmental Science in 1936. [www.jhu.edu]

Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois establishes a Department of Geography in 1936 and its graduate program in geography the same year. [www.siu.edu]

1937
The American Guide Series, a project of the depression-era Federal Writer's Project (U. S. Work Projects Administration), begins issuing a series of geographic guidebooks for the nation. In less than a decade, the project publishes guides with detailed place-specific information for each state, major cities, and several regions, plus pictorial guides and other items-a total of over 1,000 individual publications. The guidebooks appear during a period of renewed interest in America as a set of regionally unique places and locales, and as automobiles become the primary means of travel for Americans. More than a third of the contents of state guides are devoted to presenting the state's human and physical geographies ordered along cross-sectional highway traverses. The American Guide Series sets the nation's high water mark for place-specific accounting in geography's chorographic-regional tradition. Nearly a half-century later, historian Neil Harris and geographer Michael Conzen summarize the series' accomplishment-"The genius of the guides was their gift of personality and drama to the American scene, their invocation of the color, the misery, eccentricity, and the grandeur that had overtaken Americans in the course of their settlement" (Harris and Conzen, xxv).
      [Marc S. Selvaggio. The American Guide Series: [a list of] Works by the Federal Writers' Project. Pittsburgh, PA: Shoyer's Books, n.d. (1990s); Frederick Gutheim. America in Guide Books. The Saturday Review of Literature. June 14, 1941; Daniel M. Fox. The Achievement of the Federal Writers' Project. American Quarterly 13 (Spring 1961): 3-19; Jerre G. Mangione. The Dream and the Deal: the Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972; Monty N. Penkower. The Federal Writers' Project: a Study in Government Patronage of the Arts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977; Neil Harris and Michael Conzen. Introduction to The WPA Guide to Illinois. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. Pp. xvii-xli.]

Trade Centers and Trade Routes, by Eugene Van Cleef (1887-1973), is the first book written by an American geographer to be used as a textbook in urban geography courses in American universities. The first college courses in urban geography were offered at least as early as 1919 (Brigham).
      [Eugene Van Cleef. Trade Centers and Trade Routes. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1937; Albert Perry Brigham. Geographic Education in America. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution [for 1919]. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1921. Pp. 487-496.]

The Texas Geographic Magazine, the official journal of the Texas Geographic Society begins publication in 1937. The Texas Geography Society was founded in 1933. It continues to publish The Texas Geographic Magazine through 1948. The society disbands in 1950.

1938
General Cartography, by Erwin J. Raisz (1893-1968), is the first textbook in cartography to be published in the United States. This landmark publication is subsequently hailed as “probably the most notable event [in American academic cartography] prior to World War II” (Robinson). Well into the 1930s, few undergraduate courses in cartography are offered in American colleges and universities, and most graduate programs offer only a single such course. The appearance of General Cartography dramatically alters this situation, and the work remains a standard course text and reference volume for decades.
      [Erwin J. Raisz. General Cartography. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1938; W. L. G. Joerg. Review of General Cartography. Geographical Review 29 (October 1939): 699-701; Arthur H. Robinson. Geography and Cartography Then and Now. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 97-102.]

The scholarly journal, Journal of Geomorphology, begins publication in 1938. Its publication continues through Vol. 5, December 1942. (see Geomorphology entry at 1987)

University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts establishes a Department of Geosciences in 1938 and its graduate program in geography in 1980. [www.umass.edu]

1939
The Nature of Geography, by Richard Hartshorne (1899-1992), provides a historical and methodological argument for the study of the specificity of place and region-the regional and spatial differentiation research traditions within geography. It serves as a focal point of methodological examinations in American geography for decades.
      [Richard Hartshorne. The Nature of Geography: a Critical Survey of Current Thought in Light of the Past. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 29 (1939): 171-658, and as The Nature of Geography. Lancaster, PA: Association of American Geographers, 1939 and reprinted with corrections 1961; Richard Hartshorne. Perspective on the Nature of Geography. Monograph Series No. 1. Chicago: Rand, McNally for the Association of American Geographers, 1959; Nine essays. In J. Nicholas Entriken and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. Reflections on Richard Hartshorne's 'The Nature of Geography.' Occasional Publication No. 1. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1989.]

The World in Maps, a geographic exhibition, is presented at the American Geographical Society in New York City in conjunction with the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair (Wright and entry at 1939-45). This large exhibition provides an outstanding example of a form of geographic exhibition that continues to appear from the late 1930s on. They tend to focus on materials relating to the acquisition of basic geographic information by displaying primary materials such as manuscript maps, papers, photographs, and reports, and supplementary materials such as maps, atlases, models, globes, and books that provide interpretations of the basic materials.
      Another distinguished example of this primary-material form of geographic exhibition is Geographical Exploration and Topographic Mapping by the United States Government 1777-1952. It is prepared by Herman R. Friis (1905-1989), U.S. National Archives, in 1952 and displayed in the gallery of the U.S. National Archives building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. While open to all National Archives’ visitors, it is prepared in conjunction with the 17th International Geographical Congress, held in Washington in 1952.
      The popularity of this primary-materials form of geographic exhibition continues. More recent examples include exhibits on geographic exploration of the Pacific Ocean and on the American West (Friis 1961 and 1963), geographic exploration of the American West (Benson 1995 and 2002), cartographic history of the Commonwealth of Virginia (Stephenson and McKee), history of atlases (Wolter and Grim), and literary maps (Hopkins and Buscher).
      [John K. Wright. Descriptive Catalogue of an Exhibit of Maps, Photographs, Instruments and Other Materials of Geographical Interest at the House of the American Geographical Society. New York: American Geographical Society, 1939; John K. Wright. The World in Maps: the American Geographical Society’s Exhibition. Geographical Review 30 (January 1940): 1-18; American Geographical Society. Milestones in American Geography: an Exhibit Arranged in Commemoration of the Five Hundredth Anniversary of the Invention of Printing. New York: American Geographical Society, 1940; Herman R. Friis. Geographical Exploration and Topographic Mapping by the United States Government 1777-1952: an Exhibit Catalog. Catalog of an exhibition held in conjunction with the International Geographical Congress at the National Archives, Washington, D.C. in 1952. National Archives Publication No. 53-2. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952; Herman R. Friis. United States Scientific Geographical Exploration of the Pacific Basin 1783-1899. Catalog of an exhibition held in conjunction with the Tenth Pacific Science Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961. National Archives Publication No. 62-2. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961; Herman R. Friis. Federal Exploration of the American West Before 1880. Catalog of an exhibition held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Western History Association at the Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah in 1963. National Archives Publication No. 64-6. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963; Guy Meriwether Benson with William R. Irwin and Heather Moore. Exploring the West from Monticello: a Perspective in Maps from Columbus to Lewis and Clark. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Library, 1995; Guy Meriwether Benson et al. Lewis and Clark: the Maps of Exploration 1507-1814. Charlottesville, VA: Howell Press for the University of Virginia Library, 2002; Richard W. Stephenson and Marianne M. McKee. eds. Virginia in Maps: Four Centuries of Settlement, Growth, and Development. Richmond, VA: The Library of Virginia, 2000; John A. Wolter and Ronald E. Grim. eds. Images of the World; the Atlas through History. Washington: Library of Congress and New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997; Martha E. Hopkins and Michael Buscher. Language of the Land: the Library of Congress Book of Literary Maps. Washington: Library of Congress, 1999.]

Wind chill temperature, which becomes a standard indicator of human sensory response to different atmospheric temperatures, is developed by Paul A. Siple (1908-1968) as part of his doctoral research in geography at Clark University. The wind chill temperature (WCT) index combines wind speed and atmospheric temperature to provide a more accurate measure of the human response to outdoor, especially cold, temperatures than simple atmospheric temperature. The wind chill temperature index is revised by the U.S. National Weather Service in 2001. Siple goes on to become one of America's most renowned Antarctic researchers and president of the Association of American Geographers. (see Siple entry at 1956)
      [Paul A. Siple. Adaptation of the Explorer to the Climate of Antarctica. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Worcester, MA: Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, 1939; current wind chill temperature index information is at the National Weather Service, www.nws.noaa.gov/om/windchill.]

1940s - World War II
Engagement of the United States in World War II calls numerous geographers into service in a variety of professional activities, as well as in combat and relief roles. As much as 80 percent of all Americans with training in geography become directly involved in the war effort – with half employed by the federal government, either as civilians (as many as 350 by 1945) or as military (as many as 500 by 1945), and about half involved in military training programs on college campuses. About 200 of those directly involved in geographic research activities are professional geographers, i.e., possess graduate training in geography (Harris, National Research Committee, Russell et al.).
      Federal agencies with particularly large concentrations of geographers are the Office of Strategic Services, War Department, U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Economic Defense Board (later Board of Economic Warfare then Office of Foreign Economic Assistance), and Department of State. The largest number of professional geographers work in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which has a total staff of 13,000 and is headed by Colonel William J. Donovan. Geographers serving in the OSS are concentrated in Washington, D.C., in its Research and Analysis Branch, which includes a Geography Division, Map Division, and regional divisions for Europe-Africa, U.S.S.R., Far East, and Latin America, but also overseas in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The OSS, independently and in conjunction with other agencies, produce regional geographic accounts, field intelligence, some 1,300 general and thematic maps, relief models, and the President’s Globes (see entry at 1942). In 1943, the Joint Intelligence Publishing Board begins publishing the remarkable 34-volume series of Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Studies (JANIS), the results of the federal government’s first multi-agency strategic basic intelligence assessment. Combine contributions from twenty agencies, these multi-volume reports provide topographical and geographical information on areas of likely operations extending from Bulgaria across Asia to Japan. Another particularly notable contribution, the Intelligence Photographic Documentation Project (IPDP), examines areas of Europe liberated by Allied forces.
      Geographers serving elsewhere in the federal government are concentrated in the War Department, with most in the U.S. Army, within its Military Intelligence Service of the General Staff (G-2) and particularly the Topographic Branch commanded by geographer Colonel Sidman P. Poole (1893-1955), but also the Army Map Service, Quartermaster Corps, Army Air Corps, and field commands; others are called to the U.S. Navy, particularly its Hydrographic Office, and the Marine Corps. The regional landform diagrams of portions of Europe that Armin K. Lobeck (1886-1958) prepares for the Army’s Military Intelligence Service serve as the basis of his Physiographic Diagram of Europe.
      At other agencies in Washington, geographers support map production efforts in all federal agencies at the U.S. Board on Geographic Names; conduct overseas economic geographic analyses at the Economic Defense Board and domestically at the War Production Board and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces; and engage in political geographic analyses and map production at the Department of State’s Office of Geographer and Division of Geography and Cartography. The lively exchanges that result from the unprecedented concentration of geographers in Washington and the heroic demands placed upon them professionally, leads to creation of a professional society to formally support the exchange of ideas – the American Society for Professional Geographers (see entry at 1943).
      Several hundred geographers contribute elsewhere in the country as civilians to the numerous training programs directed by the War Department, particularly the Army Specialized Training Program’s (ASTP) basic and area-language programs. Academic courses in geography, including World Regions, Physical Geography, Economic Geography, and Political Geography, are part of the basic ASTP program, which is offered at over 200 colleges and universities and trains approximately 140,000 soldiers. Several works in geography are produced for these courses, including both new publications and reproductions of existing works (Department of State et al., U.S. Army Service Forces, Finch and Trewartha, Whittlesey, Jones). Geography works appear outside the federal government as well during this period that serve to educate the general public and professional geographers on war-related topics (Renner, Lobeck et al.).
      Also outside the federal government, the American Geographical Society provides the U.S. Department of State with cartographic and geographic research support under contract, and contributes to projects in numerous other federal agencies from early 1942 through war’s end. Eighty some projects undertaken for the Department of State include the preparation of base maps of the world, individual continents, and selected sub-continental regions; the Atlas of World Maps for the Study of Geography in the Army Specialized Training Program; a world map showing the status of official topographic mapping programs; and contributions to technical reports and training textbooks (American Geographical Society, U.S. Department of State, Platt).
      When representatives of 50 countries meet at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in June 1945, the U.S Department of State’s Territorial Committee is chaired by Isaiah Bowman, geographer and president of Johns Hopkins University, who also had participated in the Peace Conference at the conclusion of World War I (Coughlan). The conference leads to creation of the United Nations, with a charter signing in October 1945.
      [Chauncy D. Harris. Geographers in the U.S. Government in Washington, DC, during World War II. Professional Geographer 49 (May 1997): 245-256; National Research Council, Committee on Training and Standards in the Geographic Profession. Lessons from the War-time Experience for Improving Graduate Training for Geographic Research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 36 (September 1946): 195-214; Joseph A. Russell, Alfred W. Booth, and Sidman P. Poole. Military Geography. In Preston E. James and Clarence F. Jones. eds. American Geography: Inventory and Prospect. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press for Association of American Geographers, 1954. Pp. 484-495; Armin K. Lobeck. Physiographic Diagram of Europe [map]. New York: The Geographical Press, 1944; U.S. Army Service Forces. Geographical Foundations of National Power. ASF Manual M-103-1, 2, & 3, 3 vols. Washington, DC: Army Service Forces, 1944; Vernor C. Finch and Glenn T. Trewartha. Elements of Geography: Physical and Cultural. 2 vols. Madison, WI: Armed Forces Institute, 1944; Derwent S. Whittlesey. The Earth and the State: a Study of Political Geography. Education Manual EM234. Madison, WI: Armed Forces Institute, 1944; Clarence F. Jones. Economic Geography (College) . Education Manual EM230. Madison, WI: Armed Forces Institute, 1944; George T. Renner. Maps: Global War Teaches Global Cartography. Life Magazine 13 (3 August 1942): 57-65; Armin K. Lobeck and Wentworth J. Tellington, with Introduction by John K. Wright. Military Maps and Air Photographs: Their Use and Interpretation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1944; American Geographical Society. Environment and Conflict in Europe: Eighteen Basic Maps. A.G.S. Special Publication No. 24, 2nd revised edition. Eighteen maps, 115 x 89 cm. New York: American Geographical Society, 1940 (1939); American Geographical Society. Annual Report of the Council for the Year 1944. Geographical Review 35 (April 1945): 314-318; U.S. Department of State Office of the Geographer, Office of Strategic Services, and American Geographical Society. Atlas of World Maps for the Study of Geography in the Army Specialized Training Program. Forty-eight maps at scales from 1:75,000,000 to 1:150,000,000, 27 x 55 cm. ASF Manual M-101. Washington: Army Services Forces, 1943; Raye R. Platt. Official Topographic Maps: a World Index. Geographical Review 35 (April 1945): 175-181; Robert Coughlan. Isaiah Bowman: the World’s Leading Political Geographer, Who Helped Frame American Peace Policy at Versailles, Now Has a New Set of Boundary Worries. Life Magazine 19 (22 October 1945): 118-120, 123-126, 129.]

Experiences during World War II fundamentally reorient the global geographic perceptions of Americans as they come to realize that great-circle distances between the United States and the Eurasian continent across the Arctic are much shorter than transatlantic ocean routes, and that air travel, which is supplanting ocean travel, dramatically increases accessibility to any locality on Earth (Harrison). Achieving one of the basic objectives of geography education in the United States-developing an appreciation of Earth’s human and physical geographies and their interactions at the global scale-requires a major reconsideration of the adequacy of the nation’s geography school textbooks.
      The altered global geographic perceptions result in numerous changes to elementary, secondary, and introductory college textbooks (Engelhardt and many others). These changes include the introduction of polar maps, replacement of global maps based on the Mercator projection, new cartographic forms of visualizing global perspectives, the revision of text material describing the ‘shrinking world’ and the spatial immediacy of newly-important localities both within and surrounding the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. School textbooks quickly incorporate what is termed air-age geography (Van Zandt, Huntington, Fleming).
      [Richard Edes Harrison. Look at the World: the Fortune Atlas for World Strategy. New York: Knopf, 1944; Nickolaus L. Engelhardt et al. Education for the Air Age: a Guide for Teachers and Administrators. New York: Macmillan, 1942; George T. Renner. Geographic Education for the Air Age: a Text for High School Students. New York: Macmillan, 1942; George T. Renner. Human Geography in the Air Age. New York: Macmillan, 1942; George T. Renner. Maps: Global War Teaches Global Cartography. Life Magazine (1942): 57-65; George T. Renner and associates. Global Geography. New York: Thomas Crowell Co., 1944; Leonard Packard with Bruce Overton and Ben Wood. Our Air-Age World: a Textbook in Global Geography. New York: Macmillan, 1944; Grace Croyle Hankins. Our Global World: a Brief Geography for the Air Age. New York: Gregg, 1944; John H. Bradley. World Geography. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1945 (editions through mid-1950s); James F. Chamberlain. Air-Age Geography and Society. Revised by Harold E. Stewart. Chicago: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1945; Edith West, Dorothy Meredith, and Edgar B. Wesley. Contemporary Problems Here and Abroad. Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1947; DeForest Stull and Roy W. Hatch. Our World Today: Asia, Latin America, United States. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1948; Ellsworth Huntington. Geography and Aviation. In Griffith Taylor. ed. Geography in the Twentieth Century: a Study of Growth, Fields, Techniques, Aims and Trends. 3rd edition. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957. Pp. 528-542;Douglas K. Fleming. Cartographic Strategies for Airline Advertising. Geographical Review 74 (January 1984): 76-93.]

The creation of geographic exhibits to illuminate wartime activities in museums and in other locales of public display is one of several ways geographers bring their particular perspectives and understandings of events in World War II to the larger public. In New York City, a major geographic exhibit is on display at the American Geographical Society when the war starts—The World in Maps (see entry at 1939). From October 1939 through the conclusion of World War II, the American Geographical Society displays changing war-related geographic exhibits in conjunction with its ongoing exhibitions.
      War-related geographic exhibits also appear elsewhere in the United States. Can America Be Bombed opens in April 1941 at the Science Museum of the Saint Paul Institute in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is the museum’s second exhibition featuring maps to examine U.S. wartime geography, and versions of it are subsequently shown at numerous science, history, and art museums, in Pittsburgh, New York City, Cleveland, and Minneapolis among other places, and at the U.S. Senate and House office buildings in Washington, D.C. St. Paul’s Science Museum presents a series of exhibitions throughout the war: one examines the implications of the size of the Pacific Ocean for U.S. wartime naval strategy; another the recording of events in the European theater (Pownell).
      [John K. Wright. Descriptive Catalogue of an Exhibit of Maps, Photographs, Instruments and Other Materials of Geographical Interest at the House of the American Geographical Society. New York: American Geographical Society, 1939; John K. Wright. Exhibit of Maps Pertaining to the War in Europe. Geographical Review 29 (October 1939): 685-686; John K. Wright. The World in Maps: the American Geographical Society’s Exhibition. Geographical Review 30 (January 1940): 1-18; Louis H. Powell. New Uses for Globes and Spherical Maps. Geographical Review 35 (January 1945): 49-58.]

1940
The Great Relief Model, the largest raised-relief or three-dimensional terrain model of the United States (conterminous states) ever produced, is installed at Babson College in Wellsley, Massachusetts. The Great Relief Model-at the scale of about 1:250,000 and measuring 65 feet east-west and 45 feet north-south-is constructed under the direction of Wallace W. Atwood (1872-1949), geographer and president of Clark University. It remains on display at Babson College for public viewing and is regularly visited by school children until it is demolished in 1997.
      [Wallace W. Atwood, Jr. The Giant Relief Model of the United States. Journal of Geography 40 (May 1941): 169-172.]

Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma establishes a Department of Geography in 1940 and its graduate program in geography in 1947. [www.okstate.edu]

University of North Carolina in Greensboro, North Carolina establishes a Department of Geography
      [www.uncg.edu; Keith G. Debbage and D. Gordon Bennett. Geography at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro: Historical Evolution, 1940-2004. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 188-197.]

1941
A Theory of Location for Cities, the landmark essay by Edward L. Ullman (1912-1976) appears in American Journal of Sociology in 1941. It provides the earliest statement of central place theory in English. Ullman introduces the basis of the piece – “Periodically in the past century the location and distribution of cities and settlements have been studied. Important contributions have been made by individuals in many disciplines. Partly because of the diversity and unco-ordinated nature of the attack and partly because of the complexities and variables involved, a systematic theory has been slow to evolve… A theoretical framework for study of the distribution of settlements is provided by the work of Walter Christaller. The essence of the theory is that a certain amount of productive land supports an urban center. The center [i.e., central place] exists because essential services must be performed for the surrounding land.” Ullman concludes by suggesting the theory’s applicability to the geographic situation of the United States.
      Brian J. L. Berry and Chauncy D. Harris (1914-2003), both then at the University of Chicago, subsequently describe central place theory as “the logic of systems of central places [in a settlement system], focusing particularly upon the numbers, sizes, activities, and spatial distribution of such places and their associated regions… [it] is fundamentally concerned with the [spatial] patterns through which wholesale, retail, service, and administrative functions, plus market-oriented manufacturing, are provided to consuming populations.” The initial body of research relating to this aspect of the spatial structure of settlement systems is documented in Central Place Studies. (see Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution entry at 1967)
      [Edward L. Ullman. A Theory of Location for Cities. American Journal of Sociology 46 (May 1941): 853-864, and in Harold M. Mayer and Clyde F. Kohn. eds. Readings in Urban Geography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959, pp. 202-209; Walter Christaller. Central Places in Southern Germany. Translated from the German by Carlisle W. Baskin. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966 (1933); Brian J. L. Berry and Chauncy D. Harris. Central Place. In David L. Sills. ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 19 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1968; Brian J. L. Berry and Allen Pred. Central Place Studies: a Bibliography of Theory and Applications; including Supplement through 1964. Philadelphia, PA: Regional Science Research Institute, 1965; J. D. Eyre. ed. A Man for All Regions: the Contributions of Edward L. Ullman to Geography. Studies in Geography No. 11. Chapel Hill, NC: Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, 1978; Ronald R. Boyce. ed. Edward L. Ullman. Geography as Spatial Interaction. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1980.]

Association of American Geographers becomes a constituent society member of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The American Council of Learned Societies, founded in 1919, consists of 63 constituent societies, numerous colleges and universities, and other education-related institutions in 2000. It serves to promote humanistic studies in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, to strengthen relations among national societies devoted to such studies, and to represent constituent societies in the International Union of Academies (Union Academique Internationale).

Surveying and Land Information Systems, a scholarly journal of the American Congress of Surveying and Mapping, begins publication as Bulletin of the National Congress on Surveying and Mapping. Its name changes to Bulletin of the American Congress of Surveying and Mapping in 1942; to Surveying and Mapping in 1944; and to its current name in 1990. Its publication continues to the present.

John K. Wright (1891-1969), librarian (1920-38) and then director (1938-49) of the American Geographical Society, is the first geographer profiled in The New Yorker. The article describes Wright as one who "not only knows but loves geography, and never feels wholly at ease unless he is within sight of a map" (The New Yorker, 6) and provides an account of American Geographical Society activities through the time of World War II.
      [E. J. Kahn, Jr. Profiles: Big Geographer [John Kirtland Wright]. The New Yorker 17 (July 26, 1941): 20-24, 27-28, 30; David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden. eds. Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor of John Kirtland Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976; Martyn J. Bowden. John Kirtland Wright, 1891-1969. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 60 (June 1970): 394-403.]

Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1962), Arctic explorer, researcher, and writer, is profiled in The New Yorker magazine. Stefansson participates in three Arctic expeditions that focus on acquiring information on human habitation and resource availability as well as the geographic exploration of new areas (Stefansson 1913, 1921,1922). He is one of the first explorers to live with Inuits-Eskimos and then apply knowledge of their lifestyle in furthering his exploration goals. Following his initial phase of active field exploration, which closes in 1918, he continues to conduct research on the Arctic, presents thousands of lectures, and writes-publishing more than 50 books and over 300 articles, including a dozen in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society and Geographical Review. Prepared to challenge virtually any existing aspect of the geographic understanding of the northern latitudes, derived of decades of Euro-Russian-American exploration, his overall characterization of the North as ‘the friendly Arctic’ wins him world renown, especially in Russia. When the United States enters the era of global-scale air-age geography in the 1940s, his understanding of the Arctic region is much sought by the federal government (Stefansson 1944, Weigert et al.). He joins the faculty of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire as director of polar studies in 1947. Dartmouth College maintains the immense Stefansson Collection of Polar Exploration that he amassed.
      Robert Taylor’s assessment of Stefansson’s career in The New Yorker calls him “the debunker of the North” and notes that “while some explorers, unsettled by Stefansson’s irreverent approach to their profession, argue that he does not take his work seriously enough, the more detached scientists are inclined to consider him the most scholarly and honest man in the field… more than anybody else, [he] has been responsible for the growing awareness that the Arctic is habitable and possesses undeveloped resources of great value. He has also had a good deal to do with getting the government to establish air bases and weather stations in the Arctic.” He is described by his biographer as “the last explorer to discover new lands in the Arctic, [who] fully credited the Eskimos who taught him how to hunt and travel in the region. As an explorer he sought knowledge rather than meaningless goals such as reaching the ‘farthest North’ or achieving ‘the conquest of the pole.’ In this respect his career contrasts with those of famed explorers of his time such as Roald Amundson and Robert Peary” (Hunt 1999). His accomplishments are recognized by numerous geographical societies and celebrated by the U.S. Postal Service with $0.22 commemorative stamp in 1986.
      [Robert L. Taylor. Profiles: Klondike Stef [Vilhjalmur Stefansson]. The New Yorker (October 18, 1941): 26-30, 32, 35-36 and (October 25, 1941): 25-28, 30, 32-36; Vilhjalmur Stefansson. My Life with the Eskimos. New York: Macmillan, 1913; Vilhjalmur Stefansson. The Friendly Arctic: the Story of Five Years in Polar Regions. New York: Macmillan, 1921; Vilhjalmur Stefansson. The Northward Course of Empire. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922; Captain George H. Wilkins and Vilhjalmur Stefansson. The Detroit Arctic Expedition of 1926 and Living by Foraging in Arctic Exploration. New York: American Geographical Society, 1926; Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Arctic Manual. Prepared for the U.S. Army Air Corps. New York: Macmillan, 1944; Hans Weigert, Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Richard E. Harrison. eds. New Compass of the World: a Symposium on Political Geography. New York: Macmillan, 1949 (1944); Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Discovery: the Autobiography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964; G. Edgar Folk, Jr. and Mary A. Folk. eds. Vilhjamur Stefansson and the Development of Arctic Terrestrial Science. Centennial Symposium. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1984; William R. Hunt. Vilhjalmur Stefansson. In John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, Vol. 20, pp. 613-614; William R. Hunt. Stef: a Biography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson: Canadian Arctic Explorer. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 1986.]

University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida establishes a Department of Geography in 1941 and its graduate program in geography in 1947. [www.ufl.edu]

1942
Human Adjustment to Floods: a Geographical Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States, a landmark geographic study by Gilbert F. White, appears as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago in 1942. In examining areas of the United States where various forms of engineering works have been constructed to control floods, White raises the question-Does the net effect of constructing engineering flood control works in floodplains increase the possibility of damages to human property because once such works are in place, people will feel safer and place still more structures there, thus increasing losses when flooding actually does occur? The volume is described as "nothing less than a comprehensive theory of the geographic approach to the problem of dealing with floods" (Calef) and what "may well [be] the most influential [doctoral] dissertation in U.S. geography" (Kates and Burton). (see Gilbert F. White entry at 2000)
      [Gilbert F. White. Human Adjustment to Floods: a Geographical Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States. Chicago: Private edition distributed by University of Chicago Libraries, 1942, and as Research Paper No. 29. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1945; Wesley C. Calef. Introduction to Human Adjustment to Floods: a Geographical Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States. Research Paper No. 29. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1945. p. vii, Subsequent commentary by Rutherford H. Platt, Tim O’Riordan, and Gilbert F. White. Classics in Human Geography Revisited: Human Adjustments to Floods: a Geographical Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States. Research Paper No. 29. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1945. Progress in Human Geography 21 (June 1997): 243-250.; Robert W. Kates and Ian Burton. eds. Selected Writings of Gilbert F. White. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Selected Writings of Gilbert F. White: Geography, Resources, and Environment. Vol. 1, p. 10.]

President's Globes are presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House and to Prime Minister Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street at Christmas 1942. The identical terrestrial globes are presents from General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. Each globe measures 50 inches in diameter and 13 feet in circumference, weighs 750 pounds, and is covered with a map of the world at a scale of 1:10,000,000 that includes a 5-degree graticule, water shown with blue color, permanent and maximum limits of polar pack ice indicated, and land shown with three types of terrain character-lowland or plain, plateau or hilly upland, and mountains-indicated with buff-colored tints. Globes of the same design are installed in the War Department, the Senate Marble Room in the U.S. Capitol, and the Speaker's Lobby of the House in the U.S. Capitol for the duration of World War II. No more than a dozen President's Globes are created.
      The idea for creating the globes originates with Colonel William J. Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS evolves into the Central Intelligence Agency). The globe's map is produced in the Office of Strategic Studies under the direction of Arthur H. Robinson (chief, Map Division of the Research and Analysis Branch), Richard Hartshorne (1899-1992, director of research, Research and Analysis Branch), and Preston E. James (1899-1986, chief, Latin America Division of the Research and Analysis Branch). Final production-printing of the map, its application to the globe, and finishing-is carried out by the school supply firm of Weber Costello Co. of Chicago Heights, Illinois.
      [Arthur H. Robinson. The President's Globe. Imago Mundi 49 (1997): 143-152.]

The University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland establishes its geography program when President Harry C. Byrd asks Oliver E. Baker to join its faculty and create the Department of Economic Geography in the university’s College of Business and Public Administration. Baker, who was well known for his distinguished research with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, had served as president of the Association of American Geographers ten years earlier.
      In 1946, the department is reorganized as the Department of Geography, and by 1949, 40 graduate students are enrolled in its programs. Dr. Vishwambar Nath is awarded the university’s first Ph.D. degree in geography in 1949, and an additional five Ph.D.s and nine M.A.s are awarded by 1950.
      During the 1950s, the two-volume Atlas of the World’s Resources, produced under the direction of William Van Royen and with the assistance of numerous members of the Department of Geography, appears and becomes an international landmark in geography-Volume 1, Atlas of the World’s Resources: the Agricultural Resources of the World, and Volume 2, Atlas of the World’s Resources: the Mineral Resources of the World.
      By the mid-1970s, computer mapping is introduced in the ‘Introduction to Cartography’ course; a cartography production lab is established; and cartography is added as an undergraduate major in 1978. The department’s first course in remote sensing is taught in 1980, and during the early 1980s, computer resources and instruction materials are developed for offering geographic information systems (GIS). In 1983, the department becomes the first academic department in a university to use the new geographic information systems (GIS) software Arc/Info^TM (Version 2.0) developed by ESRI^TM, and a year later the undergraduate cartography major is changed to geographic information systems and cartography.
      The Department of Geography transfers to the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences when it is formed in 1987, and creates a series of new programs: the ‘Geography/Library Science (GELS)’ curriculum, a dual M.A. program with a full offering of computer-based spatial analysis and information management, developed in conjunction with the Department of Library Science in 1988; and two environmental sciences and policy program (ENSP) majors, ‘Land Use, and Environmental Mapping’ and ‘Data Management’ in 1997. In recent years, the Department of Geography has consistently ranked among the University of Maryland’s top grant earning departments.
      [William Van Royen. Atlas of the World’s Resources. 2 vols. Atlas of the World’s Resources: the Agricultural Resources of the World. and Atlas of the World’s Resources: the Mineral Resources of the World. New York: Prentice-Hall for the University of Maryland, 1952-54.]

University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota establishes an independent Department of Geography when the program in geography separates from the Department of Geology and Geography in 1942. Vernice Margaret Aldrich serves as acting head of the new department.
      Geography’s presence at the University of North Dakota prior to the creation of an independent department dates from the university’s creation in 1883. At that time, Henry Montgomery, vice-president of the university and professor of natural science, includes basic geographic concepts in his courses, and by 1885, physical geography, map drawing, and meteorology are offered in the Department of Geology. Fulia Bertine Rue is awarded the first master’s degree in geography in 1920, with the thesis, The Economic Geography of the Lignite Coal of North Dakota. The Department of Geology offers a minor in physiography in 1923, which is replaced by the option of a major or minor-degree program in geography in 1925. The Department of Geology and Geography emerges in 1932. The university’s one and only Ph.D. degree in geography is awarded to Arthur Carl Selke in 1935, with the dissertation, The Transportation System of Germany with Some Application to North Dakota Conditions.
      The Department of Geography awards its first M.A. degree to Melvin E. Kazeck in 1947, with the thesis, Audio-Visual Aids for the Modern High School. It establishes the local chapter of Gamma Theta Upsilon the following year. In 1973, the Institute for Remote Sensing, which later evolves into the Geographic Analysis and Remote Sensing Laboratory, is created by Roland D. Mower and Gary E. Johnson and the Forum for Contemporary Geographic Issues is established by Gary E. Johnson in 1974. The Institute for Remote Sensing sponsors the Innovations in Land Use Management Conference in 1976 and 1978. Bernt Lloyd Wills, former faculty member and initial faculty advisor to the Gamma Theta Upsilon chapter, is honored with the naming of a scholarship fund in 1985 that honors an outstanding undergraduate geography major each semester. The department proudly celebrates the unusual distinction of hosting regional meetings of both Canadian and American geographers – and the Prairie Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers in 1982, 1888, and 1992, and the Great Plains/Rocky Mountain Division of the Association of American Geographers in 1979 and 1995.
      Since 1970 the facilities of the Department of Geography have moved first from Merrifield Hall to Babcock Hall, then to Gillette Hall around 1977, and in 1992 to its current location in Clifford Hall. The department currently offers B.S., M.A., and M.S. degrees in geography and a Graduate Certificate in GISc (geographic information science).
      [www.und.edu; R. C. Brown. Departmental Histories: Geography. Grand Forks, ND: Department of Geography, University of North Dakota, 1983; William A. Dando and Gary E. Johnson. eds. Innovations in Land Use Management Symposium. Grand Forks, ND: University of North Dakota Press, 1976.]

1943
American Society for Geographical Research is established in Washington, D.C. It is renamed the American Society for Professional Geographers in 1944. The purpose of the organization, according to its constitution, is "to promote and stimulate interest in all branches of the science of geography and the development of its applications in government, private enterprise, and education; to foster a better public appreciation of the practical possibilities inherent in modern geography, and of the importance of proper professional training; to aid in improving professional training in geography; to serve as a bond among all-professional and non-professionals-who are interested in the various phases of geography, applied as well as theoretical; to aid in serving the professional needs of the members and in directing their professional efforts; and to foster and improve contacts with other societies and institutions in geography and related fields" (24-25). The American Society for Professional Geographers merges with the Association of American Geographers in 1948.
      [E. Willard Miller. ed. American Society for Professional Geographers: Papers Presented on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Its Founding. Occasional Publication No. 3. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1993.]

The Professional Geographer, a scholarly-professional journal of the American Society for Geographical Research and then the American Society for Professional Geographers, begins publication as Bulletin of the American Society for Geographical Research. The name is changed to The Professional Geographer in 1946. Its original series is issued in six volumes (1943-46). A new series begins publication in 1949 that continues to the present as a publication of the Association of American Geographers.

Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor (1875-1966), editor of National Geographic Magazine (1903-54) and president of the National Geographic Society (1930-54), is profiled in The New Yorker. The article notes how Grosvenor's editorship of the National Geographic Magazine transformed it from a scholarly-professional journal that served geographers who were scientists and educators to one that appealed to a general audience-the "geography unshackled" of the article's title. The journal's transformation under his half-century editorship propels growth in the membership of the National Geographic Society from around 3,000 to over 2,000,000. Grosvenor is described as "a kindly, mild-mannered, purposeful, poker-faced, peripatetic man of sixty-seven, endowed with the sprightly air of an inquiring grasshopper, with a clear pink complexion, and with the mixture of business sagacity, intellectual curiosity, regard for tradition, and tolerance of temperate innovation that is sometimes found in the president of a fairly wealthy college" (The New Yorker September 25, 27).
      [Geoffrey T. Hellman. Profiles: Geography Unshackled [Gilbert H. Grosvenor]. The New Yorker 19 (September 25, 1943): 26-30, 33, 34, (October 2, 1943): 27-32, 34, 35, and (October 9, 1943): 27-32, 35, 36; Gilbert H. Grosvenor. The National Geographic Society and Its Magazine: a History. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1957; Gilbert H. Grosvenor. The Romance of the Geographic. National Geographic Magazine 123 (October 1963): 516-585; Keir B. Sterling. Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 9, pp. 663-664.]

The Dymaxion World, a map/polyhedral globe created by R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), is introduced to Americas in an article appearing in Life Magazine, the extremely popular (circulation 4 million) photojournalism magazine that is published weekly from 1936 to 1972. The article's featured cutout map/globe, created by Richard Edes Harrison and magazine staff artists, is projected onto 14 pieces of paper, eight triangles and six squares, which can be left flat and arranged to suit the viewer's preferences, or assembled into a 14-sided polyhedral (cuboctahedral) globe. The article describes the cutout map/globe in its World War II context-"The President of the U.S. keeps a 50-in.-diameter globe close enough to his desk so that he need only swing his chair to consult it [see President's Globe entry at 1942]...The student-and master-of political geography is interested in true, relative geographical locations of the Great Powers, and in the strategy of communications on the great-circle (shortest distance) routes between them. He must be able to visualize the world's geographical layout not only from his own vantage point, but in the divergent perspectives of other nations and their political geographers" (42).
      The Dymaxion World map/globe "embodies [Fuller's] effort to resolve the dilemma of cartography: how to depict as a flat surface this spherical world, with true scale, true direction and correct configuration at one and the same time...For the layman, engrossed in belated, war-taught lessons in geography, the Dymaxion World map is a means by which he can see the whole world fairly and all at once" (41). Five flat arrangements-North Pole Layout, Mercator World, British Empire, Heartland, and Jap Empire-of the map's 14 sections are displayed with commentary. The cutout map displays country boundaries and names, and selected physical features such as mountains and rivers, but its principal subject is temperature, depicted with 18 land and 8 water temperature zones. In explaining the importance of temperature, the article states that "the major centers of modern civilization lie within...the zone where average January temperature ranges from 22° to 42°...Here live 56% of the total human population. They control 84% of world's mechanical horsepower and, in consequence, dominate the territories and people outside...It is the optimum temperature zone for the well-being and efficiency of human beings" (43).
      The idea of the polyhedral globe dates from at least the sixteenth century. Designs for several appear in Albrecht Dürer's (1471-1528) Unterweysung der Messung mit dem Zirke und Richtscheyt... , but never has one been introduced to so many people at one time (Snyder). Fuller's globe is one of several polyhedral globes introduced during the 1940s, when changing global perceptions stimulate interest in 'air-age geography' (Fisher and Bradley). An updated world map/globe employing Fuller's projection is available from the Buckminster Fuller Institute, www.bfi.org.
      [Life Presents R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion World. Life Magazine 14 (March 1, 1943): 41-55, with an 8-page pullout section with Fuller's map printed in color on heavy stock paper; John P. Snyder. Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993; Irving Fisher. A World Map on a Regular Icosahedron by Gnominic Projection. Geographical Review 33 (1943): 605-619; A. D. Bradley. Equal-Area Projection on the Icosahedron. Geographical Review 36 (January 1946): 101-104.]

1944
University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky establishes a Department of Geography in 1944 and its graduate program in geography in 1946.
      [www.uky.edu; P. P. Karan and Stanley D. Brunn. Sixty Years of Geography at the University of Kentucky, 1944-2004. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 166-172.]

1945
The Nature of Cities, the landmark essay by Chauncy D. Harris (1914-2003) and Edward L. Ullman (1912-1976), appears in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, in an issue devoted to ‘Building the Future City’ in 1945. Harris and Ullman discuss the economic basis of American cities; provide a categorization of cities in terms of their functions within a larger system of cities; and review three descriptive models of urban spatial structure and expansion – concentric zones, sectors radiating out from the core, and multiple-nuclei. The piece becomes the most widely quoted article in urban geography’s expansive research literature, and will be reproduced in full in more than 300 books during the subsequent half century. (see A Theory of Location for Cities entry at 1941)
      [Chauncy D. Harris and Edward L. Ullman. The Nature of Cities. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Topical issue on Building the Future City, edited by Robert B. Mitchell. 242 (November 1945): 7-17, also in Harold M. Mayer and Clyde F. Kohn. eds. Readings in Urban Geography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959, pp. 277-282; Edward L. Ullman. The Nature of Cities Reconsidered. Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association 9 (1962): 7-23; Chauncy D. Harris. Patterns of Cities. In J. D. Eyre. ed. A Man for All Regions: the Contributions of Edward L. Ullman to Geography. Studies in Geography No. 11. Chapel Hill, NC: Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, 1978, pp. 66-79; Chauncy D. Harris. Diffusion of Urban Models: a Case Study. Urban Geography 19 (January-February 1998): 49-67; Robert W. Lake, John Agnew, Elisabeth Lichtenberger, and Chauncy D. Harris. Urban Geography Special Issue: Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman, ‘The Nature of Cities’: a Fiftieth Year Commemoration. 18 (January-February 1997): 1-35; George J. Demko and Roland J. Fuchs. eds. Geographical Studies on the Soviet Union: Essays in Honor of Chuancy D. Harris. Research Paper No. 211. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1884; Michael P. Conzen, ed. World Patterns of Modern Urban Change: Essays in Honor of Chauncy D. Harris. Research Paper No. 217-218: Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1985.]

Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio offers geography courses in its Department of Geography and Geology, which enables students to receive a Bachelors degree with a minor in geography. When Lowry Karnes, the university's first trained geographer, joins the faculty in 1946, the number of courses in geography increases and an undergraduate major in geography is offered for the first time. In 1952, a separate Department of Geography is established with Lowry Karnes as chair; and in 1967, the department transfers from the College of Business Administration to the College of Arts and Sciences and relocates to Hanna Hall where it remains.

George Washington University in Washington, D. C. establishes a Department of Geography with Harold T. Straw offering three full-year courses-an introductory course, and two regional courses, The Geography of North America and The Geography of South America. Robert D. Campbell becomes chair of the department in 1947. The department currently offers the B.A. and M.A. degrees in geography.
      [ www.gwu.edu]

Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania establishes a Department of Geography in 1945 and its graduate program in geography the following year. [www.psu.edu]

Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois establishes a Department of Geography in 1945. Though currently without a Department of Geography, Northwestern University continues to offer an undergraduate geography major. [www.northwestern.edu]

1946

University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa establishes a Department of Geography in the College of Liberal Arts in 1946. The new department, with a faculty of five and offering full undergraduate and graduate degree programs, is chaired by Harold H. McCarty (1901-1987). Emergence of an independent Department of Geography is preceded by two decades of geography’s presence in the university’s College of Commerce. Harold H. McCarty, with a Ph.D. in economics and a member of the College of Commerce faculty, introduces a course in Commercial Geography in 1925 and Industrial Geography of the United States in 1930. Recognition of geography as a non-degree program within the College of Commerce occurs in 1938, when course offerings include Human Geography, Economic Geography, Geography of South America, and Geography of North America. McCarty’s landmark book, The Geographic Basis of American Economic Life, also appears during this early period. Beginning in the 1940s, Fred K. Schaefer (1904-1953), a refugee from Germany, offers Economics of Modern Dictatorships, Geography of Europe, and Geography of the Soviet Union among other courses. Schaefer’s landmark paper, Exceptionalism in Geography: a Methodological Examination, appears just after his death in 1953. During World War II, several persons teach geography courses in the university’s Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) provided for armed forces personnel.
      Following establishment as an independent department in 1946, Geography’s faculty remains at five members until the early 1960s when it increases to seven. The department’s program, which pioneers the application of rigorous statistical techniques in analytic human geography from the 1950s - embodied in the landmark monograph The Measurement of Association in Industrial Geography - emphasizes the training of graduate students and the pursuit of research and professional efforts. Student enrollment, primarily due to increasing numbers of undergraduates, triples during the 1960s. By the early 1970s, 45-50 graduate students are pursuing advanced degrees, and when the department strengthens its commitment to college-level instruction, the number of undergraduate majors increases to 50. The 1982 National Research Council ranking of graduate programs places Iowa geography at 13th out of 48 programs in terms of quality of faculty and 10th in terms of effectiveness (Jones et al.). In 1984, the department relocates from the old Library and Armory buildings to Jessup Hall on the main campus quadrangle. By 1990 its faculty increases to thirteen. The 1993 National Research Council ranking of graduate programs places Iowa geography 17th in the U.S. (Goldberger et al.). In 1995 a geographic information systems (GIS) laboratory is created with a full complement of high-end computers donated by a major computer manufacturer.
      During the 2000s, the number of undergraduate majors increases to 135 and the number of graduate students remains consistent at 45-50. The dominant areas of teaching and research are environmental studies and geographic information systems (GIS). Since its inception in 1946, the department has awarded 151 Ph.D. degrees in geography.
      [Harold H. McCarty. The Geographic Basis of American Economic Life. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940; Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1971; Fred K. Schaefer. Exceptionalism in Geography: a Methodological Examination. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43 (September 1953): 226-249; Harold H. McCarty, John C. Hook, and Duane S. Knos. The Measurement of Association in Industrial Geography. Iowa City, IA: Department of Geography, University of Iowa, 1956; Harold H. McCarty. Geography at Iowa. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 121-124; Leslie J. King. Areal Associations and Regressions. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 124-128; William Bunge. Fred K. Schaefer and the Science of Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 128-132; Lyle V. Jones, Gardner Lindzey, and Porter E. Coggeshall. eds. An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States. 5 vols. Washington: National Academy Press, 1982; Marvin L. Goldberger, Brendan A. Maher, and Pamela E. Flattau. eds. Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change. Washington: National Academy Press, 1995.]

The Great Plains-Rocky Mountain Division of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) is established as the Midwestern Division of the American Society of Professional Geographers (ASPG) by Nels A. Bengston (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), Clark N. Crain (University of Denver), and Harold A. Hoffmeister (University of Colorado, Boulder) at its initial meeting in Denver, Colorado. The American Society of Professional Geographers subsequently merges with the Association of American Geographers to form a much expanded Association of Geographers in 1948, and the Midwestern Division designation changes to Great Plains-Rocky Mountain Division in 1950.
      Today the Great Plains-Rocky Mountain Division incorporates the states of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas in the United States, and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. From its inception in 1946 through 2002, the division has conducted 57 annual meetings at 28 different venues. These regional meetings, which continue, have brought together thousands of academic and non-academic geographers alike to share hundreds of formal presentations and hundreds of local field expeditions. The division published Great Plains-Rocky Mountain Geographical Journal from volume 1 (1972) through volume 13 (1985).

Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana establishes a Department of Geography, chaired by Otis P. Starkey, when the geography program detaches from the Department of Geology and is located in Rawles Hall. Courses in geography were offered by Stephen S. Visher and others in the Department of Geology since 1919, and six Masters degrees in geography were granted prior to establishment of a separate department. In 1957, George H. T. Kimble becomes chair and the department relocates to Kirkwood Hall. During the late 1960s, a program reorientation begins that emphasizes analytic approaches to both human and physical geography. During this same period, programmatic ties are initiated between the department and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Area Studies programs. Atmospheric sciences is added as a specialization within the department in 1985 after the two remaining geomorphologists transfer to the Department of Geology. In 1991, the department relocates to its current facilities in the Student Building. The department currently offers the Bachelors, Masters and Doctors degrees in geography, with specialties in atmospheric sciences, the environment, geographic information science, and urban and regional systems. [www.indiana.edu]

Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas establishes a Department of Geography in 1946 and its graduate program in geography in 1961. [www.ksu.edu]

University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia establishes a Department of Geography in 1946 and its graduate program in geography in 1951.
      [www.uga.edu; Merle C. Prunty. Geography in the South. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 53-58; Merle C. Prunty. Merle C. Prunty on the Origins and Early Philosophic Base of the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 288-290; Fraser Hart. Early Days at Georgia. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 218-225; James O. Wheeler. James A. Barnes, University of Georgia, 1951-1977: America’s First Quantitative Geographer, an Interpretation. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 364-372; William G. Moseley. Yankee Go Home: Tales of a Northerner Educated in the South. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 386-391; Sam Ock Park. Where There is a Dream, There is a Way: The U.S. South in My Academic Life. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 392-399.]

University of Miami in Miami, Florida establishes a Department of Geography and Regional Studies in 1946. [www.miami.edu]

University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma establishes a Department of Geography in 1946. The university first offered graduate degrees in geography in 1930. [www.ou.edu]

1947

Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire establishes a Department of Geography in 1947. [www.dartmouth.edu]

Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont establishes a Department of Geography in 1947. [www.middlebury.edu]

University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas establishes a Department of Geography in 1947. Walter M. Kollmorgen, who joined the university faculty from the U.S. Department of Agriculture the previous year, chairs the new department. Courses in regional geography have been offered in the Department of Geology since the 1930s. The new geography program, located in Lindley Hall, expands rapidly, and by 1956 its faculty includes Thomas R. Smith, George F. Jenks, A. William Küchler, and David Simonett in addition to Kollmorgen. The department’s first M.A. degree is awarded in 1949 and its first Ph.D. in 1959.
      The geography programs for undergraduate and graduate students broaden and are enhanced during the 1960s and 1970s with significant additions to the faculty, primarily in physical and human geography specialties and with relatively fewer members emphasizing regional geography. Adjustments during the 1980s capitalize on the department’s long-standing strengths of physical geography, including geomorphology, landscape evolution, plants, and soils; human geography, including cultural ecology, economic development, historical, humanistic, political and population specialties; interdisciplinary regional programs on East Asia, Africa, Latin American, Russia-East Europe, and United States; and analytic techniques, including remote sensing, cartography, and geographic information system (GIS) applications.
      In 2003 the university’s Atmospheric Science Program rejoins Geography after a 20-year hiatus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Programs developed during the 1980s in physical and human geography specialties, regional studies, and analytic techniques continue to the present. The library of the University of Kansas maintains the outstanding Thomas R. Smith Map Collection, named for the professor of geography who established the collection.
     [ www.ku.edu]

University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas establishes a Division of Geography in its Department of Geosciences in 1947 and its graduate program in geography in 1948. [www.uark.edu]

1948
University of Chicago Geography Research Papers, a series of scholarly research monographs, begins publication as Research Papers. Initially published by the University of Chicago's Department of Geography, the series continues as a publication of the University of Chicago Press. Over 230 monographs are published by 2000.

Historical Geography of the United States, a landmark publication by Ralph H. Brown appears in 1948. It represents the first attempt to systematically provide, in the author's words "a survey of the character of American regions in earlier times (Brown iv)” in terms of each ones’ physical and human geographies. Prior to its publication, presentation of the historical geography of the United States in college courses is based upon Ellen Churchill Semple’s American History and Its Geographic Conditions, or is the province of classroom lectures (Barrows). The first sequel to Brown's work, a volume of reprinted essays edited by David Ward, does not appear for another three decades. The blossom of volumes on the historical geography of the United States that appear in the closing decades of the century demonstrate a new level of commitment by academic geographers to the geographic scholarship of America's past (Mitchell and Groves, Conzen, Meinig).
      [Ralph H. Brown. Historical Geography of the United States. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1948; Ellen Churchill Semple. American History and Its Geographic Conditions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1903; Harlan H. Barrows. Lectures on the Historical Geography of the United States, 1933; edited by William A. Koelsch. Research Paper No. 77. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1962; David Ward. ed. Geographic Perspectives on America's Past: Readings on the Historical Geography of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979; Robert D. Mitchell and Paul A. Groves. eds. North America: the Historical Geography of a Changing Continent. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987, 2nd ed. edited by Thomas F. McIlwraith and Edward K. Muller, 2001; Michael P. Conzen. ed. The Making of the American Landscape. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990; Donald W. Meinig. The Shaping of America. 4 vols. Vol. 1, Atlantic America, 1492-1800, Vol. 2, Continental America, 1800-1867, Vol. 3, Transcontinental America, 1850-1915, Vol. 4, Global America, 1915-1992. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986-200?; Thomas J. Curran. Ralph H. Brown. In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 3, pp. 728-729.]

Geography program is established in the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington, D.C. in 1948. The Secretary of the Navy established an office for scientific research in May 1945, which was formally authorized by Congressional legislation as the Office of Naval Research the following year. During its first year ONR funds 200 research contracts totaling about $22 million, mostly with university-based researchers.
      Commander J. Ward Brock, U.S. Navy, head of the new Geography Branch, and subsequent administrators direct a program that provides financial support for both physical and human geography (Russell, Pruitt). The program provides financial support for a series of basic scientific research efforts that include creation of the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University; meetings to prepare American Geography: Inventory and Prospect (see entry at 1954); a Foreign Field Research Program administered by the Division of Earth Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council that provides grants to nearly 100 individuals between 1955 and 1966; a study on emerging trends in scientific geography during the 1960s (Ackerman, entry at 1965); a 1965 National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA) symposium on the uses of remote sensing imagery from space (NAS-NRC), and numerous individual research projects.
      [Joseph A. Russell. Aides to Geographic Research Afforded by the Office of Naval Research. Professional Geographer 2 (November 1950): 35-39; Anon. Announcement of the Office of Naval Research Contracts in Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43 (March 1953): 1-3; Evelyn L. Pruitt. The Office of Naval Research and Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 103-108; Edward A. Ackerman et al. The Science of Geography: Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Geography of the Earth Sciences Division. Publication 1277. Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1965; NAS-NRC. Spacecraft in Geographic Research. Publication 1353. Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1966.]

1949
The World Land Use Survey is proposed by Samuel Van Valkenburg (1891-1976) at the 16th International Geographical Congress in Lisbon, Portugal with this vision statement-"If a double graph is constructed representing the upper and lower levels of standard of life through the centuries of history it will show that the two lines, once close together, have in late centuries, and especially in the last decades, deviated widely... increased understanding of what life can mean materially has penetrated to the remotest corners of our world, and instead of any longer being resigned, the masses are turning toward discontent and unrest. This mass movement which can be called the awakening of the have-nots, threatens to overthrow the foundations of our civilization. From the standpoint of decency, as well as of self-preservation, it is essential that we look for methods to improve [living] conditions [worldwide]. Something should be done and even done soon, otherwise it will be too late...It is my urgent plea that in this time of stress, the voice of geography be heard over the world, announcing a project to promote man's best use of his resources that all peoples of the world may benefit" (Van Valkenburg 1949, 237-9).
      The International Geographical Union establishes the Commission on a World Land Use Survey, initially chaired by Van Valkenburg, 1949-56, and then by L. Dudley Stamp of Great Britain and Hans H. Boesch of Switzerland) to carry out Van Valkenburg's proposal. During the ensuing years, the project receives support from national governments, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the Pan American Institute on Geography and History through its Committee on Land Classification and Land Use, among other organizations. It produces a series of preliminary regional land use inventories, finished land-use maps and monographs, and several methodological discussions in both the World Land Use Survey's own Occasional Papers and Monographs and a variety of national publications through the early 1970s. Each of these publications is derived from extensive field investigation and the use of aerial photographs. Much like the International Map of the World project at a scale of 1:1,000,000, interest in the project withers as the potential of emerging satellite remote sensing technologies for uniform inventorying and mapping at the global scale becomes apparent. (see International Map of the World entry at 1904)
      [Samuel Van Valkenburg. A World Inventory. Economic Geography 25 (October 1949): 237-239; Samuel Van Valkenburg. The World Land Use Survey. Economic Geography 26 (January 1950): 1-5; International Geographical Congress. Report of the Commission on World Land Use Survey for the Period 1949-1952. Worcester, MA: School of Geography, Clark University, 1952; [Report of IGU] Commission on Inventory of World Land Use. In National Committee of the International Geographical Union. Proceedings [of the Eighth General Assembly and Seventeenth International Congress]. Washington: U.S. National Committee of the International Geographical Union, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, n.d. Pp. 168-191; Charles Y. Hu. Some Basic Problems Concerning Inventory of World Land Use. Journal of Geography 53 (March 1954): 123-131; L. Dudley Stamp. Land Use Surveys with Special Reference to Britain. In Griffith Taylor. ed. Geography in the Twentieth Century: a Study of Growth, Fields, Techniques, Aims and Trends. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957 (1951). Pp. 372-393; George Kish. A New Land-Use Map of Italy. Geographical Review 48 (April 1958): 270-271.]

Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia offers its first geography courses in 1949 when the university is still known as the Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia. The Department of Geography is created in 1967 and establishes a M.A. degree program in 1971. The department merges with the anthropology faculty to form the Department of Anthropology and Geography in 1997.
      [www.gsu.edu; Sanford H. Bederman. A Brief Memoir of the Geography Department at Georgia State University in Atlanta. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 151-165.]

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, New Jersey establishes a Department of Geography in 1949 and its graduate program in geography in 1956. [www.rutgers.edu]

University of Texas at Austin, Texas establishes a Department of Geography in 1949 and its graduate program in geography in 1950. [www.utexas.edu]

1950s
Lands and Peoples of the World, a series of geography textbooks for elementary schools edited by Robert M. Glendinning, appear. These volumes, the first post-World War II series of graded school texts, update the two extremely successful co-authored series created during the 1920s by H. Barrows & Edith P. Parker and Wallace W. Atwood & Helen G. Thomas (see Human Geography entry at 1920s). The Lands and Peoples series of school textbooks incorporates the new ‘air-age geography’ perspective, i.e., increased levels of connectivity among world regions that result from new air transportation technologies developed during World War II; provides most maps at the common scale of 1:40,000,000; and features maps produced by Richard Edes Harrison, the American cartographer who dramatically altered global cartographic perspectives during World War II (Saveland; Harrison).
      [Robert M. Glendinning. Lands and Peoples of the World. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1957; Delia Goetz. At Home Around the World. Fourth grade. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1958; Katheryne T. Whittemore. The United States and Canada. Fifth grade. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1957; Marguerite Uttley and Alison E. Aitchison. Latin America, Africa, and Australia. Sixth grade. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1957; and Robert M. Glendinning. Eurasia. Seventh grade. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1958; Robert N. Saveland. Richard Edes Harrison’s Contribution to School Geography. Journal of Geography 93 (July-August 1994): 204-205; Richard Edes Harrison. Look at the World: the Fortune Atlas for World Strategy. New York: Knopf, 1944.]

1950
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is established as an independent agency of the U.S. federal government to fund basic research in the sciences in 1950. In carrying out its mission “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense,” NSF now awards about 19,000 research grants a year (NSF Internet site).
      The National Science Foundation emerges as an agency of the federal government from a debate following World War II over whether the government should continue funding basic scientific research in peacetime as it had during the war, i.e., following the model of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (1941-47). Critical in that discussion were the roles of physicist Vannevar Bush, then head of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and geographer Isaiah Bowman, then president of Johns Hopkins University and chair of the Committee on Science and the Public Welfare (Bush, Penick, Kevles, Noble).
      NSF support for research in human geography, as with other social sciences, emerges slowly. It is first recognized in 1955, when a program for the sociophysical sciences is created in the Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences Division, to fund research in mathematical social science, human geography, economic engineering, statistical design, and the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. In 1958, formal programmatic recognition is given to all social sciences when related programs are consolidated in the Office of Social Science (Mazuzan).
      Richard Morrill, University of Washington, receives the first NSF research grant known to be awarded to a geographer in 1960; he uses the grant to investigate relationships between urbanization and migration in Sweden (Morrill). During the 1970s, Human Geography and Regional Science emerges as a separate program through the efforts of Howard Hines, director of the Economics program, who handled geography and regional science research proposals until then (Garrison). Renamed the Geography and Regional Science program in 1977, its mission remains unchanged—to fund “research on the geographic distributions and interactions of human, physical, and biotic systems on the Earth’s surface” (NSF Internet site).
      [www.nsf.gov; Vannevar Bush. Science: the Endless Frontier; Report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945; James L. Penick. ed. The Politics of American Science: 1939 to the Present. Revised edition. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972; Daniel Kevles. The National Science Foundation and the Debate over Postwar Research Policy, 1942-45. Isis 68 (1977): 5-26; David Noble. Science for Sale. Thought and Action: the NEA Higher Education Journal 16 (Fall 1984): 15-28; George T. Mazuzan. The National Science Foundation: a Brief History. General Publication No. NSF8816. Washington: Office of Legislative Affairs, National Science Foundation, 1994; Committee on the Social Sciences in the National Science Foundation, National Research Council. Social and Behavioral Science Programs in the National Science Foundation. Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1976; Richard Morrill. Pausing for Breath. In Peter Gould and Forrest R. Pitts. eds. Geographical Voices: Fourteen Autobiographical Essays. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, p. 219; William L Garrison. Lessons from the Design of a Life. In Peter Gould and Forrest R. Pitts. eds. Geographical Voices: Fourteen Autobiographical Essays. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, p. 117.]

The Geographic Cycle in Periglacial Regions as it is Related to Climatic Geomorphology, an article by Louis C. Peltier (1916-2003) appears in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers in 1950. In this paper, Peltier develops the concept of morphogenetic regions in geomorphology by linking climate to intensity of weathering and erosional processes. Peltier, one of William Morris Davis' last students, describes the cycle of erosion in a periglacial environment, and recognizes that climate change would occur too frequently to allow a full Davisian cycle to run its course in periglacial regions.
      [Louis C. Peltier. The Geographic Cycle in Periglacial Regions as it is Related to Climatic Geomorphology. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 40 (September 1950): 214-236.]

University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri establishes a Department of Geography in 1950 and its graduate program in geography the same year. The university’s Geographic Resources Center is part of the Department of Geography. [www.missouri.edu]

1951
The scholarly journal Landscape, published and edited by John Brinkerhoff Jackson (1909-1966), begins publication. Its publication is suspended in 1971, but resumes in 1974 and continues until ceasing publication with Volume 32 (1993-94).

1952
Seventeenth International Geographical Congress, the second to be convened in the United States, meets August 8-15 in Washington, D.C. The first International Geographical Congress to be convened in the United States took place in 1904. (see International Geographical Congress entry at 1904)
      [National Committee of the International Geographical Union. Proceedings [of the Eighth General Assembly and Seventeenth International Congress. Washington: U.S. National Committee of the International Geographical Union, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, n.d.; Charles W. Buffum. ed. Catalog of National Exhibits, Seventeenth International Geographical Congress. Washington: Library of Congress, 1952; John H. Thompson and Edward C. Higbee. New England Excursion Guidebook. Publication No. 1. Washington: Rand McNally for the U.S. National Committee for the International Geographical Union, 1952; Harold M. Mayer and Allen K. Philbrick. Industrial Cities Excursion Guidebook. Publication No. 2. Washington: Rand McNally for the U.S. National Committee for the International Geographical Union, 1952; Eugene Mather and J. Fraser Hart. Southeastern Excursion Guidebook. Publication No. 3. Washington: Rand McNally for the U.S. National Committee for the International Geographical Union, 1952; William E. Powers and Richard F. Logan. Transcontinental Excursion Guidebook. Publication No. 4. Washington: Rand McNally for the U.S. National Committee for the International Geographical Union, 1952; Erwin Raisz. Map of the Landforms of the United States: Special Edition Prepared for the Excursions of the International Geographical Congress. Publication No. 5. Washington: Rand McNally for the U.S. National Committee for the International Geographical Union, 1952; John K. Wright. ed. Report of the Commission on the International Map of the World, 1:1,000,000. Washington: International Geographical Union, 1952.]

Dynamic Basis of Geomorphology, the first of a series of landmark research papers by Arthur N. Strahler (1918-2003), geomorphologist at Columbia University, appears in 1952. A second key paper, Quantitative Analysis of Watershed Geomorphology, appears in 1957. These papers, along with others published by Strahler during the 1950s, define geomorphology for the first time as a quantitative and systematic approach to the scientific explanation of geomorphologic processes rather than a qualitative description of the evolution of landforms.
      [Arthur N. Strahler. Dynamic Basis of Geomorphology. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 63 (1952): 923-938; Arthur N. Strahler. Quantitative Analysis of Watershed Geomorphology. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 38 (1957): 913-920.]

1954
American Geography: Inventory and Prospect, edited by Preston James and Clarence Jones, provides a "progress report on the objectives and procedures of geographic research [in the United States]" (vii) at the fiftieth anniversary of the Association of American Geographers. Preparation of the volume is initiated by the Committee on Training and Standards in the Geographic Profession of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in 1944, and receives financial support from the National Research Council, Social Science Research Council, and the Office of Naval Research. A collaboration of dozens of contributors, the volume provides a 600-page statement, divided into 26 thematic chapters, of the status of American geography during the immediate post-Second World War period.
      [Preston E. James and Clarence F. Jones. eds. American Geography: Inventory and Prospect. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press for the Association of American Geographers, 1954.]

Regional Science Association International is established as the Regional Science Association. Its name changes to Regional Science Association International in 1990 to reflect its evolution into an international organization that encompasses three regional organizations--North America Regional Science Association, Europe Regional Science Association, and Pacific Regional Science Association.

1956
Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, a landmark publication in geography's human-environment tradition edited by William L. Thomas, is published in 1956. It reports the results of an international symposium held in 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, to consider previous, current, and prospective physical and cultural alterations by humans of Earth as humankind's habitat. The symposium, sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and chaired by Carl O. Sauer, Marston Bates, and Lewis Mumford, brought together 76 participants from 10 countries to discuss a set of 52 papers that had been prepared and distributed to participants in advance of the symposium. Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth includes an introduction by Thomas, the 52 reports with discussion, and summarizing remarks by Sauer, Bates, and Mumford. The National Science Foundation provides financial support for publication of Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, which sells more than 18,000 copies in its 1,193-page single-volume hardback edition. A two-volume paperback edition is issued in 1972, which sells 24,000 copies over the next twenty years. The two-volume edition remains in print.
      A follow-on symposium to Wenner-Gren's international symposium, titled Man, Time, and Space in Southern California, is coordinated by William L. Thomas, and held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Santa Monica in 1958. It provides a detailed examination of the role of humans in modifying the environment of Southern California.
      [William L. Thomas, Jr. ed. Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, and 2 vols., 1972); William L. Thomas, Jr. ed. Man, Time, and Space in Southern California: a Symposium. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49 (supplement, part 2, September 1959): 1-120.]

Paul A. Siple (1908-1968), expert on Antarctica and employee of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, is portrayed on the cover of Time Magazine (Isaiah Bowman was the first geographer to appear on the magazine's cover in 1936). The cover-story article reviews Siple's career and the exploration of Antarctica through Operation Deep Freeze, the research project he heads as part of the International Geophysical Year-IGY (1956-58). Siple, who directs scientific research at the South Pole Station on behalf of the United States National Committee for the International Geophysical Year, participates in seven expeditions to and lives in Antarctica more than six years during a distinguished career over thirty years. He is honored by the American Geographical Society with the David Livingstone Centenary Medal and by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names with the naming of Mt. Siple (3110 m.), a volcano that forms an island adjacent to Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica.
      [Time Magazine 68 (December 31, 1956): cover and 5, 12-17; Paul A. Siple. 90° South: the Story of the American South Pole Conquest. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959.]

Location and Space Economy, the landmark publication by Walter Isard, appears in 1956. It reviews the development, through 1947, of a general economic location theory; explores basic spatial aspects of transportation, distance, scale, and agglomeration within economies; provides an account of the spatial equilibrium of the firm, the spatial structure of markets, and agricultural land rent theory; and concludes with a general synthesis. Some four decades later, Morrill describes the work’s “breathtaking originality, a bringing together of the state of theory of spatial behavior and structure, sweeping and revolutionary… a work of masterful and provocative insights, of tantalizing graphics and challenges for research.”
      Location and Space Economy is shortly followed by the better known and more widely used textbook, Methods of Regional Analysis, in 1960. This volume, prepared by Isard and a team of contributors, provides a comprehensive how-to compendium of regional analytic techniques – projecting resident populations, estimating migration and interregional monetary flows, locating industries, developing input-output models and gravity, potential, and spatial interaction models. A subsequent, Methods of Interregional and Regional Analysis, updates and expands ‘Methods‘ to account for developments through the 1990s, including techniques for the integration of sectoral (industrial) and spatial interdependencies in system models.
      [Walter Isard. Location and Space Economy: a General Theory Relating to Industrial Location, Market Areas, Land Use, Trade, and Urban Structure. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1956; Subsequent commentary by Richard Morrill. Textbooks that Moved Generations: Location and Space Economy. Progress in Human Geography 26 (February 2002): 113-115; Walter Isard et al. Methods of Regional Analysis: an Introduction to Regional Science. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1960; Walter Isard et al. Methods of Interregional and Regional Analysis. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998.]

University of Montana in Missoula, Montana establishes a Department of Geography in 1956 and its graduate program in geography in 1965. [www.umt.edu]

1957
University of Nevada in Reno, Nevada establishes a Department of Geography in 1957 and its graduate program in geography in 1993. [www.unr.edu]

1958
Geography as a Fundamental Research Discipline, by Edward A. Ackerman (1911-1973), provides an early formulation of the spatial science paradigm that will blossom within university geography during the 1960s. In assessing the "position of geography as a scientific discipline and its future as a fundamental research tool, [it concludes that] there is only one fundamental approach in geography, and that approach may be applied to a variety of subject matter. It is the differentiation of the content of space on the earth's surface and the analysis of space relations within the same universe" (Ackerman 1958, 7 & 8).
      [Edward A. Ackerman. Geography as a Fundamental Research Discipline. Research Paper No. 39. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1958; Edward A. Ackerman. Where is a Research Frontier? Presidential address to the Association of American Geographers. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 53 (1963): 429-440.]

The scholarly journal The Iowa Geographer, an annual publication of the Iowa Council for Geographic Education and the Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa, begins publication. Its name changes to Geographical Perspectives with volume 33 (1974). Its publication continues through volume 64 (1993).

Journal of Regional Science begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

Discussion Papers, a series of scholarly but non-reviewed exploratory papers, is established in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1958. The Discussion Paper series issues over 40 papers by 1961.
      In the pre-photocopy pre-Internet era of the 1950s and early 1960s, such informally produced, sometimes mimeographed working paper series are sponsored by numerous academic geography departments. They prove highly effective in disseminating and influencing the development and promotion of new ideas. This informal form of publication continues to appear regularly into the 1970s, but then diminishes as an increasing number of formal, refereed, scholarly journals are published, and the means of communications between individual researchers is enhanced dramatically with the eventual emergence of the Internet.
      [Bibliography and Review of Geography Department Discussion Papers, Occasional Papers, and Monographs. Vols. 1-4 (1974-1980). Waterloo, Ontario [Canada]: Department of Geography, Wilfrid Laurier University.]

1959
Readings in Urban Geography, edited by Harold Mayer and Clyde Kohn, is one of numerous compilations of papers that appear as the rapidly evolving social sciences enter the 1960s. The reader's 18 section introductions and 54 articles provide the first "volume of articles and excerpts...designed to facilitate a comprehension of the character and scope of the field of urban geography, both as a scientific discipline and as a body of applied knowledge...[in lieu of] no systematic presentation of these concepts and hypotheses for the student of geography and others concerned with urban affairs" (1).
      [Harold M. Mayer and Clyde F. Kohn. eds. Readings in Urban Geography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.]

International Cartographic Association (ICA) is founded in Bern, Switzerland, in 1959. Its mission is to promote the discipline and profession of cartography in its international context through research, publication, discussion, education, and the transfer of new cartographic technology and knowledge.
      Several geographers-cartographers from the United States are honored by the International Cartographic Association during the ensuing decades. The Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal is awarded Arthur H. Robinson, University of Wisconsin (1980) and Joel L. Morrison, Ohio State University (2001). The title Honorary Fellowship is granted Joel L. Morrison, U.S. Bureau of the Census (1991), Richard F. Dahlberg, Northern Illinois University (1997), and Judy M. Olson, Michigan State University (2001).
      [ www.icaci.org]

1960
The scholarly journal Soviet Geography: Review and Translation begins publication with Vol. 1 (January and February 1960) in February 1960. Its publication is initially sponsored by the American Geographical Society. The name of the journal changes to Soviet Geography beginning with Vol. 25 (January 1984) to reflect the journal’s publication of increasing numbers of original Western research papers on the Soviet Union. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the journal’s name changes to Post-Soviet Geography Vol. 33 (January 1992), and with the inclusion of papers on regional economics, to Post-Soviet Geography and Economics Vol. 37 (January 1996). The journal continues publication to the present with the title Eurasian Geography and Economics, adopted with Vol. 43 (March 2002), to reflect an expanded regional focus that includes the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and China.
      [www.bellpub.com]

The first edition of International List of Geographical Serials, the landmark compilation of geography journals by Chauncy D. Harris, University of Chicago, and Jerome D. Fellmann, University of Illinois, appears in 1960. The volume includes extensive bibliographic information on popular and scholarly, current and historic (no longer published) journals, as well as information on sources, library holdings, and inventories by language and writing system. By its third edition, published in 1980, it includes 3,445 entries, just over a thousand of which continue to be issued as of the publication date.
      [Chauncy D. Harris and Jerome D. Fellmann. International List of Geographical Serials. Research Paper No. 63. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1960; Chauncy D. Harris and Jerome D. Fellmann. International List of Geographical Serials. 3rd edition. Research Paper No. 193. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1980.]

The California Geographer, a scholarly journal issued annually, begins publication in 1960. It is sponsored by the California Council for Geographic Education and begins with volume 1 (1960). Its publication is preceded by the Bulletin, produced by the California Council of Geography Teachers, volumes 1 (1953) through 7 (1960). The California Geographical Society subsequently assumes responsibility for publication of The California Geographer, which continues to the present.

Society for the History of Discoveries is established to stimulate interest in teaching, research, and publishing the history of geographical exploration of Earth's land and sea surfaces from earliest times to the present. Its publication program includes the scholarly journal, Terrae Incognitae, published annually since 1969, and volumes in the Studies in the History of Discoveries series, published jointly with the Newberry Library of Chicago.
      [www.sochistdisc.org]

"Don't know much about geography," sings the gospel-soul-rhythm & blues singer-songwriter Sam Cooke in the hit song Wonderful World, written by Cooke, Herb Alpert, and Lou Adler. The same song also becomes a hit for Herman's Hermits five years later. The apparent irrelevance of geography to the song's lovesick teenager is not unique, as he knows little about any of his other school subjects-history, biology, science, French, trigonometry, algebra. He is trying to be an A student, however, hoping that by doing so, he will win his truelove's heart.

1961
Megalopolis: the Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, by Jean Gottmann (1915-1994), introduces the term 'megalopolis' to apply to the "almost continuous stretch of urban and suburban areas [extending] from southern New Hampshire to northern Virginia and from the Atlantic shore to the Appalachian foothills [that the processes of urbanization have endowed] "with unique ways of life and land use, and a kind of supremacy, in politics, in economics, and possibly even in cultural activities, seldom before attained by an area of this size [within the United States or indeed the world]" (Gottmann 1961, 3). A landmark in geography's regional research tradition, Megalopolis emphasizes the importance of the spatial restructuring of interactions in this region of contemporary American society, and draws attention to the growing significance of service-sector jobs that are based on information-based transactions in support of decision-making in business and government, of particular importance in this region. Megalopolis alters the urban research agenda in numerous social science research disciplines and sets the stage for decades of investigations into the causes and consequences of what will later come to be termed 'global cities.'
      [Jean Gottmann. Megalopolis: the Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1961; Howard J. Nelson. Megalopolis and New York Metropolitan Region: New Studies of the Urbanized Eastern Seaboard. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 52 (September 1962): 307-317; Wolf Von Eckardt. The Challenge of Megalopolis: a Graphic Presentation of the Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. New York: Macmillan for the Twentieth Century Fund, 1964; Jean Gottmann. Megalopolitan Systems Around the World. Ekistics 243 (February 1976): 109-113; Jean Gottmann. Megalopolis Revisited: 25 Years Later. Monograph No. 6. College Park, MD: University of Maryland Institute for Urban Studies, 1987; Jean Gottmann. Since Megalopolis: the Urban Writings of Jean Gottmann, edited by Jean Gottmann and Ropert A. Harper. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.]

Southeastern Geographer, a scholarly journal of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG), begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.
      [James O. Wheeler. On the History of Publications of the Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers & Notable First-Time Occurrences in the History of the Southeastern Geographer, 1961-2003 & Authorship of Articles Published in the Southeastern Geographer, 1961-1999. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 122-137 & 138-150 & 402-405; Jodie Traylor Guy. The Southeastern Geographer: a Regional Journal? In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 377-244.]

University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico establishes a Department of Geography in 1961 and its graduate program in geography in 1970. [www.unm.edu]

Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania establishes a Department of Geography and Urban Studies in 1961 and its graduate program in geography in 1969. [www.temple.edu]

1962
Readings in Cultural Geography is a landmark volume of international writings on aspects of cultural geography edited, translated, and introduced by Philip L. Wagner and Marvin W. Mikesell. The volume's 34 writings are grouped into four topical sections, each introduced by the editors-Orientation, Cultural Areas and Distributions, Cultural Origins and Dispersals, and Landscape and Ecology. It is one of numerous compilations of papers that appear as the rapidly evolving social sciences enter the 1960s. Influential scholarly research pieces in cultural geography dating into the 1990s are included in the volume, Re-Reading Cultural Geography, edited by Foote et al.
      [Philip L. Wagner and Marvin W. Mikesell. eds. Readings in Cultural Geography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962; Fay Gale. Textbooks that Moved Generations: Readings in Cultural Geography. Progress in Human Geography 27 (April 2003): 233-236; Kenneth E. Foote et al. ed. Re-Reading Cultural Geography. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994.]

The Van Nostrand Searchlight series of books debuts in 1962. Produced by the Van Nostrand Co. of Princeton, New Jersey and later the Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. of New York City, the Searchlight series grows to about 40 original paperback editions, each running about 130 pages and is edited by geographers G. Etzel Pearcy (1905-1980), U.S. Department of State, and George W. Hoffman (1914-1990), University of Texas. In the words of the editors, the series focuses on “specific regions or topics of current international interest. In each volume, a distinguished scholar illuminates a given segment of the globe or an activity which, because of politico-geographic implications, plays or promises to play an unusual role in the international scene. Concise narrative – supported by striking maps specially drawn for the series – provides a coherent, coordinated background or current problems.” The series includes a set of regional monographs for the United States and an international series of regional and topical monographs.
      United States series: The Northeastern United States, by Lewis M. Alexander, 1976 (1967); The North Central United States, by Wallace E. Akin, 1968; The South (2nd edition), by John Fraser Hart, 1976 (The Southeastern United States, 1967); The Southwestern United States, by John W. Morris, 1970; The Northwestern United States, by Charles W. Booth, 1971; California, the Last Frontier, by Robert Durrenberger, 1969; The United States and World Resources, by Donald J. Patton, 1968; Canada in the American Community, by Norman L. Nicholson, 1963.
      International series: Divided Germany and Berlin, by Norman J. G. Pounds, 1962; The Russo-Chinese Borderlands: Zone of Peaceful Contact or Potential Conflict?, by W. A. Douglas Jackson, 1968 (1962); Spain in the World, by Saxton E. Bradford, 1962; Pacific Island Bastions of the United States, by Herold J. Weins, 1962; The Common Market: the European Community in Action, by J. Warren Nystrom and George W. Hoffman/Peter Malof, 1976 (1962); Central America: Land of Lords and Lizards, by Thorsten V. Kalijarvi, 1962; Puerto Rico: Ally for Progress, by Earl Parker Hanson, 1962; Space: Frontier Unlimited, by Harold Leland Goodwin, 1962; Environment and Policies in West Africa, by R. J. Harrison Church, 1976 (1963); Indonesia: the Crisis of the Millstones, by Benjamin H. Higgins and Jean Higgins, 1963; Japan: Industrial Power of Asia, by Robert B. Hall, Jr., 1963; The Lower Mekong: Challenge to Cooperation in Southeast Asia, by C. Hart Schaaf and Russell H. Fifield, 1963; The Himalayan Kingdoms: Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal, by Pradyumma P. Karen and William M. Jenkins, Jr., 1963; Pakistan: Emerging Democracy, by Robert D. Campbell, 1963; The Soviet Union, by E. Gordon East, 1963; The Changing Map of Africa, by Robert D. Hodgson and Elvyn A. Stoneman, 1968 (1963); The Global Sea, by Harris B. Stewart, Jr., 1963; Transportation and Politics, by Roy I. Wolfe, 1963; The Balkans in Transition, by George W. Hoffman, 1963; A New Soviet Heartland?, by David J. M. Hooson, 1964; Poland Between East and West, by Norman J. G. Pounds, 1964; The Philippines: Nation of Islands, by Alden Cutshall, 1964; India: the Search for Unity, Democracy, and Progress, by Walter C. Neale, 1965; Norden: Crossroads of Destiny, by Vincent H. Malmström, 1965; The West Indian Scene, by G. Etzel Pearcy, 1965; The Alliance for Progress: Key to Latin America’s Development, by J. Warren Nystrom and Nathan A. Haverstock, 1966; Argentina: the Divided Land, by Thomas F. McGann, 1966; Dilemmas Down Under: Australia and the Southwest Pacific, by A. James Rose, 1966; Military Geography, by Louis C. Peltier and G. Etzel Pearcy, 1966; Mexico: Land of Sunshine and Shadow, by Donald D. Brand, 1966; The Northern Tier: Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, by Rouhollah K. Ramazani, 1966; China: Ageless Land and Countless People, by Chiao-min Hsieh, 1967; China: Emerging World Power, by Viktor Porfirievich Petrov, 1967; Brazil: a Giant Stirs, by Richard P. Momsen, 1968; Italy, by George Kish, 1969; France in the Modern World, by Niles M. Hansen, 1969; Venezuela: Search for Middle Ground, by Raymond E. Crist and Edward P. Leahy, 1969; Geography, Marketing, and Urban Growth, by Donald F. Mulvihill and Ruth Cope Mulvihill, 1970; COMECON: Challenge to the West, by Roy E. H. Mellor, 1971.

Proceedings of the IGU Symposium in Urban Geography, edited by Knut Norborg, is published in 1962. It includes papers and discussions presented at the 1960 Symposium in Urban Geography, convened by the Department of Geography, University of Lund (Sweden) in conjunction with meetings of the 19th International Geographical Congress in Stockholm. Many of the symposium's presentations presage the 'theoretical turn' that will occur in research geography during the 1960s. The published papers represent the four major topics addressed at the conference-analytic/theoretical approaches, individual settlements within settlement systems/regions, spatial structure of settlements, and core/central business districts of settlements.
      [Knut Norborg. ed. Proceedings of the I[nternational] G[eographical] U[nion] Symposium in Urban Geography. Lund Studies in Geography, Ser. B. Human Geography No. 34. Lund, Sweden: C.W.K. Gleerup Publishers for Department of Geography, University of Lund, 1962.]

State University of New York in Buffalo, New York establishes a Department of Geography in 1962. [www.buffalo.edu]

1963
The innovative Discussion Papers of the Michigan Inter-University Community of Mathematical Geographers is established. Twelve issues appear in the series, popularly known as the MICMOG discussion papers, from 1 (July 1963) to 12 (June 1968).
      [The series is reprinted as: John D. Nysteun. ed. Michigan Interuniversity Community of Mathematical Geographers: Papers. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute of Mathematical Geography, 1986.]

The University of California, Santa Barbara, in Santa Barbara, California establishes a Geography Program in the College of Arts and Letters under Berl Golomb, in 1963. Two additional full-time instructors are added the following year, and a geography major is created and first B.A. in geography awarded in 1966. The offering of classes in geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, actually dates from 1944 when the Santa Barbara State College first became a campus of the University of California.
      By the early 1970s, the faculty in geography offers over 20 courses, and a formal Department of Geography is established in 1974, with David Simonett as its first chair. Rapid growth occurs during the 1970s, with the Remote Sensing Research Unit established and first M.A. degree awarded. The doctoral program in geography is established in 1980 and the first Ph.D. is awarded in 1982. Continued programmatic growth includes creation of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), in conjunction with faculty at the University of Maine and the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, and funding from the National Science Foundation; reorganization of the Computer Systems Laboratory/Center for Remote Sensing and Environmental Optics (CSL/CRSEO), which in 1995 is renamed Institute for Computational Earth System Science (ICESS); and creation of Research Unit on Spatial Cognition and Choice (RUSCC), all in 1988.
      During the 1990s, the department creates a joint-Ph.D. program with San Diego State University and opens the Descartes Lab for undergraduate education in Geographic Information Sciences (GIS). The first years of the new century find the Department of Geography with 23 faculty and 23 staff; nearly 200 undergraduates and 100 graduate students; and the largest amount of extra-mural research funds of any academic department at University of California, Santa Barbara.
      [www.geog.ucsb.edu]

California State University, Northridge, in the Northridge section of the city of Los Angeles, California, establishes a Department of Geography in 1963. When the university opened as San Fernando Valley State College in 1956, Robert Durrenburger was the only full-time faculty member in geography. He was joined by Robert Lamb the following year.
      The university changes its name to California State University, Northridge, in 1971, and by 1972, the Department of Geography includes 33 faculty members, making it one of the largest academic geography departments in the United States. After the 1970s geography retains about 20 faculty positions.
      Climatology is a departmental strength throughout the department’s history. Historical geography was particularly strong during the late 1960s and 1970s. More recently the department experiences vigorous expansion of its expertise in Geographic Information Sciences (GIS). The department is well-known for maps and atlases addressing human geography topics that are produced by its faculty and students. While embracing the latest computer technologies for instruction, research, and cartographic production, field experiences continue to play vital roles in the curriculum. The department’s programs, which focus on urban, environment, regional and international studies, and cartography and geographic information sciences, lead to B.A. and M.A. degrees and an undergraduate certificate in GIS.
      [www.csun.edu/geography]

University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina establishes a Department of Geography in 1963 and its graduate program in geography the same year.
      [www.sc.edu; Allen D. Bushong. Two Centuries of Geography at the University of South Carolina. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 173-187.]

The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) is established as a non-profit association of professionals using spatial information technology in the fields of city and regional planning, public works, environment, emergency services, utilities, and local, state, and regional governments. Publication of the association’s Journal of URISA begins in 1989.
      [ www.urisa.org]

1964
Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology, the landmark book by Luna B. Leopold, M. Gordon Wolman, and John P. Miller is published in 1964. This benchmark book is recognized as the first systematic analysis of rivers that links hydrology and geomorphology, and that synthesizes years of empirical research by U.S. Geological Survey scientists.
      [Luna B. Leopold, M. Gordon Wolman, and John P. Miller. Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology. San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman, 1964, and New York: Dover Publications, 1995.]

Explorer’s Hall in the National Geographic Society’s new headquarters building in Washington, D.C. is created as the nation’s first permanent geography museum in 1964. One of Washington’s major attractions for visitors, its permanent and regularly changing exhibits explore the breadth of human geography, physical geography, and human-environment themes. Many of the temporary exhibits displayed here also travel to other museums.
      [ www.nationalgeographic.com/explorer]

The University of Akron in Akron, Ohio establishes a Department of Geography and Geology under the leadership of Allen G. Noble in its Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences in 1964. Geography previously had been offered only in the College of Education, where classes were taught by Edward Jones, the first geographer to become a member of the university faculty. Geography adds a graduate program leading to the master’s degree in 1967. The geology program is separated from the Department of Geography and Geology to create its own department in 1968. When a strong urban and regional planning component is incorporated into the geography program in 1991, the department becomes the Department of Geography and Planning. The department has awarded over 500 undergraduate and graduate degrees since its founding. Departmental programs currently lead to three different bachelor's degrees and three different master's degrees—M.A. (Geography), M.S (Geography), M.A. (Geography/Urban Planning).
      [www3.uakron.edu]

The scholarly journal Mapping Sciences and Remote Sensing begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.
      [ www.bellpub.com]

1965
The Science of Geography, prepared by a committee of geographers for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first of three reports issued over the next three decades addressing the role of fundamental scientific research in geography. It assesses the potential contributions of geography to science and to society and provides a strategy for achieving those ends. Prepared in a period of active scientific competition between the United States and the Soviet Union (the Russian space satellite Sputnik was launched in 1957), the committee attempts to build upon contemporary discussions of geography's contributions to fundamental scientific research.
      The second report prepared by the National Research Council, issued at the end of the 1960s, addresses geography's role within the behavioral and social sciences and appears jointly with reports on economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, and history.
      The National Research Council's third report, prepared during the mid-1990s, again addresses geography's contributions to pure and applied scientific understanding and to societal decision-making processes.
      [Edward A. Ackerman et al. The Science of Geography: Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Geography of the Earth Sciences Division. NRC Publication 1277. Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1965; Edward J. Taaffe. ed. Geography: Report of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Survey. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969, and Behavioral and Social Sciences Survey Committee, National Academy of Sciences and Committee on Problems and Policy, Social Science Research Council. The Behavioral and Social Sciences: Outlook and Needs. Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1969; Thomas J. Wilbanks et al. Rediscovering Geography: New Relevance for Science and Society. Washington: National Academy Press, 1997.]

Geography in Undergraduate Liberal Education, a report of the Geography in Liberal Education Project of the Association of American Geographers, discusses the important contribution geography instruction makes in the liberal arts college curriculum. The volume addresses the importance of both human and physical geography, the importance of understanding maps, and the geographic study of foreign areas in a liberal education. Gilbert White summarizes the educational outcome expected from including geography in the liberal arts curriculums of American colleges-"A liberally educated person should know sufficient about the processes which shape the spatial distribution of selected landscape features [landforms, natural vegetation, cultivated land, urban settlement, etc.] so that with a minimum memorization of basic facts and anomalous relationships he can state with a fair degree of accuracy the complex landscape features he would expect to find on any given part of the earth's surface, expressly noting the amount of diversity present at any given scale, and the changes he would expect to result from any given shift in conditions affecting the processes" (White et al. 1965, 16). Geography in Undergraduate Liberal Education triggers creation of the Commission on College Geography (CCG) of the Association of American Geographers and provides the first publication in a series that will include 40 additional reports on aspects of geography in the college curriculum appearing between 1965 and 1972.
      [Gilbert F. White, Chauncy D. Harris, Arthur H. Robinson, M Gordon Wolman, and Arch C. Gerlach. Geography in Undergraduate Liberal Education. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1965; Homer Aschmann. Geography in the Liberal Arts College. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 52 (September 1962): 284-292.]

Commission on College Geography (CCG) is established by the Association of American Geographers to strengthen instruction in college geography in 1965. During the mid-1960s, the cohort of youth born during the post-World War II baby boom fills American colleges and produces a dramatically increased demand for college geography courses. The Commission on College Geography, with financial support from the U.S. Department of Education, considers curriculum content and the development of materials devoted to substantive and methodological topics through discussion at summer institutes. It then issues numerous volumes in three publication series - General Series, Resource Paper Series, and Technical Paper Series. It functions into the mid-1970s. The commission is reconstituted as Commission on College Geography II (CCGII) by the Association of American Geographers in 1991 to address college-level geography academic programs in light of education goals during the 1990s.
      [Commission on College Geography. Geography in Undergraduate Liberal Education. General Series No. 1. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1965; A Basic Geographical Library: a Selected and Annotated Book List for American Colleges. General Series No. 2. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1966; Geographic Manpower: a Report on Manpower in American Geography. General Series No. 3. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1966; New Approaches in Introductory College Geography Courses. General Series No. 4. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1967; Introductory Geography: Viewpoints and Themes. General Series No. 5. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1967; Undergraduate Major Programs in American Geography. General Series No. 6. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1968; A Survey Course: the Energy and Mass Budget at the Surface of the Earth. General Series No. 7. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1968; A Systems Analytic Approach to Economic Geography. General Series No. 8. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1968; A Geographical Bibliography for American College Libraries. General Series No. 9. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1970; Geography in the Two-Year Colleges. General Series No. 10. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1970; Manpower in Geography: an Updated Report. General Series No. 11. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1972; Planning College Geography: Facilities’ Guidelines for Space and Equipment. General Series No. 12. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1973; Perspectives on Environment: Essays Requested by the Panel on Environmental Education, Commission on College Geography. General Series No. 13. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1974.]

Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas establishes a Department of Geography in 1965 and its graduate program in geography in 1983. [www.swt.edu]

University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont establishes a Department of Geography in 1965 and a graduate program in geography in 1970. [www.uvm.edu]

1966
Locational Analysis in Human Geography, by Peter Haggett of England's University of Cambridge, provides the initial synthesis of the analytic spatial-science research paradigm in human geography, which blossoms rapidly in the 1960s. Other landmark volumes in this tradition rapidly follow. A variety of terms are employed to label this emerging orientation to geographic research-quantitative, spatial, theoretical, model building, logical positivist, and scientific revolution.
      [Peter Haggett. Locational Analysis in Human Geography. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966; Subsequent commentary by Richard Morrill, Maurice Yeates, and Peter Haggett. Classics in Human Geography Revisited: Locational Analysis in Human Geography. Progress in Human Geography 15 (September 1991): 300-302; William Bunge. Theoretical Geography. Lund Studies in Geography, Ser. C, No.1. Lund, Sweden: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1966; Richard J. Chorley and Peter Haggett. eds. Models in Geography. London: Methuen, 1967; Brian J. L. Berry and Duane F. Marble. eds. Spatial Analysis: a Reader in Statistical Geography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968; David Harvey. Explanation in Geography. London: Edward Arnold, 1969; William Bunge. Perspective on Theoretical Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 169-174.]

The American City: an Urban Geography, by Raymond E. Murphy, is the first textbook written by an American geographer explicitly for college courses in urban geography. Its appearance is followed in the 1970s by the first advanced urban geography college textbook, Geographic Perspectives on Urban Systems, by Brian Berry and Frank Horton.
      [Raymond E. Murphy. The American City: An Urban Geography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966; 2nd edition., 1974; Brian J. L. Berry and Frank E. Horton. Geographic Perspectives on Urban Systems with Integrated Readings. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970.]

A Basic Geographical Library lists and provides commentary on 1,300 publications, including books and serials, for inclusion in a basic collection of geography publications for American college libraries. It is one of many projects sponsored by the Commission on College Geography (CCG) of the Association of American Geographers. The 'basic library' is revised and expanded to include 1,800 items in 1970, and further revised and expanded to include nearly 3,000 items in 1985. An indication of some of the changes that have occurred in the basic set of geography reference works available to American libraries during the twentieth century is provided by comparing these lists with the one provided by the U.S. Office of Education for the nation's emerging public libraries in 1876.
      [Martha Church, Robert E. Huke, and Wilbur Zelinsky. A Basic Geographical Library: a Selected and Annotated Book List for American Colleges. Commission on College Geography Publication No. 2. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1966; Gordon R. Lewthwaite, Edward T. Price, Jr., and Harold A. Winters. A Geographical Bibliography for American College Libraries. Commission on College Geography Publication No. 9. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1970; Chauncy D. Harris, Salvatore J. Natoli, Richard W. Stevenson, Harold A. Winters, and Wilbur Zelinsky. A Geographical Bibliography for American Libraries. Washington: Association of American Geographers and National Geographic Society, 1985; U.S. Office of Education. Public Libraries in the United States of America: Their History, Condition, and Management. 2 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1876, Pp. 699-700, and in electronic version at Making of America, moa.umdl.umich.edu]

South Dakota State University (SDSU) in Brookings, South Dakota establishes a Department of Geography in 1966. Geography was one of the seven initial subjects offered as a general science when the South Dakota State University was founded in 1881, and geography courses were offered during the intervening years, but it is not until the 1966-67 academic year when Edward P. Hogan joined the faculty that the Department of Geography is established in Scobey Hall and an undergraduate major offered. A graduate geography program leading to a M.S. degree is initiated in 1974. Geography faculty members join with history colleagues to form the Department of History and Geography in 1968, and then revert to an independent Department of Geography once again in 1973 with Professor Hogan as its head. The Department of Geography offers the B.A., B.S., and M.S. degrees, with undergraduate majors in teaching, environmental management, urban and regional planning, cultural geography, geographic techniques, and Geographic Information Sciences.
      SDSU’s Department of Geography works hard to introduce geography to audiences in South Dakota beyond its own campus. Charles F. “Fritz” Gritzner, with help from Edward P. Hogan, succeeds in making South Dakota the first state to restore geography as a statewide requirement for graduation from high school in 1984. And, perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the SDSU geography program is its annual South Dakota State Geography Convention, which is student initiated and directed, and brings together top geographers from across the United States and Canada for two days of sharing ideas and trends in geography.
      [ www.sdstate.org]

University of Maryland Baltimore County creates a Department of Geography in 1966, the year the Baltimore County campus of the University of Maryland opens. The first courses in geography are offered during the spring term in the Division of Social Sciences, with Kingsley E. Haynes as the first instructor. In autumn term 1968, the department offers a full range of courses leading to the B.A. and B.S. degrees in geography. The department’s current name-Geography and Environmental Systems-emphasizes its instructional and research focus on interactions between environmental and human systems.

Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina establishes a Department of Geography and Planning in 1966. [www.appstate.edu]

University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware establishes a Department of Geography in 1966 and a graduate program in geography in 1971. [www.udel.edu]

University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming establishes a Department of Geography in 1966 and its graduate program the same year. [www.uwyo.edu]

1967
Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution, the landmark book by Brian J. L. Berry, then at the University of Chicago, appears in 1967 as a volume in the Foundations of Economic Geography Series published by Prentice-Hall. The book introduces concepts of markets and central places; reviews examples of empirical research studies; develops central place theory in both classical and modern forms; discusses empirical findings from complex modern economies outside the United States and from historical research of systems developing through time; and carries theory into the applications of marketing research and urban planning. It sells more than 37,000 copies(?) and serves to introduce new economic geography research in the ‘quantitative revolution’ tradition to both geographers and to social science researchers in urban studies, planning and marketing. Revisiting the book 25 years later, Davies writes that it – “provided the first convincing quantitative demonstration that the structure of service centers systematically varied across space. Yet this work was important in conceptual terms. By linking his results with central place theory and extending them to the literature on periodic marketing the discussion transcended empirical and contemporary concerns – a rare combination at the time.”
      [Brian J. L. Berry. Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967, plus editions in Japanese (1970), French (1971), and Spanish (1972) and revised edition, Market Centers and Retail Location: Theory and Applications, by Brian J. L. Berry, John B. Parr, Bart J. Epstein, Avijit Ghosh, and Robert H. T. Smith (1988); Subsequent commentary by W. K. D. Davies, John Dawson, and Brian J. L. Berry. Classics in Human Geography Revisited: Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution. Progress in Human Geography 16 (June 1992): 219-222; Other titles in the Foundation of Economic Geography Series include Geography of Agriculture, by Howard Gregor; Geography of Energy, by Nathaniel G. Guyol; Geography of International Trade, by Richard S. Thoman and Edgar C. Conkling; Geography of Manufacturing, by Gunnar Alexandersson; Geography of Natural Resources, by Ian Burton and Robert W. Kates; Geography of Transportation, by Edward J. Taafe and Howard L. Gauthier, Jr.; Geography of Urban Land Use, by Harold Mayer; Geography of Water Resources, by W. R. Derrick Sewell; Geography of Wholesaling, by James E. Vance, Jr.; and A Prologue to Population Geography, by Wilbur Zelinsky.]

The bases of our capacity to perceive environments and the behavioral responses based on those perceptions emerge as the focus of a new research theme in geography during the 1960s. The new terms-environmental perception and human behavior-appear in the title of a monograph published in 1967, which presents papers from a symposium held at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Columbus, Ohio in April 1965. The volume's papers, by Yi-Fu Tuan, Robert Beck, Joseph Sonnenfeld, Robert W. Kates, and Kevin Lynch, "demonstrate that subjective, often unconscious, and culturally dominated forces play a major role in how we see the environment and act in it" (1).
      [David Lowenthal. ed. Environmental Perception and Behavior. Research Paper No. 109. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1967.]

Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona establishes a Department of Geography and Public Planning in its College of Ecosystem Science and Management in 1967. The department offers a B.S. degree for majors in geography, geography education, applied geography, and public planning; an M.A. degree in rural geography; and a graduate level Certificate in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In 2003, the university’s Program in Parks and Recreation Management merges with the existing department to create the Department of Geography, Planning and Recreation. Restructuring within Northern Arizona University places the new department in the College of Arts and Sciences.
     [ www.nau.edu]

Ecoregions of Canada by John M. Crowley, is the first published map of ecoregions created by an American geographer. Ecoregion becomes a standard term for ecological-environmental regions defined in terms of relative homogeneity in climate, surface material such as soil, vegetation, and landforms. More comprehensive delimitations of ecoregions are subsequently prepared by James M. Omernik, Robert G. Bailey, and others, that incorporate systems of hierarchical and spatially nested sets of regions. Such systems of ecoregions are prepared for the United States, North America, and Earth.
      [John M. Crowley. Biogeography [in Canada]. Canadian Geographer 11 (1967): 312-326, with Ecoregions of Canada [map]. approx. 1:31,000,000, 13 x 18 cm., 1 sheet; James M. Omernik. Ecoregions of the Conterminous United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (March 1987): 118-125, includes Ecoregions of the Conterminous United States [map]. 1:2,500,000, 42 x 65 cm., 1 sheet; Robert G. Bailey. Ecoregions of the United States [map]. 1:7,500,000, 42 x 66 cm., 1 sheet, 1976, with Description of the Ecoregions of the United States. Miscellaneous Publication No. 1391, revised and enlarged. Ogden, UT: U.S. Forest Service, 1995; Robert G. Bailey. Ecoregions of North America [map]. 1:15,000,000, 62 x 63 cm., 1 sheet, with Ecoregions Map of North American, Explanatory Note. Miscellaneous Publication No. 1548, revised. Washington, DC: U.S. Forest Service, 1997; Robert G. Bailey. Ecoregions: the Ecosystem Geography of the Oceans and the Continents. New York: Springer, 1998.]

West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia establishes a Department of Geology and Geography in 1967 and a graduate program in geography in 1971. [www.wvu.edu]

University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Alaska establishes a Department of Geography in 1967. [www.uaf.edu]

1968
The eighteen-volume International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, an update of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1930-35), provides an account of research interests in the social sciences during the 1960s. It aims "to reflect and encourage the rapid development of the social sciences throughout the world." Human and human-environment geography is represented with a set of summarizing articles-The Field by Richard Hartshorne, Cultural Geography by Edward T. Price, Economic Geography by Richard S. Thoman, Political Geography by Harold H. Sprout, Social Geography by Anne Buttimer, and Statistical Geography by Brian J. L. Berry. Other geography topics addressed are-Area by Norton Ginsburg, Cartography by Arthur H. Robinson, Central Place by Brian J. L. Berry and Chauncy D. Harris, Environment by Marston Bates, Environmentalism by Oscar H. K. Spate, Land Classification by L. Dudley Stamp, Landscape by Marvin W. Mikesell, Region by Rupert B. Vance, and Regional Science by Walter Isard and Thomas A. Reiner. Geographers receiving biographical sketches are-Nikolai N. Baranskii, Isaiah Bowman, Ralph H. Brown, H. J. Fleure, Alfred Hettner, Alexander von Humboldt, Ellsworth Huntington, Rudolf Kjellén, Halford Mackinder, George Perkins Marsh, Friedrich Ratzel, Carl Ritter, Carl O. Sauer, Pál Teleki, Paul Vidal de la Blache, and Johann H. von Thünen. (see Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences entry at 1930, and International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences at 2001)
      [David L. Sills. ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 18 vols. plus biographical supplement. New York: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1968 & 1979; Statistical Geography, also in William H. Kruskal and Judith M. Tanur. eds. International Encyclopedia of Statistics. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1978.]

Around the World: a View from Space, a book by the map and atlas publishing firm of Rand McNally, provides the first set of images of Earth from space that is available to the general public. It features photographs taken by astronauts on the Gemini missions that are arranged by continent. Mission to Earth: Landsat Views of the World, published by the U.S. National Air and Space Administration (NASA) in 1976, is the first book to provide satellite images of Earth from space to the general public. By the 1980s, several atlases display mosaics of space images along with conventional maps (Rand McNally and Garrett). In 2000, NASA creates an Internet website-Great Images in NASA (GRIN)-that provides publicly accessible photographs from NASA and its predecessor agency, the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (1915-1958). Each of the website’s images is downloadable to a personal computer and the site provides excellent instructions for doing that. Most of the website’s images are from NASA spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope or robotic planetary exploration craft, but images of Earth are also included (grin.hq.nasa.gov).
      [Rand McNally. Around the World: a View from Space. Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1968; Nicholas M. Short et al. Mission to Earth: Landsat Views of the World. Scientific and Technical Office, National Air and Space Administration. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976; Rand McNally. Rand McNally Images of the World: an Atlas of Satellite Images and Maps. English edition of Dierke Weltraumbild-Atlas. 2 vols. Barunschweig, Germany: Westermann, 1981-82. Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1983; Wilbur E. Garrett. ed. Atlas of North America: Space Age Portrait of a Continent. Washington: National Geographic Society, 1985; Kevin W. Kelley for the Association of Space Explorers. ed. The Home Planet. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. and Moscow, Russia: Mir Publishers, 1988; Roger Ressmeyer. ed. Orbit: NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth. Washington: National Geographic Society, 1996.]

Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas establishes a Department of Geography in 1968 and its graduate program the same year. [www.tamu.edu]

1969
Behavioral Problems in Geography: a Symposium, edited by Kevin R. Cox and Reginald G. Golledge, appears in 1969. It is the first scholarly book devoted to behavioral geography to be published in the United States. Together with no more than a handful of other efforts (Lynch, Saarinen, Lowenthal among them), Behavioral Problems in Geography establishes an initial scientific research agenda in behavioral geography, which blossoms during the 1970s in conjunction with environmental psychology, to explore the broad realms of environmental perception, environmental cognition, environmental behavior, and the ways they lead to our understanding and operating in the worlds in which we dwell. Geographers, who had explored the world for centuries, never again understood the world in quite the same frames of reference.
      The early 1970s’ prove to be a time of efflorescence in behavioral geography research, a series of steps occur in rapid succession that prove to be landmarks in establishing this research domain – Roger Downs’ article, The Cognitive Structure of an Urban Shopping Center, is published; Golledge, Brown and Williamson’s Behavioral Approaches in Geography appears as the first article devoted to behavioral geography to be published in a scholarly geography journal; Image and Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior, edited by Downs and Stea, appears as the first book to be used as a text in college courses on behavioral geography; Gould and White’s landmark volume Mental Maps appears; and Yi-Fu Tuan’s landmark volume Topophilia: a Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values appears, and the National Science F oundation funds its first research in behavioral geography, a grant to Golledge and Rayner for the Cognitive Configurations of a City research project.
      A perspective on the state of research in behavioral two decades later is provided by Golledge and Stimson’s Spatial Behavior: a Geographic Perspective and Gärling and Golledge’s Behavior and Environment: Psychological and Geographical Approaches. [Kevin R. Cox and Reginald G. Golledge. eds. Behavioral Problems in Geography: a Symposium. Studies in Geography No. 17. Evanston, IL: Department of Geography, Northwestern University, 1969; Kevin Lynch. The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1960; Thomas Saarinen. Perceptions of the Drought Hazard on the Great Plains. Research Paper No. 106. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1966; David Lowenthal. ed. Environmental Perception and Behavior. Research Paper No. 109. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1967; Roger M. Downs. The Cognitive Structure of an Urban Shopping Center. Environment and Behavior 2 (1970): 13-39; Reginald G. Golledge. Larry A. Brown. and F. Williamson. Behavioral Approaches in Geography: an Overview. Australian Geographer 12 (1972): 59-79; Roger M. Downs and David Stea. eds. Image and Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior. Chicago: Aldine, 1973; Contemporary review, Joachim F. Wohlwill. Mental Geography [Review of Image and Environment]. Science 184 (3 May 1974): 557-558; Peter Gould and Rodney White. Mental Maps. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1974, With subsequent editions by Allen and Unwin, 1986 and Routledge, 1992, and commentary by John R. Gold, Thomas F. Saarinen, Peter Gould, and Rodney White. Classics in Human Geography Revisited: Mental Maps. Progress in Human Geography 19 (March 1995): 111-122; Yi-Fu Tuan. Topophilia: a Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974, Reissued by Columbia University Press, 1990, and subsequent commentary by Douglas Pocock, Edward Relph and Yi-Fu Tuan. Classics in Human Geography Revisited: Topophilia. Progress in Human Geography 18 (September 1994): 355-359; National Science Foundation Grant to Reginald G. Golledge and John N. Rayner: Cognitive Configurations of a City, NSF #GS37967; Reginald G. Golledge and Robert J. Stimson. Spatial Behavior: A Geographic Perspective. New York: Guilford Press, 1997; Tommy Gärling and Reginald G. Golledge. eds. Behavior and Environment: Psychological and Geographical Approaches. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1993]

ESRI, a private firm developing geographic information system (GIS) software and technology, is established as Environmental Systems Research Institute, a privately held consulting group by Jack and Laura Dangermond in Redlands, California in 1969. It introduces its first commercial software, ARC/INFO, which combines the computer display of geographic features such as points, lines, and polygons, with database management tools for assigning attributes to those features. ESRI’s products come to include ArcView, ArcGIS, ArcWeb and other GIS software, and printed publications. By the early 2000s, ESRI has distributors in more than 90 countries; 1,500 business partners; and more than 300,000 clients worldwide.
      [ www.esri.com]

Progress in Geography: International Reviews of Current Research begins publication as an annual journal "to present regular, scholarly reviews of current developments within all branches of the field [of geography] on a scale that will allow the specialist contributors an opportunity to develop broad geographical themes and to provide comprehensive bibliographic material" (vi). In 1977, the success of Progress in Geography leads it to divide into two annual journals-Progress in Human Geography: International Reviews of Geographical Work in the Social Sciences and Humanities and Progress in Physical Geography: International Reviews of Geographical Work in the Natural and Environmental Sciences. By 1979, both journals are being issued four times a year and in 2002 Progress in Human Geography shifts to being issued six times a year. Their publication continues to the present.
      [Christopher Board, Richard J. Chorley, Peter Haggett and David R. Stoddart. eds. Progress in Geography: International Reviews of Current Research. London: Edward Arnold.]

Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) is created by the International Council for Science (ICSU) as an interdisciplinary body of natural and social scientists in 1969. Its task is to focus on global environmental issues through an international network of scientists and scientific institutions that work to develop syntheses of scientific knowledge on current and potential environmental issues. Its scientific program consists of projects that focus on the concepts and practices of sustainability, maintaining the life-support systems of humankind by safeguarding Earth’s natural resources over time. SCOPE works to contribute to designing processes and practices that reduce the depletion rate of non-renewable resources, identifying substitute resources, and assuring a sustainable supply of renewable resources. Titles of selected publications-Climate Impact Assessment, Man-Made Lakes as Modified Ecosystems, Risk Assessment of Environmental Hazards, Scale and Global Change, and Sustainability Indicators.
      The United States of America maintains membership in SCOPE through the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicity in Washington, D.C. Geographers contribute to numerous investigations and Gilbert F. White serves as president, 1976-1982. SCOPE’s most recent general meeting, General Congress XI, is held in Bremen, Germany in September 2001.
      [www.icsu-scope.org, www.icsu.org]

The scholarly journal Antipode: a Radical Journal of Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

The scholarly journal Geographical Analysis: an International Journal of Theoretical Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.
     [Reginald G. Golledge. The Development of Geographical Analysis. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (March 1979): 151-154.]

Terrae Incognitae, a scholarly journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries, begins publication. Its publication continues to the present. (see Society for the History of Discoveries entry at 1960)

1970
National Atlas of the United States of America, the landmark publication edited by Arch C. Gerlach (1911-1972) of the U.S. Geological Survey, is the first thematic atlas issued by the U.S. federal government to provide comprehensive cartographic representations of the nation's physical and human geographies since the Statistical Atlas of the United States issued by the Census Office in conjunction with the censuses of 1870 and 1880.
      [Arch C. Gerlach. ed. National Atlas of the United States of America. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970; Mark Monmonier. The Rise of the National Atlas. In John A. Wolter and Ronald E. Grim. eds. Images of the World: the Atlas Through History. New York: McGraw-Hill and Washington: Library of Congress, 1997. Pp. 369-399; electronic version of the atlas is at the Library of Congress American Memory Internet site - National Atlases: Presenting the Nation's Cultural Geography, memory.loc.gov.]

Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium, organized by Donald R. Coates and Marie Morisawa, meets for the first time at Binghamton University (State University of New York at Binghamton) in 1970. Each year since then, geomorphologists from geography, geology, and other backgrounds assemble from around the world to present and discuss the latest developments on a different research topic. Research papers presented at these annual symposiums are published in the series, Proceedings of the Binghamton Symposium in Geomorphology.
      The Annual Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium provides a forum at which leading researchers present extended papers on a different theme each year. The symposium improves visibility for geomorphologists trained as geographers who regularly contribute papers. Geographers also frequently organize the symposia and edit the published volumes. Examples include Donald R. Coates and John D. Vitek. eds. Thresholds in Geomorphology, 1980; Colin E. Thorn. ed. Space and Time in Geomorphology, 1981; Michael J. Woldenberg. ed. Models in Geomorphology, 1983; Athol D. Abrahams. ed. Hillslope Processes, 1985; William G. Nickling. ed. Aeolian Geomorphology, 1986; John C. Dixon and Athol D. Abrahams. eds. Periglacial Geomorphology, 1992; J. D. Phillips and W. H. Renwick. Geomorphic Systems, 1992; John D. Vitek and J. R. Giardino. eds. Geomorphology Research Frontiers, 1993; Bruce L. Rhoads and Colin E. Thorn. eds. Scientific Nature of Geomorphology, 1996; J. R. Giardino, Richard A. Marston, and Marie Morisawa. eds. Engineering Geomorphology, 1997; Paul A. Gares and Douglas J. Sherman. eds. Coastal Geomorphology, 2002; Peter L. K. Knuepfer and James F. Petersen, organizers. Geomorphology in the Public Eye: Policy Issues, Education, and the Public, 30th Symposium, 1999; J. F. Shroder Jr. and M. P. Bishop, organizers. Integrating Computer Modeling and Field Work, 31st Symposium, 2000; D. R. Butler, S. J. Walsh and G. P. Malanson, organizers. Mountain Geomorphology, 32nd Symposium, 2001).
      [ continuinged.binghamton.edu/geo]

Earth Day is celebrated by an estimated 20 million Americans on April 22, 1970. This landmark event, which celebrates Earth’s environment and examines the role humans play as sustainers-despoilers of it, is conceived by Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Nelson develops the concept for Earth Day over a seven-year period while attempting to raise the profile of environmental issues in the U.S. Senate and in the minds of the American public. In 1969, he links the example of grassroots teach-in protests of America’s war in Vietnam with his environmental concerns and announces at a conference in Seattle that a nationwide grassroots demonstration would take place the following spring to which all Americans are invited. Local efforts to organize teach-ins on the proposed Earth Day so proliferate across the country that the New York Times reports on Sunday, November 30, 1969 that "Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam... .”
      While in the U.S. Senate, Nelson champions landmark environmental laws including the Wilderness Act, National Trails Act, National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and National Environmental Education Act, and introduces the first federal legislation to mandate fuel-efficiency standards in automobiles, control strip mining, ban the use of phosphates in detergents, the pesticide DDT, and the defoliant 2,4,5-T. For his contributions in raising the awareness of the role humans play in altering the physical environment, he receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 and the University of Wisconsin renames its Institute for Environmental Studies the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies in 2002.
      Within a remarkably short period of time Earth Day, the federal government creates the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to administer the plethora of new environmental laws enacted by the U.S. Congress; the United Nations convenes the Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972 and issues its Declaration of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment; and a heightened attentiveness to Earth’s physical and biological environments, and the relationships of humans to those environments, can be said to have encompassed Earth as never before.
      The immediate response of America’s academic geographers to this blossoming of interest in the environment is creation of the Panel on Environmental Education of the Commission on College Geography, and of the Task Force on Environmental Quality, by the Association of American Geographers (Manners and Mikesell, Lowenthal et al.). In the publication, Perspectives on Environment, the Panel on Environmental Education documents the role that environment has traditionally played in research by geographers and shows how this domain of geographic research is characterized by – a long-standing commitment to environmental studies; understanding the significant factors of location, diffusion, and scale; an awareness of the complexity of man-environment interactions; the recognition that problems of environmental quality must be considered not only in physical and biological terms but also in relation to human perceptions, needs, and desires; and long experience in addressing research questions in terms of systems and processes. Perspectives on Environment provides a set of review articles addressing environmental problems that have been historically, are currently, and-or should be of interest to geographers, the scientific community, and the larger society.
      [Ian R. Manners and Marvin W. Mikesell. eds. Perspectives on Environment. Commission on College Geography Publication No. 13. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 1974; David Lowenthal, Ian Burton, Richard Cooley, and Marvin W. Mikesell. Report of the AAG Task Force on Environmental Quality. Professional Geographer 25 (1973): 39-47; www.unep.org; www.aag.org.]

Geoscience and Man, a series of scholarly monographs published by Louisiana State University's Department of Geography and Anthropology, begins publication. Its publications include scholarly symposia, research, and collections of papers in anthropology, archaeology, geography, geology, meteorology, paleontology, and other areas of the geosciences. The series includes 36 volumes by 2000.

Geography in an Urban Age, curriculum materials for an innovative high school geography course created by the High School Geography Project of the Association of American Geographers, are published. The course consists of a sequence of six separate units-Geography of Cities, Manufacturing and Agriculture, Cultural Geography, Political Geography, Habitat and Resources, and Japan-designed to provide either a full-year ninth or tenth grade geography course, or serve as individual teaching units.
      Classroom materials consist of Geography in an Urban Age (a teacher’s guide, student reading books, and a set of activity resource materials for each of the six units), and two reference volumes-The Local Community: a Handbook for Teachers, and Sources of Information and Materials: Maps and Aerial Photographs. This set of materials is developed in response to calls made during the 1960s for curriculums that emphasize ‘discovery learning’ techniques, and reflect as well, the desire that students be introduced to the ways real-world physical geographies, human geographies, and human-environment relationships are investigated prior to their entering college. Implicitly, the materials may be seen to respond to the much earlier calls of American education reformers Horace Mann and John Dewey among others for developmental approaches to education that are grounded in hands-on student-centered learning activities and that relate to the contemporary lifeworld of the student.
      The new set of curriculum materials emerges from a process that originated in a panel discussion-Teaching Geography in Our Secondary Schools-at the 1959 annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers. At that session, Gilbert White proposes that, in terms of preparing students for further coursework in geography at the college level, the greatest gains from new high school geography curriculum materials would be derived from an activity-based approach to learning basic geographic concepts and understanding, and from the development of an honors course that would enable students seriously interested in geography to obtain advanced standing upon entering college. Taking this as its working concept, the Association of American Geographers and National Council on Geographic Education create a Joint Committee on Education that initiates the process of ascertaining the best single alternative curriculum to those already utilized by the nation’s high schools, which typically imbed geography within the social studies curriculum.
      The High School Geography Project is initiated with financial support from the Fund for the Advancement of Education of the Ford Foundation under the direction of William D. Pattison (1961-63), and continues under the direction of Nicholas Helburn (1964-70) with funding from the National Science Foundation ($2.6 million). It involves over 300 geographers in the preparation of course materials and an equal number of classroom teachers in over 200 schools. A revised edition of Geography in an Urban Age is issued in 1979.
      [William D. Pattison. Changing Attitudes and the High School Geography Project. In Clyde F. Kohn. ed. Selected Classroom Experiences: High School Geography Project. Geographic Education Series No. 4. Normal, IL: National Council for Geographic Education, 1964. Pp. 34-37; Nicholas Helburn. The Educational Objectives of High School Geography. Journal of Geography 67 (May 1968): 279-281; High School Geography Project. Geography in an Urban Age. New York: Macmillan, 1970 (revised edition, 1976); High School Geography Project. The Local Community: a Handbook for Teachers. New York: Macmillan, 1971; High School Geography Project. Sources of Information and Materials: Maps and Aerial Photographs. Washington: High School Geography Project, Association of American Geographers, 1970; William D. Pattison. Geography in the High School. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 52 (September 1962): 280-284; Donald J. Patton. ed. From Geographic Discipline to Inquiring Student: Final Report on the High School Geography Project. Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1970; Clyde F. Kohn. ed. Selected Classroom Experiences: the High School Geography Project. Normal, IL: National Council for Geographic Education, 1964; Association of American Geographers High School Geography Project and American Sociological Association Sociological Resources for the Social Studies. Experiences in Inquiry: HSGP and SRSS. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1974; Robert B. McNee. Does Geography Have a Structure? Can It Be ‘Discovered’? The Case of the High School Geography Project. In Richard J. Chorley. ed. Directions in Geography. London: Methuen and Co., 1973. Pp. 285-313; Nicholas Helburn. The High School Geography Project: a Retrospective View. Social Studies89 (1998): 212-218.]

Geographers on Film, a series of filmed interviews of geographers produced by Maynard Weston Dow, records its first interview-with Carl O. Sauer (1889-1975) at the University of California at Berkeley in August 1970. Over the next three decades, Wes Dow and his wife Nancy F. Dow, produce a series that totals over 500 productions of visual and oral recordings, including personal interviews and sessions at scholarly meetings. The series of nearly 300 hours of video (VHS) recordings preserves the geographical and personal thoughts of over 250 geographers.
      [Listings and Geographers on Film-Visual Record and Archival Resource at Internet site-oz.plymouth.edu/~mwd.]

Transition, the Quarterly Journal of SERGE [Socially and Ecologically Responsible Geographers], edited by Laurence G. Wolf, begins publication. It ceases publication in 1988.

Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers (CLAG) is established in 1970 to foster geography education and research on Latin America through conferences and publications. It publishes the annual Yearbook beginning in 1985, which becomes the Journal of Latin American Geography in 2002.
      [clagonline.org]

University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho offers a graduate program in geography beginning in 1965 and establishes its Department of Geography in 1970. [www.uidaho.edu]

Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode Island establishes a Department of Political Science/Geography in 1970. [www.ric.edu]

1971
The scholarly journal Historical Geography begins publication. An annual journal, its publication continues to the present.

1972
Salem State College, in Salem, Massachusetts, establishes a Department of Geography offering a B.S. degree program in 1972. The department grows into a program that includes more than ten full-time faculty positions and 200 majors, with subject specialties in planning, environmental management, and travel and tourism. A cartography and geographic information systems (GIS) B.S. degree program is initiated in 1982, and an M.S. degree program in geo-information science in 1992. While offering a curriculum that is well grounded in standard systematic and regional courses, many undergraduates are also attracted to the department’s wide range of applied courses that include internship opportunities.
      The department is honored twice with Salem State College’s Department of the Year Award, in 1982 and 2002; recognized by the Governor’s Office for its exceptional working relationships with businesses and public agencies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and designated a Commonwealth Center of Excellence in 1986, which includes a $232,000 grant to establish the Digital Geography Laboratory. Members of the department have also served as leaders in the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance and the Northeast Global Education Center for Teachers.
      Historically, geography has enjoyed a strong presence in the training of teachers at Salem State, extending straight through its Normal School (1854-1931) and Teachers College (1932-1960) periods. Two geography courses, Physical Geography and Projections of the Sphere, were included in the institution’s initial curriculum offering in 1854, and Arnold H. Guyot lectured at Salem Normal School in 1856, two years after he had joined the faculty at Princeton University as Professor of Physical Geography. Sumner W. Cushing (1879-1920), the innovative teacher and dedicated scholar who taught at Salem State during the early 1900s, brought many outstanding geographers to lecture at the school, including William Morris Davis, Ellsworth Huntington, Ray H. Whitbeck, and Richard E. Dodge. Carl O. Sauer taught here during the 1913-14 academic year, and based upon this experience, suggested that Normal Schools deserved more recognition as training grounds for professional geographers. The strong early tradition of geography at Salem State provided the basis for the rapid growth and development of degree programs in the latter half of the twentieth century.
      [ www.dgl.salemstate.edu; Mildred Berman. Distinctly Professional: the Development of Geography at Salem State College. In John E. Harmon and Timothy Rickard. eds. Geography in New England. New Britain, CN: New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, 1988. Pp. 30-39; Theodore S. Pikora. An Applied Geography Curriculum Component in Travel and Tourism. In John E. Harmon and Timothy Rickard. eds. Geography in New England. New Britain, CN: New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, 1988. Pp.131-135; Ellsworth Huntington. Memoir of Sumner W. Cushing. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 11 (1921): 109-111; Richard O. Riess. Some Notes on Salem, Salem Normal School, and Carl Sauer: 1914. Proceedings: New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society (1976): 63-68.]

1973
The Cultural Geography of the United States, the landmark book by Wilbur Zelinsky, Penn State University, appears in 1973 as a volume in the Foundations of Cultural Geography Series published by Prentice-Hall. It provides a masterful summary of the origins and spread of American subpopulations and their cultural systems; defines the four major attributes of America’s ‘national character’ – individualism, high value placed on mobility and change, mechanistic world view, and a messianic perfectionism – and demonstrates how these traits manifest themselves in the landscape; describes the geographical processes shaping the cultural system; and articulates the resultant five macro-scale sub-national regions – New England, Midland (Mid-Atlantic), South, Middle West, and West – and their component sub-regions.
      The work includes Zelinsky’s original and influential map of the country’s first-order, second-order and third-order culture regions (pages 118 and 119), which will be amplified and extended in some 400 drawings and maps in the subsequent This Remarkable Continent: an Atlas of United States and Canadian Society and Cultures, prepared by numerous contributors. Zelinsky’s Cultural Geography and the Remarkable Continent atlas by multiple authors are ‘must reads’ for citizens seeking to be geographically literate prior to undertaking any serious field expeditions to discovery the human geography of the United States first hand.
      [Wilbur Zelinsky. The Cultural Geography of the United States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973; John F. Rooney, Jr., Wilbur Zelinsky, Dean R. Louder, John D. Vitek and numerous others. This Remarkable Continent: an Atlas of United States and Canadian Society and Cultures. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press for the Society for the North American Cultural Survey, 1982; Other volumes in the Foundations of Cultural Geography Series include Cultural Ecology, by Marvin Mikesell; Environments and Peoples, by Philip L. Wagner; Frontiers of Political Geography, by Roger E. Kasperson; Geography of Cities, by James E. Vance, Jr.; Geography of Domestication, by Erich Isaac; House Form and Culture, by Amos Rapoport; Rural Landscapes of the Nonwestern World, by James M. Blaut; and Rural Landscapes of the Western World, by John Fraser Hart.]

1974
Cartography and Geographic Information Science, a scholarly journal of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, begins publication as The American Cartographer. Its name changes from The American Cartographer to Cartography and Geographic Information Systems in 1990, and to it current name in 1999. Its publication continues to the present.

1975
The scholarly journal, Journal of Historical Geography, begins publication in 1975. Its publication continues to the present.
      [ www.esevier.com]

Virginia Tech, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in Blacksburg, Virginia establishes a Department of Geography in 1975 and its graduate program in geography in 1979. [www.vt.edu]

1976
Contemporary Metropolitan America: Twenty Geographical Vignettes (4 vols.), Urban Policy-Making and Metropolitan Dynamics: a Comparative Geographical Analysis, and A Comparative Atlas of America's Great Cities: Twenty Metropolitan Regions are the major publications prepared by the Comparative Metropolitan Analysis Project. The massive project, a collaborative undertaking of more than a hundred geographers, is directed by John S. Adams and Ronald Abler for the Association of American Geographers and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Conducted in the general framework of geography's urban research tradition, the six volumes provide a comprehensive-a combined total of 2,554 pages and 1,000 maps in the atlas-and explicitly comparative investigation of the nation's major urban settlements and the many societal issues associated with their governance, environment, spatial structure, housing, transportation, and schooling among other topics. Symbolically, they stand as American geography's gift to the nation for the bicentennial celebration of its Independence-a geographic portrait of those portions of the nation, its major metropolitan regions, where half its residents live at the beginning of the last quarter of the twentieth century.
      [John S. Adams. ed. Contemporary Metropolitan America: Twenty Geographical Vignettes. 4 vols., sub-titled Historical Metropolitan Core Cities: Boston, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, Hartford/Central Connecticut; 19th Century Port Cities: Baltimore, New Orleans, San Francisco; 19th Century Inland Cities: Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, St. Paul/Minneapolis, Seattle; and 20th Century Cities: Dallas, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles. Washington, D.C. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1976; John S. Adams. ed. Urban Policy-Making and Metropolitan Dynamics: a Comparative Geographical Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1976; John S. Adams and Ronald Abler. eds. A Comparative Atlas of America's Great Cities: Twenty Metropolitan Regions. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press for the Association of American Geographers, 1976; Jean Gottman. The Mutation of the American City: a review of the Comparative Metropolitan Analysis Project. Geographical Review 68 (April 1978): 201-208; Maurice Yeates. Review of the six Comparative Metropolitan Analysis Project volumes. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 68 (June 1978): 309-316.]

View of the World from Ninth Avenue, by the artist Saul Steinberg (1914-1999), appears as the cover illustration of The New Yorker magazine on March 29, 1976. Popularly termed 'The New Yorker's View of the World' and dubbed "the most iconic image in American art since Grant Wood's American Gothic" (Plagens), the westward-facing view from 9th Avenue in New York City incorporates the features-buildings, streets, people, and vehicles-one expects to find in a human settlement in the immediate foreground of Manhattan, but the remainder of the viewshed includes only names and stylized topographic features-"Jersey" across the Hudson River, the occasional name of a locality or topographic element dropped onto the otherwise featureless plain of North America, and the Pacific Ocean as a strip of water with Asia barely emerging on the horizon. Steinberg's picture provides a marvelous illustration of the topocentric (place-centered) nature of, and the spatial distortion inherent in, the images of physical space held by most persons-the 'mental maps' of our lifeworlds-as most people have greater contact with, are more familiar with, are more emotionally involved with, and possess a greater appreciation of the world located closer to them than portions located farther away. Other artists redraw Steinberg's New York City-based image scores of times to create world-view images from other localities, many of which appear on postcards in celebration of those places.
      [Saul Steinberg. View of the World from Ninth Avenue. original artwork, 28 x 19 cm., for The New Yorker (March 29, 1976): cover; Peter Plagens. Have Pen, Will Draw. Newsweek (May 24, 1999); Roger M. Downs and David Stea. eds. Image and Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1973; Peter Gould and Rodney While. Mental Maps. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, Inc., 1974.]

The scholarly journal Environmental History begins publication as a journal of the American Society for Environmental History with the title Environmental Review. First published as Environmental Review (1976-1989) and then as Environmental History Review (1990-1995), Environmental History becomes a co-published journal of the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society in 1996. Its publication continues to the present.

University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut establishes a Department of Geography in 1976. [www.uconn.edu]

1977
The scholarly annual publication Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies begins publication in 1977 under the auspices of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on the History of Geographical Thought. International in coverage, each geographer’s entry includes a biographical sketch, assessment of contributions to geographical thought and the larger society, bibliography, list of sources, and portrait. Its publication continues to the present.

The first group of American academic geographers to visit China during the post-Mao period is organized and conducted by Laurence J. C. Ma and Allen G. Noble, both at the University of Akron, in Akron, Ohio. The American group is officially received and visits several academic departments. Chinese academic geographers reciprocate by visiting university geography departments in the United States in 1978. Chinese and American geographers subsequently join together to share research findings at the Symposium at Wingspread Conference Center, in Racine, Wisconsin, 13-14 October 1978.
      [Laurence J. C. Ma and Allen G. Noble. Recent Developments in Chinese Geographical Research. Geographical Review 69 (January 1979): 63-77; Laurence J. C. Ma and Allen G. Noble. eds. The Environment: Chinese and American Views. New York: Methuen and Co. for Ohio Academy of Science, 1981.]

The scholarly journal Polar Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

1978
The first Applied Geography Conference is held to discuss the application of concepts, data, and methods to existing human and physical geographies. Annual meetings of the Applied Geography Conference bring together geographers and non-geographers, professional practitioners and academics, to address geographic aspects of public and private sector issues. Papers and Proceedings of the Applied Geography Conference is published annually in conjunction with the conference.

1979
The Library of America is founded as an effort to preserve the nation's literary heritage by publishing America's best and most significant writing in authoritative and permanent editions. A project of truly historic proportions, this publishing adventure seeks to accomplish something never attempted before-both publishing important literary works and keeping them permanently in print and widely available. The first volume is published in 1982, and the 100-plus volume series now provides a survey of over two centuries of American novels, short stories, essays, poetry, plays, religious sermons, biographies, and journalism. Numerous works of fiction illuminate the nation’s human and physical geographies indirectly, and many of the non-fiction works address geography explicitly, including the volumes by John James Audubon, William Bartram, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and recently, the appearance of several volumes on explicit geographic locales-New York City, Los Angeles, and the sea. Simon’s volume serves as a guidebook to American literature via its locale-specific dimension.
      [Phillip Lopate. ed. Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. New York: Library of America, 1988; David L. Ulin. ed. Writing Los Angeles: a Literary Anthology. New York: Library of America, 2002; Peter Neill. ed. American Sea Writing. New York: Library of America, 20000; Maggy Simon. ed. The Traveler’s Reading Guide: Ready-Made Reading Lists for the Armchair Traveler. 2nd edition. New York: Facts on File, 1993 (1987); www.loa.org].

The scholarly journal Journal of Cultural Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

1980
The scholarly journal Urban Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

The scholarly journal Physical Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

The scholarly journal Journal of Cultural Geography begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) establishes a Department of Geography chaired by Fredrick L. Bein. The university's first courses in geography were offered by George Knadler in 1971. The first Bachelors degree in geography is awarded in 1980. The department currently offers the Bachelors and Masters degrees in geography and a graduate certificate in Geographic Information Science.

Gilbert Fowler White, of the University of Colorado, receives the Award for Environmental Quality from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. The Award for Environmental Quality is given "for outstanding contributions based on science or technology to improve the quality of the environment or the control of pollution by man."

GeoResearch Inc. is founded by Douglas S. Richardson as one of the first American firms in the private sector devoted specifically to geographic research with electronic systems. GeoResearch Inc. invents, develops and patents the first real-time interactive GPS/GIS (global positioning system/geographic information system) technology. This technology becomes the heart of GPS mapping, automated vehicle location systems, mobile geographic computing, interactive geographic management and location-based service systems. It revolutionizes the ways in which large-scale maps are made and used.
      [Douglas B. Richardson. Managing with Maps: the Convergence of GPS and GIS Technologies. Plenary Session Presentation. In Federal Geographic Technology Conference. Fort Collins, CO: GIS World Books, 1994; Douglas B. Richardson. GeoLink Unites GPS and GIS Technologies. GIS World 4 (September, 1991); Douglas B. Richardson. Doing Geography: a Perspective on Geography in the Private Sector. In Martin S. Kenzer. ed. On Becoming a Professional Geographer . Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing Company, 1989. Pp. 66-74.]

North American Cartographic Information Society [NACIS] is established as a professional society in 1980. The organization’s aim is to facilitate communication among individuals in the map information community from private, academic, and governmental organizations; promote communication between professional organizations and institutions involved with producing cartographic information; improve the use of cartographic materials through education; promote the acquisition, preservation, and retrieval of cartographic information; and influence government policy on cartographic information.
      [ www.nacis.org]

1981
International Map Trade Association (IMTA) is established to promote the common interests of individuals, firms, and institutions engaged in the production and sale of maps, globes, travel guides, spatial information and related products and materials in 1981. The organization grows to include more than 700 companies in 50 countries, and reorganizes into three semi-autonomous regional bodies, IMTA of Asia Pacific; IMTA of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; IMTA of the Americas.
      [ www.maptrade.com]

The scholarly journal History of Geography Newsletter [later History of Geography Journal], edited by Geoffrey J. Martin, begins publication. It ceases publication in 1988.

1982
The scholarly journal Political Geography Quarterly begins publication in 1982. With volume 11 (January 1992), the journal’s name changes to Political Geography. Its publication continues to the present.
      [ www.elsevier.nl]

Geospatial Information & Technology Association is established as AM/FM International in 1982 to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas in the field of automated mapping/facilities management (AM/FM). It takes its current name of Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) in 1998. GITA's mission is to facilitate education and information exchange on the use and benefits of geospatial information and technology in telecommunications, infrastructure, and utility applications throughout the world. It seeks to serve infrastructure-based organizations that can benefit from the application of geospatial information technologies. Such organizations include electric utilities, gas utilities, telecommunications companies, water and wastewater utilities, public works, local governments, oil and gas pipelines. By 2000, the organization's membership includes more than 2,200 individuals, 140 user affiliates, and 150 vendor companies.
      [ www.gita.org]

The Making of America: the Southwest, the first of a series of seventeen two-sided map sheets depicting the regional evolution of human geography in the United States, appears in the November 1982 issue of National Geographic Magazine. These two-sided map sheets contain a set of small-scale maps and text depicting the evolution of the region’s human geography on the obverse, and a full-page regional map displaying contemporary physical and human geographic features, with significant sites identified, on the reverse. The maps are conceptualized and researched by Donald W. Meinig of Syracuse University, and produced in the National Geographic Society’s Cartographic Division, under the direction of John B. Garver, Jr. The series of maps reach an audience of 10.6 million National Geographic subscribers.
      [Donald W. Meinig. ed. The Making of America. 17 two-sided color map sheets. Scales of the regional maps vary from 1:4,295,000 (Texas) to 1:1,056,000 (New England). Washington: Cartographic Division, National Geographic Society. Maps appear periodically as supplements to National Geographic Magazine from volumes 162 (November 1982) to 173 (June 1988).]

1983
A Nation at Risk, a report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, declares "that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and as a people...If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war" (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983, 5). Six million copies of A Nation at Risk are printed.
      Commission chair, David P. Gardner subsequently notes that "in 1960-61, only 14 percent of America's 7-12 graders were enrolled in geography courses. This was a lower percentage than had been standard for years. By the mid-1970s, however, the figure had dropped to 9 percent [but] geography has always been a rich discipline in its capacity to unfold the wonders of other cultures, other settlement patterns, and other attitudes toward the environment and the earth and its resources...This comprehension of distinct and sometimes vividly divergent ways of life provides children with a wonderful vision of the world and their place in it. It is not only a vision of life lived differently; it is a vision that leads to a better understanding of one's own way of life. To study another place, another society, another people is always to explore one's own universe through contrast and comparison...I welcome the energetic efforts of geographers to strengthen this educational resource in American classrooms" (Gardner 1986, 2-3).
      [National Commission on Excellence in Education. A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983; David Pierpont Gardner. Geography in the School Curriculum Annals of the Association of American Geographers 76 (March 1986): 1-4.]

1984
Guidelines for Geographic Education: Elementary and Secondary Schools is prepared by the Joint Committee on Geographic Education of the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers as a statement for improving geography education in the United States. It describes five themes that are deemed fundamental in geographic inquiry-location, place, relationships within places, movement, and regions-and outlines a course of study for geography education in America's elementary and secondary schools that is based on these five themes.
      The Summit in Geographic Education, a conference convened a decade after the guidelines for geography education were issued, declares "a benefit of the reform movement in geographic education has been the widespread process of self-assessment in the discipline [of geography], with no segment escaping scrutiny. We share a belief that the geographic perspective can provide a comprehensive picture of a complex problem...Geography accepts diversity within regions defined by shared characteristics, considers problems at many scales, understands the inter-relatedness of parts of a system, considers environmental interactions with human behavior, and often encourages a broad and integrative perspective...Geographers can theorize, but they can also apply their knowledge. Having analyzed the needs, the time is now ripe for application" (Bednarz and Peterson, 9).
      [Joint Committee on Geographic Education (Salvatore J. Natoli, Richard Boehm, James B. Kracht, David Lanegran, Janice J. Monk, and Robert W. Morrill). Guidelines for Geographic Education: Elementary and Secondary Schools. Washington: Association of American Geographers and National Council for Geographic Education, 1984; Robert S. Bednarz and James F. Peterson. eds. A Decade of Reform in Geographic Education: Inventory and Prospect. Indiana, PA: National Council for Geographic Education, 1995; Robert J. Marzano and John S. Kendall. Implementing Standards-Based Education. Washington: National Education Association, 1998.]

South Dakota becomes the first state in the modern era to include geography in its state-wide secondary school curriculum requirements. With the graduating class of 1988, all high school graduates in South Dakota are required to have successfully completed an independent one-semester course in geography. Many of the state’s schools come to adopt a full-year (two-semester) geography course.

1985
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, a computer-based geography education game produced by Brøderbund Software, is issued. The education software program becomes a best seller and wins numerous awards, including World Class Award (1966) and Best CD-ROM for Children (1997) from the magazine PCWorld. It inspires a popular television show of the same name broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), books, magazines, games, puzzles, and additional computer games in geography, Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego?, and in history, Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time.

The scholarly journal National Geographic Research, sponsored by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration, begins publication. Its title changes to National Geographic Research and Exploration: a Scholarly Publication of the National Geographic Society with volume 7 (Winter 1991). Its publication continues through volume 10 (Autumn 1994).

1986
British Academy, established in 1902 as the British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies, elects Paul Wheatley (1921-1999) as a corresponding fellow. He is the Academy’s first geographer elected to membership from the United States. Other geographers elected as corresponding members from the United States are Brian J. L. Berry, Donald W. Meinig, David Woodward, David W. Harvey, and Yi-Fu Tuan. David Lowenthal, the American geographer on the faculty at University College London, is elected as an ordinary fellow, a scholar residing in the United Kingdom.
      The British Academy is Britain’s national organization honoring distinguished scholars in the humanities and social sciences, counterpart to its Royal Society, which honors individuals achieving distinction in the natural sciences. Corresponding fellows are scholars “habitually resident outside the United Kingdom who have attained high international standing” in the humanities and social sciences.
      [ www.britac.ac.uk]

The first State Geographic Alliance is established in California to promote geography education in that state with the support of the National Geographic Society. Within a decade, similar alliances are established among universities, public officials, and private businesses to promote geography education in schools in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and throughout Canada.
      [Christopher L. Salter. Geography and California's Educational Reform: One Approach to a Common Cause. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 76 (March 1986): 5-17.]

1987
The History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, the first volume in the projected six-volume History of Cartography is published in 1987. As the three installments of volume two of History of Cartography appear over the next decade, it readily becomes apparent that this work stands as a continental-scale landmark in geographic, cartographic, and history of science scholarship and publishing. The series, which undertakes the breathtaking task of literally presenting a cartographic history of the world from prehistory through the twentieth century, not only discovers, documents, interprets, and reveals, but reconceptualizes the role of maps and cartographic information in society.
      The first two volumes, accounting for the history of cartography in the worlds of prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, and in the traditional worlds of Islamic, South Asian, East and Southeast Asian, African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific societies, encompass nearly 3,000 pages, 150 color plates, and 1,600 black-and-white illustrations. They receive the Best Book in the Humanities Award for 1987 and the R. R. Hawkins Award for 1992, both from the Association of American Publishers, and the James Henry Breasted Prize for 1999 from the American Historical Association.
      The forthcoming four volumes will carry the history of cartography through the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
      [J. Brian Harley and David Woodward. eds. Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume 1 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; J. Brian Harley and David Woodward. eds. Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies. Volume 2, Book 1 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; J. Brian Harley and David Woodward. eds. Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Volume 2, Book 2 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis. eds. Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies. Volume 2, Book 3 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998; David Woodward. ed. Cartography in the European Renaissance. Volume 3 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming; D. Graham Burnett, Matthew Edney, Mary G. Sponberg Pedley, with David Woodward. eds. Cartography in the European Enlightenment. Volume 4 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming; Cartography in the Nineteenth Century. Volume 5 ofThe History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming; Mark Monmonier and David Woodward. eds. Cartography in the Twentieth Century. Volume 6 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming.]

The scholarly journal, Geomorphology, begins publication in 1987. Its publication continues to the present. (see Journal of Geomorphology entry at 1938)
      [ www.elsevier.com]

Geography Awareness Week (GAW) is initiated as a week set aside in November to promote awareness of the importance of geography and to raise geographic literacy through support of geography education in America’s schools. It is sponsored by the National Geographic Society and endorsed by resolutions of the U. S. Congress, state and local governments.
      In 1999, the Wednesday of Geography Awareness Week is set aside as GIS Day, to promote awareness of the diverse contributions made by geographic information system (GIS) technology in society today. The principal sponsors of GIS Day are National Geographic Society, Association of American Geographers (AAG), and ESRI, along with numerous co-sponsors are American Congress of Surveying and Mapping (ACSM), Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), American Geographical Society, Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA), National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE), National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA), The Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
      Both Geography Awareness Week and GIS Day become annual events with local grassroots supported activities throughout the nation.
      [www.nationalgeographic.com & www.gisday.com]

Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., professor of English at the University of Virginia, declares that education curriculums in American primary and middle schools (kindergarten through 8th grades) fail to provide students with the foundational information necessary to become competent citizens. Hirsch proposes that schools adopt a 'core knowledge' curriculum, a notion that is quickly embraced by the nation's growing standards-based education reform movement, and just as quickly attacked by others (Harvard Educational Review). Core knowledge reformers produce their first set of classroom materials for an integrated geography and history kindergarten-6th grade curriculum that consists of student books, teacher guides, and 4-14 modular units per grade (Hirsch 2001).
      Numerous classroom and popular books of the don't-know-much genre begin to appear, each promoting its own version of foundational elements for the geography literate citizen.
      [E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, with Appendix: What Literate Americans Know. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1987; E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Tefil. The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1988 & 1993; E. D. Hirsch, Jr. The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them. New York: Doubleday, 1996; Stanley Aronowitz and Henry A. Giroux. Schooling, Culture, and Literacy in the Age of Broken Dreams: a Review of Bloom [The Closing of the American Mind] and Hirsch [Cultural Literacy]. Harvard Educational Review 58 (1988): 172-194; James Paul Gee. The Legacies of Literacy: from Plato to Freire through Harvey Graff. Harvard Educational Review 58 (1988): 195-212; Peter L. McLaren. Culture or Cannon? Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Literacy. Harvard Educational Review 58 (1988): 213-234; Kristen L. Buras. Questioning Core Assumptions: a Critical Reading of and Response to E. D. Hirsch's The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them. Harvard Educational Review 69 (Spring 1999): online; E. D. Hirsch, Jr. ed. History and Geography. Parsippany, NJ: Pearson Learning/Core Knowledge, 2001; Core Knowledge Foundation, www.coreknowledge.org; Kenneth C. Davis. Don't Know Much About Geography: Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned. New York: Morrow, 1992; Kenneth C. Davis. Don't Know Much About the Planet Earth. New York: HarperCollins, 2001; Kenneth C. Davis. Don't Know Much About the Fifty States. New York: HarperCollins, 2001; Thomas E. Sherer, Jr. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geography. New York: Alpha Books, 1997.]

The first World Geography Bowl, a geography quiz game similar to television's College Bowl quiz show, is held when Bashir Rabat, a student at North Carolina State University, challenges students of other North Carolina universities to a competition. A regional World Geography Bowl, organized by Neal Lineback, is held in conjunction with the 1990 annual meeting of the Southeast Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG). The first national-level World Geography Bowl competition, also organized by Neal Lineback, is held in conjunction with the 1993 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. State, regional, and national-level World Geography Bowl competitions promote geography education among college students and continue to the present.
      [Neal Lineback. World Geography Bowl. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 383-386.]

Geography in the News, created by Neal Lineback of Appalachian State University, is a weekly column and analytic map that examines a news event in terms of its many geographies and of the physical and human factors that help create those geographies. Geography in the News appears as a feature on the Internet for the first time in 2000 and is distributed to more than 3,000 schools by spring 2001.
      [www.geographyinthenews.com; www.maps.com. Neal Lineback. History of Geography in the News. In James O. Wheeler and Stanley D. Brunn. eds. The Role of the South in the Making of American Geography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004. Columbia, MD: Bellwether Publishing for Southeastern Division, Association of American Geographers, 2004. Pp. 381-383.]]

1988
GEO World, the first monthly general-circulation magazine devoted to geographic information systems (GIS) begins publication as GIS World.
      [ www.geoplace.com]

U-Haul International Inc., the American truck and trailer rental company, begins placing large graphic images that depict significant local places or activities on the sides of their vehicles. The large vehicle-size images feature well-known attributes of a specific state, province, or city, and text that identifies the locale. Implemented by U-Haul as a pictorial tribute to North America, images represent features in all states, provinces, and numerous cities. In 1998, U-Haul extends the program to include images that feature less well known attributes. The 200 different local-feature images create a mobile on-the-road discovery-North-America's-place-specific-geography game. U-Haul reports that "teachers and students alike have been using [these images] for years to help make geography lessons fun. U-Haul distributes more than 250,000 games at no cost to students every year" (U-Haul Internet site, December 19, 2001).
      [U-Haul, www.uhaul.com.]

1989
The computer game, SimCity^TM, created by Will Wright, is released to the general public in 1989. It is an open-ended non-combative system-simulation computer game designed to model urban settlements. It is distributed by Maxis, a software publishing firm created by Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and becomes the world’s first best-selling simulation game and one of the most popular computer games of the next decade, ranking near the top of the Hall of Fame list compiled by Computer Gaming World Magazine.
      During the decade following its release, several updated versions of SimCity^TM appear. Several other simulation games from Maxis also appear that feature geographic themes—SimFarm^TM (the vicissitudes of farming, an occupation with perhaps the most explicit interactions between humans and the physical-biological environment), SimIsle: Missions in the Rainforest^TM (a rainforest environment), and SimEarth: the Living Planet^TM (Earth). The creator of all of these simulation games, Will Wright, reveals his basic geographic world view with the title he is reported to have once used on his business card—‘Metaphorical Cartographer’.
      SimCity^TM represents the first computer-age educational technology (software) response to the call issued by the High School Geography Project during the 1960s for ‘hands-on, real-world based’ classroom teaching methods that it could then only answer with non-computer simulation games (see Geography in an Urban Age entry at 1970). Its inherent teaching value is readily appreciated, and it soon appears in both secondary and college geography classrooms. Such simulations allow the activities occurring in geographic areas to evolve through time in an open-ended manner, thus enabling students to discover consequences of their decisions within class-period time frames. The inspiration for SimCity^TM was the computer-based urban growth models of M.I.T. professor Jay Forrester; SimEarth^TM was inspired by the Gaia notions of James Lovelock, an English environmental scientist.
      [simcity.ea.com; Paul C. Adams. Teaching and Learning with SimCity 2000. Journal of Geography 97 (March-April 1998): 47-55; Jay W. Forrester. Urban Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1969; James E. Lovelock. Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.]

The National Geography Bee is established as an annual nation-wide geography competition organized by the National Geographic Society of Washington, D.C. The goals of the Geography Bee are to stimulate student interest in geography, encourage teachers to include the subject in their classes, and to increase public awareness of geography. It is similar to the long-running National Spelling Bee competition administered by the E. W. Scripps Company, which was started by the Courier-Journal newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky in 1925.
      Participation in the National Geography Bee is open to elementary- and middle-school students enrolled in grades 4-8. Each year’s Geography Bee consists of three rounds—competitions within schools to produce school champions, state-level eliminations to produce state champions, and a national-level competition among state winners that is televised from the National Geographic Society to produce a national champion. In 1993, the National Geographic Society organized the first international geography competition at the Royal Geographic Society in London, England. This international competition—the National Geographic World Championship—is conducted every two years.
      [www.nationalgeographic.com/geographybee]

John R. Borchert (1918-2001), the distinguished professor of geography at the University of Minnesota is honored when that university names its map collection the John R. Borchert Map Library in 1989. Professor Borchert had been a member of the university’s faculty from 1949 to 1989. The John R. Borchert Map Library is located in the O. M. Wilson Library on the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus. (map.lib.umn.edu)
      [John R. Borchert. A Journey of Discovery. In Peter Gould and Forrest R. Pitts. eds. Geographical Voices: Fourteen Autobiographical Essays. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002. Pp. 27-51]

Cartographic Perspectives, a scholarly-professional journal of the North American Cartographic Information Society, begins publication. Its publication continues to the present. (see North American Cartographic Information Society at 1980)
      [ www.nacis.org]

1990
The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years reports on human-induced transformations of Earth's physical environment over the past 300 years and their regional impacts at the close of the twentieth century. The 720-page volume includes 42 reports in four topical sections-Changes in Population and Society, Transformations of the Global Environment, Regional Studies of Transformation, and Understanding Transformations. The volume's reports were originally presented and discussed at an international symposium sponsored by International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, World Resources Institute, and Clark University's Graduate School of Geography, and convened at Clark University in 1987. The symposium was hosted by the Graduate School of Geography in celebration of Clark University's 100th anniversary and led to creation of Clark University's George Perkins Marsh Institute.
      A retrospective summation of the volume, appearing four years after its issuance, concludes-"The great international research enterprise designed to understand how the earth works will supply, if all goes well, untold observations of the earth, new models that link the present disparate realms of land, air, water, and people, and novel transnational institutions of study and policy. At the same time, the phenomenal challenge posed by the doubling of world population and quadrupling of consumption within the lifetime of today's children will demand the very best of science, understanding, and collective action if humankind is to navigate safely the extraordinary passage ahead. For geographers, for whom the human use of the earth is a central question, it is not too early to use the occasion of this reflection on ET to ask of ourselves and our species: beyond modification, beyond transformation, what ought to be the human use of the earth?" (Earle).
      [Billie Lee Turner II, William C. Clark, Robert W. Kates, John F. Richards, Jessica T. Mathews, William B. Meyer. eds. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Carville Earle et al. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Conversations in the Round: the Forum's Aims and Ambitions. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84 (December 1994): 710-731.]

National Goals for Education, a report issued by the National Governor's Association, calls for increased societal emphasis on education. The report designates geography, science, mathematics, history, and English as core subjects for the curriculum of America's elementary and secondary schools. The call for reforms in American education by state governors responds to the declaration of the federal government's National Commission on Excellence in Education report A Nation at Risk-"that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and as a people...If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war" (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983, 5). Six million copies of A Nation at Risk are printed.
      [National Governor's Association Task Force on Education. National Goals for Education. Washington: National Governor's Association, 1990; National Commission on Excellence in Education. A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983.]

The Geography Learning of High School Seniors is issued as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program of the U.S. Department of Education. It provides results of the first nation-wide assessment of geographic understanding among high school seniors, a limited though national-scale sample survey administered in 1988. It finds that “our country’s high-school seniors are not well versed in geography. Most students did not demonstrate an understanding of the basic concepts of physical and cultural geography, and many did not correctly identify the location of major countries, cities, and landmarks. Further, many of the students did not seem to understand that maps can be used to derive all kinds of information about the world, rather than simply to find places” (Allen 7).
      In 1994 and 2001, The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics produces nation-wide assessments of geography understanding at grades 4, 8, and 12 (Persky and National Center for Education Statistics). Each wave of assessments queries levels of geographic understanding in three content areas-Space and Place, Environment and Society, and Spatial Dynamics and Connections. The assessment questionnaires are administered to a national sample of approximately 25,000 students in some 1,100 public and non-public schools. The next round of NAEP geography assessments is scheduled for 2010.
      [Russell Allen et al. The Geography Learning of High School Seniors. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990; Hilary Persky et al. NAEP 1994 Geography Report Card: Findings fro the National Assessment of Educational Progress. NCES No. 96-087. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996; U.S. National Center for Education Statistics. The Nation's Report Card: Geography 2001. NCES No. 2002-484. Washington: National Center for Education Statistics, 2002.]

1991
Robert W. Kates, University Professor and Director of Brown University's Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program, is awarded the National Medal of Science by the President of the United States. He receives the award for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of natural and man-made hazards, global environmental change, and the prevalence and persistence of world hunger. Kates is the first geographer to receive the nation’s highest science honor, which is awarded to scientists and engineers for the cumulative impact of an individual's work on the present state of physical, chemical, biological, mathematical, engineering, behavioral, or social science.
      [Robert W. Kates. Hazard and Choice Perception in Flood Plain Management. Research Paper No. 78. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1962; Robert W. Kates. The Human Environment: the Road Not Taken, the Road Still Beckoning. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (December 1987): 525-534.

The Shape of the World, a six-part series of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programs is aired. It reviews the history of bringing Earth’s surface into the realm of knowledge through developments in geography, exploration, and mapping. The series is produced by Granada Television International (UK) in association with WNET-13 of New York City; funded by IBM; and narrated by the actor Patrick Stewart. The series six episodes are-Empire (advances in science during the Renaissance), Heaven and Earth (coming to understand Earth as a geographic entity), Pictures of the Invisible (mapping the land), Secrets of the Sea (charting the oceans), Staking a Claim (Europe’s age of exploration), and The Writing on the Screen (electronic maps as information systems). The television presentation is supplemented by educational materials for teachers and students, provided for 100,000 classrooms by IBM.
      [The Shape of the World [6 VHS tapes]; Simon Berthon and Andrew Robinson. The Shape of the World. Chicago: Rand, McNally and Co., 1991; teacher study guides (one for classes in science and one for social studies) and student booklets (one for classes in science and one for social studies) produced by TelEd, Inc.; George F. McCleary and Jenny Marie Johnson. ‘The Shape of the World’ and The Shape of the World. Meridian: a Journal of the Map and Geography Round Table of the American Library Association 6 (1991): 55 -60.]

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) establish an ad hoc working group chaired by B. L. Turner II and co-chaired by David Skole to investigate the possibilities of a joint natural and social science research effort on land-use and land-cover change. The group’s 1993 report, Relating Land Use and Global Land-Cover Change: a Proposal for an IGBP-HDP Core Program, makes the case that such an international science effort is both necessary and possible.
      In 1992, the Core Project Planning Committee (IGBP)/Research Project Planning Committee (IHDP) chaired by B. L. Turner II and co-chaired by David Skole is charged with devising a scientific plan of investigation for an international and integrated natural-social science program of study on Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC). Drawing on international input, a Science Plan prepared by this committee, Land Use and Land-Cover Change: Science/Research Plan, is accepted by the sponsoring programs in 1995.
      In January 1996, LUCC launches a joint Core Project of IGBP and IHDP by way of a LUCC Open Science Conference sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. LUCC’s mission is to improve data, understanding, and modeling of land-change dynamics worldwide, at different spatio-temporal scales of analysis and consistent with the needs of international global environmental change research. Dave Skole serves as LUCC’s first chair, with the Core Project Office housed in the Institute Cartographic of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. In 1998, the office hosts a joint Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystem (GCTE) - Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC) Open Science Conference on Global Change. In 1999, Eric Lambin assumes the chair of LUCC and its office moves to the Department of Geography, University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, where it currently resides. LUCC’s Implementation Strategy, Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Implementation Strategy, is also published in 1999.
      While highly interdisciplinary in scope, geographers have been and remain strongly active in the 47 endorsed projects, 12 regional networks, 6 published reports of LUCC, and many special issues of periodicals, edited books and state-of-the-art papers. LUCC maintains ties with the International Geographical Union and with the Committee on Geography, U.S. National Research Council, in Washington, D.C., among other geographical organizations. (Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC) Internet site: www.geo.ucl.ac.be/LUCC; International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Internet site: www.igbp.kva.se; International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) Internet site: www.ihdp.org)
      [B. L. Turner II, R. H. Moss, and D. L. Skole. eds. Relating Land Use and Global Land-Cover Change: a Proposal for an IGBP-HDP Core Program. Joint IGBP Report No. 24/IHDP Report No. 5. Stockholm, Sweden: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, 1993; B. L. Turner II, D. L. Skole, Steven Sanderson, Günther Fischer, Loise Fresco and Rik Leemans. eds. Land Use and Land-Cover Change: Science/Research Plan. Joint IGBP Report No. 35/IHDP Report No. 7. Stockholm, Sweden: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, 1995; Scientific Steering Committee and International Project Office of LUCC, edited by C. Nunes and J. I. Augé. Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Implementation Strategy. Joint IGBP Report No. 48/IHDP Report No. 10. Stockholm, Sweden: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, 1999.]

1992
Twenty-seventh International Geographical Congress, the third to be convened in the United States, meets August 9-14 in Washington, D.C. Thirteen guidebooks to various regions of North America and the Caribbean Islands are prepared in conjunction with the meeting. Two previous International Geographical Congresses met in the United States, in 1904 and 1952.
      [Proceedings. Washington: Organizing Committee, 27th International Geographical Congress, 1992; Technical Program Abstracts. Washington: Organizing Committee, 27th International Geographical Congress, 1992; and Touring North American series of guidebooks-Anthony R. de Souza. ed. The Capital Region: Day Trips in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.; John R. Borchert. Megalopolis: Washington, D.C. to Boston; P. P. Karen and Wilford A. Bladen. Across the Appalachians: Washington, D.C. to Lake Michigan; Sam B. Hilliard. The South Revisited: Forty Years of Change; Louis De Vorsey, Jr. and Marion J. Rice. The Plantation South: Atlanta to Savannah and Charleston; John C. Hudson. Crossing the Heartland: Chicago to Denver; Cotton Mather, P. P. Karan, and George F. Thompson. Beyond the Great Divide: Denver to the Grand Canyon; Martin S. Kenzer, Douglas J. Sherman, Robert A. Rundstrom, and Bernard O. Bauer. California Landscapes: Los Angeles, Big Sur, San Francisco, Yosemite, and Death Valley; Larry Ford and Ernie Griffin. Southern California Extended: Las Vegas to San Diego and Los Angeles; George E. Stuart and Winfield Swanson. Ancient Mexico: Aztec, Mixtec, and Maya Landscapes; Thomas D. Boswell and Dennis Conway. The Caribbean Islands: Endless Geographical Diversity; Dean Louder. ed. The Heart of French Canada: from Ottawa to Quebec City; J. K. Stager and Harry Swain. Canada North: Journey to the High Arctic. all New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Cartografia del Mondo: International Map and Book Exhibition. Washington: Organizing Committee, 27th International Geographical Congress, 1992; [Proceedings. Washington: Organizing Committee, 27th International Geographical Congress, 1992; Technical Program Abstracts. Washington: Organizing Committee, 27th International Geographical Congress, 1992; Cartografia del Mondo: International Map and Book Exhibition. Washington: Organizing Committee, 27th International Geographical Congress, 1992; and Touring North American series of guidebooks]

Looking at Earth, a permanent exhibit of the uses of aerial imagery - photographs from balloons and from space, remote sensing imagery from satellites, etc. - to improve our understanding of Earth opens in Washington, D.C. It permanently occupies an entire gallery of the Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian Institutions’ most-visited museum, on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
      [ www.nasm.si.edu/nasm/NASMexh.html; Priscilla Strain and Frederick Engle. Looking at Earth. Atlanta, GA: Turner Publications, 1992.]

The North Carolina Geographer, the annual scholarly journal of the North Carolina Geographical Society begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

1993
A Scholar’s Guide to Geographical Writing on the American and Canadian Past, by Michael P. Conzen, Thomas A. Rumney, and Graeme Wynn, is published by the University of Chicago Press in 1993. The volume is both a landmark publication in, and benchmark of, historical geography scholarship in the United States and Canada. It updates and documents the dramatic expansion of scholarship in historical geography since issuance of previous accounts (McManis, Grim, Clark), and provides an explicitly geographic counterpoint to the well-established and essential general guides to the scholarly works of American historians (American Historical Association, Freidel et al.).
      Two overview essays, by Conzen – The Historical Impulse in Geographical Writing about the United States, 1850-1990 (pp. 3-90), and Wynn – The Writing of Canadian Historical Geography (pp. 91-124), situate geographers’ historical accounts of this corner of the world within the broader realm of geographic scholarship. Thoroughly documented, they provide essential starting points to this body of scholarly research. The guide’s categorized listing of some 10,000 works of geographical writing on the United States and Canada emphatically demonstrates the geographer’s way of accounting for transformations that occur from one historic period to the next. The works are categorized geographically – country, region, and province/state – and by some twenty-five topics within each geographic unit.
      [Michael P. Conzen, Thomas A. Rumney, and Graeme Wynn. A Scholar’s Guide to Geographical Writing on the American and Canadian Past. Geography Research Paper No. 235. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993; Douglas R. McManis. Historical Geography of the United States: a Bibliography, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. Ypsilanti, MI: Eastern Michigan University Press, 1965; Ronald E. Grim. Historical Geography of the United States: a Guide to Information Sources. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co., 1982; Andrew H. Clark. Historical Geography. In Preston E. James and Clarence F. Jones. eds. American Geography: Inventory and Prospect. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press for Association of American Geographers, 1954, pp. 70-105; American Historical Association. Guide to Historical Literature. 2 vols. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 (1961, 1927); American Historical Association. Writings on American History. 1902-03 and irregular thereafter; Frank Freidel et al. Harvard Guide to American History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974 (1967, 1954, 1912).]

1994
Geography for Life: National Geography Standards 1994 provides a national set of voluntary standards for the teaching of geography in elementary and secondary schools. The report is prepared in response to widespread public demands for new standards in elementary and secondary education in general and geography specifically by the Geography Education Standards Project, a joint effort of the American Geographical Society, Association of American Geographers, National Council for Geographic Education, and National Geographic Society.
      [Geography Education Standards Project. Geography for Life: National Geography Standards 1994. Washington: National Geographic Society, 1994.]

Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is established to make geospatial information and its processing more useful and more widely available. It grows out of experiences within the federal government during the early 1980s by the spatial analysis software development group headed by Bill Goran, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USACERL), at Champaign, Illinois. This group assists the U.S. Department of Defense in developing and applying geographic information system (GIS) technologies to the management of military installations and to various civil works applications through the creation of a public-domain open-source UNIX-based geospatial analysis software termed Geographic Resource and Analysis Support System (GRASS). A GRASS Interagency Steering Committee (GIASC) is formed in 1990 to support and coordinate development of GRASS throughout the federal government. By the early 1990s, users of this software number in the thousands. Building on this experience, the Open GIS Consortium is created to promote the benefits of an open system approach to handling geospatial information outside the federal government user community as well.
     [ www.opengis.org]

1995
Earth 2U, Exploring Geography, organized by the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibit Service (SITES) and the National Geographic Society, is a self-contained exhibit that is designed to be portable and displayed at museums throughout the country. The interactive exhibit is targeted primarily to 6-12 year olds and consists of six quasi-independent sections that address the question, “What is Geography?” The six sections are - Population, Landscape/Landshapes, Everyday Things, Forces of Nature, Exploration and Adventure, and Tools and Techniques.
      A smaller exhibit, Earth 2U, Exploring Geography, Version II, includes three of the original six sections. During the next five years, the two exhibits are shown at 50 sites. A compact disk (CD) version of the exhibit is created by Macmillan Software Publishing. The two exhibits spend years traveling from one museum to another.
      [ www.sites.si.edu]

1996
The Geo Quiz is a feature of The World, a daily international news program broadcast on public radio (PBS) stations from the program's debut in 1996. The Geo Quiz is a geography quiz that offers a set of clues about some specific place in the world at one point during the half-hour program and provides the answer somewhat later in the same program. The World is co-produced by the BBC World Service, Public Radio International (PRI), and station WGBH in Boston. The program is also available online, complete with photographs and music, at www.theworld.org.

1997
Southwestern Geographer, a scholarly journal of the Southwestern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SWAAG), begins publication. Its publication continues to the present.

The scholarly journal Applied Geographic Studies begins publication. Its publication continues through 1999, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer 1999).

Perry School in Eire, Pennsylvania creates the nation’s first geography theme-based elementary school curriculum when it utilizes geography to integrate the standard elementary-school (k-6)-math, science, history, writing, reading, spelling, and physical education. The school has its own Geography Learning Laboratory, a geographic motto-“Geography Takes You Everywhere!”, and a geographic mascot-Toby the Traveling Bear, which has visited the White House in Washington, D.C. and five countries.
      [esd.iu5.org/perry/per.htm]

Geography in the form of ‘information about geography’ becomes an electronic presence in the expanding cyberspace world through creation of Geography at About.com, one of a family of Internet sites managed by About.com. The site has since grown to incorporate over 2,000 individual pages of articles, facts, quizzes, and discussion devoted to geography and receives over 2 million visits a month.
     [geography.about.com]

1998
The world's largest globe is created by DeLorme, an American publisher of maps and mapping software. It is erected at the firm's headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine. Constructed at the scale of 1:1,000,000 (one inch equals about 16 miles), its diameter is just over 41 feet. Geographic features depicted on its cloud-free image of Earth include topography represented with shaded relief, bathymetry with color, vegetation cover with color, and major roads and urban settlement.
      Several immense globes existed previously. Among them was one of similar size by Delanglard termed Géorama, built in Paris in 1844, and one erected by James Wyld, Geographer to the Queen, in London that was 60 feet in diameter and stood for a decade (1851-61). Such large globes provide us, "learned or unlearned, the direct study of geography on spherical surfaces" that French geographer Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) declared "absolutely essential" a century ago, "at a time when every morning and evening newspaper brings us news from all parts of the world; when every one of us, even the least fortunate, is fed and clothed with productions of all continents and seas; when we all have friends across both oceans in the antipodal countries...Now Globes must be temples themselves, as by the magnificence or proportions as by the beauty of workmanship and the scrupulous care of scientific drawing. In sight of such constructions, people must feel grave and respectful, not only because those monuments consecrated to science will partake of its majesty, but also because they will belong to all men, without any privilege for race or nationality, and will help to strengthen within us the feeling that we are one and the same family" (Reclus, 403, 406).
      [DeLorme, www.delorme.com; Alfred R. Wallace. The Proposed Gigantic Model of the Earth. The Living Age 209 (13 June 1896): 692-700 (reprinted from The Contemporary Review); Élisée Reclus. A Great Globe. Geographical Journal 12 (1898): 401-409; Gary S. Dunbar. Élisée Reclus and the Great Globe. Scottish Geographical Magazine 90 (April 1974): 57-66.]

1999
The twenty-four volume American National Biography is prepared to serve as America's authoritative biographical dictionary under the sponsorship of the American Council of Learned Societies. It updates and broadens the coverage of the earlier Dictionary of American Biography (original 20 vols., 1926-37) by providing nearly 17,500 biographical sketches. Biographies for persons identified as geographers include-Cyrus C. Adams, Wallace W. Atwood, Oliver E. Baker, Isaiah Bowman, Ralph H. Brown, Charles P. Daly, William M. Davis, Henry Gannett, Arnold H. Guyot, Richard Hakluyt, Ellsworth Huntington, Mark S. W. Jefferson, Jedidiah Morse, Edward Robinson, Carl O. Sauer, Ellen C. Semple, Nathaniel S. Shaler, Henry S. Tanner, George M. Wheeler, and Douglas W. Johnson (as geomorphologist). Persons identified as cartographers include-Abraham Bradley, Jr., Nelson H. Darton, William G. De Brahm, Simeon De Witt, William H. Emory, Lewis Evans, Moses Greenleaf, Thomas Harriot, Augustine Herrman, Thomas Hutchins, Arthur Keith, Edward M. and Richard H. Kern, Eusebio F. Kino, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, J. Peter Lesley, Bernard Romans, Henry S. Tanner, David Thompson, and John Wood. Other geographers and persons who made significant contributions to geography include-Gilbert H. Grosvenor, George Perkins Marsh, Mathew Fontaine Maury, Paul A. Siple, Ralph S. Tarr, Emma H. Willard, and William C. Woodbridge.
      [John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. eds. American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press for the American Council of Learned Societies, 1999.]

The United States Mint begins issuing quarter ($0.25) coins to commemorate the 50 states. The coins include a common design on the obverse (heads) side, and different state-specific designs on the reverse (tails) side. The program represents the first time the U.S. Mint gives preference to sub-national images on coins minted by the federal government. The 50 different coins commemorate events, landscape elements, or other state-specific features chosen by the states. Designs for the reverse side of several coins include maps and the State of New York's coin includes one of the smallest state raised relief maps every produced (1.43 x 1.91 cm.). The program will issue five new coins each year through 2008 in the order that states ratified the Constitution or became a state. School lesson plans are prepared by the U.S. Mint for grades kindergarten through six that feature geography, history, and math and are linked to national education standards, including those issued for geography in 1994.
      [U.S. Mint, www.usmint.gov]

The scholarly journal Tourism Geographies begins publication in 1999. Its publication continues to the present.
      [ www.tandf.co.uk]

2000s
The five best-selling textbooks used in college introductory courses in human geography are - Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov and Mona Domosh. The Human Mosaic: a Thematic Introduction to Cultural Geography. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 1999; Paul Knox and Sallie A. Marston. Places and Regions in Global Context: Human Geography. (2nd ed. 2001) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998; Harm J. de Blij and Alexander B. Murphy. Human Geography: Culture, Society, and Space. 6th ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999; James M. Rubenstein. The Cultural Landscape: an Introduction to Human Geography. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999; Jerome D. Fellman, Arthur Getis and Judith Getis. Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activity. 6th ed. New York: ACB McGraw-Hill, 1999.
      Introductory human geography classes are commonly offered to first-year and second-year college students.
      [Garth Andrew Myers. Introductory Human Geography Textbooks Representations of Africa. Professional Geographer 53 (November 2001): 522-532.

2000
Advanced Placement Human Geography courses are offered in North American high schools for the first time in the fall of 2000. The first Advanced Placement Human Geography examinations, administered at the close of the 2000-01 academic year, are taken by over 4,000 students. With this programmatic launching, geography joins the group of 19 subject areas and 33 college-level Advanced Placement courses that are offered highly motivated high-school students in the Advanced Placement Program of the College Board.
      The initial offering of AP Human Geography was preceded by years of lobbying by secondary school and college teachers of geography, most notably James Marran, New Trier High School, Evanston, Illinois. Inclusion of human geography among AP courses offered in 2000-01 follows a progression that was launched when members of the Educational Testing Service convened a meeting on behalf of the College Board at the Association of American Geographers’ annual meeting at San Francisco, 1994. This meeting led to a formal assessment of interest in a geography course, and the appointment of Alexander B. Murphy, University of Oregon, to chair an AP Geography Task Force for the Educational Testing Service. In March 1995, the task force recommended that AP Human Geography become the first Advanced Placement geography course offered rather than Physical Geography or World Regional Geography (the two other common first-year college geography courses), because of the greater ease of teacher preparation vis-à-vis Physical Geography and because of its more systematic emphasis vis-à-vis World Regional Geography.
      The addition of AP Human Geography to the Advanced Placement Program was approved by the College Board in spring 1996. Shortly thereafter the Educational Testing Service established the AP Human Geography Development Committee, which would serve through 2000, with Alexander B. Murphy, (chair), Adrian Bailey, Dartmouth College, David A. Lanegran, Macalester College, Larry R. Ford, San Diego State University, Daniel D. Arreola, Arizona State University, Douglas L. Johnson, Clark University, Isobel Stevenson, Johnston High School, Austin, Texas, Martha B. Sharma, National Cathedral School, Washington, D.C., and John Trites, Horton District High School, Wolfville, Nova Scotia; and later as members rotated off, Mona Domosh, Florida Atlantic University, Barbara E. McDade, University of Florida, and Debra Lange, A&M Consolidated High School, College Station, Texas. At the conclusion of the development phase, David A. Lanegran takes over as chair of the Educational Testing Service’s continuing AP Human Geography Committee.
      [www.collegeboard.com/ap; Joan Clemons and Tom L. McKnight. Teacher’s Guide—AP Human Geography. Princeton, NJ: College Entrance Examination Board and Educational Testing Service, 1999; Alexander B. Murphy, guest editor. Teaching Advanced Placement Human Geography. Journal of Geography 99 (May-August 2000): 93-172.]

Gilbert Fowler White, of the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, receives the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest science honor. White is honored for outstanding leadership and scientific contributions to geography and environmental sciences, and for helping shape the nation's policies on flood plains, water use, and environmental disasters for more than five decades. He is the second geographer to receive the National Medal of Science. (see National Medal of Science entry at 1991) Gilbert White also receives the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 2000. It is the highest honor bestowed by the National Academy of Sciences upon a member of the Academy, and honors an individual for extraordinary use of science in the public interest. White receives the award for his fundamental contributions to our understanding of the interactions between the environment and society and the management of environmental hazards over a period of sixty years.
      [Gilbert F. White. Human Adjustment to Floods: a Geographical Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States. Chicago: Private edition distributed by University of Chicago Libraries, 1942, and as Research Paper No. 29. Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1945; Gilbert F. White. ed. Natural Hazards: Local, National, Global. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974; Robert W. Kates and Ian Burton. eds. Geography, Resources and Environment: Selected Writings of Gilbert F. White and Geography, Resources, and Environment: Themes from the Work of Gilbert F. White. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; James L. Westcoat, Jr. Common Themes in the Work of Gilbert White and John Dewey: a Pragmatic Appraisal. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (December 1992): 587-607.]

2001
The 26-volume and 17,000-page International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences provides an account of social and behavioral science research domains at entry into the twenty-first century. It updates the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences of 1968, which accounted for transformations that occurred during the 1960s, and provides a 70-year-on perspective to social science’s foundational post-World War I era, represented by the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences of 1930-35. Taken together, these three landmark publications provide a remarkable comparative accounting of the development of the social and behavioral sciences in general, and of the human and human-environment traditions within geography more specifically across seven-plus decades.
      The editors justify the current enterprise in terms of – updating the two previous encyclopedias; providing a form of quality control in the age of rapidly expanding accessibility to information via the Internet; and several science-specific ones – the astonishing growth and further specialization of scientific knowledge since the 1960s; rapid development of interdisciplinary fields; expanded interest in public policy and applications; internationalization of research; the impact of computers and the information revolution on theory and practice; and newly developed connections between social and behavioral sciences and between social and biological life sciences.
      This extraordinary set of essays, with perhaps a hundred or more articles devoted to topics of explicit concern to geographers, enables readers to capture the current state of scholarly research in geography as does no other source. It provides a breathtaking account of geography’s contemporary scientific and scholarly horizons. These titles and author names suggest its richness – Geography by Ron J. Johnston, History of Geographic Thought and History of Spatial Thinking in the Social Sciences by Paul Claval, Geographic (Geography) Education by Roger M. Downs, Geographic Learning in Children by David Stea, Place in Geography by Ed Relph, Power of Place by Delores Hayden, Spatial Equity by Richard L. Morrill, Locational Conflict (NIMBY) by Robert W. Lake, Political Geography by Alexander B. Murphy, Geopolitics by Saul B. Cohen, Regional Geography by G. Wood, Region: Geographical by M. B. Pudup, Human-Environment Relationships by William B. Meyer, Human-Environment Relationships: Prehistoric by Karl W. Butzer, Resource Geography by G. Bridge, Geoarchaeology by M. I. Weisler, Humanistic Geography by Anne Buttimer, Behavioral Geography by Reginald G. Golledge, Spatial Cognition by D. R. Montello, Cognitive Maps by R. Kitchin, Spatial Decision Support System by Gerard Rushton, Space and Social Theory in Geography by Barney Wharf, Cultural Geography by Geraldine Pratt, Economic Geography by Edward J. Malecki, Social Geography by S. Bowlby, Urban Geography by Rita Schneider-Sliwa, Urban Systems in Geography by Peter Hall, Rural Geography by J. Little, Geodemographics by J. Goss, Spatial Interaction by Edward J. Taaffe, Spatial Interaction Models by A. S. Fotheringham, Time-Geography by P. Glennie and N. Thrift, Historical Geography by B. Graham, Qualitative Methods in Geography by I. Dyck, Cartography by Judy M. Olson, History of Cartography by G. Malcolm Lewis, Cartographic Visualization by M. J. Kraak, Spatial Data by Stephen C. Guptill, Spatial Data Infrastructure by David Rhind, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by Michael F. Goodchild, Geographic Information Systems: Critical Approaches by Eric Sheppard, Spatial Analysis in Geography by M. M. Fischer, Spatial Statistical Methods by L. M. Berliner, Measures of Spatial Association by Arthur Getis, Spatial Autocorrelation by Robert P. Haining, Analysis of Spatial Pattern by Barry Boots, Postmodernism in Geography by Edward W. Soja. (see Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences entry at 1930, and International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences entry at 1968)
      [Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. editors-in-chief. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. 26 vols. Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier Science, 2001.]

Doing Fieldwork is issued as a special edition of Geographical Review in 2001. It provides a contemporary update on the commitment of geographers to the importance of direct on-site acquisition of scientific and supporting information.
      Fieldwork, field research, field experience; geographers being ‘in the field’ or serving as field researchers; the high praise associated with the ‘field man’ accolade that placed the nineteenth-century geographer second only to ‘explorer’ (defined perhaps as a field man who travels to places others have yet to witness); ‘ground truthing’ remotely sensed imagery-information from space; field trips conducted in conjunction with classroom instruction as part of geography education or in conjunction with professional and scholarly meetings; and the attendant methods for obtaining geographic information first hand - all exist as an integral part of geography in America throughout its history.
      First-hand knowledge of Earth’s physical and human geographies from direct observation receives varying levels of attention from society at large and in the practice of geography education. The importance placed upon direct first-hand experiential learning experiences derived from being in the field remains, however, a fundamental and constant aspect of seemingly ever-changing education philosophies. Its contemporary importance, for members of society at large when aspatial non-place ‘understanding’ continues its ascent, and for geography in bringing its understanding of processes played out as place-specific events and phenomena to the rest of society, remains unquestioned.
      [Dydia DeLyser and Paul F. Storrs. eds. Doing Fieldwork. Geographical Review 91 (January and April 2001): 1-508 (entire issue); Wellington D. Jones and Carl O. Sauer. Outline for Field Work in Geography. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 47 (1915): 520-525; Carl O. Sauer. Mapping the Utilization of the Land. Geographical Review 8 (July 1919): 47-54; Carl O. Sauer. The Survey Method in Geography and Its Objectives. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 14 (1924): 17-33; Derwent S. Whittlesey. Devices for Accumulating Geographic Data in the Field. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 17 (June 1927): 72-78; Charles M. Davis. Field Techniques. In Preston E. James and Clarence F. Jones. eds. American Geography: Inventory and Prospect. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press for Association of American Geographers, 1954. Pp. 496-529; Robert S. Platt. Field Study in American Geography: the Development of Theory and Method Exemplified by Selections. Research Paper No. 61. Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1959; Preston E. James and Cotton Mather. The Role of Periodic Field Conferences in the Development of Geographical Ideas in the United States. Geographical Review 67 (October 1977): 446-461; Kenneth E. Corey, A. David Hill, John Fraser Hart, Neil E. Salisbury, and Peirce F. Lewis. Field Training in Geography. Commission on College Geography Technical Paper No. 1. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 1968.]

2002
Kingsley E. Haynes, University Professor of Public Policy and dean of the School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, is honored as the first geographer to be elected a fellow to the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). The National Academy of Public Administration is an independent organization chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1984 to-evaluate the performance of evolving federal and other governmental programs, examine emerging public administration issues, assess the effectiveness of proposed public programs and policies, advise on relationships among federal, state, regional, and local governments, and demonstrate a commitment to the highest professional standards of ethics and scholarship. Persons honored as Academy fellows include academic scholars, elected officials at all levels of government, diplomats, and business executives. In fulfilling its charter’s mandate to address relevant governance issues, the Academy issues numerous committee reports, including the influential Geographic Information for the 21st Century: Building a Strategy for the Nation (1998).
     [www.napawash.org]