Memorial to John Beaver Mertie, Jr. 1888-1980

WILLIAM C. OVERSTREET 900 East Garcia Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

ROBERT M. CHAPMAN U.S. Geological Survey, Mail Stop 90-B, Menlo Park, California 94025

The death at age 92 of John Beaver Mertie, Jr., on December 7, 1980, at his home in Rockville, Maryland, ended a long geologic career that began in 1908 when he served as a summer assistant for the United States Geological Survey (USGS). His full-time geologic work with the USGS began in 1911 and continued, with brief interruptions during World War I and in 1920-1921, until mandatory retirement at age 70 in 1958. There­after, Mertie continued geologic investigations on a part-time basis for the USGS until 1975. His last publi­cation, a professional paper, appeared in 1979 on the 100th anniversary of the USGS and in the 71st year of Mertie’s association—both formal and informal—with the Survey. During that time his original contributions to the regional and economic geology of Alaska and to

techniques for mineral exploration in areas of weathered rocks in the southeastern states earned him a recognized place as a pioneering scientist.

Mertie was born on January 22, 1888, in Baltimore, Maryland, the second son of John Beaver Mertie and Margaret E. Tierney Mertie. Both parents were native to Penn­sylvania; his father was of Dutch-Irish stock and his mother of Irish descent. Their only other child, Harold, died before John was born. John Beaver Mertie, Sr., was a black­smith foreman for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the Baltimore shops where he was renowned for his skill at manually welding heavy bar stock through the use of 16- and 24-pound sledge hammers. The father’s great physical strength was inherited by the son. The two enjoyed strenuous bicycle trips of a Sunday, and in later years John recalled that his father’s bicycle was equipped with special gears of a ratio too stiff for other men to pedal.

In 1904 the father joined the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad as a black­smith foreman at Raton, New Mexico. The parents moved to Raton, leaving young Mertie to continue his public school education at Baltimore City College (a high school) from which he graduated in 1905. That fall he entered The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to study chemistry, and he subsequently took all the undergraduate courses in chemistry. In his senior year Mertie attended lectures in geology given by Dr. Charles K. Swartz. The subject interested him so greatly that he changed his field to geology. Mertie received an A.B. degree in 1908 and a Ph.D. degree in 1911 in geology at the age of 23. He was also elected to the Johns Hopkins Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

In his last year at Johns Hopkins, Mertie received a University Fellowship for $500, but most of his undergraduate expenses were paid from salary he received in the summers of 1904-1907, when he lived with his parents in Raton and worked in the railroad shops, starting as a machinist’s helper at the age of 16. In the succeeding summers he became a skilled lathe operator and rose to machinist. During this time he learned to drive a steam locomotive, but it was not until 40 years later that he acquired his first motor vehicle driver’s license.

2 TH E GEOLOGICA L SOCIETY O F AM ERICA

His funds for graduate school were earned in part-time summer employment with the USGS, beginning in 1908 as a rodman in the field party of George B. Richardson, who was mapping the Trinidad coal deposits of southeastern Colorado. In the spring of 1909 Mertie passed the U.S. Civil Service examination for junior geologist to which position he was appointed in the USGS on August 2, 1910. During the summers of 1909 and 1910 Mertie was geologic field assistant to Willis T. Lee in central and southeastern Colorado and in northeastern New Mexico. This fieldwork provided material for his Ph.D. disserta­tion “Lavas of the Raton Mesa region,” which was later incorporated by Lee into the text of the Raton, N. Mex., geologic folio (number 214). Professor Harry Fielding Reed, who had worked in Alaska in the 1890s, influenced Mertie with a 2-year course that covered a wide range of physical topics related to geology, including astronomy and geodesy, which benefited Mertie in his later work in unexplored country.

On July 3, 1912, John B. Mertie, Jr., married Mary Brice Garrish of Baltimore County, Md. They were the same age and had known one another from the time they were 5 years old. Mary passed away May 12, 1965. John and Mary’s only child, Robert Beaver Mertie, was born September 16, 1918, and died on May 21, 1947. Robert married Mary Margaret Odebrecht, who died January 31, 1950, and their one son, Robert Beaver Mertie, Jr., resides with his wife Natalie and two children, Marianne and Scott Robert Mertie, in Westerville, Ohio. On October 26, 1966, John B. Mertie, Jr., married Evelyn Cisney (nee Saladino), a physicist formerly in the Branch of Geochemistry and Petrology, USGS. Mrs. Evelyn Mertie lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Mertie’s attachment to a vigorous outdoor life influenced his decision to become a geologist instead of a chemist and was evident in the sports in which he participated— swimming and lacrosse—as well as his lifelong hobby of photography. Mertie later acquired interests in radio and in botany, both of which figured in his subsequent work. His collections of arctic flora were preserved in the field by the use of a half-size plant press that he always carried as part of his field equipment, even during one summer when he backpacked alone through central Alaska. During his years in Alaska he discovered a number of arctic plant species, several of which were named after him.

Mertie entered the USGS on a permanent basis as a petrographer in the spring of 1911 and was assigned, at his request, to the Alaskan Division (now the Branch of Alas­kan Geology). For many years he did microscopic petrography for other geologists in the Division, as well as his own work, because in those days training in the use of the petro- graphic microscope was not common. This assignment initiated his career in Alaska which continued through 1942, with two interruptions, and in other parts of the United States through 1975.

Mertie began Alaskan field studies in the spring of 1911 as assistant to Louis M. Prindle in the Yukon-Tanana region. Prindle had worked 6 years in that area, and 1911 was his final season before he transferred to the eastern United States. Thus, Mertie was introduced to the region in which he conducted about half of his subsequent Alaskan investigations. However, he did not return for several years owing to demands for other Alaskan investigations and to the customary apprenticeship expected of junior geologists. In order to learn how to operate efficiently in Alaska, a junior geologist served three or four field seasons as assistant to senior geologists before leading his own party. After the1911 season, Mertie spent two seasons with F. H. Moffit in the Copper River region and one with George C. Martin in the upper Matanuska Valley before starting on his own.

In 1915 Mertie, with an assistant geologist and two topographers, undertook topo­graphic and geologic mapping and investigations of the placer gold deposits and mining activities in the rapidly developing region between Ruby and the Iditarod district. Such combined field parties were generally used in Alaskan work until 1941. From 1916

M EM ORIAL TO JO H N BEA V ER M ERTIE, JR . 3

through 1919 investigations of gold, platinum, and various strategic mineral deposits in the southeastern, southern, central, and Seward Peninsula regions of Alaska occupied Mertie’s time. In 1921 he returned to the Yukon-Tanana region and began systematic geologic mapping of this region and studies of the placer gold deposits that would con­tinue through 1931, except for 1924. On foot and with pack-horse trains he traversed most of east-central Alaska between the Tanana River and the Brooks Range and did additional geologic work in this region in 1936, 1938, 1941, and 1942. In all, he spent 16 field seasons in this region of over 50,000 square miles (slightly larger than New York state), published many reports and maps covering parts of the region, and in 1937 pub­lished Bulletin 872, an eclectic summary and interpretation of the stratigraphy, igneous petrology, mineralization, and geologic history of the Yukon-Tanana region. This major contribution to knowledge of Alaskan regional geology is still widely used and has pro­vided a base for the geologic work in this region in the following 40 years.

Mertie’s expertise in Alaskan reconnaissance geologic mapping and field logistics were put to full use in 1924 when he and P. S. Smith, with two topographers and several assistants, led a geologic expedition to northern Alaska and the newly established Naval Petroleum Reserve #4. The party started from Nenana in early February and ended at Barrow in late August. This journey of more than 700 miles through largely unmapped country required arduous daily foot travel, sometimes in deep sub-zero cold, as well as transportation of men and supplies by horse-drawn freight sledge, dog-team sled train, and canoes. In Bulletin 815 Smith and Mertie presented a comprehensive synthesis of the geography, geology, and mineral resources of northwestern Alaska, describing and inter­preting the many rock units and the geologic history of this vast region. Published in 1930, it is still a useful reference and was invaluable to the geologists who conducted detailed geologic and petroleum investigations in northern Alaska in 1945 and later years.

Mertie revisited the Ruby-Iditarod region in 1933, a year in which the Alaskan Branch budget had been cut drastically. Working with five hundred dollars for field expenses, he backpacked alone from Ruby to Flat, walking certainly no less than 400 miles, visiting and compiling a wealth of geologic and mining data on the many placer gold mining operations throughout this region. His Bulletin 864-C resulting from this traverse is still the best source of information on the mineral deposits of this region. In 1934, with a pack-horse train, Mertie extended geologic coverage of this region to the northwest by mapping approximately 2,400 square miles in the Kaiyuh Hills in 2 months.

Shifting to southwestern Alaska in 1935, Mertie completed geologic mapping of the Nushagak district and in 1937 studied the geology and placer platinum deposits of the Goodnews Bay area, a study and area he was to return to about 30 years later. As the war in Europe loomed more ominously, USGS investigations were directed to domestic stra­tegic and critical mineral resources, and as part of this program Mertie undertook studies of the tin deposits at the west tip of the Seward Peninsula in 1939 and 1940, and of potential chromium, tungsten, and antimony resources in the Eagle and Fairbanks dis­tricts in 1942.

The pioneering geologic mapping and the studies of lode and placer mineral deposits in Alaska by Mertie demonstrated his thorough understanding of geology and an out­standing ability to derive valid geologic interpretations and guidelines for mineral explo­ration from the relatively few observations and sample collections that could be made on long, difficult reconnaissance traverses. He defined many of the rock units of Precambrian through Cenozoic age in central and northwestern Alaska, and a number of these units remain in current usage. In addition to a sound scientific training and wide range of scientific interests, his accomplishments reflect his dedication, resourcefulness, physical endurance, and the rapport he developed with prospectors, miners, and other

4 THE G EO LO G ICA L SOCIETY O F AMERICA

Alaskans who held him in high regard and often supplied him with information and assistance. Mertie pioneered in other field methods, making use of the early airplanes and Alaskan bush-pilots in the 1930s, and in the late 1920s he was the first to use short-wave radio for communication between his field party and an established radio operator in a small Alaskan village.

The first interruption of Mertie’s Alaskan work was in 1917-1918 when he was assigned with a senior member of the Alaskan Division, Fred H. Moffit, to the Topogra­phic Branch of the USGS to conduct research in collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on aerial photogrammetry. This work, which is described in Mertie’s 1958 memorial to Moffit for the Geological Society of America, was conducted both in Washington, D.C., and at Langley Field, Va., where Mertie’s share included all the flight testing of processes and equipment, the construction of a photographic research labora­tory, and instructing Army officers in the use of aerial photography. The photogrammet- ric investigations stimulated Mertie’s interest in mathematics. Later, as time permitted, he toolc seven correspondence courses in this subject from the University of Chicago, the last of which—theory of equations—was completed in February 1962, 4 years after his man­datory retirement. Indeed, at the time of his death he was writing a paper on the theory of numbers, which had engaged his attention since 1975.

The second interruption of his Alaskan work was from June 1920 to June 1921 when he served in South America as an exploration geologist for the Carter Oil Company. At that time both the Director of the USGS and the Secretary of the Interior thought that it was in the public interest to have a Survey geologist go abroad to widen his outlook on geology and on life in general. Thus, leave was granted for Mertie and four other geolo­gists, and the party, under Eugene Stebinger, went by ship from New York to Mollendo in Peru to make railroad connections for Cochabamba, Bolivia. In Cochabamba the party hired mules and started a geologic traverse 250 miles across the mountains to Santa Cruz in the eastern foothills of the Bolivian Andes. At Santa Cruz the party divided, and Mertie made an eastward traverse 450 miles by muleback across the Gran Chaco to Puerto Suarez on the Paraguay River. The muleback traverses were carefully conducted time-and-compass surveys. In the early 1950s, Mertie received a letter from the American Geographical Society in New York, then preparing the 1:1,000,000 geographic maps of South America, complimenting him for the precision of his locations of river junctions in the Gran Chaco as depicted on his maps for the Carter Oil Company.

In 1943 Mertie was transferred at his own request to the Geologic Branch (into what is now the Branch of Eastern Mineral Resources) of the USGS and commenced investiga­tions that were to occupy him until retirement and for many years thereafter. For 8 months that year he explored in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama for oscillator quartz, which was used to control radio frequencies and was in short supply during World War II. Mrs. Mertie drove for him on what was their first fieldwork together. Field tests to identify quartz that was free from twinning soon dis­closed that the only material suitable for oscillators occurred as nested aggregates of secondary quartz in residual soil and saprolite developed on granitic rocks, gneisses, and schists. The absence of associated veins, and the wispy screens and inclusions of clay in the quartz, which reminded Mertie of ground ice in Alaska, provided the field evidence for his interpretation that this form of quartz grew in place through precipitation from ground water of shallow circulation during rock weathering. These processes were des­cribed in Bulletin 1072-D issued in 1959. More immediately, however, for wartime needs, many pounds of quartz were mailed from the field by Mertie, at personal expense, to the U.S. National Bureau of Standards for final testing. Appropriate correspondence insured that the landowner on whose farm the quartz was found received payment from the U.S.

M EM O RIAL TO JO H N BEAVER M ERTIE, JR . 5

Metals Reserve Corporation when the Bureau of Standards certified that the quartz was of oscillator grade.

A preliminary appraisal of the gold placers in Idaho, California, and Oregon was made by Mertie during 1944, but wartime priorities closed off this work before it was com­pleted, and Mertie was asked to make a reconnaissance evaluation of placer deposits of monazite in the southeastern United States. This was accomplished in 1944-1945 with trips to the Coastal Plain and beach deposits from North Carolina to Florida and to the long-known alluvial deposits in the western Piedmont of the Carolinas. Clarence Ross and C. Wythe Cooke were associated with Mertie in the reconnaissance of the Coastal Plain in 1944. Mrs. Mertie accompanied him in 1945 during his initial exploration of the alluvial placers in the Piedmont, and each year from 1947 to 1957 in subsequent investigations of monazite in granitic rocks in the southeastern Atlantic States. Acknowledgment of her help was made in Professional Paper 1904 where Mertie wrote: “The work described in this report was done by the writer alone. . . . However, the writer was accompanied on all field trips from 1945 to 1957 . . . by his wife, who as an unpaid worker rendered material assistance in driving, recording traverses, aiding in the collection of samples, and in performing many of the necessary chores associated with the project and conventionally undertaken by field assistants.”

Mertie collaborated with Richard P. Fischer and S. Warren Hobbs in 1946 on geo­logic mapping of the Canyon Ferry quadrangle, Montana. In 1947 he returned to the problem of determining the source rocks for detrital monazite in the alluvial placers of the Piedmont and Blue Ridge. These sources, he thought, could be found by the use of pan­ning techniques like those employed in Brazil during the 1890s by Orville A. Derby, in England in the 1920s by Alfred Brammall, and in the Southeastern States during 1934—1935 by his early mentor, Louis M. Prindle, who, working with J. T. Pardee and C. F. Park, Jr., identified and correlated deeply weathered crystalline rocks through the minera- logic composition of concentrates panned from residual soil and saprolite (Professional Paper 213). Starting in 1947 at the sites of former placer mining for monazite in North Carolina, and working outward along and across strike, Mertie panned 55,415 pounds of saprolite and pulverized unweathered granitic rock from 677 sites in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama by the close of the 1957 field season. From the distribution of monazite in the panned concentrates, Mertie defined three great belts of northeasterly trending monazite-bearing rocks with an aggregate length of 1,650 miles of which only a 160-mile segment had been previously identified. He also derived mineralogic criteria to permit interpretation of the igneous or metasedimentary origin of granitic rocks from the character of the concentrates. This lengthy investigation, described in Professional Paper 1094, is an exemplary demonstration of the use of heavy minerals in geologic exploration.

At his mandatory retirement on January 28, 1958, John Beaver Mertie, Jr., was given the Distinguished Service Award of the Department of the Interior for his contributions to the knowledge of the geology of Alaska, to the development of photogrammetry, and to an understanding of sources for monazite and zircon. On February 14, 1958, he was reappointed on a part-time basis and so continued until December 31, 1975. During this time Mertie completed major professional papers on monazite in the southeastern states, the geology and world resources of platinum metals, and the geology of the Goodnews Bay district platinum placers in Alaska. The Goodnews Bay Mining Company and the USGS offered Mertie the opportunity to return in 1966, 1968, and 1969 to restudy the platinum deposit that he first examined in 1937 when it was being opened, and thus at ages 78 to 81 he conducted the fieldwork for his third report on the Goodnews Bay district. In tribute to him, G. A. Desborough and co-workers in 1973 assigned the name

6 THE GEO LO G ICA L SOCIETY O I; AMERICA

mertieite to a new palladium mineral from the Goodncws Bay district. Mertie’s interest in arctic flora remained lively as ever, and his 1966-1969 collections of plants from the Goodnews Bay area were given to the U.S. National Herbarium.

John Beaver Mertie, Jr., was a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, a char­ter member of the Society of Economic Geologists, and a member of the Mineralógica] Society of America, Mathematical Association of America, the Geochemical Society, and Geological Society of Washington (President, 1939). He was the author of more than 70 scientific publications and was the field supervisor of many junior geologists during their apprentice years who later had distinguished careers in the USGS, private industry, or the academic world.

AcknowledgmentsThe writers wish to thank Mrs. Evelyn Mertie fo r giving them access to a manuscript

titled "Life and professional activities o f John Beaver Mertie, Jr.," which he had prepared as a modest summary o f his career through 1963. Our appreciation is also expressed toA. Richard Tagg, USGS, fo r making available to us a transcript o f his interviews with Dr. Mertie which were tape-recorded in April 1978 as part o f the USGS oral history program.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF J. B. MERTIE, JR .1912 (with Prindle, L. M.) Gold placers between Woodchopper and Fourth of July

Creeks, upper Yukon River, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 520-G, p. 201-210.

1914 (with Martin, G. C.) Mineral resources of the upper Matanuska and Nelchina valleys, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 592-H, p. 273-299.

1916 (and Harrington, G. L.) Mineral resources of the Ruby-Kuskokwim region, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 642-H, p. 223-266.

1918 The gold placers of the Tolovana district, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 662-D, p. 221-277.

----- Lode mining in the Fairbanks district, Alaska: United States Geological SurveyBulletin 662-H, p. 403-424.

----- Lode mining and prospecting on Seward Peninsula, Alaska: United StatesGeological Survey Bulletin 662-1, p. 425-449.

1919 Present status of photographic mapping from the air: Engineering News-Record, v. 82, p. 996-999.

----- Platinum-bearing gold placers of the Kahiltna Valley, Alaska: United StatesGeological Survey Bulletin 692-D, p. 233-264.

1921 Lode mining in the Juneau and Ketchikan districts, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 714-B, p. 105-128.

1922 Graphic and mechanical computation of thickness of strata and distance to a stratum: United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 129-C, p. 39-52.

1923 The occurrence of metalliferous deposits in the Yukon and Kuskokwim regions, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 739-D, p. 149-165.

----- (with Moffit, F. H.) The Kotsina-Kuskulana district, Alaska: United StatesGeological Survey Bulletin 745, 149 p.

1924 (and Harrington, G. L.) The Ruby-Kuskokwim region, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 754, 129 p.

1925 Geology and gold placers of the Chandalar district, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 773-E, p. 215-263.

1930 The Chandalar-Sheenjek district, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 810-B, p. 87-139.

M EM O RIAL TO JO H N BEA V ER M ERTIE, JR . 7

----- Geology of the Eagle-Circle district, Alaska: United States Geological SurveyBulletin 816, 168 p.

----- (with Smith, P. S.) Geology and mineral resources of northwestern Alaska: UnitedStates Geological Survey Bulletin 815, 351 p.

1931 A geologic reconnaissance of the Dennison Fork district, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 827, 44 p.

1933 The Tatonduk-Nation district, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 836-E, p. 347-443.

----- Notes on the geography and geology of Lituya Bay, Alaska: United StatesGeological Survey Bulletin 836-B, p. 117-135.

1934 Mineral deposits of the Rampart and Hot Springs districts, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 844-D, p. 163-226.

1936 Mineral deposits of the Ruby-Kuskokwim region, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 864-C, p. 115-245.

1937 The Kaiyuh Hills, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 868-D, p. 145-177.

----- The Yukon-Tanana region, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 872,276 p.

1938 The Nushagak district, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 903, 96 p.----- Gold placers of the Fortymile, Eagle, and Circle districts, Alaska: United States

Geological Survey Bulletin 897-C, p. 133-261.1940 The Goodnews platinum deposits, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Bulletin

918, 97 p.----- Placer gold in Alaska (Presidential address, Geological Society of Washington):

Washington Academy of Sciences, v. 30, no. 3, p. 93-124.----- Stratigraphic measurements in parallel folds: Geological Society of America

Bulletin, v. 51, p. 1107-1134.1942 Tertiary deposits of the Eagle-Circle district, Alaska: United States Geological

Survey Bulletin 917-D, p. 213-264.----- Nomograms of optic angle formulae: American Mineralogist, v. 27, p. 538-551.1943 Structural determinations from diamond drilling: Economic Geology, v. 38, no. 4,

p. 298-312.----- Calculation of stratigraphic thickness in parallel folds: American Association

of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 28, no. 9, p. 1376-1386.1947 Delineation of parallel folds, and measurement of stratigraphic dimensions:

Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 58, p. 779-802.1948 Application of Brianchon’s theorem to construction of geologic profiles: Geological

Society of America Bulletin, v. 59, p. 767-786.1949 Monazite, in Industrial minerals and rocks: New York, American Institute of

Mining Engineers, p. 629-636.----- Charting five and six variables on the bounding tetrahedra of hypertetrahedra:

American Mineralogist, v. 34, p. 706-716.1952 (and Fischer, R. P., and Hobbs, S. W.) Geology of the Canyon Ferry quadrangle,

Montana: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 972, 97 p.1954 The gold pan: A neglected geological tool: Economic Geology, v. 49, no. 6,

p. 639-651.1958 Zirconium and hafnium in the southeastern Atlantic States: United States

Geological Survey Bulletin 1082-A, p. 1-28.1959 Classification, delineation, and measurement of nonparallel folds: United States

Geological Survey Professional Paper 314-E, p. 91-124.

1959 Quartz crystal deposits of southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina:United States Geological Survey Bulletin 1072-D, p. 233-298.

----- Memorial to Fred Howard Moffit: Geological Society of America ProceedingsVolume for 1958, p. 157-159.

1964 Transformation of trilinear and quadriplanar coordinates to and from cartesian coordinates: American Mineralogist, v. 49, p. 926-936.

----- A method of classifying analyses with any number of terms: American Mineralogist,v. 49, p. 1306-1320.

1969 Economic geology of the platinum metals: United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 630, 120 p.

1975 Monazite placers of the southeastern Atlantic States: United States Geological Survey Bulletin 1390, 41 p.

1976 Platinum deposits of the Goodnews Bay district, Alaska: United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 938, 42 p.

1979 Monazite in the granitic rocks of the southeastern Atlantic States—an example of the use of heavy minerals in geologic exploration: United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 1094, 79 p.

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Printed in U.S.A. 11/81