U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 96-260

Wallace: With the war over, I began to think about my long-term interest in teaching, so I left the Survey to teach in Pullman, Washington, at Washington State College (now University). But while on the permafrost story, I will continue one more step. While at Pullman, I was visited by a Colonel Orr of the Air Force, who wanted me to head up a snow, ice and permafrost investigation group that they were starting. I understand it later became a big operation in the Air Force.

Scott: The Air Force asked you to move into a long-term permafrost and cold environment program?

Wallace: Yes. Also it involved a grade or two raise from what the Survey was paying. I said, "Yes, that might be interesting." I signed all the papers, but then never heard another word. More than a year later, I received an inquiry from another Air Force person. He told me that Colonel Orr had been killed in a parachuting accident, and said that in sorting through Orr's papers, they had found my application, which obviously had never been acted upon. Was I still interested? By then, I said, "No." That was one of those quirks of fate--a decision made for me. I would have gone with the Air Force, but because of an Air Force colonel's accident in practicing parachute jumps, my future life had been changed.

Scott: Save for that Colonel's fatal accident, you probably would have embarked on a career with the Air Force?

Wallace: Yes. So I taught at Pullman for five years, from the Fall of 1946 through the Spring of 1951.

Scott: Had you especially sought employment at Washington State?

Wallace: I applied for a post at Pullman and also at Redlands, I believe. Redlands, as a strongly religious school, did not like my religious credentials, i.e. my lack of any church affiliation. Washington State hired me as an assistant professor at a salary of $3,000 for a nine-month school year.

Scott: When you went in, was it with the thought of doing a stint of teaching, and then coming back to the U.S. Geological Survey later? Or did you intend to give teaching a try, and decide later after you had a chance to see how it went?

Wallace: It was more the latter, to give teaching a try. Inasmuch as I was from a family of teachers, my father, mother, and an aunt had been teachers, I knew that teaching was a fine, rewarding career. Both my father and mother got so much out of teaching, my mother especially, that I decided, "I'd better give it a try." But I believe I went into it thinking, "This is my life--I'm going into teaching."

Scott: What subjects did you teach at Washington State?

Wallace: I considered myself primarily a structural geologist with major interests in mineralogy and petrology. So I taught classes in structural geology and beginning mineralogy. But the department had a course in crystallography on the books and I agreed to teach that, although I had only elementary courses in crystallography myself.

I had to do considerable study and decided to use the class as an exercise in viewing things in 3-D, as well as a simple adjunct to mineralogy as the department wanted it. That approach also helped students in structural geology as well, inasmuch as for most of structural analyses, one must have a keen sense for picturing three dimensions. We used the stereographic projection for displaying crystal faces and internal structure. I also emphasized 3-D drawing in perspective, orthographic construction, etc. I must admit I benefitted as much as the students--assuming of course that they did benefit.

Scott: Probably a lot of teachers find teaching a powerful learning exercise for themselves. What other courses did you give?

Wallace: We had only five or six full-time staff at any one time, and about a half dozen teaching assistants out of about fifteen graduate students--a nice small family. As a result I took on several other teaching tasks, partly for my own amusement. They included physiography of the United States, structure of the Western US, and, the most difficult, vertebrate paleontology. I even had the gall to teach a class in geologic report preparation. (From grade school on, I have never been able to spell well, even after an all-out effort in graduate school. I can see no rationality to spelling.)

Scott: Teaching such a variety of subjects must have been quite a load.

Wallace: It was an enormous teaching load in comparison to what professors at the larger schools carry, today at least. Several of the students expressed great interest in vertebrate paleontology, and the department had a fine vertebrate collection, so I was conscripted to take on the class. I had done a thesis in vertebrate paleontology, but that was of limited breadth compared to what should be in a course. It was a lot of fun even though a lot of work. The students and I learned together.

Scott: You pointed out earlier that the best teaching is not just lecturing, but a combined effort by teacher and student, working together.

Wallace: Yes. The class and I had one really great success, working together. I once said glibly, "Let's go find a mammoth tooth." The next weekend out we went to find a mammoth in the Palouse. We followed some of the search techniques I learned under Chester Stock, and amazingly, by early afternoon we found a mammoth tooth! Excitement reigned.

We had good students there at Pullman. With small classes one can't help getting well acquainted. Several became very successful with careers in the USGS,...including Don Peterson, George Becraft, Bob Schuster, Willard Puffett, and Tom Cheney, who later went with private industry in South America. Others went on to teach and into industry. Very gratifying.

Scott: But you did give this up and return to the USGS?

Wallace: Yes. After five years of teaching I realized that my love of exploration and of research was too strong to deny, and I had also found the teaching load very trying. Moreover while I was at Pullman I had never really disconnected from the Survey. During my second, third and fourth year there, I was with USGS every summer doing field work in the Coeur d'Alene mining district of northern Idaho. Also while at Pullman, we developed strong friendships with the USGS group headquartered in Spokane, Washington. So we had a very close association with the Survey all through those years. By 1951 I knew I wanted to go back to the Survey, and good friends arranged for me to return full-time.

Scott: Talk a little about that summer work. Was it related to mining?

Wallace: Yes, the Coeur d'Alene mining district has produced several billions of dollars worth of lead, zinc, and silver. Warren Hobbs and Allan Griggs were the co-leaders of the USGS project, many others worked directly on it, and still others carried out specialty studies in geochemistry, metamorphism and ore minerals.

Scott: It must have been a major USGS effort.

Wallace: It was, and it stretched over many years. While I was at Pullman, I worked as what was called a WAE employee--the acronym meaning "when actually employed." It has been a very common practice for the USGS to use university faculty members as part-time employees. It helps the USGS and also keeps academic people abreast of new field findings, giving them material for professional writing and teaching.

Scott: When did you work on the Coeur d'Alene project?

Wallace: I first joined the project in 1948, but even after moving to Menlo Park in 1956 I was still involved with the major report. Meanwhile in 1952, along with John Hosterman, I had extended our project into Mineral County Montana. We completed a report on that work the next year, and it was published as a USGS Bulletin.

The major report appeared as a USGS Professional Paper, co-authored by Hobbs, Griggs, Wallace and Art Campbell. Vern Fryklund also did a separate Professional Paper. Preparation of our report stretched into 1956-1957, well after I had returned to the USGS full time. Allan Griggs became the spearhead for the final report and carried out the main work that brought it to completion. Somewhat strangely perhaps, although I had been only part time on the project field work, I ended up writing almost all of section on structural geology, which amounted to most of the pages in the report.

Scott: Would you care to comment on the considerable length of time it took to get the report completed and published?

Wallace: The difficulties of field studies, learning about the geology, the rock types, the significance of structural relations of rocks, identifying and defining faults and folds. Writing such a report is always a research-type of exercise on the forefront of knowledge. With all the intellectual effort required, the report preparation is no mean task. It is difficult to describe all of the complex steps, especially when precise, colored geologic maps are to be a major product. Problems included obtaining good base maps, printed on stable materials on which to draft the geology.

The stability is needed so that registry will be possible of perhaps 50 or more colors representing different rock types in final printing. Maps of the underground workings of mines must be alined from one working level to another. On this project we used base maps printed on excellent rag paper permanently mounted on metal sheeting. We did hand-drafting from field sheets, mine maps, and the like--it was the only way to compile the data and present geometric interpretations. Newer techniques are becoming available, but maps are still a complex problem in editing and publication.

Wallace: The complexities and agonies of bringing major reports to completion could be a subject for an in-depth statement. You would have to talk about the psychology of authors, the diversion of authors to other momentarily more important priorities, the ebb and flow of editorial staff, and the frequent lack of capabilities at the printing and publishing end, whether within USGS or in outside contract companies. Such problems have often been encountered in publishing colored geologic maps, which are inherently complex. Some geologic maps depict a hundred or more rock types and structures, and precise color rendition of those is very difficult. With the new computer methods now coming into being, several processes seem promising, but nothing is standardized or universally suitable yet.

Wallace: The geologic theme of my life has been structural geology and faulting, so I was fascinated by the great Osburn fault, which dominates the Coeur d'Alene district and greatly influences the distribution of ore bodies. In many ways the Osburn fault is like the San Andreas fault on which I was weaned, except that the Osburn fault has only 25-28 km of slip instead of the hundreds of kilometers on the San Andreas fault. Nevertheless, the Osburn is a fine analogy of the San Andreas. Because of the mine shafts and tunnels that cut the Osburn fault, we were able to explore this great fault in 3-D to depths of a mile or more. We could feel it, see it, sample it, even taste it, as is rarely possible with other great faults.

For many years, I tried to organize a field trip of geophysicists and geologists who had no concept of what a real fault is like. Many theoreticians, especially, need that kind of exposure to the real world. To many, a fault is just a simple plane as seen on a computer screen, rather than the complex mess of irregular fractures and broken rock seen in a mine. It would help many of them if they could personally pluck out some plastic gouge and mould it in their hands, find water pouring into a tunnel where they least expect it, or find a branch fault onto which most of the displacement had shifted.

Wallace: Examining things underground is not, however, as simple as it might seem. The walls are commonly covered by dust from blasting and drilling of the mine face, so washing is often needed. Rocks don't look just right under a carbide light, or even a regular electric mine light, and careful chipping with a hammer is standard practice to examine fresh surfaces. For good identification the chips or samples may require the preparation of thin sections and analysis under a petrographic microscope.

Then, too, when first starting to work underground, one's initial apprehension is not easily dispelled. Moreover, anyone underground in a mine needs to be on the lookout for hazards such as "widow makers"--large blocks that could fall on someone passing underneath--or abandoned shafts that must be edged around to keep from falling, perhaps a thousand feet. I grew to love underground work, but taking a group of inexperienced people underground for only a day or two is seldom enough to give a usually lab-bound theoretician the insight needed.

Scott: The underground environment is intimidating at first, but with experience you learn to deal with it.

Wallace: Yes, including "bad air," which is another underground hazard. "Bad air" means air that has little or no oxygen, which has usually been taken up by rotting mine timbers, or minerals that combine with oxygen readily to form oxides ("rusting"). On two occasions I nearly "got it" by entering bad air, but with experience, and using candles, matches, etc., as indicators of air quality, we got to know just about where to expect bad air.

Under conditions of poor or nonexistent air circulation, we knew that on entering a tunnel, crosscut or drift, we would find bad air beyond rotted timber that extended for more than a few tens of feet along the tunnel. Unfortunately, carbide lights are not helpful as they use acetylene, which burns brightly in air bad enough to make me feel faint--air in which a candle or match would not burn. While concentrating on fascinating geological puzzles, it is easy to forget about such mundane things as oxygen content of air.

To recapitulate, the teaching at Washington State College was from 1946 to 1951, but summers from '48 to '51 were devoted to work with the Geological Survey.

Scott: Would you say a little more about the problem of meshing theory and real-world observation? You have been alluding to some of the difficulties of doing that.

Wallace: Yes, it is inherently difficult. I have devoted a lot of effort to trying to bring different disciplines together. Geologists and geophysicists really need each other's insights, but often do not see eye-to-eye. The geologist may be more comfortable with the complexities of the real world. On the other hand, those who wish to quantify things and deal with them mathematically, usually must simplify questions in order to treat them mathematically.

Many examples can be cited in which known physical or chemical principles seem to rule out an interpretation of field data, but later field observations demonstrate that the interpretation was correct, and what was ruled out theoretically, indeed did happen in nature. So, although it may seem facetious, I like to say: "If it happened, it must be possible." Plate tectonics and large-scale gravitional sliding are two things now accepted that at one time seemed improbable, if not impossible.

Scott: Most people have at least some idea of plate tectonics, but I am not familiar with the concept of "large-scale gravitational sliding".

Wallace: Well, most people have some idea of landsliding, as along road cuts, but the same process can happen at much larger scales. In Tadzikistan just south of Garm, Igor Nersesov treated me to a helicopter ride over the Peter the First Range. The whole north flank of the Peter the First Range apparently is sliding to the north along beds of gypsum and similar materials. At the range crest, at the head of the slide, is an area of "pull apart".

A similar gravity-driven block, the Heart Mountain detachment, can be found in the Absarokee Mountains east of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. There Bill Pierce described a block of rocks a hundred kilometers long, fifty kilometers wide and one to two thousand meters thick. The block has slid on slopes of only a degree or so and moved eastward tens of kilometers. Many geologists see reasons to interpret subcontinent-size blocks as having moved great distances by gravitational forces. Dr. Rein W. Van Bemmelen of the University of Utrech and others early championed this concept.

The earth sciences have certainly become more quantitative, and properly so--but the real world is extremely complex. I coined the phrase, "synthesis of multiple suggestions" to characterize how geologists think.

Geologists seem to be comfortable working with a mixed range of facts, inferences, and fuzzy suggestions in developing a working hypothesis. Such a synthesized model can be much stronger than many of its individual elements, and is amenable to testing. Interpretations can be greatly improved by synthesizing ideas derived by different disciplines. Where different disciplines work side-by-side, as they do at USGS, great things can and do occur. I continue to emphasize that geologists and geophysicists need each other desperately.

Geologists and geophysicists are not the only groups who find it difficult to understand and appreciate each other. Jointly they have an even more difficult time getting through to the rest of the world--especially to those who set and administer policy, and to the lay public. The problem is generally referred to as one of "communications," using a term that itself is so overused and ambiguous as to be almost meaningless. But the point is that disciplines and groups come at problems so very differently.

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