A Passion For Gold: An Autobiography

3. Sonoma Range, 1939–1942

Chapter 3 Sonoma Range 1939–1942 What do I feel? The way you feel when you come to the top of a ridge and look down across miles and miles of land you have never seen (before). . . . the pleasant sound of running water, the way the leaves turn red in the fall. —louis l’amour, Westward the Tide He said there was one only good, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance. —diogenes While I was working in the field, cresting the ridge was always important to me, for then I could take a breather, and look ahead across the valley. It generally happened about midday; then I would have lunch and plan the afternoon. When Warren Hobbs and I left New Haven in June 1939, we took the train to Flint, Michigan, where we picked up a new car that we were to drive out to Mackin at the University of Washington. From Flint we headed for Helena, Montana; Warren wanted to visit his fiancée, Arleda Allen. They had met when Warren was working as field assistant to Maxwell Knechtel of the usgs in the Little Rocky Mountains and had become engaged the previous summer. When I met Arleda I was immediately impressed with her beauty, selfpossession , and cordiality. Our eyes met and held for a long moment. She was wearing Warren’s ring, but her greeting to him seemed re- strained. She introduced us to her roommate—the girl I was supposed to escort around Helena for the next few days. I do not remember much about that visit, except that I was drawn to Arleda. Since she was Warren’s girl, I tried not to let my feelings show, but I suspect that she knew I found her attractive, and I sensed that she was interested in me. As Warren and I both had summer jobs with the usgs, we stayed in Helena only three days. When we reached Seattle, Mackin was a little puzzled about the excess mileage acquired on our trip, but Warren gave him a satisfactory answer. I only knew that I was enormously glad to have met Arleda. A couple of weeks later I boarded a bus for Nevada, where I had accepted a position as junior geologist in the Metals Branch of the usgs under D. Foster Hewett. My first assignment was a new project in Nevada under the overall direction of Henry G. (Fergie) Ferguson. Our job was to map the geology of the Sonoma Range one-degree quadrangle (a quadrangle is a rectangular map area; a one-degree quadrangle runs one-degree latitude and one-degree longitude. At the latitude of Nevada, it covers about seventy miles from north to south and fifty miles from east to west, about thirty-five hundred square miles). We were to make the map, assemble a geologic framework of the region, and study the mineral deposits. I now had a full-time job with the usgs at a salary of two thousand dollars per year plus field expenses . Not bad for those days! When I stepped off the bus on July 4, 1939, in Winnemucca, Nevada , a blast of hot, dry air and Henry Ferguson greeted me. He quietly said, “Hello, I’m Fergie.” He was short, about five feet, four inches, and his unassuming, almost shy personality immediately put me at ease. I soon learned that his self-effacing manner hid a great intellect. Siemon (Si) Muller, professor of geology (paleontology) at Stanford University, was with Fergie. I sensed that I was in the right place to learn a lot of field geology. We went to Bob’s Cafe in Winnemucca for a quick lunch, and Fergie exclaimed, “We want to go out to the East Range to look at the Triassic rocks there.” Si, a specialist in Triassic rocks and faunas, had worked in the Sonoma Range south of Winnemucca previously, but Sonoma Range, 1939–1942 29 Map 3.1. Principal mining districts and cities of Nevada. he had never had a chance to look at the East Range. On that first, brief trip, we found what Si was looking for—Triassic formations identical to those he had studied in the Sonoma Range. I got a serious blister on my heel during the hike but didn’t complain. I found out right away that we were going to tackle the geology of the Sonoma Range quadrangle head on! The...