Herbert Ernest Gregory Pioneer Geologist of Southern Utah

HERBERT ERNEST GREGORY PIONEER GEOLOGIST OF SOUTHERN UTAH

By Reed W. Farnsworth

It was my great privilege to have known Dr. Gregory over a period of thirteen years extending from 1939 to 1952. This was the period of his life ranging from age seventy until his death at age eighty-two. These would normally be considered the sunset years usually spent in reflection and easing off from taxing commitments and responsibilities. Not so with Dr. Gregory. He always acted as though he had never given any thought to the possibility that his life might someday come to an end. His home was wherever he hung his hat, and speaking of his hat, it invariably was a battered Field Ranger or Boy Scout type, which pyramided in die center and always appeared as though he were facing into a strong wind. It was usually tied with a lanyard beneath his chin. This habit was, no doubt, a practical one grown out of many seasons in the field on the windswept Colorado Plateau.

My association with Gregory (this was the name he preferred to be called) was not constant or continuous but intermittent, for his life gravitated about three magnetic poles. The first was Yale University where he held the Silliman Professorial Chair in Geology from 1904 to 1936; the second, the Hawaiian Islands where he was director of the Bishop Museum from 1919 to 1925; and third, the area of the Colorado Plateau from the Four Corners westward to Zion Park. He preferred to work in southern Utah from quarters furnished him by arrangements through the Department of Interior in Zion Park. It was during his return visits to Zion that I came to know him both professionally and as a friend and fellow explorer of this vast colorful area that he loved so well. It was my good fortune during these years to accompany him on one five-day pack trip into the tributaries of the Escalante River and two shorter trips into* the Navajo Reservation Area and Monument Valley.

It was on these trips, together with the many hours spent in his office and mine, that I gained such profound respect for this most fascinating man. I shall never forget the expression on his face one October afternoon as we were standing on a small ledge gazing out across the cleft of the Escalante River below us — toward the Water Pocket Fold and the Henry Mountains. His eyes sparkled like a child's on Christmas morning as the wind blew his straggly gray locks back from his face. He was seeing visions and dreaming dreams of the happy days he had spent in this area forty years earlier as a field geologist. He spent his eightieth birthday on this trip, and I feel sure he could not have enjoyed it more on any other spot on the globe.

Herbert Ernest Gregory was born at Middleville, Michigan, October 15, 1869, the eleventh of thirteen children — eight girls and five boys. His father, a descendant of migrant Scots, moved west from East Sparta, New York, at an early age and tried his hand at several ventures. Becoming increasingly troubled with asthma, he decided to move his family to Crete, in eastern Nebraska. His wife's brother, Herman Bross, a minister, had already settled in Crete. Nebraska had been admitted to statehood only two years before Gregory was born, and he was just seven years old when the family took up residence in Crete.

In 1881 when he was twelve his mother died. The death of the wife and mother created an emergency for the father and the younger children, and in the adjustments that followed Herbert was sent to live with another family, the Lamberts, who treated him as one of their own. His adolescent years were spent like those of most farm youths of the time. He milked cows, helped tend the sheep and other stock, took part in the hard work of the fields, and attended school in season. His younger brother remembers him as a boy of exceptional energy, a leader in school sports, fond of pranks, doing his lessons with little apparent effort. In due time he entered Doane College, a small school at Crete, in which some members of the Gregory family long kept an interest. But Herbert's stay was short; his entire class rebelled because of a supposed injustice to one of the members and left in a body via the side window. This window, no doubt, was viewed with a great deal of interest and amusement when Gregory was called back to Doane College a half century later to receive an honorary degree.

During his early school years he found time to play in the band, sometimes as a trumpet soloist, but preferring the bass horn. As he expressed it, "I liked to make a big noise." He also sang in the choir, cultivating a good baritone voice with an interest stimulated by his musical father. During these years he made at least one journey into the badlands of western Nebraska, where he found and dug out some fossil bones. He had some experience riding the range and made one trip as far west as Yellowstone Park. No doubt his interest in geology had its beginning in the early acquaintance with the striking geologic exhibits of Wyoming and western Nebraska.

In 1890 a few months before his twenty-first birthday, Gates College (located in Neligh, Nebraska, but no longer in existence) granted him the B.S. degree. Upon graduation he tried teaching as a career and for a time was superintendent of Chadron Academy in northwestern Nebraska. But he was ambitious to go further with his own education and went back to Gates for studies leading to an A.B. degree, which he received in 1895. One of his instructors at Gates was a Yale graduate who encouraged Herbert to go to New Haven, where he went as a "scrub senior." With one year of study he acquired his third bachelor's degree.

Gregory had a thoroughly good time and was well liked by his fellows during the New Haven student days. He was a born extrovert, friendly, talkative, full of good-natured banter. He was vigorous physically, walked with a swinging stride, his keen dark eyes registering everything and everyone around him. Usually he was in company, and his booming voice and infectious laugh drew attention. These qualities remained characteristic of him throughout his entire life. Pictures taken after his eightieth milestone show his face creased with mirth, his eyes keenly alert, his broad mouth twisted in relish as he spoke in the jocular vein.

At Yale Gregory chose his courses broadly; he was interested in biology, and during two years of his graduate study he helped pay his way by serving as assistant in the biology laboratory. In his third year he became instructor in physical geography, a subject to which he continued to give much of his thought and energy. This broad educational base served him well, for several of his manuscripts written later in southern Utah deal with population and sociological studies, cultural as well as geographic, in addition to geologic subjects. He was awarded his doctorate at Yale in 1899, served the next year as instructor in the Sheffield Scientific School, and in 1900 transferred to Yale College.

Gregory's advancement was rapid and his activities were phenomenal. The undergraduate program in geology was in need of reorganization, and he provided vigorous leadership at a critical time, as well as good teaching. In 1904 five years after his first appointment, he was made Silliman Professor of Geology, a title he kept until his retirement.

In 1900 Gregory was appointed assistant geologist in the United States Geological Survey, and he kept his connection with that organization through the rest of his life. It was a U.S. Geological Survey financed trip that I was privileged to make with him into the Escalante River region.

In 1909 he was asked to undertake a reconnaissance study of the vast Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, with the object of finding underground supplies of water badly needed for range animals in that arid region. It was this assignment that first brought him to his beloved Colorado Plateau and southern Utah. At this time the country was rugged and barren, as it is today, but there were no roads, and the surveying party had to travel by pack train. Grass for the pack animals was scant, and carrying feed for a long stay far from bases of supply was out of the question. The Navajos were suspicious of white men and had to be treated with exceptional care and understanding. It is a tribute to Gregory's resourcefulness and personality that he solved these physical and human problems in three long and arduous field seasons. As the work progressed his love of the plateau country grew, and in later years he seized every opportunity to study and map the high lands bordering the Colorado River and its tributaries. Many of his best scientific contributions are based on his field work in the plateaus from the region of the Four Corners westward to Zion Canyon.

Two principal publications came from his Navajo work: . . . The Navajo Country, a Geographic and Hydrographic Reconnaissance of Parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah (1916), Water Supply Paper 380; and . . . Geology of the Navajo Country, a Reconnaissance of Parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah (1917), Professional Paper 93. Several students who assisted him during one or another season testify to his unfailing energy and enthusiasm and to his pleasant companionship in field and camp. And there was no trouble with the Navajos — in fact the Indians, in their own strange ways demonstrated their friendship. Gregory, with characteristic drollery, cited proof of their gratitude for his efforts in their behalf. On one expedition far back into the reservation, his pack animals were confronted with starvation — their small store of grain was gone, and they could find practically no forage. As the party sat one evening around the campfire, much depressed and convinced that in the morning they must head toward a base, they were startled by an object that came tumbling from a nearby cliff, followed by several more that rolled into the firelight, where they were recognized as bundles of hay. Some Navajos had seen the plight of the party and had made this contribution without revealing their identity. "I wish," said Gregory, "I could learn the names and addresses of those fellows — I would send every one of them a copy of Water Supply Paper 380." The Navajos' name for Gregory was "Waterfinder." It was for me an inspiration when I accompanied him into some of the Navajo hogans nearly a half century after his work among them to see the fading eyes of some of these venerable tribesmen light up as they recognized Gregory.

One of Gregory's main objectives was the integration of scientific effort throughout the vast Pacific domain. In 1920 he organized the Committee on Pacific Investigation of the Division of Geology and Geography, National Research Council, and he served continuously as chairman of this committee until 1946.

The Gregorys lived happily and busily in Honolulu while the big research program progressed at Bishop Museum. Though deeply generous personally, the Scotch in his nature was most useful in stretching the slender Museum funds to their fullest potential. Convinced that the basic work of the Museum should be scientific research rather than education, he allocated the funds to carefully planned expeditions and to publication of the results of field work. His powers of persuasion induced many individuals and foundations to augment the funds appreciably.

Photographs taken of a field trip portraying Dr. Gregory amidst the southern Utah settings he loved.

Cave Camp (top) Willow Creek (center) Soda Creek Trail (bottom)

Many visitors stopped at the Hawaiian crossroad to- see the Gregorys. But the Gregorys were drawn back to the Colorado Plateau for at least part of the summer whenever possible; this was his favorite country, and he longed to complete field studies he had begun over the years. In 1936 he retired as director and Silliman Professor, and thereafter he and Mrs. Gregory were in Utah for a long season each year, returning to their Hawaiian home in winter.

Their favorite stand was Zion Canyon, where he was close to his field problems and could revel in landscape views that to him were the world's finest. I have heard him repeat many times that if he were called upon to select a single podium from which to- view America's most expansive geology, it would be atop the black lava rock mountain just east of Black Ridge, above Ash Creek, looking southeastward toward Mount Trumbull, Kaibab Plateau, Smithsonian Butte, Zion West Temple, and the finger canyons and buttes of the Kolob.

In 1941, the Gregorys were in their home on the Pacific Heights, Honolulu, and early in the morning of December 7 they witnessed the performance of the bombing of Pearl Harbor from a ringside seat.

During the war years they were in the States much of the time, working in the strategic minerals program for the Geological Survey and advancing his reports. Early in 1948 with work on his manuscripts complete, he set out with Mrs. Gregory on a world tour, going first to England for meetings of the Eighteenth International Geological Congress, then to France for three months, then on to Australia and to New Zealand for the Seventh Pacific Science Congress, then home to Honolulu — his ambition to circle the globe realized. In 1950 Dr. Carl Skottsberg, who had done distinguished botanical research in the Pacific under the Bishop Museum and had become director of the Botanical Garden at Gotberg, Sweden, invited Gregory to be his guest at the International Botanical Congress at Stockholm. Afterward the Gregorys attended the International Congress on the History of Science at Amsterdam, had a lengthy visit in France, and continued eastward by way of Egypt, Ceylon, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, and Manila, where he stopped to help plan the Eighth Pacific Science Congress. The return to Hawaii in February, 1951, completed their second trip around the world. And for him the end of the trail was near. They lived quietly at their home for some months, occasionally entertaining friends at tea around their big table made of koa wood.

One of the last monographs, The Geology and Geography of the Paunsaugunt Region, Utah; A Survey of Parts of Garfield and Kane Counties (1951) Professional Paper 226, was published and a copy reached him during his final illness shortly after his eighty-second birthday. He passed away January 23, 1952.

During his long and productive life, Dr. Herbert E. Gregory published sixty-six professional papers. His membership in learned societies included the Geological Society of America, the Association of American Geographers (of which he was president in 1920), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He knew kings, princes, and heads of nations, yet was equally at home with the lonely tribesmen of the Southwest deserts. The world was his home, and I have never known a person who knew so much about it. His life might well be summed up by the Navajo word, Utenie — "Doer of Great Deeds."

This record would not be complete without mentioning Edna Hope Gregory who married Herbert Gregory in 1908 and who was constantly at his side through many of his world-wide exploits and who shared his intense enthusiasm for southern Utah. She now survives him, and it is she to whom I am indebted for much of the material concerning Dr. Gregory's background. She is now in her middle seventies and lives in Berkeley, California, where she audits classes at the University of California. But she does not confine her interests to the classroom; within the past two years she undertook the touring of France, Switzerland, and Western Europe in a small foreign-made car and enjoyed every moment of it. She is a most delightful person, and like her noted husband has no intention of contemplating the fact that her life, too, might some day end.

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