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The Role of the Pomona College Geology Dept. and USGS Geologists in Documenting the Geology of the greater Los Angeles Basin including Orange County.
By Ivan P. Colburn, Dept. of Geological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles, California
The SEPM Book 106 recently published by the Pacific Section of the Society of Sedimentary Geologists entitled: "Geology of Orange County, California, and the Irvine Ranch National Natural Landmark" draws the attention of the Southern California geologic community to the geologic studies of this terrane that were carried out by the USGS Fuels Branch geologists during and immediately after World War II. These geologists produced the majority of the published geologic studies and geologic maps of Orange County, the Irvine Ranch land, and large parts of the Los Angeles Basin that provided not only the core of the geologic foundation on which the Irvine Ranch National Natural Landmark was established, but also the geologic foundation on which broader studies and interpretations on the origin of the Transverse Ranges and the Southern California Borderland have been developed.
At the Beginning of WWII
At the beginning of WWII it became clear to our national leaders that the availability of large petroleum resources would playa pivotal role in our ability to fight and win the war. The US Geological Survey was given the authority under the auspices of its Strategic Minerals Branch, Fuels Division, of assessing the petroleum resources throughout the continental U.S.
Teams of USGS geologists were organized to go into the known petroleum bearing districts such as the greater Los Angeles Basin to evaluate our petroleum resources and to determine if more petroleum resources could be found in those known petroleum-bearing districts to help the war effort.
The Pomona College Role
In the early 1940s as part of that strategy the Strategic Mineral Branch of the U. S. Geological Survey established one of its Fuels Branch offices in the basement of Mason Hall on the Pomona College campus in Claremont, California. In part this location was chosen to have offices close to the Los Angeles Basin and its surrounding terrane which was known to have petroleum resources, but also it was because Pomona College was where Prof. A. O. "Woody" Woodford taught geology. He, of San Onofre Breccia fame (Ph.D. thesis topic at UC Berkley), was one among just a few academic geologists at that time that was very knowledgeable about Southern California geology. It is also because Woody was well known and admired by geologist Wendell Woodring, one of the USGS advisors in Washington D.C. and author of numerous USGS publications on the California geology. It was for these reasons that Professor Woodford was selected to be Fuels Branch Chief (WAE) of the Southern California district with his office located at Pomona College.
The One Man Geology Dept.
Professor Woodford constituted the one-man geology department at Pomona College for several decades before WWII. Clearly he was an effective teacher because prior to the war he had trained such notable geologists as Mason Hill, former chief geologist for Arco: Rollin Eckis, former vice president of Arco; Charlie Anderson, former chief geologist of the U. S. Geological Survey; and Roger Revelle, oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and later President of Revelle College at UC San Diego, to name just a few of the many notable geologists trained by Woody.
Joining Woody at Pomona College at the beginning of WWII was John Shelton, one of his former students. In 1935 John had completed undergraduate courses in music and math at Pomona College but before he graduated he decided to take Woody's yearlong introductory geology course. By the end of that course John had decided he wanted more geology. Woody suggested he go to Yale to study geology under Chester Longwell. Before John received his geology Ph.D. from Yale, he started work with the USGS under Woody on the petroleum potential in and around the Los Angeles Basin. In 1947 John completed his doctorate and joined Woody to form a two-man department at Pomona College that lasted for nearly 20 years.
The National Association of Geology Teachers Recognition
Both John and Woody were subsequently recognized for their roles as outstanding geology teachers with Neil Minor Awards given by the National Association of Geology Teachers.
The Greater Los Angeles Basin
The area of the greater Los Angeles Basin includes the geologic terrane on the Irvine Ranch, Santa Ana Mountains, San Joaquin Hills, Puente/Whittier Hills, San Jose Hills, Santa Monica (Mountains, Palos Verdes Hills, the Santa Monica Mountains) and the Santa Susana Mountains. The oil-bearing strata that crop out around the greater Los Angeles Basin were recognized at that time to be mostly of Miocene and Pliocene age. Still, there was a need to make further determinations as to the extent and depth of any potential oil bearing formations in the greater LA basin region that had not yet been fully exploited or found by drill holes. If strata in any these locations were found to be potentially productive the increased oil production would provide additional fuel for the war effort. This same USGS geologic assessment process of our petroleum resources was going on elsewhere in the continental USA.
Pomona College Graduates Join the USGS
Prof. Woodford as the administrative head of the Fuels Branch in Southern California hired former Pomona College geology students to work for the Fuels Branch after they completed their geology training. Among these former students in the 1940s and 1950s were: Jack Schoellhamer, '42; Jack Vedder; ’48; Bob Yerkes '50; Thane McCulloh, '49; and Patsy Beckstead Smth, '51; all of whom got their geologic training under Professors Woodford and Shelton. Thane McCulloh went on to complete his Ph.D. in geology at UCLA and was later responsible for carrying out a gravity survey of the Los Angeles Basin for the Fuels Branch. Also geology graduates from UCLA and Cal Tech such as Jerry Winterer and Dave Durham were employed to work under Woodford for the Fuels Branch.
Work on the Santa Ana Mountains Was First
Among the first projects undertaken by the Fuels Branch was the mapping of the geology of the Santa Ana Mountains with Doug Kinney as the project chief working under the direction of Dr. Woodford. Doing fieldwork with Doug on that project were Jack Vedder, Jack Schoellhamer, and Bob Yerkes. Jerry Winterer, who later became a geology professor at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, undertook a similar geologic study in the Santa Susana Mountains
Field Studies By Pomona Graduate Students
Many Pomona College geology graduates elected to carry out Master's degree studies under the guidance of "Woody" and John in various areas around the edge of the greater Los Angeles Basin such as the Puente and San Jose Hills, Santa Ana Mountains, and the San Joaquin Hills before or at the same time the Survey geologists were carrying out their studies of large districts of the Los Angeles Basin. All of these Master's degree studies were administered by the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont even though the course work and research monitoring was carried out by Pomona College professors Woodford and Shelton. These studies included extensive geologic field mapping and analysis of the studied terrane that helped the Survey geologists in carrying forward their work in these districts.
These Master's Degree students included: Jack Vedder, MA '50 (study of the Santiago Formation in the Silverado/Santiago Canyons district); Jim Richmond, MA '51 (study on the geology of Burrell Ridge in the Santa Ana Mountains); Ivan Colburn, MA '53 (study of the structure and stratigraphy along the trace of the Whittier fault on the south flank of the Puente Hills next to Yorba Linda); Ed Heath, MA '54 (study of the structure and stratigraphy along the Whittier fault east of Colburn's study area into Santa Ana Canyon); George Clark, MA '50 (study of the geology in the San Joaquin Hills inland from the Aliso/Dana Point coast); Patsy Beckstead Smith, MA '54 (study on the microfossils of the Puente and Monterey Formations on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Basin); Cliff Gray, MA '54 (study of the southeastern Puente Hills); and Frank Olmsted, MA, '51 (study of the San Jose Hills); and Charles Kundert, Geology of the Western Puente Hills, 1950.
Pomona Graduates Worked Along Side of the USGS Geologists
Those of us who were students in the geology department at Pomona College in the 1940s and 1950s had the wonderful opportunity to work both under the direction of professors Woodford and Shelton and with the USGS geologists because our offices were adjacent in the basement of Mason Hall.
Oil Drilling in Orange County
During and following the work of the USGS geologists, several oil companies, particularly Shell Oil Company, came into the San Joaquin Hills and the EI Toro Plain districts in the late 1950's and mapped the geology and drilled numerous test holes without finding any commercially viable oil bearing formations. However, their work yielded valuable surface and subsurface geologic information that has been helpful in filling out a third dimension of the geologic terrane of the San Joaquin Hills and adjacent EI Toro Plain for the USGS geologists.
McCulloh and Vedder also agree that the success of the U.S.G.S. geologists in their efforts to report on the geology of Orange County and the greater Los Angeles Basin during and after WWIl was helped immensely by the work of pre-war U S S geologists: G. H. Eldridge, Ralph Arnold, W. S. W. Kew, W. A. English, H. W. Hoots, W. P. Woodring, and M. N. Bramlette. The geologic and stratigraphic analyses, and geologic maps prepared by these earlier geologists formed an indispensable framework for the proposed new studies carried out by the Fuels Branch of the Survey under the direction of A. o. Woodford and his staff of geologists in the 1940, 1950s, and 1960s.
The Lasting Value of the USGS Reports
The reports prepared by the USGS Fuels Branch geologists formed a solid basis of geologic documentation for subsequent studies of the geologic origin of the Southern California borderland and its relationship to the mainland geology including the Los Angeles Basin, the Transverse Ranges and the Peninsular Range.
The Irvine Ranch in Orange County, California.
The Irvine Ranch, as originally constituted in the 1860s, consisted of more than 102,000 acres of Orange County land. It was probably one of the largest ranches in all of California at that time. When the U.S.G.S. geologists began their studies of its geologic terrane at the beginning of WWII the dimensions of the ranch had changed very little from its original 102,000 acres. At that time the Irvine Ranch land extended well into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains on the inland side of Orange County and extended out across the Orange County plain and over most of the San Joaquin Hills right out to the high tide line on the Orange County coast. The absence of urban development on the Irvine Ranch and most of the rest of Orange County at that time gave USGS geologists unprecedented access to all of the geologic terrane of the ranch and the surrounding area. This huge district has one of the most complete and virtually unbroken stratigraphic successions from Jurassic to Holocene to be found anywhere in California.
Urbanization of the Irvine Ranch
Subsequent to WWII a large portion of the Irvine Ranch land underwent significant urbanization the result of which has been to limit access to much of what was open space geologic terrane in the days when the USGS geologists did most of their field studies.
The U.S. National Park Service Irvine Ranch Natural National Landmark Reserve
The extensive published geologic studies carried out by the U geologists in the decades during and after WWII as cited in this paper constituted the geologic part of the foundation on which the National Park Service made its proposal that the remaining undeveloped part of the Irvine Ranch land be established as National Natural Landmark.
The idea behind this Reserve/Landmark designation is to allow the Irvine Company to set aside a large portion of its undeveloped land in a type of a reserve status that protects the land from taxation while making the land accessible to educational institutions and their staffs and students for natural history study as well as for some recreational purposes. Presumably this also means the property would be accessible for further geologic study, but not for mineral exploitation.
It is not clear, however, how permanent the "Reserve" status will be for the Irvine Company property. Is it possible that at some future date the "Reserve" status can be withdrawn by the Irvine Company and the property urbanize. This is an issue that needs to be clarified before the geological community and the public at large can embraces the "Reserve" concept for the undeveloped Irvine Ranch land.
Woody and John Lived a Long Time
Woody and John trained a lot of geology students who went on to become professional geologists. Some us went on to become U.S.G.S. geologists; some become petroleum geologists; some become university professors; some high school earth science teachers, and other types of earth science professionals. We all owe a great debt to these two men who mentored us while we were their students but also in our professional growth after school. Woody passed away in 1990 after living over 100 years. John Shelton passed in July 2008 at age 98.
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