University of California Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Luna B. Leopold
HYDROLOGY, GEOMORPHOLOGY , AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY:
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 1950-1972, AND UC BERKELEY, 1972-1987
With an Introduction by
Thomas Dunne
Interviews Conducted by
Ann Lage
in 1990, 1991
Copyright c 1993 by The Regents of the University of California
Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a modern research
technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous
conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity
and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed
in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable.
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement
between The Regents of the University of California and Luna B.
Leopold dated May 9, 1991. The manuscript is thereby made available
for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library
of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the
manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University
of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be
addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with Luna B. Leopold requires that he be notified of the
request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Luna B. Leopold, "Hydrology,
Geomorphology, and Environmental Policy:
U.S. Geological Survey, 1950-1972, and UC
Berkeley, 1972-1987," an oral history
conducted in 1990 and 1991 by Ann Lage,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California,
Berkeley, 1993.
Copy no.
Luna B. Leopold, 1991.
Cataloging information
Leopold, Luna B. (b. 1915) Hydrologist, educator
Hydrology. Geomorphologv. and Environmental Policy: U.S. Geological Survey.
1950-1972. and UC Berkeley. 1972-1987. 1993, viii, 309 pp.
Family and youth in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Madison, Wisconsin: influence
of father, Aldo Leopold, in development of scientific skills and land ethic;
siblings Starker, Nina, Carl, and Estella; education, Wisconsin and Harvard,
1930s, 1950; jobs with Soil Conservation Service, Army Corps of Engineers,
Bureau of Reclamation, Pineapple Research Institute (Hawaii), 1930s-1940s;
chief hydrologist and research scientist, USGS Water Resources Division:
administrative reorganization, personnel policies, publications, new programs
of scientific research, field trips, relations with other government agencies;
genesis of scientific papers in hydrology, geomorphology ; colleagues Thomas
Maddock, John Miller, Walter Langbein, Herb Skibitzke; environmental policies
on Florida Everglades Jetport, Trans -Alaska oil pipeline, Colorado River
issues, Hell's Canyon; Sierra Club Board of Directors, 1968-1971; teaching and
research at UC Berkeley Departments of Geology and Landscape Architecture.
Appended interview of USGS colleague David R. Dawdy.
Introduction by Thomas Dunne, Professor of Geological Sciences, University of
Washington.
Interviewed 1990, 1991 by Ann Lage. The Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Donors to the Luna B. Leopold Oral History
The Regional Oral History Office would like to express its
thanks to the following organizations whose encouragement and support
have made possible the oral history of Luna B. Leopold.
University of California Water Resources Center
United States Geological Survey
UC Berkeley Department of Geology and Geophysics
UC Berkeley Department of Landscape Architecture
TABLE OF CONTENTS --Luna B. Leopold
INTRODUCTION- -by Thomas Dunne i
INTERVIEW HISTORY- -by Ann Lage v
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION viii
I EARLY LIFE AND FAMILY 1
Memories of Duck Hunting in Albuquerque 1
Mother's Family: Sheep Ranchers in the Southwest 2
The Lunas and Bergeres 6
Move to Wisconsin: Family Interest in Archery and Craftsmanship 8
Passing on Family Values and Traditions 11
Reading and Religion 13
Father's Family in Burlington, Iowa 15
Skate Sailing, Skiing, and Hunting in Wisconsin 16
Developing Habits of Close Observation of Nature 19
II EDUCATIONAL AND EARLY CAREER EXPERIENCES 21
Schooling in Albuquerque and Madison 21
Civil Engineering at the University of Wisconsin: Influence of
Professor Von Hagen 22
Designing a Broadened Field of Study, with Lasting Impact 25
A Learning Experience at Coon Valley Experiment Station 28
Thoughts on Breadth in Education and the Value of Field Experience 29
Lessons in Supervision at the Soil Conservation Service 31
Flood Control Surveys with Tom Maddock, SCS, 1938-1941 34
Graduate Study at Harvard, 1937: Classical Ideas in Science 37
Failure of Modern Science to Pursue the Important Problems 38
Interdisciplinary Resource Planning with the SCS 42
Land Planning: Need for Responsibility to Society and the Land 44
III WARTIME AND POSTWAR WORK AND STUDIES 46
Postwar Changes in the Soil Conservation Service 46
Brief Stint with the Army Corps of Engineers 47
Enrolling as a Private in the U.S. Army 48
Meteorological Studies at UCLA 49
Sedimentation Studies and the Bureau of Reclamation 51
Meteorologist for the Pineapple Research Institute in Hawaii,
1946-1949 54
Another Lesson in Supervisory Styles 55
Rainfall Maps and Records 57
Developing a New Rain Forecasting Scheme in Hawaii 59
Experiments with Cloud Seeding 60
Four Months to a Ph.D. in Geology at Harvard, 1950 62
IV THE LEOPOLD FAMILY, THE SHACK AND A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC 68
Competitive Relationship with Starker
Financial Hardship in the Depression Years
Carl, Nina, and Estella Leopold
Building the Shack and Restoring the Land
Publication of A Sand County Almanac
Round River: Conservationists and Hunting
Further Editions of A Sand County Almanac
V SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH WITH THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 1950s 86
Research in the Water Resources Division, 1950 86
Research with John Miller on the Influence of Climatic Change
on River Valleys 91
Genesis of Hydraulic Geometry 94
Further Collaboration with John Miller: His Untimely Death and
Special Qualities 96
Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology 100
VI A NEW DIRECTION FOR THE USGS WATER RESOURCES DIVISION, 1957-1966 102
USGS Directors Wrather and Nolan 102
Assistant Chief Hydrologic Engineer: Initiating Controversial
Changes in Budget Process 104
Accepting the Job of Chief Engineer and Director Nolan's Mandate
for Change, 1957 106
Allocating an Increased Budget: New Programs and Personnel 108
Hiring and Retraining Research Staff 109
Reorganizing the Administrative Structure 111
Continuing Research Work as Chief: Taking a Random Walk with
Walter Langbein 113
Independence for Researchers 119
Raising Expectations in Publications and Hiring 121
Promoting Education in Hydrology in the Universities 123
Redrawing Civil Service Requirements for Hydrologists 125
Revising Publications Policies: The Pink Terror Memos 126
Encouraging the Flow of Ideas 129
Retrospective Views on Leopold's Changes in Program and Management 130
VII EXPANDED SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS IN THE WATER RESOURCES DIVISION 133
Changes in Data Collection: Network Design, Benchmark Gauging
Stations, the Vigil Network 133
Backyard Research: Strawberry Creek, Hawaiian Dew 138
Attempt to Stimulate Publication of Hydrology Series 139
Maintaining Staff Productivity and Initiative 141
The Tree Ring Laboratory: Documenting Climatic Change 142
The Hydraulic Laboratories 145
The Ocean and Glacial Programs 147
Influence of Western Irrigators on the Research Program 149
Cooperation with the Geologic and Topographic Divisions 150
Relations with Congress: The Senate Select Committee on Water
Resources 152
Interagency Conflicts over Water Quality 156
Battling the Bureau of Reclamation over Colorado River
Water Quality 158
[II FUN, GAMES, AND PRODUCTIVE RESEARCH IN THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 162
The Pick and Hammer Show 162
Poems, Songs, and Literary Allusions 165
Field Trips: Canoeing, Surveying, Mapmaking 167
First River Raft Trip: Down Lodore Canyon with Herb Skibitzke 169
Research on the River Trips 172
John Wesley Powell and the Intrigue of Unanswered Questions 175
Choosing the Important Problems in Geomorphology 177
IX INVOLVEMENT IN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES AND ORGANIZATIONS 179
Basic Hydrological Research and Environmental Problems 179
Agency Politics and Dams on the Colorado River 180
Testifying in Arizona vs. Colorado 183
Pressures for River Development vs. Scientific Fact and Public
Interest 185
Advice to Secretary of Interior Udall 187
The First Environmental Impact Review: Everglades Jetport 189
Preventing an Ill-Conceived Trans-Alaska Pipeline 193
Recommendation on Redwoods National Park 199
Scientists as Consultants on Environmental Issues 201
The Forest Service and the Denver Water Board 202
A Turbulent Time on the Sierra Club Board of Directors, 1968-1971 206
Importance of Aesthetic Values: Hells Canyon 211
X LEAVING THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 213
Resigning as Chief Hydrologist and Subsequent Changes in the
Division 213
Problems of Maintaining Productivity in a Research Staff 216
Deficiencies in University Reviews for Promotion and Ph.D.'s 219
Trend toward Unimportant Problems and Short Research Papers 223
Encouraging Careful Acknowledgement of Ideas 226
UC Graduate Student Seminar in Geomorphology 227
Bitter Experience at the Survey after Leaving Chief's Job:
Isolation and Vindictiveness 229
To UC Berkeley in the Departments of Geology and Landscape
Architecture, 1972 233
Herb Skibitzke and His Crew: Brilliant Iconoclast, Disturbing to
Survey Hierarchy 234
XI THOUGHTS ON A HALF CENTURY IN HYDROLOGY 237
Overview of Contributions to Geological Survey and Field of
Hydrology 237
Changing Geomorphology to a Quantitative Science 238
Entropy and Landscape Evolution 245
Hydrology in Urban Areas: Study of the Brandywine Basin 249
Evaluating Non- Economic Values 251
Family and Family Values 254
Building Cabin and House in Pinedale, Wyoming 256
Since Retirement: Seminars in Hydrology 260
"Ethos, Equity, and the Water Resource" 262
TAPE GUIDE 265
APPENDIX- -Interview with David R. Dawdy 266
INTERVIEW HISTORY 268
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION 269
I DAWDY' S CAREER PATH IN THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 270
Field Assistant with a B.A. in History, 1951 270
To Washington, on Flood Frequency Analysis 271
Walter Langbein, a Genius 272
Papers on Sand Channel Streams 273
Higher Degree in Statistics through the Government
Training Act 276
II LUNA LEOPOLD AS CHIEF HYDROLOGIST, USGS , 1957-1966 277
Hiring Ph.D.'s 277
Administrative Reorganization and the Old- Boy Network 278
Reeducating the Old-Line Staff: Rolland Carter 282
Luna's Shoot -from- the -Hip Style 284
Resistance to Change in the Bureaucracy 286
A Permanent Change in the Orientation of the Water Resources
Division 288
Building Programs: Looking at Systems and Processes 290
Reorganizing the Research Unit in the 1970s 291
Pink Terror Memos 293
Leopold's Contributions to the Publications Program 294
Review of Policy Statements in Research Papers 295
Political Pressures on Research 297
Leopold's Treatment after Resignation as Chief Hydrologist 298
The Maverick Herb Skibitzke 301
In Summary 304
TAPE GUIDE 306
INDEX 307
INTRODUCTION- -by Thomas Dunne
One day in late 1968, I was perched at the end of a long desk in
Luna Leopold's Geological Survey office, making Einstein bedload
calculations on a slide rule. Suddenly, into the room swept a group of
men who settled in an arc around the other end of the desk. "Luna!" said
one of them. "What are we going to do with Alaska?" I felt my neck
contract slightly into my shoulders, in anticipation that a big issue was
about to be discussed far above my head. It was a period in which Luna
was pioneering the assessment of how the proposed Trans -Alaska oil
pipeline would impact rivers and other wild resources. Such experiences
became common throughout the months when I worked as Luna's research
assistant during a lull in my graduate student career. The research
group swirled between discussion of large environmental -policy issues and
analysis of data collected and analyzed with our own hands. During the
succeeding quarter century, while sharing with Luna many field trips in
diverse lands, committee work, ideas for teaching, research and writing,
I have watched this interplay of broad vision and hands-on experience
exert remarkable influence on people and institutions .
A conversation with Luna Leopold is a vigorous experience- -bracing
for some, overwhelming for others. You're expected to get in there and
dig. Think! What do you think? Here's what I think! The intense
roving eyes, resonant voice, challenging questions mean that we're
swimming out here in the deep water. This is not idle gossip, but meaty
stuff about science, personal conduct, history, wild rivers, and
politics. Luna brings the reticent into the conversation with courtly
patience, and will listen to others with deep concentration. At other
times his Stygian expression will flash into a grin, the tip of his
tongue becomes visible between slightly open lips, his index finger will
scythe the air in a loop from right to left as he has some new insight,
recognizes an oversight or an absurdity, or imagines something new that
"we ought to do". Luna thrives on lengthy, analytical discussion carried
on for hours, or intermittently over years, or on a long field trip.
Breakfast may extend for half a day.
I don't know another academic person with such a strong style as
Luna's. Students sense in him something striking, different, even
formidable. Some are unnerved, but others are drawn to him as a role
model. Many decide to emulate him: his method of note-taking, of
speaking, the way he thinks, the way he organizes himself and his life.
He has a presence and an intensity. Reciprocally, he places great value
on young people, encouraging them to search for the critical new idea
that will move an entire field or institution to a new level of
understanding or effectiveness.
ii
Fundamental to Luna's style is the way he integrates his
intellectual, aesthetic, and home life. The houses in Berkeley and
Pinedale, Wyoming, have views chosen with great care; here it is
difficult to forget mountains, rivers, the sea, wild game, and the need
for their husbandry. There is a desk by the fire. A miscellany of books
lie close at hand: Hurst's studies of the Nile streamflow, Darwin, Robert
Graves, Alexander's military adventures, birds, a few collections of
technical papers leather-bound by Luna's hand. The walls hold paintings
of western American landscapes. There is good wine, the flame of a wood
fire, an oil lamp or a candle reflected in it. Scientists, students,
lawyers, administrators are hosted with great generosity and warmth by
Luna and Barbara, whose ebullience leavens the proceedings and reminds
everyone that the science, the careers, the plans, the programs are worth
something only if they are humane. Here, Luna works on developing a
perspective on a problem concerning science, environmental management, or
public administration. When delivered, it is strongly cast. Whether
right or wrong, he has worked hard at crafting it, sought extensive
review from colleagues and students, and he keeps working on it. 1 have
watched him mulling over problems for twenty- five years, and through his
literature I can trace others for half a century.
The integration is evident also in the way Luna values individual
craft. He enjoys doing his own river surveying, plotting his own graphs
and maps for publication, carpentry, bookbinding, and building cabins for
himself and others. When he took up the building of stone fireplaces, he
read Ben Franklin's original paper on the design of fireplaces and
stoves. The historical roots of a skill, an idea, a scientific
development, are extremely important to him. He values also the crafts
and music of others, as marks of their individuality. Hand-wrought
objects collected on travels lie around within reach so that they can be
picked up, turned over and marvelled at. "Gee! how d'you think they made
that?" he'll say quietly.
There is a seriousness and intensity about Luna which is easy to
mistake for competitiveness and self -absorption. He just doesn't choose
to project silliness very oftenthough a glass of wine or a brand-new
experience sometimes loosens him up. A guitar will often release another
of his muses. He has written songs that express his love of doing
science, environmental conservation, and the camaraderie of his River
Boys team during the 1960 -70s. Once, late in a day of maple -sap
collecting in Vermont, Luna discovered a list of annual maple -syrup
yields scribbled in pencil on the inside wall of the sugar house. He was
excited when he recognized the possibility of correlating these yields
with weather variations, and he spent much of the evening merrily
standing in melting snow as he questioned the farmer about the sugaring
process and factors that might cause yields to vary. On visits to
Africa, his joyful enthusiasm for bird identification, animal ecology,
ill
and learning about traditional herding practices persisted through days
of hillslope surveying and bumpy rides. The only two times I have ever
been charged uncomfortably close by a rhinoceros was in Luna's company.
They just don't seem to like his concentrated stare!
The main public result of all this energy, of course, is a
scientific career of international and inter- generational significance.
Luna defined a field of research at the intersection of the traditional
disciplines of geology, climatology, and terrestrial ecology, and was
emphasizing the interacting roles of climatic change and human impact on
land and water even during the 1940s, long before these issues were
appreciated by most environmental scientists. More specifically, he
yoked together surface-water hydrology and fluvial geomorphology and
changed the latter into a quantitative science that provides a basis for
environmental management and aesthetic appreciation of landscape. As
chief hydrologist in the U.S. Geological Survey and later as a professor,
Luna fostered a generation of young geoscientists in government and
academe who have extended his quantitative interdisciplinary approach to
other branches of earth- surf ace studies. When the need arose, Luna
applied his process -based hydrology and geomorphology to the problem of
environmental impact assessment in the cases of the proposed Everglades
jetport and the Alaska pipeline. Though copied only badly in most cases,
his examples still provide models for improvement in this vital activity
that anticipates and seeks to minimize environmental degradation.
Throughout his career, Luna has emphasized the value of data and
their honest use. He has pressed for government agencies to collect data
and to disseminate them promptly and in a form that is transparent to
citizens. He tirelessly stresses to young people the value of making
one's own measurements in a backyard rain gauge, at regularly measured
channel cross-sections, or simply from photo stations that can be re-
occupied to document landscape change. They would be easily convinced if
they had seen Luna in his nightshirt reading a stream gauge through a
telescope from his deck and then using the resulting data as the basis of
a scientific article on the effect of urban growth on floods. They would
also be stimulated by his mischievous sense that out of such a simple
measurement can come a scientific result with the power to help people
understand and conserve the landscape that is so important to him.
It is difficult to imagine the development of surface-water
hydrology and fluvial geomorphology without Luna Leopold's role as a
restless, energetic leader of the U.S. Geological Survey's Water
Resources Division, and later as professor of both geology and landscape
architecture at the University of California. In these careers he has
been a teacher sensu lato from the undergraduate level to the highest
levels of government. He has challenged scientists to confront their
responsibilities for Earth, and shown them how to develop the tools to
undertake that task with a sense of optimism and deep appreciation. His
iv
career illustrates this passion, rooted in his strong sense of history,
ethical responsibility, and love of the Western American landscape.
Thomas Dunne
Professor of Geological Sciences
University of Washington
September 25, 1992
Seattle, Washington
INTERVIEW HISTORY- -by Ann Lage
Luna Leopold, professor emeritus of geology and landscape
architecture at the University and former chief hydrologist of the U.S.
Geological Survey's Water Resources Division, was interviewed by the
Regional Oral History Office as part of its extensive collection of oral
histories in water resources. Leopold's oral history documents his life
work as a hydrologist who redefined the field of hydrology; a
geomorphologist who changed geomorphology from "an arm-waving pastime to
a quantitative science;" and an administrator who transformed a
government agency into a major research institution in water resources.
It also chronicles his contributions as an educator in helping to shape
university programs in hydrology and geomorphology, and as an
environmentalist in bringing both science and ethics to bear on
environmental problems .
Luna Leopold's early life and family background are of considerable
interest. He is the second son of Aldo Leopold, pioneer in scientific
wildlife management and author of A Sand County Almanac, a collection of
reflective essays which stands alongside the works of Thoreau and John
Muir as philosophic underpinnings for the modern environmental movement.
Knowing that Aldo Leopold's life has been throughly documented, our
discussions in this oral history focused on familial influences important
in shaping Luna Leopold's scientific and ethical outlooks. Especially
valuable are his recollections of his father's teaching by example the
skills of precision craftsmanship and careful observation of nature; and
his relationships with brothers Starker and Carl and sisters Nina and
Estella, all of whom have followed distinguished scientific careers.
Also important in understanding Leopold's interest in the lands and
rivers of the Southwest are his recollections of his mother's family and
his youthful experiences in New Mexico. Other areas of his background
discussed here are his education and educational mentors at the
University of Wisconsin and at Harvard and his early career experiences
with the Soil Conservation Service, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of
Reclamation, and the Pineapple Research Institute in Hawaii.
A significant portion of the oral history is devoted to Leopold's
twenty- two year career with the United States Geological Survey,
including his seminal research during this period, recollections of field
trips and colleagues, and a perspective on the sometimes wrenching
changes he instituted as chief of the Water Resources Division from 1957
to 1966. A videotaped interview with Luna Leopold was conducted in 1988
vi
by R.C. Averett and W.W. Emmett for the USGS and was invaluable in
preparing for this oral history. Mr. Leopold has made available a copy
of the videotape for deposit in The Bancroft Library. To supplement his
remarks and give another perspective on his leadership of the Water
Resources Division, Leopold suggested that we interview his colleague,
David Dawdy. That interview is included here as an appendix.
The final sections of the interview focus on Leopold's teaching at
the University of California, his involvement in environmental issues,
and insights into his major research work during more than fifty years in
the field of hydrology. Throughout the oral history a picture emerges of
a very gracious person, an intense scientist, sometimes intimidating in
his strong sense of mission and his adherance to the highest standards in
science and personal conduct. The conversations with Luna Leopold also
reveal his sense of joy in intellectual inquiry, scientific discovery,
and camaraderie with his fellow travelers along the research trails.
Mr. Leopold was interviewed in his office in the Department of
Geology at the University. The first three sessions took place in May
and June of 1990. Interviewing resumed in January 1991 after his yearly
sojourn in Wyoming. The eighth and final session took place in May 1991.
The interview transcripts were lightly edited in this office for clarity
and continuity and reviewed by Mr. Leopold, who made only minor changes
to his words. Some of his scientific papers have been placed in The
Bancroft Library; his technical field notes have been given to the
Geological Society of America. In his personal library he has an
extraordinary collection of his personal journals from a lifetime of
hunting trips and field trips, which he has hand bound in leather.
While this oral history was underway, in September of 1991, Mr.
Leopold was awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest
scientific honor. Previously he received the Distinguished Service Award
of the Department of the Interior (1958) and the Rockefeller Public
Service Award (1971).
We are grateful to the Water Resources Center of the University of
California and in particular to its director, Henry Vaux, Jr., for a
major contribution to make this oral history possible. This is one of
twelve Regional Oral History Office interviews funded in whole or in part
by the Water Resources Center since 1964. The United States Geological
Survey also contributed substantial funds to underwrite a careful
documentation of Luna Leopold's role in that agency. Additional funding
was received from the Departments of Geology and Landscape Architecture
at the University of California, Berkeley.
vii
The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to record
the lives of persons who have contributed significantly to the history of
California and the West. The office is a division of The Bancroft
Library and is under the direction of Willa K. Baum.
Ann Lage
Interviewer/editor
January 20, 1993
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
viii
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)
Your full name_
Date of birth
Father's full name
Occupation
Mother's full name
Occupation
Your spouse
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Your children
Birthplace
Birthplace
Birthplace
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Where did you grow up?
Present community
Education
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Occupation(s)
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Areas of expertise
Other interests or activities
Organizations in which you are active
I EARLY LIFE AND FAMILY
[Interview 1: May 15, 1990 ]##
Memories of Duck Hunting in Albuquerque
Lage: We were going to start with family background, which is a natural
thing, but in your case probably more important than with most
people, and try to get a picture of what your family was like and
how it influenced you, since the focus of this interview really
is on you.
Leopold: It must be remembered that when I was a small child in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, things were entirely different than we
know now. I can remember very well, for example, when my father
drove up down the alley with a brand-new Model T Ford, the kind
with the brass front and the little acetylene lamps on the side,
and one of those little black tops that folded back. Ve used to
go hunting down near Los Lunas , where my family came from, at a
place called Tom6, where many of our relatives are buried in the
Tome cemetery. Tom6 is across the river from Los Lunas. My
father had acquired a very small adobe one -room house that we
used as a shack, and there was a nearby little pond where he went
hunting.
That was a wonderful time of life because I can remember my
father would hunt, go out on the little pond in the morning, and
when we came back to Albuquerque that evening he'd have twenty-
four, all drake mallards. In other words, there were so many
ducks that he could choose to shoot only drakes. And of course,
twenty-four was the limit in those days. Nobody considered that
to be excessive, but clearly it was something quite different
than what it would appear now.
Lage: And then were those ducks part of your meal?
Leopold: Oh, of course.
Driving a Model T Ford, the tires were awful, and I can
remember in the evening one time having a flat tire between
Albuquerque and Los Lunas , only eighteen miles, but it was dark
and there were no flashlights. So, since the road went by the
railroad track, parallel to the railroad track, ay father and I
would- -and 1 forget who else was with us --would sit on the
running board of the Model T Ford and wait until the train came.
When the train came, in the headlights of the train, in that few
moments that the train was going by we would work desperately to
change the tire. Blow up the tire. You know, you had to put a
patch on it. Blow up the tire in the dark.
Lage: In the few moments of headlight, that wasn't much time.
Leopold: And then we had to wait for the next train.
Mother's Familv: Sheen Ranchers in the Southwest
Lage:
Leopold:
What do you remember of your mother's family?
with them? Did you see them a lot?
Were you close
Yes, because as it turned out, over the years 1 was kind of the
favorite grandchild, so I spent a lot of time, more time than
practically any of the other children, with the family. See, the
family had moved from Los Lunas, where my mother was born, to
Santa Fe, and I'm not quite sure what the date was, but it was
probably around the turn of the century, I suppose. I know that
the family moved into a house which was down Grant Avenue just a
block away from what we called the big house, the house that 1
knew. I suppose they were renting it, because the house that 1
knew when 1 was growing up was nearer the plaza, and it had been
built by the army in 1846 when General Doniphan came into Santa
Fe at the beginning of the Mexican War in August of 1846. That
was at that time that the army formed Fort Marcy, which is up in
the hill above Santa Fe. They built a series of sort of look-
alike houses for the officers' quarters.
My great -grandmother --my grandmother's mother- -had acquired
one of these houses. I suppose it was about the turn of the
century. Later, and I'm not sure what the sequence was, but my
great -grandmother gave this house to my grandmother and her
family. I suppose that the house was enlarged somewhat later,
but it was an adobe house with walls about two and a half feet
thick. Right behind the kitchen, outside, there's a little line
of very small, all connected buildings, one of which was an
outhouse. So in those days they had an outside privy. And they
had a peach orchard. It was only two blocks from the center of
town, so it was quite a different kind of situation than you have
now, with all the urbanization.
Lage : Santa Fe's changed tremendously.
Leopold: Oh, my God, yes. Tremendously.
So, yes, I spent a lot of time in Santa Fe, primarily at the
time that I was in early high school.
Lage: You'd go down for summers?
Leopold: 1 went down for summers, and then when 1 became a senior in high
school, my father told me that now I had to go and get a job. It
was expected that you work. So that summer, the summer of, I
guess it must have been my senior high school year, I got my
first job, non-paying, but anyhow, I spent the summer someplace
else.
Lage: Do you have more to say about this side of your family and how
they might have had an impact on you? Was it kind of two
different worlds that you were exposed to there?
Leopold: No, I don't think so. I'm not sure just what kind of a question
you're asking. What is it that you'd like to know about that?
Lage: In terms of values, attitude towards the wilderness and the land,
even religion.
Leopold: They were sheep ranchers, that family, and had been sheep
ranchers for generations. It is said that my great-grandfather,
Antonio Jose Luna after whom I'm named, was sort of the --not only
the patrdn. but he was also the hidalgo of Valencia County. They
were very important politically, and they thought they were going
to lose a certain election, so Antonio Jos6 Luna arrived at the
polls with a Winchester across his saddle, and he said, "All my
sheep are citizens, and they're all going to vote." So he put
the sheep through the place where the votes were counted, and of
course he won.
I'm told that relative to other people, although they ran a
very large bunch of sheep, they probably were better managers
than many others. Although when they were running, let's just
guess at 15,000 sheep, the country must have been pretty badly
grazed. Later, when the sheep of the family were cut down to
about three thousand head, the land probably was being kept
better.
Lage: Were these things that were talked about, or did you notice them
at the time?
Leopold: No. As a matter of fact, the other problem was that they were
very--. I'm not sure just what the word is, but I never was
taken to the ranch until after I was out of college. What
happened was that all the grandsons, or the nephews, that
couldn't get through college, who were dropouts, they were taken
to the ranch and they tried to make them into sheep men. Well,
if they couldn't get through college, they certainly weren't
going to be very good sheep men. None of them lasted more than a
few months. But those of us who might have really had the sort
of background to run the place were never invited. As a matter
of fact, I was never invited at all. I simply went there one
time after I was out of college.
And then when the family ranch was to be sold- -remember ,
this was my grandmother's ranchher first sons were the ones who
were running the ranch after her brother Solomon Luna died.
Lage: So your mother's brothers were running the ranch.
Leopold: Yes. My mother's brothers were running the ranch. First Eduardo
and then later Manuel. When Eduardo died, I was probably in the
last year in high school. His younger brother Manuel took over
the ranch and ran the ranch successfully for a good many years .
The ranch had been set up as a trust by his mother, my
grandmother. It was for the purpose of supporting all these
women, you see. There were thirteen children in that family, and
eleven of them were women. Therefore, the whole purpose of the
trust was to see to it that the women in the family always had
someplace to come to.
About the time I was out of college- -I'm jumping, but this
is an important matter for what you're asking about--! could see
that my Uncle Manuel --my mother's brother- -was getting not only
too old but too tired to keep running the ranch, and they decided
that they were going to sell it. The people that really ran it
were the brother and his sister, my Aunt Nina, who was the
matriarch of the family, and her brother Manuel. They were
discussing the fact that they were going to sell the ranch.
Now, the ranch was a pretty extensive place. It was down
near Mogollon, in the Gila. They owned, apparently, about one
section, as I understand it. Six hundred and forty acres. They
controlled about thirty- five sections, so they controlled thirty-
five square miles that extended from the Gila Basin north into
the San Agustin plains.
Well, this heritage I had now seen once. I had gone there
to see it once. So my older brother Starker and I --he at that
time was already a professor at the University of California --we
made up our mind that we didn't want that land sold; we wanted to
protect it, and we decided we would make an offer. So 1 went to
my aunt, and I said to her, "My brother Starker and I would like
the opportunity to run the ranch rather than have you sell it."
I explained that we were both college educated, we knew something
about agriculture. I was an engineer, he was a forester, we knew
a lot about land. She looked at me and she said, "You don't know
a damn thing about sheep." I said, "No, but I can learn." "No,"
she said, "that's impossible, because you never worked under
Solomon Luna . "
So they sold it, under very unfavorable conditions because
they wouldn't listen to any advice. They paid about three-
quarters of their earnings in taxes, so they ended up with
nothing like what they should have had. And then, of course,
within two years, the ranch, which had been bought by a bunch of
Texans, was sold for four times the price or something like that.
Anyhow, that was what was happening.
Lage: Why did she object to your trying it, you and Starker?
Leopold: That was what I'm trying to explain. This family felt that the
only way to do things was the way it had always been done . I
remember when the Soil Conservation Service was formed, and on
all the surrounding ranches --big ranches in that part of the
country- -the government was coming in and paying through the CCC
[Civilian Conservation Corps] for drilling wells and doing
fencing and improving the grass, and erosion control. My Uncle
Manuel would have none of it: "I don't want any goddamn
government people on my land."
But they were very interesting people. They were real
characters. Eduardo, my mother's eldest half-brother, Eduardo
Otero, was, as his sister Nina was, red haired and very light
colored. They were all great gamblers, all of them. They loved
to play poker, they gambled about everything. The story goes
that Eduardo was playing one of the gambling games, apparently,
in northern Mexico- -one of the west Mexican towns- -and apparently
he had amassed a very large number of chips. He heard the
director of the gambling place come up to the dealer and say in
Spanish, "Don't let that damn gringo get any more money."
Eduardo apparently- -you can imagine, light colored and blue eyed
and red haired- -spoke out in perfect Spanish, said, "Thank you
very much; I'm just about through anyhow," and he pulled all his
chips together and left. [laughter]
The Lunas and Bereeres
Lage: So their heritage was Spanish, from Spain.
Leopold: Oh, yes. It starts. . .Well, if you look in the Bible in which 1
have put as much of the history of the family as I could get, the
first record of the Lunas was one of the great figures in the
history of Spain. He was called the condestabel. or constable.
He was really was the most potent political man in Spain under
the king. His name was Alvaro de Luna. He was beheaded by the
king in 1432. We know a lot about him. And then I have traced
all of the family. There's a big break in the history in the
Middle Ages that I don't know very much about.
But they came to New Mexico from Spain, the way I figure it,
about 1680. The leader of the expedition was Diego de Luna.
When he came up from Mexico into New Mexico along the Rio Grande,
he formed two towns. One he called after his cousin, the Duke of
Albuquerque; he called it Albuquerque. The other he named for
his own family; he called it Los Lunas. So that we know then
that the family settled there in the Rio Grande Valley. Because
the railroad happened to have a main way station in Albuquerque,
it turned out to be a large city, and Los Lunas is just still a
little town. We know quite a lot about that history. But they
were all sheep men.
Lage: Had any of the family married outside the cultural setting before
your mother did? Here she married a government man.
Leopold: Until my grandmother, I think essentially not. After my
grandmother's first husband, Manuel Otero, was murdered, she
married my grandfather Bergere, who came from England.
Lage: Was he English?
Leopold: He was a professional pianist, apparently a very good one. We
got to know something about this just last summer when Barbara
and I were in England. We got in touch with a long- lost relative
of ours who happens to be my second cousin. His name is Michael
Berger. Apparently, he and his family have been very interested
in tracing the genealogy of that part of the family, and from
what we all can conjecture, my grandfather- -my mother's father- -
was sent away from home, from Liverpool, because apparently his
stepmother couldn't get along with the boys. So they were each
given a couple of thousand pounds and told to get out.
My grandfather came to New York in the hope of studying
under a great piano teacher there. Our conjecture is that
thinking it would be better as a pianist not to have the name
Berger, he added an "e" to it and called himself Berggre. That
is our conjecture; we don't know. But then he was turned down by
this great teacher, so he really left the piano and didn't come
back to it for many, many, years. Went to New Mexico where he
met my grandmother, and that's where the family started.
But the previous generation before that marriage, all of the
people in the Luna family had married people from New Mexico, of
Spanish origin. The red hair and blue eyes come from people in
Castile.
Lage: Was there any problem with melding these two cultures together- -
your mother's and your father's?
Leopold: That's a little hard to say. There were so many of them that 1
didn't know very well. The one that I knew best was the
matriarch, my Aunt Nina Otero. She was a very strong-willed
woman, very proud of her origin, very smart. She was in politics
and in business and in a whole lot of other things. She was the
one that turned us down when we wanted to run the ranch. But she
was also very pecuniary, and she and her sisters tended to look
down on my father because he was an intellectual; he was not a
businessman who made a lot of money. But that's a passing
conjecture of mine; at least that has been my experience.
Lage: It wasn't something that you saw functioning in the family?
Leopold: No, it's simply that when something came up, and I had heard--.
She never said anything to me about it, but it was quite clear
that they thought my father, who, of course, became the most
famous of all of them, wasn't really amounting to very much
because he didn't make a lot of money.
Lage: Right. And did the fact that he worked for the government--?
Your remark about the family's attitude toward the government- -
Leopold: No, that had nothing to do with it.
Lage: That didn't bother them.
Leopold: It was a question of the fact that he didn't earn a lot of money.
Because all the rest of these people were business people, you
see.
Lage: Maybe your argument that you and Starker had gone to college and
therefore you could run the ranch didn't hold too much water with
her.
Leopold: Oh, no.
Move to Wisconsin: Familv Interest in Archerv and Craftsmanship
Lage: It sounds like an interesting background to come from.
Leopold: Yes, but of course I saw that only in summertime. Much more
important in the long run was my association with my father's
family. Or my father alone.
Lage: Let's look at that aspect, then.
Leopold: My father was a very farsighted man when he lived in New Mexico.
For example, he was secretary of the Chamber of Commerce; he was
very influential in an organization of sportsmen that he either
formed or participated in. That's all written up; there are a
lot of books about that. But the important part was that he was
very successful in his civic and in his government work, and was
advanced to higher and higher jobs until they offered him this
opportunity to go to Wisconsin, where he was to become the
associate director of the Forest Products Laboratory. But as I
say, there's no use going into that because there are books
written around it. A lot is known about that.
Lage: We should concentrate on how it might have influenced you.
Leopold: But when we moved to Wisconsin, when I was about eight, my mother
found it very difficult to get settled there because she missed
the sunshine, and the dark, long winter days of cloudy weather
she found very difficult to get along with.
Lage: And just the change in the landscape and being away from her
family must have been hard.
Leopold: But my mother was a very remarkable woman. She became an
extremely good botanist. She could name any darn plant that you
ever grew. She was very good at birds. She was a good gardener.
And how in the world she got along with five children on that
little money, I don't know, but when my father died in 1948 he
was earning $6,000 a year. And my mother--. We all went to
college. We all got along quite well.
Lage : She does sound remarkable.
Leopold: Oh, she was. And then she was, of course, the state champion in
archery. We went into archery when I was about ten. And this
becomes one of the most important things of my life. When my
father got interested in bows and arrows, and he started to make
bows and arrows himself, this was really the beginning of the
whole business of handmade, first-class articles of beauty as
well as utility.
Lage: So this became kind of a family- -
Leopold: Oh, yes. And everybody, all of the family then, at least the
elder children, primarily my older brother and I, were shown that
to make things by hand of great beauty with a high degree of
perfection was the thing to do. So we all became highly skilled
craftsmen.
Lage: What kinds of things did you make?
Leopold: I not only made my bows and arrows, but I made knives, quivers,
jewel boxes, on and on and on. But that was a very important
thing. And all with hand tools. In other words, we didn't have
a machine tool in the house. Everything was done by hand.
Lage: Were these things expressed in words or just by example, the
value of making something by hand? Would this be talked about as
well as done?
Leopold: No. But for example, when 1 started making knives, I can
remember spending a large amount of time, evening after evening,
going over drawings of knives with my father, talking about every
little nuance of how the shape should be. I mean, he took a
great interest in the whole question of "make it beautiful and do
it with perfection." So these things that were turned out were
things of great beauty, I can tell you.
Lage: Do you still have these things?
Leopold: My best knife that I made then, I have used all my life. So I
certainly do have it. The greatest piece of archery tackle that
my father made, I think to our knowledge no one has ever achieved
anything like what he did. I don't know whether you realize that
when you shoot a bow, your arrow goes from your chin and
therefore it's pointing upward when you look across it.
Therefore, when you talk about pointblank at a certain distance,
it means that the angle between the arrowhead and the bottom of
the chin is just enough rise in elevation to go a certain
distance. My father had a set of arrows, had a bow that shot
10
them, that shot polntblank at a hundred yards. No one to our
knowledge had ever achieved that before. The most beautiful set
of equipment that I've ever seen in my life.
Lage: Did a great deal of study go into the dynamics of the arrow?
Leopold: Yes, my father was a friend of a physicist who wrote several
books on bows, a man that later I knew in my professional life.
So that although my father himself was not versed in the physics
of projectiles, he certainly knew people who took a lot of
interest in that. So there was a lot of back and forth. My
father interested a lot of other people in Madison in making
bows. And in making knives, as a matter of fact. Several
friends of ours got interested in making knives when I started
making knives. But they were older people, people that were a
generation older than I.
Lage: Did Starker make things like this also?
Leopold: Beautiful. Oh, Starker was a superb craftsman. He not only made
good bows and arrows, but he made fly rods, for example. He tied
the most beautiful trout flies I've ever seen in my life. He was
a real expert on that. He carved a perfectly beautiful chest for
his daughter. I don't know who's got that chest now, but he was a
woodcarver. Well, in every way, Starker was a first-rate
craftsman in practically everything.
Lage: Did your mother also--
Leopold: My mother shot the bows.
Lage: [laughs] She was the expert at that.
Leopold: She was state champion for more than a decade. She was a
national champion in one aspect of archery. She was the best
archer that we had ever seen. She never was beaten; she just
stopped shooting bows and arrows, and somebody else--. In other
words, as far as the women were concerned, she was the best
archer that ever existed in Wisconsin. She was very good.
Lage: So she took all these things up with enthusiasm.
Leopold: Oh, my goodness, yes. Oh, yes. I should say so. She was
superb .
Lage: What got your father interested in this? Was it a new way of
hunting, or was it the craftsmanship angle?
11
Leopold: Oh, it was both, because you see--. Veil, you are acquainted
with the things that have been written about his life. He was a
great hunter, as 1 told you. And then as we moved to Madison, it
became more and more clear to him as he became more involved in
what was later to be called ecology- -he named it, really- -he
began to see that it was more important to be more related to the
study of rather than taking of game.
Passing on Family Values and Traditions////
Leopold: But all of that has been written up in great detail.
Lage: Would he talk to you boys about this as you were growing up?
Leopold: Oh, you didn't have to talk about it; you just did it, that's
all. So basically, although he never really gave up shotguns, we
really did less and less hunting, and more and more shooting with
a bow. Some of the greatest experiences that we ever had were
going deer hunting with a bow, long before anybody else was doing
that. We never killed a deer.
Lage: You never made--
Leopold: Oh, no, never did it. But it was very exciting to be shooting.
Nowadays you see people buy the tackle at the sporting goods
store. We didn't. We made everything ourselves.
But I can remember my father saying to me one time, "One
cannot grow up to be a gentleman without some experience with
dogs, guns, and horses." So after my first summer with a paying
job, when I was in early college, I came back from that full
summer work, and my father said to me--. And that's when he was
unemployed. We were living off his savings, and we were really
very poorly off. He said, "How much money did you earn?" I
said, "I came back with $90." He said, "That's fine. What are
you going to do with it?" I said, "Ninety dollars will pay for a
whole year of my tuition and books at the university, and I'm
going to spend it on that." He said, "I don't think I'd do
that." I said, "Why?" He said, "Why don't you buy yourself a
shotgun?" I'd been shooting all my life this little 20 gauge- -a
single -barrel shotgun. A very nice little shotgun but very
cheap. So I then got hold of the catalogue of the finest shotgun
maker in the world and ordered a made -to -order shotgun. I was
fourteen, and that gun which I--. Oh, yes, and my father said--.
I said, "Dad, I've only got $90, and the shotgun costs $120." He
12
said, "I'll give you the rest." So that shotgun is now worth,
what, $5,000. It's a perfectly wonderful weapon.
So anyhow, he was very interested in having the right
equipment. And to keep care of equipment; he was very, very
particular about keeping care of axes and shovels and shotguns,
things like that. So nobody spoke about these things; you just
did them. You watched your father sharpen a knife, and you
sharpened a knife that way. You watched him clean his gun, and
you cleaned your gun that way. So you don't talk about these
things; you just did them. It was a marvelous way to be taught,
because when you watched a really great craftsman go to all the
trouble to do it absolutely right, then what the son does is to
follow the same thing. You do it right, you do it the best you
possibly can, and are not satisfied with anything else.
Lage: It doesn't always seem to work that way, though, in families,
that the tradition is passed on that way so successfully.
Leopold: Well, I'm going to give an example, because it doesn't pass on
necessarily either easily or surely. My father was, of course,
very interested in birds but never made a big deal out of it; he
just knew birds. Well, I wasn't. I thought birds were, except
for shooting, birds weren't very interesting. But when I had my
first job after I left college, I bought a pair of very good
binoculars, and from that day on I became a birder. The
difference was that I had never seen a bird through a pair of
glasses. No one ever said, "You should do that," but once you
got into it, once you got the right equipment, then all of a
sudden I've been a birder ever since.
Lage: And they're habits of mind that seem to be passed down, of being
very thorough. This is evident in looking at your journals from
the early years .
Leopold: Well, I keep a journal because my father kept a journal.
Lage: Right.
Leopold: And I write small in the journal because my father wrote small in
the journal.
Lage: And you put the initials of the people who were on each trip at
beginning of each entry.
Leopold: That's the way he did it. That's the way I did it.
Lage: Was Starker like that also? Did he pattern himself in that way?
13
Leopold: Quite, yes. Now, our journals are really quite different, but,
oh, yes, he has a--
Lage: But he did keep one too.
Leopold: I'm not sure exactly how he kept his journal. But yes, he was a
very good note taker.
Reading and Religion
Lage: What other kinds of activities do you remember from these boyhood
years? Was reading something important in the family?
Leopold: Oh, my goodness, yes. My father always had trouble with his
eyes. Every night, without fail, my father would sit in the
living room with his eyes partly closed, and my mother would read
to him. They were the best -read people I've ever seen. They
read everything. They read plays, they read novels, they read
history, they read new books, they read classics. I never saw
such a well-read family, very well-read people.
Lage: And then would you listen in on this?
Leopold: No, because ordinarily I was studying. But it was a pattern. I
look back at the things that I read, and I'm just amazed at how
much I read. No, we read a lot. Everybody in the family read.
Lage: Were there boyhood books that you recall as having particular
excitement for you, or influence?
Leopold: Yes, I was crazy about Robert Louis Stevenson. I read an awful
lot of classical material because I found it interesting. And
then later on this grew into an interest in historical novels.
But it was simply part of the family business that reading was a
very important matter.
Lage: Not like having a television today.
Leopold: No, that's one of the really great difficulties with television,
is that you're not going to get the same kind of education that
you get from reading books.
Lage:
Right. Or family setting, really.
14
Leopold: Yes. Of course, even in those days there weren't very many
families that read the way my family did. The idea of my mother
reading to father every single night, without fail.
Lage: Did your mother follow her Catholic upbringing?
Leopold: Oh, that was wonderful. Ve were all brought up Catholic.
Lage: Oh, you were?
Leopold: Oh, yes. All of the children, all five of us, successively, one
after the other, dropped out of the Catholic church at about the
same time. About the same age.
Lage: About what age was that?
Leopold: About ten or eleven. I found that the little neighborhood
Catholic church that we went to at Madison, all I can remember is
they talked about money, how the church needed money. I found it
very uninspiring, uninteresting, and as a matter of fact, just a
waste of time. My mother went to church every Sunday, but when
we'd go hunting on the weekend, my mother would say, "God will
know that it's more important for you to go out a day with your
father than to go to Mass, so you go with your father." She went
to Mass, but that was the way we were taught.
Lage: Did she object when you all successively dropped out of the
church?
Leopold: No. Oh, I think she was sorry in a way, but any verbal
objection, no. As long as we were going out with our father,
doing something that was interesting outdoors, that was more
important.
Lage: But she didn't mind when you completely gave up on the church as
a religion?
Leopold: If she did, she didn't talk much about it.
Lage: Did your father ever express any opinion about it?
Leopold: No. My father was so well read, he knew more about the Bible
than I ever knew. He never went to church, but he knew a lot
about religion. Like many things, he didn't say what you should
or shouldn't do; he simply encouraged you to do what you're going
to do. So there was really very little discussion about that.
Lage:
And then have you followed any organized religion since then?
15
Leopold: No. My first wife insisted that my children be brought up in the
Episcopal church, and indeed my son, who is now a physician, went
to an Episcopal school, a very good school, a private school, and
I think got a lot out of it, but has not followed up religion
since. Although our daughter, I think, has now turned to one of
the churches, I think an Episcopal church, and apparently gets
considerable satisfaction out of it.
Father's Familv in Burlineton. Iowa
Lage: Did you have many ties to your father's family in Burlington?
Leopold: Yes, but I never spent as much time there as I spent in New
Mexico. You see, what happened in New Mexico was that not only
did 1 spend several summers there during high school time, but
then I went there to live after I graduated, and I worked in New
Mexico. And I've worked in New Mexico all my life. So that I
saw a lot more of my mother's family than my father's family.
But the Leopolds were a very remarkable group of people. Very
remarkable people. Again, it's all been discussed in books, but
among the things that were important were that all of my father's
family- -his sister, his two brothers- -were extremely good
golfers.
Lage: Oh. I've never seen that in the books.
Leopold: No. Father was not. And I never played golf. Starker
apparently played golf for a while, but the idea of being a
sportsman in the Leopold family was always an important thing.
These people were good. My Uncle Frederic was shooting the same
score as his age when he was seventy- five.
Lage: That's very remarkable.
Leopold: That same Uncle Frederic, the youngest brother of my father's
family, became the world expert on one kind of bird, the wood
duck. Everything that's known about wood ducks, he really
pioneered. He put up boxes in the family yard and followed the
life history of these little ducks, and wrote about them
extensively, and lectured about them, and a lot is known now
about wood ducks, and he started all that.
The family, of course, made fine wood furniture. This is a
Leopold desk [in Luna Leopold's office]. All during the
Depression, all during the war, no union ever unionized that
plant. No one was ever fired. They had a very old factory, but
16
they turned out beautiful stuff with very happy personnel,
apparently. The unions tried to unionize it, but apparently the
two brothers, Frederic and Carl, were very advanced in dealing
with employees. They had some kind of a benefit system of
bonuses that depended upon output, so without being a sweatshop,
it was very successful in dealing with employees. Very loyal
people, all the employees.
You'll still see these desks. The bank I go to down in
Berkeley is full of these Leopold desks. They don't know where
they came from.
Lage: You can tell by the style?
Leopold: Yes, I can tell by the style.
Lage: Is the business still operating?
Leopold: No, my uncle sold the business in one of these takeovers. He had
turned the thing from a struggling little shop into a very
successful small business and sold it for a very high price. But
sold in one of these takeover jobs.
Lage: But some time ago.
Leopold: Oh, yes, it must have been, I suppose about twenty years ago, I
suppose .
Skate Sailing. Skiing, and Hunting in Wisconsin
Lage: What other outdoor experiences do you remember? I've run across
references to your skate sailing, and I saw in your journals some
skiing trips.
Leopold: In those days, you see, before the days of ski lifts, my best
friend Bert Gallistel, who's one of my closest friends still; his
father was the chief engineer for the University of Wisconsin in
Madison. He and I did everything together. We went to high
school together, we went to college together, and we taught
ourselves to ski. But since we worked all day in school, we
started to ski at night. So we would leave after studying; we
would start out at nine o'clock in the evening on our skis, and
we taught ourselves to ski in the dark.
Lage: That's pretty hard to do.
17
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
We nearly killed ourselves a lot of times, too.
lot about skiing and skate sailing.
But we learned a
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
This was more cross -country -type skiing, I would assume.
We didn't know anything about so-called downhill skiing, because
there were no slopes. Everything was fluffy snow, and therefore
you learned to telemark before you learned to christy, you see.
Did you learn these various techniques?
We taught ourselves just doing it, that's all. And then there
was skate sailing. Growing up in Madison was an amazing
experience because here you had all these lakes . We hoped to
skate on Thanksgiving Day every year. We'd go to the smallest
lake, Lake Wingra, and we would skate across this thin ice before
it was ready. [laughs] Why we never fell in, I don't know. But
then when the big lake, when Lake Mendota became frozen- -and
there were years in which it froze when there was no wind and no
snow, and it was just a glass all the way across, four miles
across. Bert and 1 one time timed ourselves sixty-five miles an
hour over a mile course on our skates. It was a very exciting
thing to do. We could never make up our mind whether we liked
skate sailing or skiing better.
What exactly was skate sailing?
The skate sails Bert and I built were of very unorthodox design.
Mine consisted of a T-shaped spar, the base eight feet, the
height fifteen feet. On this was stretched a triangle of muslin
cloth. The apex of the triangle dragged on the ice. The long
spar sat on your shoulder about three feet from the base of the
T. To move, the pressure of the long spar against your shoulder
pushed you along. To tack, the whole sail was lifted over your
head and put on the opposite shoulder. We could tack about
thirty degrees off the wind. Because of the force components we
could sail faster than the wind pushing us, so a forty mile-per-
hour wind could push us sixty miles per hour, approximately.
Sounds like a great, exciting boyhood.
Well, then, of course, we did a lot of hunting too.
did not, but I mean my family did.
Would these be weekend trips, or longer trips?
No, mostly just a day or two days, weekend trips.
Bert and I
18
Lage : What do you think--. A lot of conservation-minded people now
think hunting's a terrible thing. How do you feel hunting
developed your own sense of sort of the ecology? It doesn't do
it for all hunters, but it surely seemed to for your family.
Leopold: The main thing about hunting is hunting is an exercise in
sportsmanship. The idea of killing a lot of something is simply
not the way it's supposed to be.
Lage: And it wasn't the way it was in your family.
Leopold: No, absolutely not. But as I say, my father had gradually
changed his mind. He finally gave up hunting more or less
completely in his later years.
Lage: Altogether?
Leopold: No, it was simply that he was more interested in doing other
things. Now, for example, after we had the shack and spent
practically every weekend up there, we were trying to build up
the population of whatever animals we had. But when I came back
during the war, when I came back for a visit when I was still in
the army, we'd go up to the shack, and my father would say, "Why
don't we go out and see whether we can find you a duck?" He
wasn't interested in shooting, but he was interested in having me
find a duck.
So the family turned more and more to growing plants and
trying to do what my sister now has done very well- -to learn how
to restore prairies in their original form with all the original
species. We tried for many years to try to grow a population of
quail in our land. That's way in the far northern edge of quail
territory, because they would simply kill off in the winter, in
the big, cold winters. But my father never really gave up
hunting. He simply was interested more in doing other things.
But when the boys came back and if they wanted to hunt, why,
that's fine.
But your question about hunting in general, well, it's like
this business of animal fur. You can carry all these things to
extremes. If you're going to say you can't wear furs, then you
shouldn't wear shoes, or you shouldn't eat meat, or you shouldn't
kill cattle for beef. I mean, there are extremes that people go
to, and I would say hunting is one of the most important things I
ever did and I have no intention of giving it up, and I think
there's nothing more important as far as learning sportsmanship
than to go hunting. Because you learn all of the things that are
needed: how to take care of equipment, how to treat other
people, how to deal with landowners, how to deal with fences, and
19
respecting other people's property,
and birds.
and then how to treat animals
Yes, there are people who in the name of conservation don't
like hunting, but there's an awful lot of very good
conservationists who do like hunting. I say if you look at the
aspects that I'm speaking of, hunting as we knew it was probably
the most educational experience that we did, because it involved
all of these ethical types of problems, so that you learn to do
it the right way. And besides, develop a skill.
Lage: And be in the outdoors.
Leopold: Yes, that's right.
Develocine Habits of Close Observation of Nature
Lage: What about the habit of very close observation of nature? That's
something that the family seemed to have had across the board.
Did that come through your hunting experience?
Leopold: Clearly it came straight from my father, no question about that.
But then there were other aspects of it. I studied a lot of
botany, but I was never a very good botanist. Because I was
primarily in another field, my knowledge of taxonomy never really
improved very much. Many times when I came back after I'd
graduated, came back to be for a weekend with the family, and we
would go up to the shack. The general thing was you went for a
walk, and my father would look at a certain plant, and he would
say, "Of course you'll remember that this plant is called so-and-
so." Well, hell, I didn't remember it, but he would never
embarrass you by suggesting that you didn't know. But then he
would remind you. And then we could talk about that plant.
But close observation was the basis of his teaching, too.
I'll never forget the final exam in his course when I took it.
The final exam consisted of a little sketch, and I remember it
still. The sketch was a cross -section. He didn't tell you where
it was. It showed a road, and a fence, and a rock, and a dead
rabbit. That's all the cross -section showed. The question
started like this: Where is this location? Where did the rock
come from? Why is the rabbit dead? What would be the
relationship of the rabbit to the road? To the roadside, and on
and on and on.
20
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
You had to think of all these relationships. You had to be
in Wisconsin because the rock was exotic. The rock was rounded
and therefore it was moved by something, and you had to think,
what could have moved the rock? Why was the rock sitting there
alone? What killed the rabbit? Why the road? Because the road
bank was protected, you see, from farming, and therefore it had
some plants in it that you wouldn't have found across the fence.
The reason the rabbit was there, because the plants were there.
I see. Would these be the kinds of questions that your father
put forth when you were out together, too? Would he encourage
you to notice things in that way?
No, he would look at something and then he would start talking
about why it was so. So he wasn't as much asking questions as
discussing with you why you thought a certain thing that you
observed was true. He always listened to what you had to say,
even though you may not have had very good ideas about it.
Did writing the journals help you observe more closely, do you
think?
Yes, 1 think so, because the reason that a journal is important
is that you'd be surprised how fast you lose something, how fast
you forget. If you sit down as we always did and wrote your
journal that night, everything's fresh in your mind and you'll
see things in the freshness of your memory that you would have
lost had you not done so.
But it seems to me it would also tend to make you, during the
day, more aware, more conscious of what's going on.
Possibly,
true.
I never thought about it that way, but that's possibly
The unfortunate thing is that my father never lived long
enough to see how successful this teaching was and how the
children had all responded to it. I think he would have been
tremendously pleased.
But he had some indication of what direction you were going in,
At least the older- -
It was too early, actually.
21
II EDUCATIONAL AND EARLY CAREER EXPERIENCES
Earlv Schooling in Albuoueraue and Madison
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
One of the books that I looked at said you'd entered college at
age fifteen. Was that unusual at that time?
Actually, I must have been fourteen. It was very peculiar. In
the first place, when we lived in Albuquerque, my mother sent me
to school when I just turned five. We went to a little private
school run by two very talented women who had probably--! don't
think there were more than twenty students. The learning was
such that you made two grades per year. Or maybe it was a grade
and a half. But I do know that when we left Albuquerque, I was
eight years old when I was in sixth grade, and I was too darn
young, because the problem was that by the time I got up at that
level, I wasn't remembering as much as I should.
So you went right to sixth grade in Wisconsin?
placement?
They accepted the
Yes, but my problem was at eighth grade. I was going to a
grammar school in Madison, and the teacher was very nice. She
didn't insist that I learn the arithmetic that I should have
known, so that when I got to high school, I was not as good in
arithmetic as I should have been, and I didn't like geometry,
which later I came to love, and I had simply fallen behind. So
when I entered college and started the engineering school, there
was a six-weeks' period during which you prepared yourself after
you entered college. At the end of six weeks you were to take an
examination to see whether you could stay in school. I learned
all my high school mathematics in six weeks, but the problem is,
you don't learn it well enough. So compared with the students
that we see here, my math has always been very much less than I
would like.
Has that been a problem in your field, or has it directed you in
a way that you might not have gone?
22
Leopold: It simply has not turned out to be my particular specialty.
Observation is my specialty, and analysis. And I wish that
knew more math, yes.
Civil Engineering at the University of Wisconsin:
Influence of Professor Von Hagan
Lage:
Leopold:
You started in civil engineering,
field then?
What were you thinking of as a
The way I went into engineering was interesting. I told you that
the father of my best friend, Bert Gallistel, was a mining
engineer who became the superintendent of buildings and grounds
at the university. We'd gone through high school together and
learned to ski and skate sail together. So when school started,
we were walking up the hill to go to register. Bert said, "What
are you going to register as?" I said, "I don't know. What are
you going to be?" He said, "I'm going to go into engineering."
I said, "I think I will too." [laughter] So we walked together,
and we signed up, and he said, "I'm going to get in this line;
this is mining engineering." I said, "I don't think I'll be as
interested in that as civil engineering; I'll take the next
line." So I went into civil engineering.
Well, then you come to the most important thing that ever
happened to me, is that the head of the civil engineering
department at the University of Wisconsin was a man by the name
of Professor Leslie Von Hagan. Von Hagan happened to be the
father of another close friend, Charles Von Hagan. Bert and I
and Charlie were very close.
Leopold: Professor Von Hagan was a very strict disciplinarian. He did a
lot of things that no university professor before or since has
ever done. Everything that he did, I have done in my teaching.
For the first three years we hated him, he was so tough on us.
But here's what he did. For all the civil engineers, he gave a
course in engineering English. The course was taught every
semester, and every civil engineer had to take a course every
semester for all the years in college, in English.
Lage: In writing, basically?
23
Leopold: Both. Every week a student had to turn in to him twenty words.
The twenty words were supposed to have been words you picked up
during your reading. Of course, you didn't have time to read, so
you went to the library and you took out a dictionary and you
wrote twenty words. You had to define them, and then he would
choose from all these words that were turned in to him, and he
would give them to you in an exam, and say, "Define these words."
Lage: So you had to know your words plus the other words.
Leopold: And you sure learned a lot. Boy, I'll tell you. I'm greatly
influenced by what that man taught me.
Lage: Now, have you done that? In your teaching?
Leopold: Not just that, but for example: everything that you turned in to
him had to be bound in a particular way, in exactly the same way
every time, in a manila folder, exactly the way he wanted it
done. You never threw any notes away. You did your computations
on the side so he could check them. And then if you got a
problem wrong, you got the same problems handed back to you, and
you did it again and again and again until it was perfect. And
then if it still wasn't done right, the same problem was handed
to you on the final examination. After you finished the
examination, here are the problems that you haven't finished. If
you didn't pass them, you were flunked.
Lage: What did you do if you needed help with that problem? Obviously,
it didn't come easy if you kept getting it back all semester.
Leopold: The difficulties were along these lines. In those days you
didn't have calculators, and everything had to be done to three
significant figures, for example, and therefore we used
logarithms. But you had to use six-place logarithms, so that if
you didn't copy the logarithm number down correctly, the six
letters, you're going to get something wrong, you see--
Lage: You had to be pretty precise.
Leopold: --and therefore you might make a slight error, and you had to do
that over. Not very often--. The problems were discussed in
class, so that there was no reason why you certainly couldn't get
it on the second or third time. But if you didn't do it
perfectly, you'd get it again and again. So that was a very
important influence. This man was--. He was wonderful.
Lage:
Did he have influence on other students as well?
24
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Oh, yes, there's no question about it. But I think I was
probably more influenced than most.
When we went to summer camp, we had six weeks of intense
work.
And this is still civil engineering?
Yes. Ue went up to the Baraboo Hills where the summer camp was
held. When we were laying out the railroad that we had to
design, and Professor Von Hagan was out with us in the field, we
found that he really was a human being, that he was very funny,
was honest, very friendly, and we all just loved the hell out of
him. Whereas formerly, you thought in class he always seemed so
gruff, and so rough on you. But he was very influential on
everybody.
So that training was absolutely wonderful because of the
discipline that this particular professor gave you. There were
not very many other things I could say about that training, but
engineering is always a wonderful thing to study because you're
thrown up against a lot of different kinds of problems. But 1
think that everybody who went through that particular university
system got something that no one else has ever gotten. He was
just beyond belief.
Were there other professors that you recall in a similar way?
At Harvard, yes. My professor at Harvard was very important to
me. But other than--. Yes, there was. One of the young
instructors in civil engineering later became a professor and
then became the dean, then became the head of all of engineering
at Wisconsin. He was very important to me because he followed
the same line of approach to students. Very demanding, had to be
done exactly right, and when you look back, you just loved him
for it. This was Professor Kurt Wendt.
Now, you say you carried this on into your teaching.
Yes.
Has it been successful? Have you gotten the students to--
Well, it's a different way, but there are--. See all those
folders there?
Lage:
Yes.
25
Leopold: Those are students' works that were handed in the same way that
Professor Von Hagan made us hand them in. If they weren't
stapled correctly, the student gets them back. For example, in
my teaching, I wasn't very loved for this, but I told the class,
when you hand in a piece of work in my class, if you have a
mistake in spelling, I said, it's ten points off. I said, "I
never correct a word that's a misspelled word without myself
looking into the dictionary to make sure that I'm correcting it
correctly. If I can look into the dictionary, so can you." Boy,
when they started to get ten points off per spelling, my students
paid some attention, I'll tell you.
Lage: It must have been unusual- -at least, in my conception of
engineering now- -to put this emphasis on writing and on reading
outside the field.
Leopold: I have absolutely no respect for this university, California, in
the engineering school. None, because everything's mathematics
and computers, and I don't think that's engineering. Not the way
I know it.
Designing a Broadened Field of Study, with Lasting Impact
Lage: Did you switch out of engineering and into geology while you were
at Wisconsin, or did you graduate in civil engineering?
Leopold: Well, what happened was that I found civil engineering to be much
too constrained.
Lage: When did you decide that?
Leopold: About the end of my first year in college. There were no
electives. I think in four years of college, I would have two
electives. So I went to the dean, and I said, "I would like to
make an agreement with the university that if I take five years
instead of four to get my degree, I want to be able to study
botany and ecology and plant physiology and geology and soils and
agricultural climatology. If I take five years, would you give
me just a little more flexibility in my schedule?" They said,
yes, so that's what I did.
Lage: That was quite an overview. There seems to be a big change from
your first entry into college and the casual way you decided to
take engineering. And then a year later you had this kind of
broad overview of what you wanted to study. How did you design a
26
series of subjects that you were going to take to round out your
education?
Leopold: I wanted to know something about geology and biology, and that's
what engineering was not giving me. So 1 took a lot of extra
geology, and that was very important because I'd gotten
interested in the one required course in geology. The required
course in geology was taught by a famous professor at Wisconsin
by the name of Warren Mead. 1 was so crazy about that course, it
was just wonderful. One of the great teachers 1 studied under.
So I started to take quite a few more courses in geology. And
then 1 went over to botany and started more or less at the
beginning with elementary botany and then advanced botany and
then taxonomy, then ecology and plant physiology, and on and on.
So that I came out with a considerable knowledge- -training, not
knowledge --training in the biological sciences, which most
engineers don't get.
Lage: Was this anything that your father encouraged, or you just--
Leopold: Oh, he encouraged it, but this was really my idea. My father
thought I was very foolish to stay in engineering. He said, "Why
don't you go into something else?" I said, "I now believe that
in order to talk to engineers I have to be an engineer." I said,
"I want a degree in engineering in order to deal with engineers."
Lage: You saw them as a group that had to be dealt with?
Leopold: Yes. Because I could see what was happening in his profession,
that there were a lot of sort of practical people who couldn't
see that ecology had much to do with them.
Lage: I see. So you want to be able to talk their language.
Leopold: Yes. And it's been very helpful to me. Very helpful to me. I
could see, for example, by watching my father, that you're not
going to get very far in science of the kind that we were
interested in without knowing something about biology.
Engineering was not enough. So although my father hardly was
directing this, he certainly was encouraging it.
Lage: I know you just kind of stumbled into engineering originally,
from what you told me, but did you come to see it as something
that maybe was missing from your father's background? Did it
give you something that would be able to take you in a different
direction?
Leopold: Well, I never thought about it as my father missing it, but I
certainly was gaining something from it, because, for example, I
27
could think in terms of the physical forces, the kind of thing
that we studied in physics and in structures and in bridge
design, foundations, which in biologic training you simply don't
get any- -you never get any of it. It was a very good
combination. As a matter of fact, the combination is really
quite necessary if you're going to go into hydrology in the
modern sense.
Lage: Were you able to take that broad base of studies at Wisconsin
that you requested?
Leopold: Oh, yes, indeed. Yes. As a matter of fact, that's standard
business now. But I had to fight for it in those days. They
didn't believe in it at all.
For example, when I was teaching in this department
[Department of Geology], I would say to graduate students,
"You've come to the University of California, Berkeley, which is
a very large and a very diverse place." I said, "I don't care
what you do, but get yourself educated. Take what you want, but
come out an educated person, because you can do so at Berkeley.
There are no requirements as far as I'm concerned. Now, I expect
you to learn some geology, but I'm not telling you what part of
geology you have to learn. Be educated." That's what I told
students when I was an advisor here- -in other words when I was a
chief advisor to students --because I believe that you're never
going to learn everything, and that the individual ought to have
a great opportunity to decide what combinations of things he
wants to learn.
Lage: So you wouldn't be one of the educators who feels that there
should be a core curriculum that everybody participates in?
Leopold: I think a person has to be educated in a broad way, but whether
that is the way to accomplish that purpose, I don't know. I have
a great empathy for a student who wishes to decide for himself or
herself what kind of an education that he or she wishes. I think
we should both give students an opportunity to do so, and to
encourage them to do so, and give them some advice as they go.
But if you graduate in geology from this department, as I said, I
expect you to know some geology. But how you're going to learn
that geology is up to you. But you're going to have to know
something about these various subjects, all of which are
geologically oriented. To come out, for example, without ever
having taken a course in paleontology, which most of these
students don't, I think is a shame. They don't know any biology
at all.
28
Lage: It doesn't give them the kind of broad view that you've brought
to it.
A Learning Experience at Coon Vallev with the Soil Erosion
Service
Lage:
Leopold:
You worked with the Soil Erosion Service during the summers?
that the non-paying summer jobs you referred to?
Is
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Well, first I worked for the Forest Service at a forest
experiment station. Then I worked for the Soil Erosion Service
in a non-paying job at one of the experiment stations. The third
summer, I worked for the Soil Conservation Service as a young
engineer.
Was the Coon Valley experience one of those?
I spent a summer at Coon Valley before the big experiment station
was expanded into a big deal. When Coon Valley was first being
set up, I was there as a non-paid helper actually laying out the
experimental plots in areas that were later to be used by the
experiment station. It was just getting started at Coon Valley
at that time.
Was that an experience that shaped you in any way, or developed
your interest in soils?
Yes, some things that happened there were very important. Yes,
I'll tell you one of the things, which was always a source of
great embarrassment to me. I was a civil engineer, and I had
just finished a course in surveying. Years later, surveying
became one of the most important things that I do. I was running
a transit, laying out experimental plots. Apparently I went in
for lunch, a thunderstorm broke, and my expensive instrument was
out there in the rain. I ran out and I picked up the instrument
and I took it in the barn, and I started to dry it out. By the
time I got it dried out and had looked through it, I had
destroyed the spider-hair crosshairs, which of course could not
be fixed except in the factory. I was fifteen.
Oh, you were very young then.
Yes. I just turned fifteen. So I went to the head boss, and I
said, "Sir, I've made a terrible mistake. I've ruined our
instrument." And I can tell you, that was very difficult to do,
but it was also a very great learning experience, because to
Lage:
Leopold
force myself to go and admit that I'd made a mistake, and to go
to the boss and tell him immediately and in detail what 1 had
done wrong- -and of course, when you do that, there isn't very
much the poor gentleman could say except to say, "We'll have to
send it to the company to be fixed." But that was a moment of
great growth, I'll tell you, when you forced yourself to say you
had made a terrible mistake; and to admit it immediately and
publicly, that was tough. I think that's one thing I remember
the most about that summer.
That's quite a learning experience. How did you get interested
in soil erosion and end up at Coon Valley?
Veil, because this was from my father's influence. We were
interested in conservation, and I happened to be leaning toward
the whole manner of how land was treated, and the one
organization that dealt with that matter was the Soil Erosion
Service. So that's where I started.
Thoughts on Breadth in Education and the Value of Field
Experience
Lage: I think we've probably come to a good stopping point, unless
there's something that comes to mind about the things we've been
talking about that you think we should add.
Leopold: To summarize that part of our experiences, it was quite clear
that an education demands breadth, and breadth you're not going
to get in many of the ways in which certain courses or certain
things are taught, such as engineering. Breadth also means
reading, which my family did a lot of. When I first went to
graduate school, you certainly did a lot of reading, which is not
now required of anybody. Therefore, people are growing up
without breadth and without having read anything, and have
usually not been forced to write very much, and therefore they
find the whole matter of writing very difficult.
So the whole business of education has been turned upside
down by the lack of experience in writing and reading, too much
emphasis on computing and what are now called "models." That's a
very bad turn of events, where you don't ever have to go out and
see anything in the field; you construct something in your mind
that you can put on a computer. Now people are being trained
without any field experience whatsoever.
Lage: It's like they were empty vessels, if they don't have the field
experience or the reading.
30
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
That's right. And that's what's happening in engineering now.
In this university here, civil engineering in the graduate school
requires only that you learn computers and mathematics, and
that's all.
No work in the field.
No. Matter of fact, they resent working in the field, or do not
encourage the students to work in the field. I know, because
some of my student friends have gone there at my suggestion, and
I turn and find out that this is not an education. And yet for
some reason or another, Berkeley engineering, Berkeley civil
engineering, is considered one of the best in the country. 1
don't believe it. That's not my idea of engineering.
Do you think other programs are similar, though?
trend not just at Berkeley.
Maybe it's a
Unfortunately, this is not just this university. I went to a
meeting a couple of months ago, of the Institute for Hydrology,
American Institute for Hydrology, and there was a lot of
discussion about training. I found, in talking to a lot of
people, there's only one school that I've found out about that
has the kind of education in hydrology that I think is a real
education. It happens to be the School of Mines in Colorado.
Not civil engineering, but the School of Mines. That's the only
place that I've seen where I would consider that they are
offering a real education in hydrology, because it has all the
things that I've been talking about.
How about in geology? Is there an emphasis there also on kind of
the "black box" approach? Computing and modeling? Or do they
still have the fieldwork?
That's a very touchy point in this department. It is indeed.
With you on one side and others on another?
Yes. I'm not the only one on my side, but there's a real schism
here. There is a difference of opinion as to the value of field
work in the science of geology. Some laboratory scientists and
theoreticians believe field work for students in geology is a
waste of time. I feel field experience is essential. But in the
last few years this has changed. Many of our more recently hired
teachers are very good field geologists, and so the pendulum is
now swinging back, I'm glad to say.
31
s in Suervision at the Soil Conservation Service
[Interview 2: May 30, 1990 ]##
Lage: You wanted to start out today with some learning experiences at
the Soil Conservation Service.
Leopold: In 1936, when I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, I had
taken five years to take my degree because I was dissatisfied
with engineering. At the end of five years I was probably the
only person at that time trained specifically for work in the
field of soil conservation. I took a job, a temporary job with
the Soil Conservation Service in New Mexico, where I had many
roots. I was paid $77 a month working for the regional office in
Albuquerque, and I was put in a reconnaissance survey team- -not
surveying, but resource surveys.
Leopold: There was a geologist in the office, Dr. Parry Reiche, that I got
to be very close to, a man who was very important to me in my
career. I had taken some geology, but I certainly could hardly
be called a geologist; I was an engineer. Also, his secretary in
the office was a girl that I started to go out with, a very
lovely girl. One time she said to me, "Why haven't you taken any
of those fine jobs that were offered to you? You have been
working here for $77 a month as a temporary. You don't even have
a classification." I said, "I never heard about them." She
said, "These letters are coming in, and they were never sent to
you?" I said, "No." "Well," she said, "your boss apparently is
simply pocketing them and doesn't let you see them." Then I
began to realize that people can take advantage of you. It never
occurred to me that people would take advantage of you. So that
made quite an impression on me, that that's no way to handle
young people .
At that time since I was a fledgling geologist, my geology
friend, Dr. Reiche, had told me about the whole question of the
effect of changing climate on the environment. I began to read
the geologic literature about this, particularly written by
Professor Kirk Bryan at Harvard. I began to see that there were
people who just didn't believe in what we were doing. The Soil
Conservation Service had one idea, but here were the other
people, very important people like the professor at Harvard, who
thought that we were crazy.
Lage: In what aspect of what you were doing?
Leopold: He said, "Man is not the cause of your erosion problems. Climate
is the cause of your erosion problem." So 1 had long discussions
with my geologist friend. Finally, I decided I wanted to learn
something about this. So I went to the big boss and I said,
"There are people who disagree with us. 1 suggest you send me to
graduate school to study under Kirk Bryan and I'll come back and
tell you, or tell everybody here, what this man is talking about.
He's a very well-known man." They said, "Oh, he doesn't know
anything. No, we won't send you to school." So I said, "1
quit."
So at that time, Dr. Reiche had written a letter to Kirk
Bryan at Harvard and said, "This young man wants to come and
study geology under you. He wants to know your ideas, and I
would suggest that you give him some help." And then Kirk Bryan,
whom I'd never met, wrote to my father and said, "Your young man
wants to come and work under me." I saw the letter later on.
"I've always wanted to have an engineer come and study geology."
He said, "I will give him a small scholarship, but that's only a
small part of what it takes to go to Harvard, and I suggest that
you help him out." But I was accepted to Harvard.
So I went to my father and I told him about this. Yes, he
had gotten the letter from Professor Bryan. My father said,
"Very well," he said, "I will give you" --and this is now when he
was unemployed- -he said, "I will give you $900." It was costing
at that time about $2,500 to go to Harvard. So I had less than
half of what other people had, but I was delighted to have it.
So off I went.
Well, that's another whole story. But at the end of the
year I didn't have any money, and there was no way to get any.
There were no such thing as grants, you see. So I went back to
work. This time, when I went back to New Mexico, having thought
about my experience with this prior boss and having learned
practically nothing--! was a very dumb engineer--! said, "I want
to work with the man I've heard about"--! had never met him- -"who
works in Safford, Arizona. His name is Thomas Maddock, Jr." At
that time Maddock was just being transferred to Albuquerque, so I
had the opportunity to work under this man, about ten years older
than I.
Tom Maddock has been one of my closest friends ever since.
We have shared an office together, and Tom is an engineer. Tom
grew up in Arizona, a very broad-gauge man, and he would put his
feet up on the desk opposite me and he would be reading all the
scientific journals. He would say to me, "Here's something we
ought to do. You compute this." So under his guidance, I
computed day after day after day, and by the time I finished
33
working under him after the first year we were probably as far
advanced in the hydrologic sciences as anybody in the United
States, because Tom read all the time and 1 tried the things out
and ran my slide rule and computed for him.
Then, in contrast to this previous supervisor, everything
that was good, Tom sent me to. Somebody would say, "We need a
man to come to Washington and do such-and-such." Tom would say,
"My assistant will go." And then he would get the money and he
would send me. So I was sent on field trips, I was sent on
conferences, and I was given every single opportunity that was
possible. I learned a lot.
I learned something about what it was like to be a
supervisor. Take care of your people. Assume that they are
going to work hard for you and they're going to work hard for
themselves and they're going to learn something, and that's the
way to get ahead. You don't get ahead by keeping people down.
You don't get ahead by putting a lid on them. You get ahead by
helping them move ahead.
Well, that affected me all my life, because later on when I
became a supervisor, then 1 did the same thing.
Lage: It's an unusual quality, I think.
Leopold: Yes. And of course, it has paid off again and again. In order
to promote yourself you promote the people that work under you.
And I mean promote in an intellectual sense; I'm not talking
necessarily about promoting in a job.
Those were very important things that happened to me. Then,
for example, in that same first year when I was working close to
but not with this geologist friend of mine, I went on field trips
with him.
Lage: With Tom Haddock?
Leopold: No, this was with Parry Reiche before I met Tom Haddock.
I was going with a girl that I was crazy about for many,
many years. Her mother had some mining claims, and one of them
was a claim in the mountains in the Jemez Hountains, and she
asked me as a young fledgling geologist to go take a look at this
claim, that happened to be a claim for kaolin, a clay. So I went
there and it was an amazing geologic formation. I studied the
thing and made a map of it. So I started to write a paper about
this. I wrote this manuscript, and Dr. Reiche helped me. He
told me this and he told me that and he guided me, and here was
34
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
my first published paper, a paper in geology. ["Climatic
character of the interval between the Jurassic and Cretaceous in
New Mexico and Arizona": Journal of Geology, v. 51 No. 1, pp. 56-
62.] Without Dr. Reiche 1 never could have completed it. But I
learned a lot by being under somebody who was really willing to
help you. He furnished technical information as well as other
kinds of advice. So again, the way to make things move is to
help people. He certainly was a wonderful help to me.
Interestingly, shortly after that Dr. Reiche was sent to
some other place, the war came along, I lost complete track of
him for many, many years, and I never could really get a chance
to thank him for all he's done for me. Last year a friend of
mine here in Berkeley said, "Do you remember what happened to
Parry Reiche? " I said, "No." "He's living here in town." I
said, " He is? I haven't seen him for forty years." So I wrote
him a letter, and I said, "I want to tell you after all these
forty years, that everything in my career has been due to the
help that you gave me." He wrote me a letter back that said,
"That's very interesting." He said, "I've helped a lot of
people, but you're the only person who ever thanked me."
Maybe they'd lost him too.
I don ' t know .
Did you go to see him then?
He didn't want to see me. He was an older man, and--. I don't
know. But he was a very, very fine geologist, and I always felt
that I had to do something to tell this man who helped me so
much; that I had to tell him about how much I appreciated him.
Flood Control Surveys with Tom Haddock. SCS . 1938-1941
Lage: When you first went to the Soil Conservation Service, did you go
as a hydrologist?
Leopold: No, I went as an engineer. I didn't become a hydrologist until
after I joined the Geological Survey many years later. Although
I had taken hydraulics, hydrology, as it turned out, when I
started my work in the Soil Conservation Service I found that--.
Looking back at it, I certainly didn't know anything. But under
Maddock I learned a lot. I really learned a lot.
35
Lage: Now, what was the Job with the Soil Conservation Service?
Leopold: I was simply called junior engineer.
Lage: And you were with the Soil Conservation Service from 1938 to
1941, three years.
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: What kinds of things were you assigned to do?
Leopold: Haddock and I were working on flood control surveys. Now, flood
control surveys involve all the kinds of things that are in
modern hydrology --that is, rainfall characteristics,
infiltration, the translation of rainfall into the runoff
hydrograph, the routing of the runoff hydrograph to some
downstream point, the whole question of measurement in streams --
everything that's in modern hydrology. But at that time it was
not well codified, and at the end of that period of time, I think
we both realized that we were as far ahead as anybody in the
country, that we were learning an awful lot. Because we were
reading the literature, and we were actually working out
problems .
So what did I do, for example? I took it upon myself to
chase rainstorms , and when a big flood occurred I would go
rushing down to see the effect of the floods and to collect data
on the rainfall that caused the flood, and I would make
measurements of the highwater marks.
Lage: Your later jobs seemed to give you a lot of freedom to decide
what the important matters to pursue were. Is that the case with
this?
Leopold: Tom Haddock, as I told you, was a very, very intelligent
supervisor. Since we worked very closely together, he gave me a
lot of openings to--. Because I was very active. When I said,
"Let's go chase that storm," he's say, "Go ahead. You'll get
some data." So it was very different from many offices, where
you have set things you were going to do. We were doing
research, as a matter of fact. We were trying to develop new
ideas .
Lage: Was publication part of the function of your job?
Leopold: As it turned out, I was the one that was interested in
publication. Tom wasn't. Later on he became interested, but I
published several papers during that period. But I didn't
realize at that time how important that was going to become.
36
Lage: In the USGS video' you made a reference to new hydrological
principles developed by these soil conservationists -hydrologists.
Could you expand on that?
*
Leopold: Yes, because right at the end of the- -just before the war, there
were two or three figures that stood out as contributors of
really new ideas. They included the famous engineer Robert E.
Horton, the engineer V.V. Horner, and a man by the name of
Sherman. What they were all working on in one form or another
was the procedure by which you could compute the volume and
timing of runoff from a precipitation event. Robert E. Horton
was at that time working on what later became known as his famous
infiltration theory, and Sherman and Horner were working on what
is now the basis of most hydrology, which is called the unit
hydrograph. When I was sent to Washington on one assignment by
Tom Haddock, I was sent to work on data relating rainfall,
infiltration, and runoff. We were generally supervised by the
great Horton.
Lage: Was that important in your development of your ideas?
Leopold: Yes, because I could see then that Tom Haddock and I were indeed
working on the right things. We were very close to having ideas
similar to these great names that were working on this problem.
Lage: But independently.
Leopold: Right.
Lage: Were you part of a hydrological division or anything like that?
Leopold: No, Tom Haddock and I were simply the hydrologists on the flood
control surveys.
Lage: 1 see. And what was Horton? Was he in Washington?
Leopold: No, Horton was a consultant to the Soil Conservation Service and
the Forest Service in Washington. A part-time consultant. So
the point is that at that time, we were independently doing--.
Looking back at it, it was research, but we weren't supposed to
research. But we were. We were on the right track.
'interview of Luna Leopold by R. C. Averett and W. W. Emmett, August
1988, for the U.S. Geological Survey. A copy is in The Bancroft Library.
37
Graduate Studv at Harvard. 1937: Classical Ideas in Science
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold;
The year at Harvard in 1937 was extremely important. I had never
heard anyone use the word "science." Kirk Bryan was always
talking about science, meaning the intellectual growth in
scientific thought. No one had ever talked to me about science.
All of a sudden I began to see that that was a very important
matter, to provide new information to other people by learning
new things. That's what science is all about.
And there was a difference from the present age. In those
days a graduate student was expected to read a lot, and that has
simply been lost. Completely lost. Now what people do is read
short articles in current journals. But when I went to graduate
school, what you were being taught was not the new things but the
classical ideas.
And that's not the case anymore?
Absolutely not.
Leopold: The classical ideas. For example, William Morris Davis was even
at that time beginning to be seen not as the great tower of
knowledge in physical geography, but he was seen at that time as
somebody who contributed a lot but we had to move ahead into
quantitative geology. But Kirk Bryan insisted that we read all
kinds of essays written by the great man. But each time, he was
saying, "We must do it a little differently; we must proceed
beyond this . "
We read all the classical people in the field of physical
geography. At that time there was a great discussion among the
most advanced thinkers in physical geography about the difference
in view between the great William Morris Davis from the United
States, and Walter Penck from Germany.
Furthermore, Professor Bryan expected you to know languages.
The first paper he gave me to read was in Spanish. The next
paper he gave me to read was in German, and boy, I'll tell you,
that was tough, because I knew very little about languages.
Lage: Did you know Spanish?
Leopold: No, but I damn well started to learn, I'll tell you.
Lage: I thought maybe you'd learned that as a youth.
38
Leopold: No, unfortunately. No, that's a great mistake. Any family that
can speak more than one language, if they fail to bring up their
children speaking that language, it's a great, great loss. No,
I'm very sorry that my mother didn't do that.
Anyhow, this doesn't occur here. In this geology
department, for example, a graduate student was once required to
have one language, only to be able to read scientific work in
that language. Until the day that I left the department, I was
the last holdout saying that we must maintain the idea that in
order to be a modern scientist you have to read a language other
than your own. Practically the day I left this department and
retired, they changed it, and now no languages are required.
Lage: I thought it was a requirement of the graduate division.
Leopold: No, ma'am. It's up to the department. A great shame. Anyhow,
at Harvard you had to have two languages, and you had to read it,
Lage : Then part of your year 'at Harvard involved learning these
languages .
Leopold: You bet your life. So that there were things that were done in
those days that I think were right.
Failure of Modern Science to Pursue the Important Problems
Leopold: I find that modern graduate students in this department really
have very little sense of how we got to where we are. The older
ideas, many of which posed extremely important problems in our
science, are being bypassed by present young people, probably
because they never realized how important they were. Let me give
you an example.
Geomorphology is the study of landforms, and that means both
process and form. What I did, actually, was to more or less help
change the nature of geomorphology from a descriptive science
into a quantitative science. But we have problems of outstanding
importance on which nobody is doing anything. As a matter of
fact, after I left the job of chief hydrologist with the
Geological Survey and came to California, I could see that I had
about ten years of active work left. I made up my mind that I
was going to tackle some of the great problems in geomorphology
that no one had ever solved.
39
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Now, in science, we have what I think is called the Medawar
curve. Dr. Medawar wrote a book on advice to young scientists,
and one of the things he said was, there are problems that are so
easy that they really aren't worth doing. And there are problems
that are so difficult, the chances are ten to one you're not
going to solve them anyhow. Therefore most of your effort ought
to be spent on problems of the intermediate sort that you think
are relatively important but within your scope. I decided the
last ten years of my life, I was going to go to the other end of
the curve, and I was going to deal with those problems that were
so difficult that maybe I couldn't solve them but I was going to
make some stab at it.
This is the kind of thinking that we're not getting right
now. Let me give an example. I was driving last week between
Los Angeles and San Francisco, and going up the San Joaquin
Valley and looking at the shape of hills. I had been working on
and off on the shape of hills for twenty-five years. The hills
that you are passing along Route 5 all have profiles that are
convex to the sky, meaning they're shaped like a ball. And then
you go into many of the nearby hills, and they're shaped in the
opposite direct ion- -they 're concave to the sky. Now,
geomorphology has to do with the shape of forms. Of the
thousands of geomorphologists in the world, I know of nobody
right now, except one, I think, who is working on the problem of
what determines the shape of hills. That's the science we're
supposed to be dealing with, but who's tackling it? It's so
obvious. It also is very difficult.
Obvious and difficult?
Yes.
Is that one you worked on at all?
Yes, but I've never published anything on it because my friend
Thomas Dunne, University of Washington, and I started fifteen
years ago making a collection of surveys of the shape of hills.
We have surveys made all over the world now, that we've done--
You've done the surveys, or you collect other- -
No, no. He and I have done the surveys together. One of the
things that we worked on together was in East Africa, where they
have these long hill slopes, oh, a mile and a half long. Very
slightly concave to the sky. Tom Dunne has made a tremendous
advance in showing by actual measurement how it is that these
slopes can develop. As a result, he was elected to the National
40
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Academy of Sciences. It was a very important problem, but it was
only one aspect of the problem of the shape of hills.
Now, what I'm saying is that the--. Let me put it this way.
I say to my students, "You can waste your life on three small
problems." Last year, when I gave a commencement address to the
people in the earth sciences here, I reiterated this point. I
said, "Don't spend your life on trivia. Pick out problems that
are really worth working on." Because as I say, you can waste
your life on a few small ones.
Do you find that your students respond to that?
No.
Even the ones you've worked closely with?
No. Fads develop. One aspect of this is that I learned long ago
that when a person gets a Ph.D. , he or she is going to spend the
next year or two years continuing that same subject, regardless
of what position he or she is in. When I hired people,
particularly when I sent them to school, I just made up my mind,
there's no use trying to change their mind. After they get out
of the Ph.D., give them a year or two, because they're going to
work on it anyhow.
But once that's done, you see, a person has the choice as to
what you do next. Unfortunately, the choices being made are
continuing to get narrower and narrower and narrower. Instead of
sitting back and saying, "All right, now I've finished my Ph.D.;
I spent the extra two years after my degree, and I've got as far
as I'm going to go with that problem. Now I'll sit back and see
what we ought to work on." What I tell students--. Again, I
usually tell students to do what I do--
[ laughs] Of course.
--and that is, I keep in my file a folder that says, "great
ideas," or "big ideas," or "ideas." I said, "Keep a file, a
personal private file, in which you write down your thoughts
about what are the things that really are most important, whether
or not you ever go into them, but keep a file. And once a year,
take that file out and read it, and say, 'All right, what did I
think in the last year about which were the really important
ideas in my field? Am I working on some of these? And if so,
what am I contributing?'"
Very few people are taking such a stance, where they're
sitting back at times to ask themselves, "Now, what in my science
41
is worth doing?" I'm not talking about people who are a great
genius like Stephen Hawkings or people like that, but the
ordinary scientist, I fear, is sort of going from one problem to
the next one that is kind of an offshoot of the one he did last
time.
Lage : Maybe more careerism involved, instead of the larger view of
science, do you think?
Leopold: Yes, because--. I think I spoke to you about this before.
There's a very grave difficulty now plaguing young scientists,
and that is that they think- -and a matter of fact, it probably is
true --that the way you get ahead, the way you get promoted, and
the way you get grants, is to write lots of papers, even if the
papers are half a page long. Big problems aren't solved that
way, in my opinion. They are not solved that way. You've got to
take a job on that lasts a long time, perhaps. But what I say to
people is this: Always have more than one string to your bow.
Don't work on just one thing. You ought to be doing three or
four things simultaneously, and then if one does not pan out,
you've got other things you can turn to that are panning out. So
that if you do that, you can afford to spend some time on
something that is not likely to produce, or that's too difficult.
When 1 was building a research organization and hiring
people, I would say to them, "In choosing something to work on,
ask yourself these questions. First, 'Is this something that
interests me?' Then, 'Is this something I am capable of doing?'
Then, 'Is it possible to do it at all?' because you may pick a
problem that there's simply no way to get it done. 'Is there
time to do it?' And finally, 'If I do solve the problem that I
set up, where does it lead? Can it be expanded by others? Will
it be the background for new advances?' So you may turn down a
problem because it's either too difficult or you don't have the
means to do it; it may require such complicated procedure or
money or instruments that you can't do it; or it may be that it
requires the kind of skills that you don't have; and finally, it
may not be worth working on."
That, I find, is a very unfortunate present difficulty in
modern science, in the fields that I know.
Interdisciplinary Resource Planning with the SCS
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Now, to get back into sort of the earlier years, when you were
working with the Soil Conservation Service, was there a sense of
a mission?
Oh, yes. There was no question about that. Oh, yes. In other
words, everybody felt a sense of doing something for the land,
doing something for the country, preventing the loss of a
resource. A real mission. Oh, yes, no question about that.
So choice of problems maybe was dictated by that in part--
But remember, in that kind of an organization, now, you didn't
choose problems. We weren't doing research; we were doing an
assigned job. But the assigned job allowed us --Tom Haddock and
me- -to develop new methods, so that in a way it was research, but
this was not free research as people do in the university. You
were assigned to a group that was doing something.
At that time, there were a lot of new things going on. Now,
the group that 1 was assigned to, it was the first time that
anybody in the world had decided that if you're going to do
resource planning, it's got to be done in an interdisciplinary
way. The team that I was assigned to consisted of an engineer, a
soils man, a forester, a hydrologist, and we had at that time a
sociologist, but they were sort of not part of the team. Our
team consisted of four scientific people.
And how did that work?
idea.
That sounds like a really forward-looking
Oh, it was. And as a matter of fact, people are now repeating
the same thing and getting the same results we got fifty years
ago. For example, we were making a series of maps of the
watersheds we were working on. A big watershed like the Rio
Grande, where you made a map of the rainfall, you made a map of
the forest, a map of the soils, a map of runoff, of erosion.
This is exactly what is being done now. 1 saw a group a couple
of weeks ago constructing the same kinds of maps we were
constructing fifty years ago on the same basin. But I don't
think they even knew where to get the material that we had done.
It would be interesting to compare the results of those.
I'll tell you where I saw it. The forest plans that are now
being constructed by the Forest Service consist of maps that show
the rainfall, the soils, the vegetation, on and on--
43
Lage: And this Is a new thing --inter disciplinary research.
Leopold: Exactly. Actually, some of these plans are redoing what we did
fifty years ago, And I don't think they're doing it much better.
Lage: But the land must have changed.
Leopold: Very little. You're not going to change the rainfall. You're
not going to change the extent of the forest. You're not going
to change the soils. That's really where all land planning
begins, you see.
Lage: Did it work well in the Soil Conservation Service? Did this team
of people coming from such different approaches do okay together?
Leopold: Very well. Oh, yes, indeed.
Then what we did then was copied by CSIRO in Australia.
That was the next group that was doing exactly the same thing.
Lage: Is that a government agency in Australia?
Leopold: Yes, this is the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organization, a very important scientific group. I found out
some decades after we were doing it that they had also put
together teams exactly like ours, again doing very large areas
much the way we were doing it.
Lage: And how did the sociologists fit in? You sort of put them off to
the side.
Leopold: Because we were at that time, for example, working in the Rio
Grande Basin, the question was about the Indian people, and the
Spanish -American people. So that one wanted to know, if you're
doing land planning, one wanted to know where these people get
their livelihood. Where does their water come from? What are
the cash crops that they grow? How are the cash crops sold? How
do they relate to the matter of credit? How do they relate to
the local businesses? Therefore, what kind of planning can be
done to maintain and help the indigenous people? So this was a
sociological problem.
44
Land Planning: Need for Responsibility to Society and the Land
Leopold: But of course, land planning in this country has never been done
very successfully. Remember these were the days in the New Deal.
Planning has taken on rather a bad flavor, despite the need for
it. There's such individualism, especially in the commercial
enterprises in this country, that planning of a large area is not
well accepted. There aren't very many workable tools for
enforcing plans. Zoning is the most prevalent one and is a very
weak reed, as we all know, because it's so easy to find ways to
get variance or to avoid it. The administrative and legislative
bodies don't really want to enforce it. So that even the most
lucrative kinds of plans for land preservation and development
are likely to be turned down by local people.
We worked for some years on a very advanced land plan for a
watershed in Pennsylvania called the Brandywine.
Lage: This was with the USGS?.
Leopold: Yes, this was when 1 was in Geological Survey. I was working
with people from the University of Pennsylvania and another set
of scientific groups, and we were trying to develop a scheme for
the preservation of the landscape in this watershed in a very
wealthy area near Philadelphia. The idea was that the Ford
Foundation was going to put up money to cover the cost of helping
people to, in effect, reserve their land following certain land-
use practices.
Actually, we had promised to pay them in cash for doing
things to show what could be done by proper land planning. For
example, don't build on the steepest hillsides. Don't build too
close to the streams. Don't build on the floodplains. So
basically, we were suggesting that local landowners do not
develop their land for the maximum money return, but develop
their land in a way so that they get a reasonable return at the
same time that they preserve the environment. After a long
period of study, the local people turned it down. They are now
trying, without our help, to do exactly what we were trying to do
twenty years ago. They found, you see, that they are being
pushed by the developers who want to be too close to the streams,
and they want to build on too steep a hillside.
The whole problem that we've got in this country is this
question of the right to do on your own land anything that you
want to do without any feeling of responsibility for society as a
whole. This is the most regressive idea that any community or
society ever had. And this, of course, this was my father's main
45
idea- -that you have a responsibility to other people and to the
land itself.
He seemed to feel that the government couldn't do it, though.
Exactly. And that's why we were trying, in our individual way,
to work with private landowners and say, "Let us try to help you
do the things that we think ought to be done, and try to persuade
you that this is in your interest as well as society's."
And of course, you'll hear this idea spoken of again and
again as taking property without recompense. The idea is that
you must be paid to do anything that you try to do for society,
rather than to say, "I have a responsibility to society to do
something that goes beyond my own personal interest."
This is the whole game of land and resource problems in the
United States. This is the whole question of the ancient timber,
the ancient forests, the rainforests, the ozone layer, the carbon
dioxide. This is the concatenation of all these resource
problems that now we begin to see are affecting everybody. It
comes about from the fact that each individual, whether it be a
business or a person, may, if he or she wishes, act as if you had
no responsibility to the world as a whole.
That's true. It's sort of built into our whole ethical system.
That's right. And that's what my father's essays were all about.
So in the whole question of resources, now- -quite apart from
the scientific part- -the physical scientist has a great part to
play, and very few scientists get involved in the relationship of
their science to the society or civilization. Somehow or
another, the kinds of contributions that are presently needed are
contributions that could come from all aspects of the society,
including the scientific society.
But you don't think that many scientists see--
No. How many of my students are working on such problems? I
can't name any of them.
46
III WARTIME AND POSTWAR WORK AND STUDIES
Postwar Changes in the Soil Conservation Serviced
Lage: On the video you also mentioned some urihappiness when the Soil
Conservation Service turned to big engineering solutions. Was
that during your time with them?
Leopold: That's a sad story. We at that time, between the Forest Service
and the Soil Conservation Service, had developed probably the
most active and knowledgeable group of hydrologists in the
business. Those two agencies. When the war came along, most of
us felt that this work wasn't the most important thing. I
resigned from the Soil Conservation Service and joined the Corps
of Engineers.
Lage:
As a result of war?
Leopold: Yes, I simply said, "I've got to do something else." So I had
made contacts during that time with many of the flood control
people in the Corps of Engineers, and I wanted to get into work
that was more concerned with the war effort. So I resigned from
the Soil Conservation Service, and many other people did the same
thing, in one form or another. Tom Haddock, for example, went to
Central America and became a very important man in growing food
in Central America during the wartime. Later he came back, and
he and I joined forces again.
But when we came back after the war, we could see that the
Soil Conservation Service had turned into an entirely different
organization. The chief engineer for the Soil Conservation
Service in Washington--! used to remember his name but I don't
right now- -went to Hugh Bennett, who was the head of the SCS, and
essentially convinced Bennett that in order to really get money
for soil conservation he was going to have to turn it into an
engineering organization, where formerly it had been run by
agronomists and geologists and plant ecologists and foresters.
47
So what they started in on was a program of building dams,
both large and small, and we who had this sort of starry-eyed
idea of taking care of the land as a whole felt it ought to be
done in the most natural way possible, but not by concrete. So
none of us went back to the Soil Conservation Service. The
service ended up with only one hydrologist out of all those that
we had been working with. He was a very good man, but everybody
else left, as far as I know.
Lage: This sort of interdisciplinary approach seems to have been lost.
Leopold: Yes, the interdisciplinary approach simply fell apart.
Lage: Would you say that was a casualty of war?
Leopold: No, it was a decision which often is taken by a government
agency, that in order to be important they must be big, and in
order to be big they had to get money, and in order to get money
they had to really change their way of looking at it.
Lage: They had to do things that cost a lot of money.
Leopold: That's correct. So the whole idea of soil conservation was
undermined, in my opinion.
Brief Stint with the Army Corps of Engineers
Lage: And what was the Corps of Engineers doing when you worked with
them? Were you with them for long?
Leopold: No, for less than a year. The Corps was working on a whole lot
of problems having to do primarily with flood control, but mostly
with military installations. For example, I was ordered to lay
out the desert training camp that General Patton was to be using
in the southern Mojave. This was a question of designing a camp
for thousands and thousands of people, where you had to deal with
water supply, housing, roads, electricity, that sort of thing.
Now, most of this actual detail work was done by consulting
firms , but engineers within the Corps of Engineers had to make
the original design and then supervise the contractors to make
the detailed studies.
Lage: Was there anything special that you brought to this, or was the
interest just in getting it done quickly? Were you concerned
about the effect on the land, that kind of thing?
48
Leopold: Not under those conditions, no. No, I realized later that--. I
didn't realize what a terrible thing the tanks were going to do
to the desert.
Enrolling as a Private in the U.S. Army
Lage:
Leopold:
You don't think of that during wartime,
other work during the war?
And then what was your
Lage:
Leopold
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Everybody, of course, wanted to be in uniform. I had advanced up
the ladder as a civilian engineer, and I was working under a
lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. I asked him how I could be
commissioned as a lieutenant in the army. They found no way of
doing it. So I then went to the navy and the Marine Corps. They
were looking for engineers, so 1 was offered a commission in the
Marine Corps, and I was offered a commission in the navy. I told
my boss 1 was going to resign my civilian position and take up a
military position. I had passed the physical examination, that
sort of thing, and decided I was going to go with the navy. They
were going to offer me the grade of ensign in the Civil Engineer
Corps .
So the day I was to be sworn in, in Los Angeles, 1 went
there early in the morning. I was to be sworn in at eight
o'clock. I went to the federal building, and I was about a half
an hour early. There was a long flight of marble steps leading
up the main door of the federal building, and I was standing on
the steps watching, and I saw all these officers walking up the
steps. They would get to the door one after another, turn around
on their heel and salute. I kept looking, and I thought, "Now,
what do they do that for?" I kept looking, and I finally decided
they were saluting the flagpole. But there wasn't a flag. I
said, "To hell with that."
[laughs] This is a great story.
I turned on my heels and I walked down the street to the nearest
recruiting office, and 1 said to the sergeant, "1 want to be a
private in the U.S. Army." And he signed me up. [laughter]
Did people think you were crazy?
Oh, yes, of course. So here I was, I was now a private in the
army.
You probably had to do a lot of saluting with that, too.
49
Meteorological Studies at UCLA
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold;
Yes, but then I was sent to boot camp and I immediately put in a
request for officer training, and I asked to be assigned to
meteorological training because it would help my hydrology
background. There were three schools of training in meteorology
at that time: one at Caltech, one at UCLA, and one at the
University of Chicago. My experience had been that anybody who
was accepted in the officers' training corps was going to be sent
as far as away from where they were as they could be. So 1
expected to be sent to Chicago. Well, 1 wasn't. 1 was sent to
UCLA, and here 1 was, living in Los Angeles already. 1 was
assigned as an officer candidate in the meteorological school at
UCLA, and there 1 spent a year.
Studying meteorology?
Yes.
Not teaching?
No. Oh, no. I didn't know anything about meteorology. But I
had a lot of background, you see, from my work at flood control.
Practically everybody in our class- -there were about thirty-five
people --they all came from either physics or mathematics. So 1
as an engineer was pretty far behind. They all knew a lot more
physics than 1 did. 1 was also about a half-year older than
anybody else; I was twenty-eight.
The end of the first month- -the first week, it must have
been, 1 was sure 1 was going to flunk out. 1 got a low grade on
the examination, and I was so physically being stretched with
these terrible calisthenics that we had to do. It wasn't as
tough, I think, as the Marine Corps, but we had a very tough
program. I was sure 1 wasn't going to last. Veil, it turned out
to be one of the great experiences in my life. 1 finally got the
hang of it and 1 graduated second in the class.
How did you finally get the hang of it?
math background?
Did you pick up your
1 just worked like hell. But also, 1 had skills that were
needed; I was very skillful with anything that had to do with
drawing and making maps.
50
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
So when we were commissioned, there were about five of us
that were asked to stay there and teach as army officers. The
next class was much larger than ours, so for the next several
years we were teaching meteorology to incoming officer
candidates. Our graduates were going all over the world to
forecast for the air force. I was in what was called the Air
Weather Service.
So finally the war was drawing to a close and we were being
reassigned, and 1 was sent down to one of the air force fields in
Texas waiting for assignment. When the assignments came and
everybody was being dispersed all over the world, my assignment
and my orders read, "Go back to UCLA," because the famous
meteorologist who taught at UCLA had his eye on me, and he wanted
me to do research for him.
So I went back to UCLA as commanding officer of a small
weather station, to do research on low clouds, to work under a
professor, Morris Neiberger, who had already been working on the
problem of coastal stratas, or coastal clouds. The real idea was
that the situation of the coastal clouds in Los Angeles is the
exact counterpart of the coastal clouds in Casablanca in Africa,
and if we could learn to forecast it in Los Angeles, we could
forecast it in Africa. That was what the problem was.
I was now in charge of this little research unit. There was
one other officer and about six or eight enlisted men. Every
time that 1 got orders to go overseas, Professor Jacob Bjerknes
would phone in General Arnold and say, "No, you can't send
Leopold overseas; he has to stay here." So I stayed there the
rest of the war and published several papers.
And you got a master's degree.
Yes, and I worked at night to get a master's degree.
In meteorology, was it?
Yes. And I wrote the first paper on the air pollution problem in
Los Angeles.
That was very early.
Yes. We were trying to describe exactly what the meteorological
situation was as far as air pollution in Los Angeles was
concerned. Well, of course, it grew into a great big thing after
that.
Lage:
I didn't realize it was even very recognized at that point.
51
Leopold: It wasn't. That's why it was such an advanced idea.
Sedimentation Studies and the Bureau of Reclamation
Leopold: So then when we were mustered out of the Army, then I had to
decide what 1 was going to do.
Lage: Were you married by this time?
Leopold: Yes. At that time, a person was discharged at the camp nearest
his main residence, and my main residence was Wisconsin. So 1
was discharged at Fort Douglas in Wisconsin. In the meantime, 1
was in conversation with people that I had known, one of whom was
in the Bureau of Reclamation, and he offered me a job. So 1 went
to Washington as a civil engineer in the Bureau of Reclamation.
The man that hired me was sort of a, not a distant relative,
but he was connected by marriage with someone in my family, and
he offered me this job. I got there and I said, "Now, I want you
to know that I'm really not a believer in what the Bureau of
Reclamation does. If I take this job, I want you to know that,
because I've been in flood control now for a long time, and I
don't believe you're going the way you ought to go. But I think
I can contribute something." "That's all right."
So two things transpired: one, the main hydrologic work in
the Bureau of Reclamation was going on in Denver, and as part of
this work that I was doing I was assigned to go to Denver to
assist in some problems that were coming up in the Rio Grande.
But the Rio Grande is what I had studied in the Soil Conservation
Service. So I went there with the chief hydrologist, Randy
Riter, and we went to a meeting, and I had made a study of recent
data on the Rio Grande. He was so impressed with what I had done
that he said, "Why don't you come to Denver and be in my
department?" I said, "No, I don't think I want to do that."
But I said, "I'll tell you what I think you need." I said
to the people in Washington, "You don't know anything about
sediment. You'd better know something about sediment, because
you're going to have a lot of problems with it, and I suggest
that we set up a sedimentation section." Well, I sold it and I
set up a sedimentation section, built a big laboratory, and got
the Bureau of Reclamation interested in sediment which, of
course, I've followed up on the rest of my career.
52
Lage: Was that something the Bureau just hadn't paid much mind to in
the past? It seems awfully important for their work.
Leopold: You'd think that they'd have realized it, but for some reason
they didn't. But when the chief of the hydrology section got
involved in the Rio Grande question and I gave some assistance to
him in understanding the sediment problem, he began to realize
that sediment was important to him, and therefore he got behind
the idea that I had proposed and the formation of a section on
sedimentation .
And then I brought my friend Tom Haddock in. At the end of
the war he was looking for a job, and I persuaded the Bureau of
Reclamation to take him on. I think that's the sequence. He
joined the Bureau of Reclamation at my suggestion and was very
important in getting their sediment business started. Shortly
after that, I left the bureau and went to Hawaii. Tom Haddock
was with the Bureau for many years and was of great assistance to
them because he was a very practical engineer with a lot of
knowledge about western conditions.
Lage: You had mentioned in the video a sedimentation survey of Lake
Head. Is that something you were in on or that you just got
going?
Leopold: Well, I was certainly in on it, but I wasn't really responsible
for it. I was much concerned with it at the time, yes. But I
was simply a collateral player in that game.
Lage: From what I've heard of the bureau's role in the water
controversies in the Southwest, it seems as if they haven't taken
account of the problems of sedimentation. How does the research
end up in the project planning?
Leopold: Well, you see, what happened was that they got a group of very
good people when the sedimentation section was first started.
When those people retired, the whole section went to pot. As far
as I can see now, no sediment work is being done that I know of.
As a matter of fact, the laboratory that I had them construct has
really never been used for the purposes I had in mind.
Lage: That's discouraging.
You also mentioned cooperation between the bureau and the
navy and the Geological Survey during this time back in '46.
Leopold: Yes. When it was decided among the many of us that there was to
be a sedimentation survey of Lake Head, it's a big lake, and
therefore we needed essentially naval vessels. So that Hr.
53
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Cummings from the navy was a scientist who was of great
assistance in getting equipment that the navy could produce onto
the Lake Mead survey. So the combination was the navy produced
primarily the equipment, the bureau mapped the reservoir, and the
Geological Survey put the man in charge who was the technical
supervisor of the job.
What was the Bureau of Reclamation like to work for?
you characterize it at that time?
How would
Veil, I guess 1 told you that when I went to work for them, 1
said, "I really don't believe in what you're doing. I'm going to
try to assist, but I'm not a believer in big dams." But after
all, that was just one person making a statement.
I don't know how to characterize it; I was there such a
short time. It tended to be quite bureaucratic and obviously
very political. The people that I got to know later on in the
secretary's office were, in my opinion, a much broader kind of.
people. At that time, you see, there was a tremendous push for
the combination of flood control, irrigation, and power. That
was what was driving the Interior Department. Later, when the
administration changed and the situation began to change,
especially when Kennedy put Stewart Udall in as secretary of the
interior, then there was an entirely different point of view.
And in the public as well.
Yes. A gradual change in the public view too.
Oh, no, I wouldn't have stayed in the Bureau of Reclamation. I
was looking for other things to do.
Was your interest in sediment something that came out of your
experience with the Soil Conservation Service?
It's a whole business of how meteorology fits with hydrology,
fits with sediments, fits with floods, and the whole thing about
water development. It was another step forward.
So meteorology focused into this.
Oh, meteorology was very important to me because it made me think
of things in a different way than other people thought about
them.
54
Lage:
Leopold: Well, then let me tell you about that. Yes, but nobody had
proven it, you see. The Soil Conservation Service said, "Man and
overgrazing has wrecked the whole world," and the Harvard
professor said, "No, you haven't thought about changes in
climate. "
Meteorologist for the Pineapple Research Institute in Havaii.
1946-1949
Leopold: So working at the Bureau of Reclamation in Washington--! had been
there little less than a year- -I had a telephone call from
probably the most important meteorologist-hydrologist in the
country, Merle Bernard, who worked for the Weather Bureau. He
said, "There's a man in town from Hawaii who's looking for a
meteorologist, and he'd like to meet you. Would you like to talk
with him?" I said, "Yes, I'll talk to him."
So I went to meet this gentleman who had been formerly a
very important man in the research unit in the Department of
Agriculture, and he said, "I would like to have you meet me at
the Mayflower Hotel for breakfast." I went to breakfast with
him, and we talked, and he said, "I would like to have a
meteorologist come to Hawaii to be the head meteorologist, to
develop a scheme of forecasting for us. We are particularly
interested in long-range forecasts for both pineapple and sugar,
because," he said, "the organization I head, called the Pineapple
Research Institute, is supported by the sugar people and the
pineapple people."
Well, during the discussion I said, "Dr. Achter, I think
that you can get a lot of help out of short-term forecasts, but
I've been in meteorology enough to tell you point-blank that
you're not going to get any long-range forecasts. We are not
able to forecast more than two days ahead, and if over a period
of a decade we can forecast three or four days ahead, we will be
doing very well." But I said, "I will not be hired with the
expectation that I'm going to develop long-range forecasting for
you. But I can tell you that meteorology is something that will
help you."
So further discussion, another breakfast, and then I called
my father, and I said, "I have this opportunity to go to Hawaii,
55
to be a meteorologist. What would you think?" Dad never gave
any advice to anybody. He said, "I'm very glad that you have
this opportunity. It's something that you ought to consider very
carefully," but he refused to commit himself. He was not going
to try to influence one way or another.
Lage: Would he give you suggestions to think about?
Leopold: I don't remember--. Yes, of course, but I don't remember what
they were. But he would not help decide. He would only make you
think about them.
So the last meeting with Dr. Achter I said, "Sir, I'll go to
Hawaii, but I can't do it unless you double my present salary."
"Oh," he said, "that's no problem." Well, then I was stuck.
Lage: Then you had to do it. [laughs]
Leopold: So now I went to a very- -in those days, a very highly paid job,
and--
Lage: Who were you actually working for?
Leopold: The Pineapple Research Institute.
Lage: Not the Weather Bureau.
Leopold: No. No, then I was in competition with the Weather Bureau, you
see. Because now I'm the foremost meteorologist in Hawaii, and
start showing up the Weather Bureau, who weren't doing what they
were supposed to do.
Lage: But was it in cooperation with the Weather Bureau?
Leopold: I tried to develop cooperation with the Weather Bureau, but they
felt I was intruding on their business. And indeed, they didn't
have any new, young ideas, you see.
Another Lesson in Supervisory Styles
Leopold: Well, anyhow, I got to Hawaii. They paid my expenses, and it was
wonderful. I got there, and of course, I'd never been to Hawaii
before. It was just a marvelous experience. Beautiful climate,
and everything was lovely. They furnished me with an office, a
beautiful secretary, a car, and a big salary. I waited for the
director to tell me something. I tried to find out something,
56
but nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened. Three
weeks. Finally I had a call from the director's office. He
wanted to talk to me. They had taken me everywhere and wined and
dined and everything.
So I went in his office, and he said, "I suppose by this
time you would like to know what we want you to do." I said,
"Dr. Achter, I'm so glad to talk to you. It's exactly what I've
been waiting for. I want to know what you want me to do." He
said, "Well, I want to tell you what I want you to do. I want
you to do nothing." I said, "Nothing?" He said, "Yes." He
said, "I want you to travel, I want you to get to know everybody
on the island, all the islands." He said, "You're the only one
that can freely travel to all the islands , because some of the
islands have only sugar, some have only pineapple, but you work
for both. Go everyplace. Meet all the plantation people, learn
all you can about pineapple and about sugar, and don't do
anything for a couple of years. Just learn."
Lage : That's an interesting assignment.
Leopold: Well, you see, now I'm beginning more and more to find out what
it is to be a supervisor.
Lage: Right.
Leopold: So that's exactly what I did.
Lage: How did you react to that?
Leopold: Wonderful. I was a free agent.
A month went by, and I was called into the director's
office. He said, "Luna, you haven't followed my instructions." I
said, "How so, sir?" He said, "I have here on my desk a
manuscript that you've written, that you want my permission to
publish. But," he said, "I told you to do nothing. And here
you've been doing research, and you've already written a
manuscript." He said, "You haven't followed what I told you to
do." I said, "Yes, that's correct." "Well," he said, "you know?
I have had several department heads who have never written a
paper in the last ten years." Of course, he was pleased as
punch, but that was the way he greeted me. So I--
Lage: Was this a big outfit, this Pineapple Research Institute?
Leopold: Yes, indeed. It was not very large in numbers, but there were
very important people in charge of different departments. I was
the chief of meteorology. There was a plant physiology section,
57
a mechanical engineering section where they designed equipment
for harvesting. There was a soils section. There was a plant
genetics section. There was an entomology section. And mine was
the newest of all of the sections.
Lage: And was it funded by the sugar --
Leopold: By the sugar and pineapple people.
Lage: It sounds like sort of an agricultural experiment station.
Leopold: It was an agricultural experiment station.
Lage: But not connected with the university?
Leopold: We were on university property, but we--. We took over some
university buildings and then built an absolutely beautiful
research building. Later on, after I left, hard times fell on
both sugar and pineapple and they discontinued it. But in the
meantime, a lot of interesting things happened. It was a
wonderful experience.
Rainfall. Maps and Records
Leopold: For example, I was constructing rainfall maps, you see, the same
thing that I had been doing before, and now being a meteorologist
I knew a lot more about things of this kind. An argument grew up
between one of the sugar companies on the island of Maui and the
territorial government. The territorial government,
interestingly, was being represented by the United States
Geological Survey. The sugar company was paying the territory
for water which fell on territorial lands, which were drawn from
a ditch coming along the mountainside into the sugar and
pineapple plantations, sugar primarily. The payment to the
territory --the territory, you see, was part of the United States
government now; Hawaii was not yet a statewas based on the
rainfall map.
It was decided by both agencies that the rainfall map was
probably wrong. They wanted somebody to make an independent
study which would not be influenced either by the agriculture
people or the federal government. They came and asked me if I
would do it. I said, "I'm very busy doing what I'm doing, but
I'll tell you what I will do for you. I will lay out the methods
by which this could be done, and then you could have it carried
out by somebody else . "
58
Veil, I got so interested in it that I did it myself and
wrote a paper that was published as "The Rainfall of East Maui . "
It was a study of the rain-gauge records, you see. Then I had to
go back into the geological record, particularly pollen, to see
what the rainfall record had probably been in the Holocene, in
the last ten thousand years. As it turned out, in the central
part of east Maui I raised the annual rainfall by 150 inches.
Lage: You found 150 more inches?
Leopold: Yes. So it made a lot of difference about who paid what.
Anyhow, it was a very interesting assignment. But it was a kind
of a sidelight, you see.
Lage: Did it result in the plantation owners having to pay more?
Leopold: I don't even remember, because that was not my problem. My
problem was to make a new map, which I did.
But immediately when I got to Hawaii, I began to realize
that rainfall was everything, and therefore I had to know not
only about irrigation, but I had to know a lot about rainfall.
So 1 started to make a study of the rainfall records in Hawaii.
There were published, I think, six gauges. When I got through
with my study, I found 650 gauges.
Lage: You found them already there?
Leopold: They were there. Nobody knew about them, because each
plantation, you see, was doing certain things, and I brought them
all together and made a rainfall map of everything with all the
gauges shown and where they were and how long they had been
there .
Lage: And was the data accurate at these various gauges?
Leopold: But then that was a question I had to deal with, you see. I had
to now deal with the accuracy of the data, so 1 had to make a
study of what gauges could be trusted and what gauges couldn't.
There was a lot of interesting stuff.
Lage: A lot of traveling around and really getting to know the--
Leopold: I loved it. Oh, yes, I loved it. I had an airplane and I had a
jeep on each of two islands, and it was great.
59
Developing a New Rain Forecasting Scheme in
Lage : Had your work in Hawaii come to a turning point?
Leopold: No, no. I had developed a new forecasting scheme that was
already in place; I was forecasting in a very new way, a lot of
new ideas.
Lage: Short -tern forecasting?
Leopold: Yes. I developed a scheme which nobody had ever done before. My
scheme allowed me to make a forecast of the rainfall, field by
field, all over the whole island of Oahu. I had worked up
cooperative relationships with universities on the mainland and
was getting help from a lot of scientists on the mainland; that's
another whole story. But we had a forecasting scheme in
operation.
Lage: Did this affect the pineapple and sugar people's decision making?
Leopold: Yes. I really couldn't forecast the small rains very much, but I
did pretty well on the large rains. I went to Washington and I
talked to the chief of the Weather Bureau in Washington, and I
said, "I now have a scheme which I would like to put on the
radio. My scheme involves the following things. I want to
forecast the rainfall in amounts. In other words, I'm going to
tell you how many inches are going to fall twenty- four hours in
advance. I want to put it on the radio, but I'm going to put,
also, a probability forecast. I'm going to say this is a 75
percent chance or a 90 percent chance, to tell people how sure I
am." And he said, "Oh, that's much too advanced. You can't do
that." Of course, that's what's done every day now.
Lage: Right. But it's many years after you came up with that idea.
Leopold: Yes. Many years. Anyhow, they said that.
So I went back to Hawaii and I said, "Now, what I'm going to
do is when I see something that's important, I'm going to start
phoning the pineapple companies and sugar companies and tell
them, 'Look, two days from now you're going to get such and such.
And it's going to fall on these fields, and this is how much it's
going to be.'" Shortly after that there was a big storm coming
in and I phoned the main people on the islands, told them what I
thought was going to happen, and everybody then stopped burning
cane, took their machines off the fields- -cost them many, many
dollars --except one. The Ewa Plantation said, "To hell with
that. We're going to do what we're going to do." The rain came
60
exactly as I forecast, and they lost about a quarter of a million
dollars. Which paid for my operation in full. And then they
began to pay attention.
Lage: Now, was it the equipment that the rain would ruin?
Leopold: Yes, because you see, you burn ten acres of cane, or five acres
of cane. Now, it's lying on the ground. You have to get it to
the mill before it decomposes, and you have to get it there with
heavy equipment. But the heavy equipment was stuck in the mud.
So you had both the canes on the ground and the heavy equipment
can't move because of the mud.
Lage: So it really was important.
Leopold: So they had a big loss, and all of a sudden they began to pay
attention to the fact that I was furnishing them with a service
that was important.
Experiments with Cloud Seeding
Lage: I noticed in your journal on the Hawaiian years something that
looked intriguing. You can tell me if it was or not. The
seeding of clouds.
Leopold: Veil, at that time, the first scientific papers had come out on
this. In the eastern United States, they started out with
laboratory experiments, but then one began to see that under
certain conditions, if you could supercool the cloud droplets,
that you're going to cause rain. Well, since that was one of the
main things that the pineapple and the sugar people were
interested in, I decided I was going to try it.
Lage: They needed more rain? Or just rain when they wanted it?
Leopold: Well, they needed more rain, in the summertime especially. And
you see, on the dry parts of these islands --you have a lot of
rain on the windward side, but the dry sides are very dry.
So with the permission of both the sugar companies and the
pineapple companies and my boss, we started to try it. This was
very early in the game when not much was known about it. We had
lapse -time photographs of how the clouds built up when we seeded
it with dry ice. This we carried on for some months. On one
day, such a tremendous rain occurred on the island of Lanai we
practically washed them out.
61
Lage:
Lage:
Leopold:
I saw a picture in your journal of the real floodlike situation.
Leopold: Some of the companies got really very interested because it
looked like it might work. At the same time, Dr. Langmuir from
Schenectady was trying to determine why it should work under
those circumstances, because in the physical theory, there was no
reason why it should work under these tropical conditions.
Langmuir wrote a paper in which he used our data to try to give
an explanation for what was happening.
Well, this had gone on for, I suppose, close to a year. 1
said, "I'm dissatisfied with this business because we're just
testing now. We have to have an experiment that's properly
designed." I designed an experiment in which we were to draw by
random lot when the seeding was to be done and where it was to be
done. We had a list of places that seeding might be done and
under what circumstances. There's no use seeding when there's no
possibility- -when there are no clouds, for example. Therefore,
once the conditions were right, then by drawing lots, I had
recommended that we were going to seed at the place that the card
showed. And the draw of the card would determine also whether to
seed or not to seed. In other words, was the rain going to fall
in the absence of seeding?
1 presented this to the companies. The Libby Company had a
chief scientist who said, "Look, you work for us. We pay you.
If you say that the conditions are right for seeding, we're going
to seed regardless of what you do." "Well," I said, "that would
ruin the experiment." "We don't care. That's what we're going
to do." I said, "Very well, I cancel everything. I will not do
any more seeding." And I never did. From that day on I never
touched it again, because if they wouldn't allow me to do a
proper experiment, I wasn't going to continue to have anything to
do with it. So the thing just fell apart.
I see. Was there any public response to this?
today , I - -
If you did it
Lage:
Oh, a tremendous public interest, but as knowledge grew, we could
see that in the long run it was not trustworthy at all. My
published papers show that. I couldn't prove that the rain that
occurred was really due to our seeding. And that was the reason I
wanted a scientifically designed experiment. If they didn't want
to run an experiment, I said I didn't want to do it at all, so I
just quit.
They didn't try to get somebody else?
62
Leopold: Shortly thereafter, I left Hawaii, and the man who took my place,
who was my colleague at the time, he tried to continue it. In
order to do so, he brought in some very high-powered talent from
universities in various parts of the country. It simply
frittered away. I was away from it and therefore I didn't know,
really, what happened. But it didn't come to anything.
Lage: It hasn't come to anything else, now, has it?
Leopold: No. In other words, the more people got into it- -and there were
lots of people who really put a lot of effort into it- -it simply
is not dependable and you can put it in one sentence. At the
time you need the rain, the clouds are not in a favorable
situation. In other words, when you need the rain the most, it's
not possible to get any inducement.
Lage: You have to have the clouds to begin with.
Leopold: So in effect, the times that you need it most to make it is the
most impossible time to get any effect.
Lage: Your journal talks about a trip you made to Washington in the
middle of this assignment.
Leopold: Oh, many trips to Washington. Many trips, yes.
Lage: It sounds as if you had relationships with the Weather Bureau
that had to be worked out.
Leopold: Indeed. As a matter of fact, I worked very closely with the
chief of the Weather Bureau, because I was furnishing a
forecasting system that they should have been furnishing, you
see. And I was trying to bring them into a cooperative agreement
with me, so we could do these things jointly. They were very
slow to respond. They did finally begin to respond, but it was
kind of touch and go because, you see, they felt I was a
competitor. Or we were competitors.
Four Months to a Ph.D. in Geology at Harvard. 1950
Leopold: In the meantime, I went back to some of the things that I had
been doing when I was in the Soil Conservation Service before the
war. I was completing a paper that I had started in the Bureau
of Reclamation on the history of what the early explorers had
found when they first went to the West in the late nineteenth
century. I was writing a paper on what I was calling the
63
vegetation in the Southwest in the nineteenth century,
now I'm talking about biology.
You see ,
Leopold: So I finished this manuscript. I had been in correspondence over
a good many years, since 1937--this was now 1950- -with Professor
Bryan at Harvard. He had earlier said, "Yes, you can come back
to Harvard and finish your degree if you take this , that , that , "
things that didn't interest me and that I simply wasn't trained
to do. But I sent him this manuscript, and he wrote back a
letter that changed my life. It was only two sentences. It
said, "Why don't you come back to Harvard and use this manuscript
as the beginning of your doctor's thesis?"
So I said, "I'm going to go." I had been earning a large
salary so I had put my money aside, and I figured, "If I spend
all my savings of five years, I'll take my family to Harvard,"
which is a lot of expense. But then when I went to my director,
he said, "I'll tell you. We will pay for your schooling."
Lage: The Pineapple Research Institute?
Leopold: Yes. I said, "All right. I would like to have you tell me,
though, what would be my responsibilities? Because I can't
accept this without knowing what's expected of me when I come
back." They put off and put off, and they wouldn't really
specify. So I said, "No, I can't do that." I said, "I cannot
tie myself down to something when I don't know what I'm expected
to do. I would rather go on my own, and then if you want me to
come back, that's another matter."
So here I am; I packed up my family and I went to Cambridge,
used up all my savings. Got there on the second of January, and
in the next three weeks I took two language examinations, I
passed my orals, and then I took four courses, wrote my thesis,
and left with a Ph.D. in four months. No one had ever done this
at Harvard before.
Lage: Tell me more about Harvard and the Ph.D. studies. Weren't you
working for the Geological Survey when you went to Harvard?
Leopold: Yes. The Geological Survey hired me when I left Hawaii, and I
worked for them for a couple of months .
Lage: In Los Angeles.
Leopold: In Los Angeles, yes. That's where I was stationed. Then I took
leave without pay, went to Harvard for half a year, and then came
64
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
to Washington after that. So that yes, I was employed but I
wasn't being paid. In other words, I was on leave.
Was that all set up before you came to the Geological Survey?
No. Well, yes, in a way it was, although I think the survey
people had not the slightest idea what I was going to do, because
they had never hired a research man before.
Tell me about that,
why?
How did they hire you as a research man, and
Veil, I told you that while I was with the Bureau of Reclamation,
1 had made a good impression on the chief hydraulic engineer of
the USGS. About the time I wanted to go to Harvard, the chief of
one of the branches came to visit his offices in Hawaii. I had
him for dinner, and I said to him, "I'd like to remind you that
five years ago, the chief said that if 1 wanted to come back to
Washington and the Geological Survey, that they would give me
consideration." 1 said, "I wonder if you would be good enough to
take that message to the chief saying, 'Yes, I would like to do
that . ' "
He said thank you, he would do that, so that the
arrangements were made then that they knew I was going to come
back anyhow to go to Harvard, so they said very well- -I was
paying my own way- -I could report for work in Los Angeles and
take leave and then be reassigned.
Was the work in Los Angeles research also?
No. I worked for them about two months. I came to Los Angeles,
and they didn't know what to do with me; they didn't have any
idea what 1 was hired for. But nobody did. It was my friend
Walter Langbein who had persuaded the chief hydraulic engineer
that I'd be a good person to have around. But nobody knew what I
was supposed to do. So I got to Los Angeles and they said,
"Well, there's a desk, but you'll have to make up your mind
because we don't do that kind of work that you expect to do.
You were the first research person in the division?
Yes. They'd never had one before. So I said, "Fine." So
without even sitting down at my desk, I said, "I'm going to New
Mexico . " I had been now away for five years . So I went to New
Mexico and picked up with some of my old colleagues there. When
I got there, I was working on one paper for my thesis.
Lage:
The Southwest vegetation?
65
Leopold:
No, it was the one on the climate of the Pleistocene,
working on evaporation.
I was
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Because I wanted to see my USGS friends in New Mexico, I'd
gone to New Mexico. I was supposed to meet one of their
administrators, Mr. Peterson, at the hotel in Gallup at a certain
time. I went to the hotel after the train arrived and he wasn't
there, so I just put my baggage behind the desk and I put on my
boots and I walked out of the hotel down to the river, which was
right past the hotel. Within two hours I had discovered things
that I had never seen before and nobody had ever seen before. I
started mapping the geology that I saw.
I came back a couple of hours later and met Mr. Peterson. I
said, "You ought to see what I found. It's very, very
interesting. I found some ancient material that is exposed in
the gully." So we went out in the field to see some of the
things that he was doing. Every time that I saw something
interesting, I'd have the car stopped and I'd rush over and take
a look and make a sketch. They didn't know what the hell I was
doing. So at the end of two days, I had a paper ready to write
because I had discovered a whole lot of things that no one had
ever seen before, which was right along the line of my major
professor at Harvard that I was going to work under.
Was this again looking at the past?
Yes, this was looking at the geologic section and seeing what the
climate had been.
So at the end of this two or three days, I went back to Los
Angeles and sat down and wrote a paper, which then became part of
my doctor's thesis.
And then when I was in Los Angeles, I was living in west Los
Angeles and my office was in the federal building in the center
of Los Angeles , so I had to take the bus . The bus trip took
three-quarters of an hour, so I studied French twice a day on the
bus. By the time I got to Harvard I could pass my examination in
French. [laughter]
You really make good use of your time, I must say.
I was young. [laughs]
So that's one reason you got through Harvard so quickly. Or got
the requirements finished.
66
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: In that short time at Harvard were there any important
experiences, or did your major professor have a particular impact
on you?
Leopold: Oh, yes, indeed. But this was, you see, the second time I had
worked under him. In other words, I worked under him in 1937 and
this was 1950, and now I came back, you see, much more senior; I
had written quite a few papers. He took a tremendous
satisfaction from my being there, because now I was older than
most of these other people that he had had.
I owe everything to him because he simply said to me one
time, "The day you decided to leave Hawaii, you earned your
degree." He said, "The fact that you were willing to spend your
own money to come back here and study and get your degree, that
means that I'm going to--." In effect, he was saying, "I'm going
to see to it you get your degree in three months," which he did.
He was happy as the Dickens because he had- - . Compared with
the amount of time that we spend on graduate students here--
helping them and reading their manuscripts and giving them ideas
and all that sort of thing- -that's not the way Dr. Bryan worked
at all. The greatest help that he gave me was one letter
consisting of two sentences. That's the supervision I had. One
letter, two sentences. And it said, "I wish that you would
consider the problem of what was the climate in the Pleistocene
in the Ice Age." That was it. I said, "Well, if that's what he
wants to do, that's what I'm going to do." The paper I wrote
became very famous, and he was very pleased with it. Extremely
pleased. Because I was attacking it from a way that no one had
ever thought about before, looking at it as a meteorologist as
well as a geologist. Bryan was very pleased with that.
Lage: Was it your meteorological training that provided the new input?
Leopold: Well, in this respect. I went from the published change in the
height of the snowline, which had been published by geologists,
and made the meteorological assumption, which later turned out to
be a reasonable statement, that the so-called lapse rate- -in
other words, the rate of change of temperature --remained the same
in the Pleistocene as the present. That was a meteorological
assumption that was very important. It turned out that everybody
agreed. When they saw it, they said, "Yes, that's the way it
ought to be . "
One of the people on my committee wrote a letter to another
member of my committee at Harvard. This was the great Russian
67
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
climatologist whose name was Konrad. Reading this paper that I
had written, he wrote a letter to the other professor, which I of
course was not supposed to see, but after 1 got my degree Dr.
Brooks gave me the letter. Konrad said, "It is not right for a
young man to work on a problem so complicated as the climate of
the Pleistocene. That should be left for the end of his career."
[laughter]
That was his objection?
Yes. And Bryan and Brooks laughed to themselves. They simply
didn't pay any attention, but he objected strongly to my working
on a problem that was a problem of speculation. [laughs]
And your Ph.D. was in geology?
Leopold: Yes.
68
IV THE LEOPOLD FAMILY, THE SHACK, AND A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC
Competitive Relationship with Starker^V/
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
After last session, I realized that, in an effort not to repeat
too much of all the written material, we really haven't talked
enough about your family, particularly your recollections of your
brothers and sisters, and growing up in Wisconsin. Do you want
to talk a little bit about your brothers and sisters?
Well, of course, Starker and I were two years apart in age, but
we were much closer together in schooling. We were only one year
apart in schooling, so that the early part of our childhood was
very competitive. Extremely competitive.
Did you both
brother?
:ive. extremely competitive,
feel that, do you think, or you as the younger
1 don't think I posed much of a problem for him, but we were
competitive in a lot of ways, girls among other things. And then
there was a long period of time in which we practically didn't
speak to each other.
What age was that?
That must have been from, oh, I just don't remember. I know
there was a long period when we didn't seem very--
When you were an adult, or still a--
I think it must have been late high school, early college. But
my brother Starker was a very popular man who in high school was
on the hockey team. I never went out for any team, and I was
very shy and sort of retarded in high school. Never had a--
I'm sure that's not the right word. [laughs]
69
Leopold: Well, I had no confidence in myself. When Starker started
college he didn't work very hard, and he joined a fraternity and
ended up by flunking out. Well, to make up for that, I made up
my mind- -and of course my family was very upset about this--! was
going to be the guy that got good grades and showed him up, at
which I worked very, very hard, and was kind of the opposite of
him.
Lage: I see. And consciously sort of--
Leopold: Oh, yes indeed. But then, of course, after Starker went to work
after he flunked out of college, he then came back and made an
extremely good record for himself. So it didn't last. But in
the meantime, I took it on myself, as I say, to be in an entirely
different camp. I wouldn't join a fraternity, for example, and I
got very good grades. The turning point in my life was at the
end of my freshman year of college when I was just fifteen. I
made the crew of the first boat, and that changed my life because
all of a sudden now I found that I, also, could be successful in
sports. And then immediately after that, then, I was soon
elected to the honor societies, and that really was a very, very
great change in my life, that all of a sudden I became
successful.
Lage: The hard work paid off.
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: Now, do you think Starker at that point began to feel more
competitive from his end?
Leopold: No. Starker, you see, had gone off. After that we didn't see
each other for many, many years. He went off to get his Ph.D.
[at University of California, Berkeley] so that we weren't thrown
together very much. He took his bachelor's at Wisconsin,
Master's in forestry at Yale, and then Berkeley. This was in the
period 1939-41 approximately. During the war he was doing
research in Mexico.
Lage: But you did go on hunting trips together, it seems from your
journals, as a youth and teenager.
Leopold: At that time, yes, we did quite a few things together, although
there was still a lot of competition because, for example, he
started dating the girl I was in love with.
Lage: How about your parents' reactions to the two of you? How did
they deal with this one very self-disciplined youth and one not
so disciplined?
70
Leopold: They were very under standing of both the personalities. Very
tinder standing. No comment was ever made that made Starker feel
bad for not doing very well in school, and very little praise was
heaped on me, but my father would say--. Just before they went
to bed I'd have been studying for three or four hours, and my
father would say, "I think you study too much. Why don't you
study a little less? This is not worthwhile." They were very
understanding; never any criticism about either of the boys.
Lage: That's hard to do as a parent, to remove yourself and not be
critical.
Leopold: Yes, but they were extremely unusual parents. For example, right
about the time that Starker was about ready to flunk out, he was
going with a sorority girl. He went off to have a party with
some boys and asked his girl to drive our family car back to
town. The car was brand new, and buying a car in those days,
particularly when my father earned so little money, was a very
important matter. On the way back she wrecked the car, and I
mean wrecked it completely. I remember my father came in the
house, and my mother said to him, "What's-her-name has just
completely ruined our car." His reply was, "I hope she wasn't
hurt." "No," my mother said, "she wasn't hurt." My father said,
"Stella, I think you'd better invite her to dinner tomorrow night
so that she doesn't think we're angry at her." This was quite a
blow, and a very great financial blow, but that was the kind of
reaction he had.
Financial Hardships in the Depression Years
Lage: Did the tightness of the financial situation affect you?
Leopold: Oh, yes, indeed. I don't know how my mother made out with five
children on the amount of money that she was given. She never
knew anything about the family finances . She took what my father
gave her, and that was that. And she made out somehow or
another. We were never bothered about it; we were never told
much- -nothing in detail.
Lage: It wasn't discussed as a family problem.
Leopold: No. I saw once in a while my mother in tears, but it was not
imposed upon the children, nor did you have to say anything,
because everybody knew that there wasn't very much money.
71
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
You didn't ask to go away to college, for instance.
Was that ever a thought?
Or did you?
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
No, we were perfectly happy to go to Wisconsin. A very good
school indeed, that of course wasn't costing very much In those
days. Sixty- four dollars a semester.
And living at home?
Yes, and living at home. But for example, we never took the bus
to school. The nearest edge of the campus was just a mile from
our house, and we walked four times a day. Ve walked to school,
walked back for lunch, walked to school in the afternoon, and
walked home, regardless of weather. Well, friends of ours would
take the bus, but we apparently didn't have ten cents to take the
bus.
Was this when your father wasn't working?
Oh, yes. When the Depression came, he was working for an arms
and ammunition company. He had just quit his job at the Forest
Service, and he was making this famous survey- -the game survey,
first of Iowa and then of the midwestern states. When the
Depression caused that job to disappear and he was really without
work, he just sat down and wrote a book. Then, as a result of a
series of lectures that he gave at the time that this book was
being written, arrangements were made by the dean of the
university to create a professorship for him. But this was a
very trying time for my mother and father because they were
really short of money.
Yes, because I think that most young people go through something
like this. Most of the people that I know started out pretty
much from scratch and didn't get very much help from their
families. We certainly didn't get any help from our family, but
nobody talked much about it; you were expected to go off and do
it, that's all. But yes, it was like any other important
experience: you learn something about how to do it properly, not
because you discuss it, because you just thought about how it was
done.
72
Carl. Nina, and Estella Leopold
[Interview 3: June 6, 1990 ]##
Lage: Could we talk a little bit about your younger brother and
sisters?
Leopold: They're all very distinguished people.
My younger brother, Carl, took his Ph.D. at Harvard, and he
is distinguished professor of plant physiology at Cornell.
Actually, he sort of divides his time between the Boyce Thompson
Institute and the University at Cornell. He, I understand, just
recently retired but keeps up his research. He's very much
interested in training of scientists, the whole matter of ethics
in science, as I am. His wife, interestingly, runs the largest
recycling environmental group, apparently, in the state.
My sister Nina is married to a geologist. They live on the
Leopold Memorial Reserve at Baraboo, Wisconsin, and she's made a
big reputation for herself in the ability to restore original
prairies with original plants. A year ago she and her husband
were each given an honorary doctor's degree from the University
of Wisconsin, which is quite unusual, to have a couple, each
honored by a big university. They lead essentially a kind of
research life. They have a great garden. I never saw anything
like it. It's a garden that's big enough to feed a whole town, I
think. So they're great plant horticulturists.
My sister Estella took her Ph.D. at Yale, and she worked for
quite a while in the United States Geological Survey as a
palynologist [student of fossil pollen]; she's a pollen expert
and now is professor of botany at the University of Washington,
Seattle, and a very distinguished scientist. She's a member of
the National Academy and is a great conservationist. She and her
friend, Vim Wright, were responsible with a few other people for
saving the great fossil beds called the Florrisant in Colorado.
And they actually did sit down in front of the bulldozers. They
were trying to get this very famous paleontology site, which has
insects and leaves in it, declared a national monument.
Lage: What were the bulldozers proposing to do?
Leopold: The bulldozers were going to build houses on the fossil bed.
They got the bill through Congress, and the thing is protected
now.
73
Lage: So the whole family combines the scientific interest and the
ethical-ecological interest.
Leopold: No question about it, yes.
Lage: As the girls were growing up, were there the same expectations
for them as for the three boys, in terms of schooling, for
instance? Did you see a difference in treatment?
Leopold: My younger sister Estella, of course, is eleven years younger
than 1, so that she was home for a much longer time and without
any siblings at home. So basically 1 think she probably knew my
father and mother more than the rest of us did when we grew up,
because everybody was so close together that--.
There's a tremendous difference between my older brother and
I, although we're two years apart, on the one hand, and my
younger sister and younger brother, on the other. They were also
two years younger than ourselves, but it was as if there were ten
years difference.
Lage: Why is that, do you think?
Leopold: 1 don't know. 1 really don't know. Well, it was partly because
Starker and 1 went to one high school, and then when the other
children got into high school, they went to another high school,
so they had another group of friends , and they always seemed much
younger than we were. It's hard to explain. I don't understand
it, but it's as if the difference in age were much larger than it
really was.
Lage: Did you do things with Carl like the hunting and fishing trips?
Leopold: That's the point. Not so much.
Lage: More with Starker.
Leopold: Later, after we were all out of college, then it began to change.
But when we were growing up, the answer is no.
Building the Shack and Restoring the Land
Lage: Were the younger set more shaped, do you think, by the
experiences at the shack? Or did you get back there often enough
that you participated?
74
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Since I was more or less responsible for building the shack, 1
was--
Tell me about that. Ve didn't get into that at all.
You saw the pictures in the journal.
Yes.
For years my father had been wanting a piece of property, and
nothing quite suited him.
So he'd been talking about getting something of that sort.
Oh, yes, for a long time. Yes. But I never really understood
exactly what he was looking for, and maybe he didn't know
himself. After we had the property [an abandoned sand county
farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin], then it began to be clear what we
were going to try to do. We were going to try to reclaim it.
At first was he talking about it as hunting cabin?
No. It was very diffuse. We weren't actively looking, but
looking back at it, it was quite clear that he was waiting for a
chance to find some land he could protect, because some of his
friends knew he was. I can remember the day that a friend of my
father's in Baraboo, Wisconsin, phoned him- -I remember the day--
and said, "There's a piece of property outside of Baraboo that's
up for sale. I think it might be something that you want to look
at."
So on a cold, snowy day--. My sister says she was there; I
don't remember. But I know my mother, father, and I, and perhaps
Nina, drove out there, and it was a very bleak- looking place.
There were no leaves on the trees and the snow was deep. There
was this little shack half the size of this room, no larger. It
was first a horse barn and then a chicken coop. We looked in it
and it was piled six feet deep with manure. My mother turned to
my father and said, "You're crazy. You don't mean to tell me you
want this place!" My father said, "Estella, when that manure
gets spread over your garden, you'll be very glad to have it."
[laughter]
So he immediately saw its potential.
So anyhow, we bought the 250 acres for practically nothing,
it was a very bleak place, I can tell you.
But
75
Lage: And when did the building take place, and what was your role in
it?
Leopold: Well, I was the chief builder.
Lage: Oh, you were?
Leopold: We built a little addition which became the bunk room- -just an
extension of the little house. We had to repair the roof. We
put in a fireplace that was on the design that my father had used
when we were in New Mexico. I don't know why there was a
difference, but the one in New Mexico worked, and the one in the
shack that we built didn't work. We spent a miserable year with
the smoking fireplace; it wasn't satisfactory. It was a dirt
floor.
Finally, the next year, we said, "Let's do it properly." So
on a Sunday day, my father and I went to the quarry, which was
only a short distance from our house in Madison. A limestone
quarry. Behind the old Essex car we had a trailer, a flatbed
trailer. We went up to the quarrymen and we looked all around,
and finally we walked up to the cliff. We scratched around and
finally put our hands on a big rock and said, "This is the rock
we want." It was about 5-1/2 feet long, nearly a foot thick,
about this wide [about three feet] . We asked whether they could
quarry it out for us, and they did. So with a crowbar the big
rock was moved out to the trailer, and we drove it out to the
shack, about fifty miles from Madison.
A few weeks later, on spring vacation, we all went out
there: my sister Nina, a girl who was a friend of all of us,
Mother and Father, and myself, I guess.
Lage: Starker didn't get in on this?
Leopold: He was away at the time.
We built a fireplace, and this time it was a good one. To
move that rock into the shack, we built a platform of overlapping
logs, and you would lift one end of the rock with a crowbar, and
then the other end of the rock, and put another log under it. We
finally moved that thing the ten or fifteen feet that was
necessary to get it in the shack. So there's the fireplace, and
it's worked extremely well.
Lage: How long did the building process take?
the rock--
Did you have to break
76
Leopold: No, we put the rock up as it was. I chipped it a little bit to
sort of knock some edges off, but no, the rock was exactly the
way we took it out of the quarry.
One of the stories of the family occurred when we were
building the brick chimney above the new fireplace. My father
was up on the roof standing on the ladder, putting a brick on the
chimney. The brick slipped out of his hand and fell to the
ground, and my father looked down and said, "Oops! Goddamnit!"
[laughter] And that's been a family expression ever since.
Oops! Goddamnit!
Lage: Was that characteristic of him?
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: And then how about the flooring? When did that come?
Leopold: Two or three years later, my mother finally said, "I want the
inside of the house painted or something. It's too hard to keep
clean. And besides, I want a floor." So we said, "Fine."
Lage: No objection?
Leopold: No, no. Ve were now ready to fix the shack up a little bit, so
we put in a wood floor and we used calcimine, I guess it was, to
paint everything. Not with paint, but with calcimine. That's the
way it is now. It's white inside.
We never bought a piece of new lumber. If you wanted a
piece of lumber, you went down on the riverbank and picked up
some wood that was thrown up by the high water. So a lot of bum
wood went into the fireplace because we never went to a
lumberyard at all; you just went to the riverbank and got
whatever you wanted.
Lage: That must give it a real characteristic air.
Leopold: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, in the one bench that I built for
the shack there is the hole that was drilled for a peg when they
were floating logs down the Wisconsin River to the mill, so you
knew that this was Paul Bunyan land, you see. There's the
stretcher, you might say, that held the log raft together.
That's one of the benches in the shack.
Lage: Did you get involved also in the restoration process on the land,
or did that come after you were away from home?
77
Leopold: At the time that we finished the shack, finished the building,
then we started seriously to plant. At that time- -and you still
can, you can get seedlings that were called a one -two or a two-
three. In other words, one- two would be a seedling of .pine that
had spent one year from the time that it was germinating, and
then two years of growth. So the little pines were about six
inches high. You could get them from the Conservation Commission
or some state agency in bundles of a hundred, with the roots.
So we started to plant. In the long run, we planted 19,000
pines. I can remember my father planting these little things
that stood six inches high, saying, "The time will come when this
is going to be valuable." And indeed, the white pine is very
valuable stuff because there's practically none of it left
naturally.
So my sister's house there in Baraboo is built out of the
pines we planted. The logs are fourteen inches in diameter, and
she built her house out of the logs that all of us planted when
they were six inches high.
Lage:
That's a wonderful feeling.
Leopold: Yes.
Lage:
And then my father was very interested in prairie and the
whole history of land use, so he began to move prairie plants. I
can remember going out with him along the railroad track, where
prairie plants had survived from the farming. He would search
for a plant that he wanted and would take it back to the shack
and plant it.
Since that time, my sister Nina has found you don't have to
do it that way. What they do now, they first went along railroad
tracks and they collected seeds. But you perhaps know that the
seeds of prairie plants are extremely small. Ten could fit on
the end of a pin, for example. Therefore, a special technique
had to be developed for how you get seeds off these plants. Once
Nina got plants started in her yard, then she got the seeds from
her own plants, so that the thing has expanded now, and now they
actually have enough seeds so they can actually give seed away.
But outside of her house, for example, there's a place at least
as large as a square block that's all prairie grass standing as
high as your head, and the most beautiful flowers you ever saw.
All native flowers.
I thought the introduced plants sort of tended to choke off the
natives.
78
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
That's what they had to teach themselves how to handle. So what
they have to do is really sterilize the ground for one year to
get rid of the weeds so they won't compete with the new prairie
plants. But once that's done and the prairie plants start to
come up, then apparently it goes quite quickly.
Has this become a nodel for government agencies and others?
Yes. Lots of people go to Baraboo to see my sister's prairies,
because now it's gotten to be a big thing. Lots of people are
interested in prairie, so that there's a Prairie Restoration
Research Station in Kansas that's doing it on a fairly large
scale. Many students have come to work with Nina and Charlie at
Baraboo to learn the techniques and to help with the
reconstruction. Then those students go out and do it elsewhere.
So it's now spreading; a lot of people are interested in prairie
restoration now.
A lot of ripples went out.
But when you heard about the covered wagons in 1846 going across
the Great Plains, and maybe you read some of that, where they
said, "And the grass stands up to your shoulder," well, indeed,
my sister's grass stands up to your shoulder. You see, when you
go from the hundredth meridian westward, you go first from the
tall grass prairie to the short grass prairie. The tall grass
prairie ends approximately at the edge of Colorado; and then from
Colorado all the way to the mountains, the Colorado border going
westward all the way to the mountains is short grass prairie.
But the high grass prairie must have been something to see, when
these billowing, waving grass stands that stood, as 1 say, as
high as a man. It must have been quite a sight.
Really. And something to get through, also,
present a little bit of barrier.
I think it would
Well, 1 presume so, although you see in both the Santa Fe Trail
and the Oregon Trail that once the trail was made, everybody
followed the same trail. Near our house in Wyoming, for example,
you can see the ruts of the Oregon Trail that are two feet deep,
still, just as though the wagons were there yesterday.
Publication of A Sand County Almanac
Lage: Can we talk a little bit about A Sand County Almanac and what you
remember about the time your father was putting things together,
79
and how you helped with the publication and the final editing of
it?
Leopold: It's quite clear that these essays had been germinating in my
father's mind for many, many years, because after Dad died, there
was found in his desk a private notebook which I had never seen,
a very small notebook. Looking through it, there were phrases
that he had written down in that private notebook that twenty
years later appeared in an essay. Little ways of putting words
together that he had thought of much earlier and then used later
on. Certain essays I recall were written during the few times
that my father was sick. I can remember coming in the house one
day, and he had been in bed for a day, which very seldom
happened. He said, with some satisfaction, "I've Just finished
another essay." I think that my father wrote as I do: very
quickly indeed, and then spend months and even years editing,
cleaning it up and making sure every word is exactly where you
want it.
Lage : Did he share any of this with the family, in process?
Leopold: When an essay was done, he would make the simple statement, "1
finished an essay," and the idea was, if you wanted to read it,
he'd be happy to have you, but he never forced it on you, never.
Well, the essays were gradually being put together. 1 came
back from Hawaii about 1946, it must have been, and Dad had
finally gotten the essays in a manner that he felt was going to
go. He sent them to a publisher; it was Alfred Knopf. Knopf
wrote back and said, "These are very nice, but you ought to write
more of them." My father was so angry, he could hardly stand it.
This had just happened when 1 happened to come back from Hawaii
for a trip. I was living in Hawaii at the time. I talked with
Dad about it, and I said, "The trouble with you, Dad, is that
you're too soft. You don't argue with these people." I said,
"Why don't you let me try to get your manuscript published?" He
said, "I'd be delighted."
I was in Washington shortly thereafter, and I went to see my
friend, Ed Graham, who worked for the Department of Agriculture.
Ed Graham had published a book on land use, so I knew he had had
recent experience with publishing. I went to him and I said,
"Ed, what advice can you give me?" He said, "Why don't you try
my publisher, the Oxford University Press in New York?" He said
that the editor's name was Philip Vaudrin.
So I made an appointment with Vaudrin and apparently I sent
the manuscript to him. Then I took a special trip to New York
and went to lunch with him. This is the usual way of authors
80
dealing with publishers. We discussed the matter, and he said,
yes, he really was interested in publishing it, but there were
certain things he didn't like, and that was what we were going to
have to worry about.
Lage: Do you remember his objections?
Leopold: Yes, Dad's title was Great Possessions, which is the title of one
of the essays. He said, "That sounds too much like Dickens." 1
said, "Okay, I'll make up an alternative possible list of
titles."
Now, what 1 don't remember right now is the sequence of
exactly what happened, because 1 think that the matter of the
title came up after Dad died. Because when Vaudrin finally made
up his mind that he was going to publish it, he sent a letter to
Madison saying to my father that the book had been accepted and
there were certain things that had to be worked out. That was
the weekend my father died. So he knew that it had been
accepted; that's all he knew.
So then thereafter, I was worrying now about illustrations.
There was a friend of mine in Washington who had recently
illustrated a book, and I asked him to make some sketches for me.
They were much too modern for me; I didn't like them at all. My
brother Starker had, you see, spent a good many years working in
Missouri. When 1 was in Hawaii, 1 met this friend, at that time
a friend of Starker 's who later became a good friend of mine,
Charles Schwartz. 1 got to know Charlie quite well when we were
both in Hawaii.
It was at that time that I was now at the job of trying to
get this book published, so I wrote to Charlie and said, "Would
you make some sketches for me?" 1 had worked out a series of
sentences chosen from the book that I thought could be used as
illustrations. In other words, a sentence that said something
that reminded you of something that might spur the artist to make
a drawing. So Charlie sent me some samples, which to my mind
were exactly what I wanted.
Then we made a serious effort to write down things that
could be illustrated. For example, the essay about the
chickadee. We picked out a sentence; say, it was about the
chickadee on a sawn log. Well, that turned out to be one of the
illustrations in Sand County. So Charlie did a splendid job.
Lage: What was his background? Was he a wildlife illustrator,
basically?
81
Leopold: No, he was primarily a game manager. He was a professional game
manager but has made his reputation now as a great artist.
Lage: But he knew game?
Leopold: Oh, yes, yes. Oh, yes, indeed, he did. Absolutely. No, he was
a real professional. And then later when 1 published the second
book of my father's work, Charlie did the illustrations for me
again.
Lage: Who thought of the title?
Leopold: It was one of the titles that 1 had suggested. I was by no means
happy with 'it. I thought there were better titles than that.
But apparently Vaudrin was sort of taken with that idea. Because
it's only the first part of the book that was really an almanac,
which started with January, February, March. But anyhow, that's
what the editor liked. So with some reluctance, I agreed to it.
It's turned out to be satisfactory, but there's always been a
question of whether that really would have been the best title.
I'm not sure.
Lage: You don't remember the ones that you wanted?
Leopold: No, but I had a list of them. No, I don't. But obviously I was
leaning toward the one that my father picked out originally. But
then 1 had made up a series of alternatives.
Lage: Did other people review it after his death also?
Leopold: At the time that Dad had first sent it to Knopf, he had several
of his students, Bob McCabe and Frederick Hamerstrom and Joe
Hickey, who all had seen the manuscript. When I got it, when I
was in Hawaii, there were a few notes written by those people on
the margin. But the final decision as to how to deal with these
minor matters were decisions that 1 myself had to make.
Lage: You didn't make too many changes on this?
Leopold: Oh, no, I certainly did not.
Round River: Conservationists and Hunting
Leopold: But then there was quite a different matter when Round River came
along. That's an interesting story, too.
82
Some years after my father died, my mother said to me, "You
know, there are really quite a few things of your father's that
were never published, and I think you ought to publish them."
Well, I was always kind of soft-hearted with my mother, so 1
said, "Okay, I'll try." In his files there were a series of
manuscripts that had never been really finished.
Lage: He hadn't worked them over?
Leopold: Yes, but actually had not finished. They were not done.
Lage: Oh, not finished. Not even completed.
Leopold: So I took several of these and finished them myself. "Round
River" was one. I didn't have to touch "A Man's Leisure Time."
That was fine just the way it was. There were several others,
basically where I had to add the words or I had to add the
paragraphs or I had to bring it to completion.
Anyhow, the book was published, and I got the first copy.
Apparently the press had written the description on the dust
jacket. My mother took a look at this, and she said, "I will not
accept that." I don't know where I was at the time, but I said,
"Very well, Mum, I'll change it. Now, what would you suggest?"
"Well," she said, "I don't want it stressed that your father was
a hunter." I said, "Very well, we'll change it." So I spoke to
the press and I said, "I will pay the difference. I want to have
you redo the dust jacket because my mother doesn't like it.
Here's the reason." Okay, they put a new dust jacket on and I
paid for it. Or the royalties paid for it.
Well, shortly thereafter, when that book was published,
there appeared in the Boston paper a book review that really
blasted my father. It said, "He cannot be a conservationist.
He's a hunter; he shoots things. He's a fraud."
Leopold: "Aldo Leopold's a fraud. He doesn't mean anything that he's
talking about. He's not in conservation at all. He shoots
things." Well, I was in conversation with one of the editors of
Oxford Press, and they said, "Did you see that book review in the
Boston paper?" I said, "I surely did, and I was very angry."
They said, "Do you know who wrote it?" I said, "No." "Rachel
Carson wrote it."
Lage: Oh, my goodness. Was it not signed?
83
Leopold: No, she had somebody else sign it. Well, that really put me off,
I'll tell you.
Lage: Did you have any contact with her on it?
Leopold: No, no, of course not. But anyhow, it's the kind of extremism
that we see in many places. You think that people interested in
the environment are also people that are broad minded or--. I'm
not just so sure what to say, but I was shocked.
Lage: Did you run across that a lot? That kind of response?
Leopold: No, that was the only one that was important. But you see, my
mother had been very smart about this. She read that sentence in
the dust jacket and she said, "You take that out." But yet that
still did not prevent some people from saying, "Anybody who--."
Well, look at what's going on now. The whole business of you
don't want to use animals for experimentation in the medical
profession for the saving of human lives. And now the fur
business.
Lage: But there was hunting mentioned in A Sand County Almanac, and the
response --
Leopold: But you see, Round River was my father's journals, you recall,
and therefore they were hunting journals like mine. So anyhow,
that was part of the story.
Fur the r Editions of A Sand County Almanac
Leopold: Then this also ought to be recorded, although no one will read
it. Some years went by, and Oxford Press was not reprinting one
of the books. I forget which one they weren't reprinting. I
think they were not going to reprint Sand County. The editors at
Ballantine Press approached the Oxford Press people and said,
"We'd like to republish the book in a paperback form." Oxford
Press got in touch with me and said, "What do you think?" I
said, "What do they want to publish?" "They want to publish Sand
County in its original form." And it was decidedand I don't
remember exactly how this decision was made that it might be
better to take the best essays out of Round River, leaving out
the hunting journals, and combine them with the original essays
in A Sand County Almanac, and publish a new edition.
Well, now, since I was having to edit this, the question
became, "How are you going to put them together?" So what I did
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
was to--. Veil, this is the part that's a little touchy. My
former wife is an aggressive woman, and she had made up her mind
she was going to edit this new edition. Well, I knew goddamn
well that she didn't have the talent to do it.
Now, was she your former wife at the time?
No, she was married to me at the time. And it was, you know,
sort of a fight in the family. So she finally got her name as
well as mine put on the new foreword, and that made the rest of
my family madder than hell, because they didn't like her, you
see.
Well, anyhow, in trying to devise a way to put these things
together, it really required an entirely new lay-out for the
book, because Round River was the name of the book but also the
name of an essay, but it was one of the essays that I finished.
That isn't made clear, really.
Not at all. No. Not at all clear. So what 1 did, was 1, in
order to meld them all together, 1 made changes in the things
that I had written, without changing anything that my father had
written, but changing the words that I had written in order to
make this thing fit. Well, the family was madder than hell.
Then there were book reviews written about how terrible it was,
blaming me, you see, for rewriting everything. The family as
well as friends of the family were very unhappy about the whole
thing.
The family tends to forget, you know. If they knew it, they
didn't act that way. Anyhow, that's what happened.
How did you feel about that product?
I was so angry that I simply said, "I don't want anything more to
do with it," so I turned it over to my brother. I had been
running the thing for twenty- five years and I was very unhappy
about it. Because I thought it was very unfair of the family to
jump on me for things that they really didn't take any trouble to
find out about.
Lage: The work really enjoyed a tremendous revival of interest in the
sixties. That must have been gratifying.
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Oh, yes indeed,
large way.
In other words, the thing came back in a very
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
When did the translation in Russian occur?
Let's see. The Russian translation is dated 1980. We have just
finished a translation in German. There's a translation in
Chinese, and 1 think that we've made some progress recently in a
translation in French, which I've been working on for some time.
But they used the same illustrations, and interestingly, in this
Russian edition they combined the two books too.
Oh, they did?
Because the illustration- - that ' s an illustration from Round
River, not an illustration from Sand County. Since I can't read
it, I don't know exactly what they did to it, but clearly they
combined the two books .
Do you get any response from this personally?
No, not very much.
The thought that it's translated into Russian is really
incredible. Especially considering how environmental issues are
seemingly so important in Eastern Europe and--
Indeed. As a matter of fact, the Russians are--. Well, they're
far ahead. The leadership in the Soviet Union is far ahead of
the leadership in the United States as far as environmental
matters are concerned.
Okay, anything else to mention on the books or the editing?
I think that it might be said that the care and interest that my
father took in writing has been tremendously influential on all
of us. You can see, if you read my stuff, you can see that I'm
greatly influenced by the kind of things that my father wrote
about .
Even in your journals I can see similarities.
Yes, I think so.
Have you published essays of the sort your father wrote?
Yes, well, there are some. I think that the one that's been most
widely reprinted is the one I called "Conservation and
Protection. "
86
V EARLY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH WITH THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Research in the Water Resources Division.
Lage: I'd like to turn now to your early years with the Geological
Survey. You received your Ph.D. in geology in 1950, and then
went back to the survey in Washington, D.C. , I understand. What
was the nature of your work in those years before you became
chief of the Water Resources Division?
Leopold: I gave you those two videotapes, didn't I? [1988 interview of
Luna Leopold for the U.S. Geological Survey.]
Lage: Yes. I listened to those, and I'd like to elaborate on that here.
Leopold: When I joined the Geological Survey, this was the first time the
Water Resources Division had ever hired a man who was supposed to
do something other than what other people did.
Lage : Do research?
Leopold: To do research, but they weren't quite sure what that meant.
Lage: So there really wasn't a research program at that time.
Leopold: Oh, no, there was none at all. There wasn't a research man in
the whole organization. In several thousand people, there wasn't
a research man.
When I came to the survey from Hawaii, and as I guess I told
you, landing in Los Angeles, they didn't know what in the world
to do with me. So they said, "Here's a desk," and I didn't pay
attention to anybody, and I sat down and started doing my own
work. So when I came back from Harvard in about three-quarters
of a year, I came to Washington where I was to be more
permanently assigned, and there wasn't an office for me, nor were
there any instructions; nobody knew what I was supposed to do.
87
Lage: And who was the person who had hired you?
Leopold: The chief hydraulic engineer, Carl Paulsen, hired me.
Lage: He hired you, but without a particular framework?
Leopold: When I was in the Bureau of Reclamation before I went to Hawaii,
I had in some manner or another access to people who had money.
I was very much interested in what the survey was doing. Since
they were right across the street from my office, I had a lot of
contacts, particularly with my friend Walter Langbein, whom I was
getting to know better. Valter was probably the senior mind, you
might say, in the office of the chief hydraulic engineer.
So to promote the work that they were doing, I transferred
some money to the Geological Survey from the Bureau of
Reclamation to continue the work that was already going on in the
hydrology of the western states. This went on for about a little
less than a year because I was only with the Reclamation Service
about a year. When I was leaving I went to call on my friends in
the Geological Survey across the street, and the chief hydraulic
engineer said, "We're sorry that you're leaving Washington, but
if you ever want a job, we would like to have you in the
Geological Survey."
So five years after that, I approached him and said, "This
is what you've said." Actually, one of the chief's people was
visiting Hawaii and I sent the message back through him, to the
chief, and the chief then got in touch with me and it was
arranged. When 1 came back from Harvard a little less than a
year later, they didn't have any job for me. They didn't even
have an office. So the assistant chief hydrologic engineer, Mr.
Royal Davenport, a wonderful manvery quiet, soft-spoken
gentleman of the very old school, a real gentleman- -he said, "Why
don't you share my office? There's an empty desk here." So I
sat down in the office of assistant chief because there was no
other place for me. So he went on with his business and
interviewed people and talked to people, and of course 1 simply
sat down and was quiet.
In the meantime, I had a lot of projects that I wanted to
work on and was having a very fine time. I had to complete for
publication a couple of papers that 1 had been working on
connected with my doctor's thesis. That led to a lot of new
investigations, but right after I got back from Harvard, in June
of 1950, I was in touch with my closest friend at Harvard, John
Miller, who was at that time at Penn State, and said, "Let's go
88
to the field together." So that summer, the first summer with
the survey, I went to the field with John Miller.
Well, we had a wonderful time. We were investigating the
whole question of the effect of changes of climate on the river
valleys of the western states, especially Wyoming. When we got
back from that summer, the question that kept sticking in my mind
was, why does the river have such a width? Because the width is
really what was going to determine how the terraces were going to
develop. So I picked up the question of why a river is as wide
as it is. This turned out to be a very fruitful question indeed.
A question that really no one had ever asked before.
The next thing that happened was that--. Well, there were
two really important aspects of this. In the first place,
because I'd just come from five years of being a professional
meteorologist, I visualized everything in terms of the atmosphere
and the structures that we see in the atmosphere, which you now
see in the form of fronts on a map on television everyday.
I'm now going to transfer my meteorological training to the
river system, because now we're still talking about a fluid, you
see . The air as a fluid has certain shapes and forms and does
certain things in a very consistent manner. Water is a fluid
also, and therefore there must be some relationship. So I
started to pick up the ideas that I had absorbed as a
meteorologist and started to apply them, to ask the questions in
terms of--
Lage : Ask the questions of the river that a meteorologist asks of the
atmosphere?
Leopold: That I had been working on as a meteorologist. For example, one
of the major tools that was being developed at that time was
called an isentropic map. That is a map of equal entropy.
Basically, equal entropy means, in very shorthand, no loss or
gain of energy. Well, I said, now, if that actually accounts for
these waves that we see in the atmosphere --at least one aspect of
the waves- -is there something comparable in the fluid of water?
Yes, indeed, there is something. So that was the kind of idea
that I had.
So really, there were two things of great importance: one,
having worked on terraces that first summer the question was, why
is a river as wide as it is? The second, transferring the ideas
that I had picked up as a meteorologist to ask the same kinds of
questions of the river system. That really started the direction
of my research. As a result, the study of river terraces has
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Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold;
been a preoccupation of mine all my life, starting with that
particular summer.
Were there people in the Geological Survey that encouraged you
along these lines, or were you really just a sole figure then?
I was really quite alone, except that 1 could walk across the
hall and talk to Walter Langbein. But Walter wasn't working on
research as much as he was working on primarily the--. Most of
his time was taken up by the things that were asked of him in an
administrative way.
What was his position at that time?
I'm not even sure what it was called. He was certainly called a
hydraulic engineer, but there was no particular position. He was
simply on the staff of the chief hydraulic engineer.
But he had administrative responsibilities?
He was always called upon because he was good at it. And in his
spare time, basically, he was working on some very important
hydrologic problems in research. Then he was also very important
in many other ways. When I became chief of the division, I
appointed Walter chief scientist. But he was great at training
people, so that people would come in from the field and spend six
months working in his office, more or less under his direction,
and he really was the leader in the development of several of the
most important research people that later on became prominent in
the research game.
This is even in those early years?
Yes, this was still in those early days. So that I would go
across the hall and there would be someone in Walter's office
that was basically working under him on some research project.
For example, they worked on such problems as how much water is
lost by evaporation from a stock pond. This is a research
project. How do you compute it?
You compute it among other things by measuring the radiation
from the sun. You also can compute it by measuring the change in
elevation of the water surface. But the measurement of water
surface was not enough because you didn't know how much leakage
there was. So then the question was, can we compute evaporation
by measuring the sun's radiation? Which means that you have to
know about the albedo, that is, the amount of reflected energy.
You have to know what kind of wavelengths are coming in. So then
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you have a whole new series of instruments. You're now talking
about pyroheliometers set up near the water surface.
Later on this became terribly important when they started
this big, very expensive survey at Lake Mead, because Lake Mead
has an evaporation of more than three feet a year. That's a very
large amount of water. So with the projects that Valter had been
working on with the people that were sent to help him or to work
under him, they had already developed a method for doing it. So
when they got to the big reservoir, they now had a theoretical
method and they knew how to make the measurement.
Lage: Did they choose this research subject because there were problems
with stock ponds, or did they do it to study the pure problem of
evaporation rates?
Leopold: Both. In other words, the whole question of evaporative loss in
the western states where water is short is extremely important.
They worked on the stock ponds because they could handle it.
They were small enough to really make direct measurement.
So anyhow, here were things going on that were really
research but not called that, and then nobody had been assigned
to research except I . I could see that there were many
potentials, because here were people being trained in research
techniques , here was one of the great minds in the whole
organization that was having to spend his time writing memoranda
for the chief.
Lage: I don't like to keep interrupting, but questions come up. Were
the people he was training Ph.D.'s?
Leopold: No, no, not a single one of them. No, not at all.
Lage: What would their background have been?
Leopold: They were usually engineers. For example, there was the highly
qualified man who's been working with me off and on, especially
in this court case in the last year, David Dawdy. He got a start
working under Walter Langbein. Earl Harbeck was the man who
really developed the theory that was used in the measurement of
evaporation. There were flood specialists. Those are the two
that I remember that were working under Walter during that first
couple of years.
Lage: So they didn't necessarily have the kind of research background
that they needed for some of these questions?
Leopold: No, but they were developing it. They were developing it,
believe me. They all turned out to be very highly qualified and
important research people.
Research with John Miller on Influence of Climatic Changes on
River VallevsM
Lage: I want to talk more about your research during the years before
you became chief of the division. Can we talk more about some of
the important research like your work on hydraulic geometry, and
try to make that understandable?
Leopold: The thing that made the difference was that right there in the
hall where I worked, just two doors down from my office, were all
the streamflow records for the whole United States.
Lage: All this data collection.
Leopold: All these data, you see.
Lage: What kind of data did they collect?
Leopold: They measure the stream, so that on a certain day they had a
current meter out there and they were measuring the velocity.
So here was this whole room full of tabulated data from the field
that no one had ever touched.
Lage: If the data wasn't interpreted, what was it collected for?
Leopold: The amounts of water were published, but the details of how they
got there, the details of the stream itself, were not published.
So they told you on August the 1st there was so much water in
such and such a stream. But the data that they measured in the
river had never been published, you see.
Lage: I see.
Leopold: So here were all these direct measurements, field measurements,
that no one had ever done anything with. So I said, "I'm going
to start fooling around with this."
Well, I left Harvard in May, 1950, and I told you I had made
a very good friend at Harvard, John Miller, who took his degree
at the same time. John was younger than I but was a geologist
who had worked for many years in New Mexico. When John graduated
at the same time I did with his Ph.D., he immediately was offered
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Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
a job as assistant professor of geology at Perm State. We were
both very glad to get out of school, and I said, "John, let's
spend the summer together." I said, "I'll meet you in Sundance,
Wyoming , " on a certain day .
John and his wife, Laura, drove across the country, and they
arrived in Sundance. They were very apprehensive about whether I
really meant business. But they were happy to start the field
work themselves. So when the train pulled up--. In those days
you could take the train. I took the train from Denver to
Sundance. When I stepped off the train they were quite surprised
that I really was there.
So I said, "Do you still have a hotel room?" "Yes, we've
got a hotel room." I said, "Okay, I've got to put on my field
clothes." So I went to the hotel. Sundance was about the size
of Pinedale; not even a paved street in the front. I went in the
hotel and I put on my blue jeans and my boots. I had a great big
Stetson about this high that was twenty years old. Apparently I
came out of the hotel, ran down the steps to the middle of the
street, threw the Stetson up in the air, and yelled, "Hah! the
field!"
So we started out. We had a wonderful time; we learned all
kinds of things. We had one ball out there.
Were you focused on a particular thing?
Yes. Because John and I were both interested in the things that
Professor Bryan had worked on all his life and that I had found
in New Mexico.
The Pleistocene.
Yes. We wanted to make a survey of Eastern Wyoming to see what
the climate was in the latter part of the Pleistocene and the
Holocene in Eastern Wyoming. That was our plan, and indeed, we
were very successful. So one of the papers that we had written
during that time before I was made chief was a paper on the
climate, and thus the geology, of the rivers of eastern Wyoming
["A post-glacial chronology for some alluvial valleys in
Wyoming"). I published that in the main Water Supply Series of
the Geological Survey.
But when I finished my paper on "The hydraulic geometry of
stream channels and some physiographic implications," that later
became famous, I had recommended that it be published as a
professional paper. Now, it turns out that the professional
paper series was primarily a series that published geological
93
material. The water supply paper series was primarily publishing
water material. When the chief hydraulic engineer received my
manuscript for permission, with the recommendation that it be
published in the professional paper series, certain people came
up to him and said, "He can't publish that in the professional
paper series because that's not our series. That's the geologic
division. "
So I went to the chief and I said, "Sir, I've written two
papers. This was a paper on geology which was written for the
hydraulic engineer. So my geological paper on western Wyoming
had to be published in the water supply paper series. Here is a
paper on water which I want to publish for the geologist. It's
going to be written in the professional paper series." He said,
"That's a good idea." So that's the way it turned out.
So I started, then, this cross connection, that I later
expanded, for writing papers on water for the geologist and
writing papers on geology for the water people. So this began to
change the way that people were looking at what we were all
supposed to do.
Lage : I noticed a paper on nineteenth -century vegetation in the
Southwest ("Vegetation of Southwestern Watersheds in the
Nineteenth Century," 1951].
Leopold: That was part of my doctor's thesis. What I was trying to do
there was to determine if old photographs recorded conditions
different from those observed today. By reading journals of
early exploration and collecting early photographs- -I was still
working on the problem of erosion, you see.
Lage: So all of this was related to the problem of erosion.
Leopold: Yes. That's right. And then one of the papers that was in my
doctor's thesis again became a famous paper because we had talked
for many, many years about climatic change, but no one had ever
computed quantitative values for climatic parameters during the
glacial age.
In another paper I found something that no one had ever
expected. There's a very famous geographer by the name of Thorne
Thwaite who had written a paper saying, "The data do not show any
climatic change in the latter part of the nineteenth century and
therefore the erosion problem must be due to man."
What I did is I showed that the averages didn't change, that
was true, but the rainfall intensity changed. My paper on
94
rainfall intensity, then, was a way of explaining how a
particular aspect of the climatic change would have been the most
important in the erosion problem. No one had ever seen that
before. ["Rainfall intensity: an aspect of climatic variation."]
Later it's been confirmed by many, many people, and now it's
agreed upon that the climatic change in the last part of the
nineteenth century was not a change in the annual rainfall but a
change in the type of precipitation.
Lage: How did you determine the intensity of rainfall in the past?
Leopold: Well, 1 saw that as a climatologist, you see. I mean, after all,
I was coming from meteorology, so I had ways of thinking about it
that other people hadn't thought of at that time. I took the
oldest rainfall record in the United States --again, you see, New
Mexico. The oldest rainfall record in the United States started
at Fort Marcy in Santa Fe in 1846 when General Doniphan first got
there and started the Mexican War. They started to collect
rainfall records . So I took those records and I counted the
number of days of different amounts of rain, and showed that the
frequency of high rainfall changed in the latter part of the
nineteenth century.
So here were a series of papers all dealing with the
interaction between meteorology and water and geology, which were
published at the time before 1 became chief.
Genesis of Hydraulic Geometry
Lage: What about hydraulic geometry? Tell me what that is.
Leopold: This is a good question. It started this way. John Miller and I
were out in the field in eastern Wyoming trying to explain to
ourselves how the climate of the Pleistocene had changed the
landscape . We saw evidence that the landscape had gone through
climatic change and caused deep gullying which occurred in the
period from 1200 to 1400 A.D., and then the gullies filled up,
and then they repeated themselves at the beginning of the present
century. This had first been demonstrated by Professor Kirk
Bryan .
Lage: So you saw this in the geological record of the stream bed?
Leopold: Yes. The question then came up, in many different ways, why is
the river as wide as it is? That was a question that I posed for
95
myself which turned out to be a very important question. As I
often tell students later, "The important thing is not how you do
it but what question you choose to work on." That, I maintained,
was a very important question. It affected everything I did for
many years later. This is the kind of difficult question that
the present students are missing. They are not paying attention
to the really important questions. They are taking things that
are too small and too easy.
Lage: Why did that question occur to you? Do you remember?
Leopold: Because here John and 1 were looking at these gullies, you see.
And we were saying, "Why should they be as wide as they were?"
We were looking at it geologically, and then I started to ask
myself, "Hydraulically, from the standpoint of the flow of the
water, why is it this way?" So I got into a whole lot of
literature about what the English engineers were doing in India
and how canals were designed and that sort of thing.
Then I remember the day I walked into Walter Langbein's
office across the hall, and I said, "Look what I found." I said,
"Do you realize that the relationship between the width of the
river and the discharge follows in a certain mathematical
formula?" "No," he said. "That's really interesting." I said,
"Did you know that that's exactly what the engineers found in
India in 1890 when they built canals?" So then we began to see
that we were talking now about how stable channels operate.
Nobody knew why, and they didn't see all these interconnections,
and then I started to put these interconnections together.
Lage: As you speak, it's so obvious how your kind of unique education
really came together.
Leopold: The main thing is that the combination that John Miller and I
were working on--. We were looking at the geology in the field.
We were interpreting the geology in terms of what had been
changing in the last ten thousand years. That had certain
climatic and hydraulic relationships, which becomes a water
problem. Being a meteorologist, I was looking at it from the
standpoint of climatology and from the standpoint of hydraulics
and from the standpoint of climate and from the standpoint of
geology. That kind of combination is the kind of stuff we need.
Lage: And John had been a geologist, or did he have a background- -
Leopold: Oh, yes, John was a tremendous help. We knew different things.
John had been mapping in northern New Mexico and was a real
expert in geologic mapping. But John also was an expert in
soils. He was a very highly trained chemist with particular
96
emphasis on soils. Soils were one of the things we were using as
a measure of climate, so that his knowledge of chemistry and
soils, and what I was bringing from climatology and hydraulics,
we were combining into a way of looking at things.
For example, we wrote a paper together called "The Role of
Paleosols in Climatic Interpretation," something like that.
Paleosol was an ancient soil from a different climate. So when
we were in eastern Wyoming, we were measuring the soil profile,
in his terms; in other words, we were actually measuring the
amount of gypsum and the amount of calcium carbonate deposited in
the soils. So it was a very good combination.
And then later on- - . My whole career has been characterized
by finding somebody who knew something that I didn't know, and
finding ways to work closely with that person, so that we put our
heads together and did something that neither one of us could
have done alone. My later relationship with Walter Langbein, who
is a real genius, was of the same sort.
John and I had worked on several things together. We wrote
this paper on eastern Wyoming. We wrote the paper on paleosols.
We wrote the paper, which became very well known, on ephemeral
channels. The channels that are dry most of the time and flow
only during rainstorms.
Lage: What was that one called?
Leopold: That was called "Ephemeral streams: relation to the drainage
net." That was a professional paper of the Geological Survey.
Further Collaboration with John Miller: His Untimely Death and
Special Qualities
Leopold: When Kirk Bryan died- -I was his last student; he died the year
that John and 1 took our degree --John Miller was asked, after
kind of an interim, to leave Pennsylvania State and go to Harvard
to take Kirk Bryan's place, which he did. So the student of Kirk
Bryan now became Kirk Bryan's successor. He came up for tenure.
A great geologist in the Geological Survey was on the visiting
committee, and he came to see me. He said, "You've written these
papers with John Miller, and Miller's coming up for tenure. We
can't tell what his contribution was because you're the senior
author in most of these papers. What did he do?"
97
Veil, I tried as best I could to explain, but they didn't
promote him at that time. I went to John and--. We were the
closest friends. I said, "John, you and 1 can't work together
for a while." I said, "You've got to wait until you've written
some papers all on your own and you get tenure, and then we can
start working together again."
So many years went by, and John was on his own, obviously
proved himself to be an extremely good scientist. And then we
started to work again in about 1958 after he had published
several very important papers of his own. We started a project
in New Mexico that involved a lot of things. We decided that we
were going to find how individual rocks moved on the stream bed,
so we started the business of painting rocks, which now has
spread all over the world.
We would take rocks off the stream bed and take them to our
truck, weigh each rock, paint them orange, and then paint the
weight of the rock on the rock. Rocks always have slightly
different weights in grams; for example, 5,212, there's not going
to be another rock of exactly that weight. So that when you
picked up the rock after it moved, you can look at it and say,
"Yes, I know where that rock came from. That's Number 5,212, and
it came from so-and-so a place."
So we laid out these rocks in different patterns to find out
what rocks moved and under what conditions they moved. We were
well into this procedure. We had developed a lot of new ideas on
how to measure these things .
One of the things that we did was I invented the system of
what 1 call bank pins. I'd take a steel reinforcing rod and
drive it into the bank of the stream and let it stick out just
two -tenths of a foot. Then after a year you'd come back and
measure it, and if it were sticking out this far you could then
know how much the erosion was.
We did the same thing with vertical rods. We invented the
things which are now called scour chains, where we dig a hole in
the bed, and--. People had tried this before, but they had
failed to do one important thing that we did that was right. You
had to have the links of the chain large enough so the sand would
get in the link. So the links that we used were about this size
[1 centimeter]. We'd dig a hole, take this length of chain, tie
a rock on the end, put it down the bottom of the hole, and then
holding the chain vertically, would fill the thing in and lay the
chain on the ground. Then when the stream came along and washed
away the sand, the chain, now, which formerly was like this,
would now bend here and now be strung out at some depth. And
98
then, since we knew exactly where that chain was because we could
stretch a tape from our benchmark, we could dig down and find out
how deep was the bend in the chain. The bend in the chain shows
the lowest elevation of the stream bed during scour by flood.
Veil, that's in the middle of what we were doing. At the
end of the summer in 1961, we were well into this business. We
had painted hundreds and hundreds of rocks and we had cross -
sections everywhere and maps and the whole thing very well done.
John had to go back to Cambridge, so I put him on the plane on a
Friday afternoon. Saturday morning I started out on a field trip
in Colorado. On Tuesday 1 was up in the mountains and I was
pulling a car out of the mud or something, a place in the high
mountains. A car came by and said, "Your name Leopold?" I said,
"Yes." They said, "The sheriff's looking for you." I said,
"What's the trouble?" They said, "I don't know, but they're very
anxious to get in touch with you. You'd better get into town and
call the sheriff."
So I drove down to the nearest town and called the sheriff,
and he said, "Your office in Santa Fe is looking for you.
There's been a terrible accident." John had died.
Lage: Oh, no. How sad. 1 didn't realize you lost him so--
Leopold: He got bubonic plague from our work in New Mexico.
Lage:
And just like that?
Leopold: Yes, and he was dead in two days. And then the question was what
had happened. Well, it turns out that bubonic plague is endemic
there, and he was bitten by a flea. Had he been taken in Santa
Fe, I'm sure they could have saved him.
Lage: They would have known.
Leopold: When he got to a small hospital in Cambridge, they'd never heard
of it. So instead of treating him, they let it go for two days,
and in two days he was dead. So anyhow, it was a terrible,
terrible thing.
So then I had a long bout with the Center for Disease
Control in Atlanta. Over a matter of about ten months, meeting
again with all kinds of doctors and stuff, I finally persuaded
them that the mark that he had on one hand was indeed a flea
bite. Then it was proven all over again that the fleas in the
area where we were working had bubonic plague, so it made a
tremendous difference to his family because Laura, his widow, got
a very good pension that's lastedkept her alive all her life
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Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
now. But it was a very sad thing because he was an extremely
competent geologist.
So there was a question even after he died that--
Veil, we had somehow to prove in one manner or another--.
Apparently the people that gave out the pension, they insisted
that there be some physical evidence that he died on duty. Well,
on duty he was when we were together, but he died in Cambridge
when he was not on duty, and 1 had to prove that he contracted a
disease which killed him while he was working for the Geological
Survey with me. Anyhow, we finally persuaded them to do so.
It's so sad.
But John was a different sort. He was the most competent
geologist I've ever worked with. For a man of his age , he really
was a wonder.
Well, in the first place, he was an extremely hard worker and
loved doing it.
He liked the field the way you did?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And he could walk your pants off. We went to
some of the toughest places that I've ever been. I used to get
really quite unhappy with John because he was always going way
ahead of me because he could walk faster than I over rough
country. God, he was a wiry fella. That's his picture there,
the center one.
Oh, yes.
Up on top of the peak. He was a very,
We had an awfully good time together,
doing.
very competent geologist.
We just loved what we were
He seemed to have an intuitive quality of mind.
Leopold: I think that's the thing that characterized both of us, as a
matter of fact. I would say different than anybody I've ever
worked with. None of my students seemed to be able to have the
same thing. There are some very brilliant ones, but I think
100
that being able to see Intuitively what's immediately in front of
you is a characteristic that's rather rare. And John had it.
Lage: And you can't say what it comes from. In your case you could
attribute it to the training of your father and the way he looked
at the world and nature. Or is qualities of mind?
Leopold: I don't know how to describe that. It's being able to think in
dimensions of time and space, to think about the geologic
setting, the geologic history, and the present processes
simultaneously. I think that's probably the thing that
distinguished him.
Fluvial Processes in Geomorvholzv
Leopold: So anyhow, right after that, John and 1 that summer, as a matter
of fact, had been sitting under a pinon tree there outside of
Santa Fe writing the outline of the book that we were to write.
Lage : On?
Leopold: We were at that time writing a book, but we had just gotten
started. John had a draft of one chapter when he died. Well, I
made up my mind on two things. In the first place, I was going
to publish that book, period, which I did then. And second, I
was going to complete the work in New Mexico, which did occur
too. Both of them were accomplished in good time. And the book,
of course --
Lage: Which is the book?
Leopold: Leopold, Wolman, and Miller. This book has been the most
important geomorphological book up until very recent times. It
was the standard for the whole world until, oh, in the last five
or seven years. A lot of new books have come out, but this for
many years was the important book in geomorphology.
Lage: Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology [San Francisco: W.H. Freeman,
1964). Who was Wolman?
Leopold: Gordon Wolman also was taking his degree at Harvard when we were
both there. He finished his degree a couple years later, and he
and I worked together very closely for quite some years, so that
when John died, I asked my friend Gordon to help me finish the
book.
101
Lage: You made the statement --maybe it was in the video that you were
responsible for bringing geomorphology to the Geological Survey.
What does that mean, and how did it happen?
Leopold: When I joined the Geological Survey in Washington, as I told you,
and people asked me what I worked on, I said 1 work in
geomorphology, and they said, "What's that?" No one in the
survey had ever heard the term.
Lage: Now, what is the term? What does it mean?
Leopold: Geomorphology is the--. The morph- is "the form." "Geo-," "of
the earth." And "-ology" is "the study of." Geomorphology is
the study of the earth's surface forms, and by forms we mean
processes as well.
Lage: Why wasn't that a part of the Geological Survey?
Leopold: Because the people in the Water Resources Division were
interested in water. They didn't know anything about geomorphic
problems, you see.
Lage: 1 see. So the focus was much narrower.
Leopold: Yes. And that's what I expanded. So anyhow, what Walter
Langbein and 1 did, as soon as I became chief and we had some
money, we said, "We're going to hire people in a whole lot of
fields to do things in a research way in the field of water."
Within about six or seven years, what we created was the most
important research organization in the world, in the field of
water. It became very famous. It became famous because
primarily everybody was looking for the professional papers of
the Geological Survey to see what was new. That's where we were
publishing.
Lage:
I think that's a good place maybe to stop for today.
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VI A NEW DIRECTION FOR THE USGS WATER RESOURCES DIVISION
[Interview 4: January 17, 1991 ]##
USGS Directors Wrather and Nolan
Lage: Today, after a long break in our interviewing, we're going to
look at the U.S. Geological Survey in some detail. We talked
last June about your early research, and I thought we'd turn
today to your appointment and work as chief of the Water
Resources Division.
Leopold: We talked about my paper on river channel geometry, which
everybody recognized at the time was going to be an important
paper. Presumably, I gathered that the various papers that I was
working on must have been called to the attention of the director
[of the USGS]. I didn't see the director probably once or twice
in that whole several years .
Lage: Who was the director at that time?
Leopold: Thomas B. Nolan was the associate director. But the director at
that time was William Wrather. Bill Wrather came basically from
industry, but he was a very good spokesman for the survey and a
very understanding man. But he was the kind of leader that was
basically a political- -not political in the ordinary sense, but
the public relations man who could explain to the Congress what
we were trying to do, and he was very good at that. He also was
very interested in these problems, but not in a detailed way. He
was not a research person himself.
I remember one time, for example, Dr. Wrather asked me to go
with him and the chief of the Groundwater Branch, to go over to
New Jersey to visit the famous meteorologist, Warren
Thornthwaite. He was interested enough, you see, to actually go
out and talk with this famous meteorologist, because Thornthwaite
at that time was working on the problem of determining how much
103
water they needed for irrigation for crops in the East. Later on
he turned this into a very lucrative business by basically
selling his services to people like the people that made frozen
peas, for example. I forgot what you call them, but anyhow, to
determine how much water the plants needed, he was turning his
meteorological background into something very practical.
In this way, therefore, I got to see a little bit of other
research people. This is the kind of thing that Bill Wrather
did, but he was not really the one that was really running the
details of the survey. It was the associate director.
Lage: So Nolan, even before he became director, was--
Leopold: Yes. And Tom Nolan had been a very loyal assistant director for,
oh, I don't know how many years, but it must have been at least a
half a dozen years, I suppose.
The time came when Dr. Wrather was going to retire. Now, up
to that time, the customary way the director of the Geological
Survey was chosen was for the Department of Interior to turn to
the National Academy of Sciences and say, "Would you make
recommendations? 11 Usually the way that worked was that the
president of the National Academy would set up a committee who
would study the problem, and they would make a recommendation of
somebody's name to be the director.
Tom Nolan was obviously a choice. He was a member of the
National Academy of Sciences himself. He was a member of the
American Philosophical Society. He was a very important
geologist and a research man in his own right. He had spent
every summer in Eureka, Nevada, working on a mining district
there, so he knew research and he was a very good working
geologist in his own right. So the Academyand I don't know the
details of this, but that was the way it was done in those days--
the Academy must have recommended Nolan, and Nolan was appointed.
Well, then as soon as Nolan was now director, now things
were going to start to change, because now for the first time in
a long time since--. Well, let's see. First there was John
Wesley Powell, and then came--. Gee, I can't remember the names
of all of these people who had been in the director's job. But
in recent years Tom Nolan was the first one who was actually a
research scientist himself and a member of the Academy. But once
he got to be director, then he started to shift things around.
104
Assistant Chief Hvdrologic Engineer: Initiating Controversial
Changes in Budget Process
Lage : You saw an immediate change?
Leopold: Oh, yes. A change immediately. Yes. He right away called me in
and said, "I want you to be the assistant chief hydrologic
engineer. I'm going to bring in another geologist"- -whose name
was Raymond Nace--"from Idaho to be the other assistant chief."
Royal Davenport actually remained the assistant chief hydrologic
engineer, so there basically must have been three of us. I don't
remember exactly how the thing looked on an organization chart,
because Mr. Davenport was still very important in administrative
ways.
What Nolan wanted us to do was to think through how the
Water Resources Division ought to be changed. So I was given the
job of dealing with money. I was really the budget officer. Ray
Nace was given the job of essentially the operational officer.
Just about that time, Royal Davenport retired, also before
Paulsen retired, I think. I think that was the sequence.
Anyhow, it turned out that under Mr. Paulsen, Nace and I were the
two assistant chiefs in charge of operations and budget
respectively.
Well, it had always been the idea that in splitting up the
money that was available for the work of the Water Resources
Division, the people that really controlled it were the chief of
the Surface Water Branch, who at that time was Joseph Wells, Joe
Wells, and the chief of the Groundwater Branch Nelson Sayre.
They really, together with Paulsen- -the chiefs of the two big
branches and the chief hydrologic engineer --they basically
decided what they were going to do, and the matter of water
quality and the other aspects of water simply were not given much
consideration.
I took a look at that, and I said, "All that's doing is
perpetuating what we're doing." Everybody was so concerned with
the cooperative program because half of the survey's money was
coming from the states under the cooperative program. The states
would say to the chief of the Surface Water Branch, "I want a
gauging station at such-and-such a place, and we'll pay 50
percent," and the Congress gives the USGS the money to pay the
other 50 percent.
Lage: So that determines the program.
105
Leopold: That was running the whole survey, because a large part of the
total money was coming in the form of the cooperative program.
The cooperative program was just data collection.
Lage: Did the cooperative program involve both the Surface Water Branch
and the Groundwater Branch?
Leopold: That's right, yes.
Lage: Were both of those part of data collection?
Leopold: Yes, because as I say, the regular cooperative program in the
Groundwater Branch was to make a study of a certain county. But
there wasn't any research in it; there was measuring wells to try
to determine what was the nature of the aquifer and how much
water was being pumped out. But there was not any research in
it. And that was the problem, that there were many important
scientific aspects of groundwater that weren't even being looked
at.
Lage: They were collecting data in case somebody wanted to look at it.
Leopold: No, the state wanted it. They said, "All right, now, we're going
to make a study of Contra Costa County." All right, the state
puts up half of the money, and the survey's told to go out and
measure the wells in Contra Costa County, and the survey comes up
with a report called "The Groundwater Resources of Contra Costa
County." But all of the county reports were pretty much the
same. There basically was no research part of the organization.
The other problem was that the groundwater people gave
everybody the impression that they were the real scientists,
because they were not ordinarily just making measurements of the
rivers the way the Surface Water Branch was. They were the
scientists, and they were the only scientists. They felt that
they were the chief scientific branch.
Well, that really wasn't quite true because there was a lot
of good work going on in the other branches, but they were always
sort of pushed aside and the groundwater people felt that they
were the top dog.
Lage: Were there other branches other than surface water and
groundwater?
Leopold: Yes, well, there was water quality, but they were sort of the
stepchildren.
Lage:
106
When the chiefs of the branches heard that I was going to
decide where the money was going to go myself, instead of letting
them decide, there was a great outcry. They were now essentially
losing their ability to determine the direction of the survey. I
said, "Now we're going to start doing this a little differently.
We're going to decide. I'm going to decide.* So Nace and I then
sort of decided what we were going to do. But at the same time,
things were not going to change very fast because the people
really in charge still were the branch chiefs, and they were not
happy about the redistribution of money, but nevertheless, they
were the ones running the program.
When they got the money, they would decide what to do with it.
Leopold: Yes, that's right. And it was, of course, more or less a
continuation of what they were doing.
Now, there are a lot of details about these matters that I
don't remember very well, but that was the gist of it. This
lasted for, 1 suppose about two years. Dr. Nolan knew that Carl
Paulsen, the chief, would retire, so he was simply biding his
time, 1 think, in order to make more drastic changes. But he was
basically getting two people --Nace and myself --to be in a
position to start making the changes that the director wanted.
Accepting the Job of Chief Engineer and Director Nolan's Mandate
for Change. 1957
Leopold: Well, came the time that Mr. Paulsen retired. He was a grand
guy. He was a very friendly man, very easygoing, not a terribly
good speaker but he knew everybody by their first name and he had
been in every office in the survey and he knew all the people in
the field, and everybody loved him. But he was basically an
administrator of the program the way it was. He was a very
popular man.
And then when it was announced that I was going to be
appointed the chief, everybody could see that as something quite
different. Because in the first place, I wasn't known; I didn't
know these people.
Lage: You hadn't been out visiting the field.
Leopold: Hell, no, I didn't know anything about that. But I remember the
day that the director asked me to be chief. I asked my friend
Thomas Maddock who had been my mentor when 1--
107
**
Leopold: Partly through my Influence, Tom Haddock was hired by the Bureau
of Reclamation, and of course he was a very experienced engineer
and a very close friend of mine. 1 asked him to come see me, and
he did. I remember when he walked in the front door of my house,
he said, "Well, Luna, you're a big boy now. Yes, of course
you're going to take this job."
Lage: You had some doubts of your own?
Leopold: Oh, yes, I didn't want to do it. In the first place, I didn't
like the administrative work of being assistant chief. I really
was more interested in my research. But it was immediately
apparent that there were things that could be done.
Now, what happened then- -I tell it this way but it may not
be exactly true. When the director talked to me, he said, in
effect, "I really don't know what needs to be done in the
division, but the division has got to change."
The Water Resources Division was not like the Geologic
Division, where over many years they had the custom that if
somebody was a branch chief, he was a branch chief only a certain
time, and then he was allowed to go back to the field to do his
geology. So there was continual rotation. But these people in
the Water Resources Division had been the branch chiefs all their
lives, or many, many years. There was no rotation at all. And
therefore, you see, there was no way of the things getting
changed. Nolan didn't say that exactly, but he implied- -and I
had learned enough now about the divisions to see what was going
on. The implication to me was clear: that the business of having
no people moving around and no new ideas coming in over long
periods of time was not working.
Lage: Did he tell you in general way what he wanted to see?
Leopold: No.
Lage: He didn't say, "I want more research, more basic research"?
Leopold: No, no. He said, "It's got to be improved, but I don't know
exactly how to do it. You'll just have to figure it out." I
said, "I'm going to have to have some money." He had gone to the
Congress and put it in the budget, which I didn't know about. He
said, "All right, I'll give you $2 million." That was a lot of
money in those days. He had apparently rearranged the budget; as
soon as he got to be director, he asked the Congress for more
108
federal money to carry on the kinds of work that he had been
doing in the Geologic Division, and he was going to divide it
among the various divisions. There were three divisions, you
see. There were actually four. There was the Topographic
Division, which makes maps; the Geologic Division, which has
always been known as a scientific organization; the Water
Resources Division, which traditionally had been known as the
people who measure water but which now was going into scientific
research; and the so-called Conservation Division, which dealt
with oil and gas matters.
Allocating an Increased Budget: New Programs and Personnel
Leopold: So all right, now 1 have some money, which 1 had never had
available before. Federal money. It was not dependent upon the
states.
Lage : I see. So this made it very different.
Leopold: Oh, it made a lot of difference. So I called Walter Langbein in.
I had just moved into the chief's office. I said, "All right,
how are we going to spend this money?" We started laying out
pieces of paper, 1 can remember, on a long table. Walter said,
"I would like to have a program in glaciology." I said, "Great.
That's another aspect of the survey that we've never done
anything about. Let's go into glaciology."
I said, "I want some hydraulic work done on the kinds of
streams that I've been working on in the West, which I would call
the problem of the alluvial stream. We know quite a lot about
the hydraulics of streams in the East, but there are a lot of
hydraulic problems of a new sort in the Far West."
We decided that we wanted a program of education. No
schools were teaching hydrology. We wanted a program in
groundwater mechanics, including what later turned out to be the
great work of Herb Skibitzke, my friend, who really invented the
whole business of modeling groundwater, first with electrical
analogs and then later on computers. I wanted something on
chemistry of water beyond what they were doing, and pollution.
There was no program in pollution. So this was how it went.
But anyhow, we divided up the money, and now we had to find
people .
109
Lage:
Leopold:
This Is a major thing, deciding on these new programs. Did you
get other input or spend a long time, or had you had this in
mind?
No, Walter and I did it in a very short time. No, we knew about
what we wanted. We wanted to spread the division out into a
research program that involved many aspects of water that had
never been touched. I said, for example, I wanted a hydraulic
laboratory. Well, this didn't just occur overnight. The
decision about what we were going to do with the money was done
very quickly. Now we had to manage, you see.
Hirine and Retraining Research Staff
Lage: You had to have personnel.
Leopold: Yes, now we had to get personnel. So the first thing I did was I
said, "All right, I'm going to use some of this money to send
people back to school." Well, this was a hell of a big change.
So those people that appeared to have the qualifications, I said,
"Okay, you're a GS-12," let's say. "You're on permanent duty.
You're a civil service employee. I'm going to assign you to
such-and-such a university and you're going to work there on a
degree." The men were then transferred. The whole family was
transferred to the place that the man was going to go to the
university.
Lage: Did people apply for this, or did you go to them and say, "This
is--"
Leopold: No, I was picking them out.
Lage: Were they receptive?
Leopold: Oh, yes.
Lage: This was not something you had to force on them.
Leopold: No, but the thing is that there was nothing in the federal
government that allows you to do this. I was doing it
surreptitiously. Later on, after I had this whole program
started, then they passed a law in Congress that allowed you to
do this. But at that time there was ho law. This was simply my
idea: "This is what we're going to do."
Lage:
Were most of these people engineers?
110
Leopold: They were both engineers and geologists, and some chemists. How
many people? I suppose at least a dozen, 1 guess.
Then I started to pick up people that were already finishing
their degree. For example, what were we going to do about
glaciology? Well, through my contacts at Caltech where I had
been a visiting professor before, I knew that there was a young
man just graduating from a Ph.D. program in glaciology. His name
was Mark Meier. I got in touch with Mark and 1 said, "You're
just getting your degree. I wonder if you would want to come and
be our glaciologist." He had many other opportunities, and 1
said, "One thing that you can be assured of is that your first
year, you're not going to be asked to do anything except finish
what you're already doing. You have to finish up your thesis and
get it ready for publication, so anyhow, you do exactly what you
want. After that, then we'll talk about what kind of a program
you want . "
Well, that sold him. In other words, he didn't have to go
to a university and start teaching. He could continue his work
on the thesis.
Lage: And design his own program.
Leopold: Yes. I have foundand I think this is absolutely truewhen you
hire a Ph.D., the first year of his life after he gets his Ph.D.,
he's going to continue to work on the subject of his Ph.D. This
is absolutely universal. I know of practically no exceptions.
Lage: To get it ready for publication?
Leopold: And you know, to finish up, because you've been immersed in it,
you see, under the university. Now, the first thing you want to
do is get the thing tied up. Well, this made a lot of
difference. But if you hadn't gone through that experience, you
wouldn't know that this is the way people think. So I got a lot
of people by saying, "In your first year, you Just work on what
you want to on your thesis. On the subject of your thesis." In
other words, extend it in some manner or another. That's what I
did. My first couple of years in the survey I was working on an
extension of what I'd done for my Ph.D. thesis.
I don't know where I found all these guys, but most of them
came out of the survey itself.
Lage: Most of the ones that headed up the new programs?
Ill
Leopold: Yes. And about a third of them, I imagine, were hired anew from
the outside. For the people on the outside, I didn't have
anybody unless they had a Ph.D. I was determined that the only
way you were going to get into the scientific work was you were
going to have to get people who had already done science, who had
done research work. By sending our own people back to school to
get Ph.D.'s, then I had the whole thing tied up with new Ph.D.'s
and Ph.D.'s that we were actually giving people the opportunity
to go back to school and earn. Some of the people were sent to
school, got a Master's degree and then came back to the survey
without getting a Ph.D., but most of them continued on until they
got their Ph.D.
The problem was in the field; with all this attention being
paid to new people, sending people back to school and getting a
research program started on a whole lot of things that no one had
ever worked on before in the division, there was a lot of
resentment.
Lage : From the groundwater and surface water people?
Leopold: From the Groundwater and Surface Water Branches because they felt
that the basic data program that they had all done work on all
their lives was not given very much attention. So what Ray Nace
and I had to do was to try to explain to people that we were
perfectly cognizant of the importance of the basic data program.
What we were trying to do was expand our total work. We pointed
out that no research people can do anything without the basic
data. The basic data is just as important as the research,
because most of the research depends upon the basic data itself
anyhow .
Reorganizing the Administrative Structure
Lage: Did you reorganize the structure of the division?
Leopold: Oh, yes. I immediately started the reorganization.
Lage: How did that work?
Leopold: Nobody liked that either.
Lage: People don't like change.
Leopold: No. 1 set up a new branch, which was called the General
Hydrology Branch, where all of the research people were located
112
They were not in the Surface Water Branch, and they were not in
the Groundwater Branch or the quality branch, they were in the
General Hydrology Branch.
Lage : Did you institute the organization by state, having a state
chief?
Leopold: That was the big change that was made, and that was the part that
caused so much controversy.
Each state had up to this time had three distinct offices,
and they often weren't in the same building. There was the
Surface Water Branch, and then someplace else there was the
Groundwater Branch, someplace else there was the Quality Water
Branch. Not all states had Quality Water Branch offices, but
every state had a Groundwater Branch and a Surface Water Branch.
It became clear to all of us that there was no single person
you could talk to. You had to talk to three people to know what
we were doing. And furthermore, that did not allow you, then, to
cross these branch lines. So we changed the structure and set up
an organization in which there was a water resources district
engineer or district officer called a district hydrologist who
was the officer for the whole state.
This caused a lot of turmoil because now the people who had
really pretty cushy jobs, I'll tell you--. When you got to be a
district chief from the Surface Water Branch, you had a really
good job. It was relatively easy. You just had to get along
with cooperators, and it was a pushover.
When you started to have a district chief that had to merge
these people, then the job became much more difficult, because
now you had a lot of personality problems that people didn't
like, and the branch representatives felt that they were more
submerged. And some of the people that I chose were good, and
some of the people were not good.
Lage: How did you choose them? From the ranks?
Leopold: From the ranks, yes.
Lage: Did you have a way of deciding who to choose, or evaluating?
Leopold: Between Ray Nace and Director Nolan and the branch chiefs, Joe
Wells and Nelson Sayre, the chief of the Groundwater Branch, we
knew an awful lot of people. Then there was Albert Fiedler, a
very competent groundwater engineer who we made an assistant
chief. He was a tremendous help, because he was not only
113
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
competent but very popular. So there was a lot of input from the
senior officers and from the director himself. Some of the
choices were good and some just didn't work out very well. But
that's the way it went.
Did it involve new offices also?
together under this one chief?
Yes.
Moving the three branches
This all took a lot of money too, I would think.
Oh, yes. Now, to a great extent it was merging the offices,
although it differed from one state to another. Usually there
were several offices in each state anyhow. Let's take
California, for example. The major district office in the
California district is in Menlo Park. But then there's a sub-
office in Sacramento, and there are sub -off ices in several other
places. In a state of this kind there would be, I don't remember
how many, but maybe five subdistrict offices. But the main thing
had to be run by one person. He might be a groundwater man, he
might be a surface water man, he might be a quality water man.
But anyhow, it would be some one man now in charge of the whole
organization in the state.
Then the General Hydrology Branch, the new branch that I
created, was basically overseeing the research people.
Did they also report to the district?
No. They reported to me.
Continuing Research as Chief: A Random Walk with Walter Lanebein
Leopold: Then in addition to that, 1 appointed Walter Langbein to be the
chief scientist and gave him that title, chief scientist.
Obviously, then, he didn't have to do any of the administrative
work anymore , except anything that was important 1 would go in
and talk to him, or Ray Nace and I would go talk to him and get
his advice because he had been much longer in the survey than we
and knew a lot of people. But he also was a very, very smart
research man, and he knew problems in the water field. So he was
tremendously important --the most important man in the survey.
Lage: How old a man was he at this time?
114
Leopold: Walter?
Lage : Yes .
Leopold: Walter--. I'm now seventy-five. Walter was about five years
older than I, and he died at the age of about seventy- two, I
think. He died about seven, eight years ago.
Lage: So he was five years your senior.
Leopold: Approximately, yes. But he and I were very close. We wrote many
papers together. The way it worked is this: in practically all
these things, including the research itself, the ideas were
usually mine. As far as Walter and I, our cooperation, is
concerned, he was often usually the one who could take an idea
and do the mathematics, which was very important, and sort of add
to it- -in other words, see new ways of doing it. I'll give you
an example.
We went down to La Jolla on a trip together to have a
discussion about certain water problems with Roger Revelle, a
famous scientist at La Jolla. Roger Revelle had called together
a group of people, maybe ten people I suppose, among them one of
my former professors from Harvard whose name is Harold Thomas, a
professor of engineering. I had taken a course from Thomas when
I was doing my Ph.D. there.
At the end of the day we were sitting, I remember, in a
patio of the hotel, and I fell in conversation with Harold
Thomas, whom I hadn't seen for a good many years. I said,
"Harold, what are you working on these days?" He said, "I'm
working on the problem of the movement of water through a medium
such as sand, and I'm looking at it in terms of a random walk."
I said, "That's very interesting."
About an hour later Walter and I were on the plane together,
and I said, "Hey, I've got an idea. Random walks, I've never
thought about it before, but that has got something to do with
us." Now, I said, "First, random walk can be thought of as how a
drainage basin develops by chance. Random walk can be used for
the movement of stream channels. Random walk might be used in
several kinds of groundvater problems. It could also be used in
hydraulic problems." I said, "Now, we have to exploit this."
Well, that's all you needed, one word, and all of a sudden
Walter and I started to churn out ways in which random walks
could be used. Now random walks are very, very common.
115
Lage:
Leopold:
It's a common concept? What exactly does random walk mean?
it mean that things develop by chance?
Does
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold;
If you have two rills on a hill slope that happen to be starting
down the hill slope by chance, and they're a certain distance
apart, and you can ask yourself, "What is the chance of those two
streams meeting and becoming one?" If you take each one and
assign it a random chance of moving right or left and then you
follow them down, each assigning by chance whether they turn
right or left, how long will they go before they meet, or will
they meet?
When I posed that problem to Walter, he came back in a
little while and he said, "That can be expressed by the
statistical problem called the Gambler's Ruin. I said, "How's
that?" "Well," he said, "the way it works is this." He said,
"Your chances of winning at Reno depend on the relative capital
that you have against the house. Since most gamblers can never
have the capital that a big casino can have, they simply can't
win in the long run. You can describe this by the chances of two
things coming together, and depending upon, in this case of the
Gambler's Ruin, the question of who has the capital behind him.
And here is the equation that describes the gambling thing and
also describes the question of how these things meet." It turns
out that that was the equation that was needed. He supplied the
equation, I supplied the idea.
Did you apply it to the various problems you mentioned?
Oh, yes. One of the lectures in the courses that I give in the
summer is based on this. I got interested in the problem of the
branching of streams, and we had published this paper on the
random walk, and we showed for the first time that the joining of
streams actually was a random problem, a completely random
problem. I said, "Therefore, if you have streams that join in a
random manner, how about the branching of trees?"
You're changing now from a two-dimensional case to a three-
dimensional case. We had hired on our staff on a temporary basis
the great geophysicist, Adrian Scheidegger, a very famous guy who
was so theoretical that nobody could understand him.
How did you happen to hire him?
He was at the University of Illinois, I think. He was so smart
that Langbein and I decided that he was somebody we needed
around. He wrote a book on theoretical geomorphology that nobody
could read, it was so complicated. I can't read it.
116
Lage: Did he write it as a result of his time with you, or was he
already working in geomorphology?
Leopold: I think he did it because he was associated with us, because we
got him interested in it.
I turned to Scheidegger and I said, "Adrian, Walter's worked
out the mathematics of a two-dimensional form of river channels,
but 1 want you to see whether you can derive a theoretical
analysis of a three-dimensional thing like a tree." He worked on
it for weeks, 1 guess, and said, "No, it's impossible. 1 just
can't do it." And I considered him one of the great
mathematicians of his day. 1 said, "Okay, if you don't do it,
then I will."
So my chief administrative officer came into the office one
day, and he said, "Chief, do 1 understand that you asked me to
order two boxes of Tinker Toys?" I said, "Yes." "What in the
world do you want Tinker Toys for?" I said, "I'm going to build
a three-dimensional tree." So I took the Tinker Toys (you
remember what they are) and you'd toss a card, and the card would
tell you, do you add a stick or a round wheel, how many do you
add, and what length. So by tossing cards I built up this tree,
a three-dimensional tree, out of Tinker Toys, but for each one,
the decision to do something depended upon the toss of the card.
Then when 1 analyzed the tree , it had the same
characteristics as the rivers did. So 1 published this paper
called "Rivers and Trees, the Efficiency of Branching Patterns."
Then I showed the difference.
fi
Leopold: Then I went to real trees and showed that the analyses that you
can make of river channels could also be applied to trees. You
got the same result whether you were dealing with the random
Tinker Toy tree or a real tree .
Lage: So the pattern of the random Tinker Toy tree was the same as the
pattern observed in real trees?
Leopold: That's right. Yes. Now, I had no theory to--. I simply showed
that this was true.
Lage: You didn't have the mathematics.
Leopold: There is no mathematics that was available to do it. I simply
said, "This is the way it is." But then I said, "Well--."
Remember, now, as chief I spent at least three months of the year
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on my own research. I simply let somebody else run the
organization. So I said, "There must be, as in rivers, there
must be some efficiency to be gained by this; the random pattern
must develop into some kind of efficiency."
In my back yard I was growing a sunflower plant about this
high [1 meter]. The sunflower plant had rather large leaves, so
I took this plant and I painted a big number on every leaf. Then
I wanted to know what--. You remember how beautifully organized
trees --if you took a mescal plant, how beautifully organized they
are. So I said, "They must be arranged in such a way that they
get their sunlight in some efficient manner."
So 1 took a light camera and I put it in the end of a
fishing pole , and over the sunflower plant I took photographs of
different positions of the sun as if the sun were looking down at
the plant. Then I took the photographs and with a planimeter
measured the amount of surface of each leaf that would be seen by
the sun and added them over the passage of the sun. This gave me
the number of square inch-hours obtaining direct sunlight during
a whole day.
Then I said, "All right. Now I'll compare that with a
theoretical plant which is shaped like a hemisphere having
exactly the same total leaf area as the real plant. Now I'm
going to do the same thing, and I'll pass with the same angles
over this hemisphere and find out how many square -inch -hours of
direct sunlight it got. And I showed that the actual plant
having exactly the same area as this dome was more efficient by
20 percent.
So then I said one of the reasons that these random patterns
develop is for efficiency.
Lage : Why would you expect that the random development would be more
efficient?
Leopold: Because, two things. First, the utilization of energy in natural
systems in practically all cases moves toward the most efficient
use of that energy. This is described, at least to some extent,
in the theory of entropy.
But entropy also involves the question of randomness. For
example, the one example that we used was: when you have your
desk cluttered with material, it becomes random, and you don't
have anything organized, because if you pick up a sheet of paper
here, that may or may not be the one that you're looking for.
But when you start organizing them in the form of files, you are
decreasing the entropy by putting energy into it. But by
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organizing it into slots, you are decreasing the entropy, so that
the more organized it is, the lower the entropy. The more
disorganized it is, the higher the entropy. Therefore the
efficiency of how your files are kept is proportional to the
work, or energy, put into the system. That's really one of the
aspects of entropy.
So that efficiency and maximum probability go hand in hand.
I was trying to show that the way in which natural systems are
organized is partly random and partly for efficiency. This was
just one example.
Lage: I know this is off the subject, but it's fascinating. Do
botanists look at it in the same way? Or did you talk to
botanists about it?
Leopold: My brother is a very well-known botanist. He's a professor of
plant physiology. I sent it to him, and I said, "Have you ever
thought of this?" He said, "No. It's an interesting idea, but
no botanist has ever played with it before."
I sent it to Ecology, and they turned it down. I sent it to
another scientific journal and they turned it down. It sat in my
file for several years. Finally a man came to see me. We were
talking about this problem, and he said, "I know the editor of a
journal called The Journal of Theoretical Biology. Why don't you
send it there?" They were delighted; they published it.
Theoretical biology. Well, anyhow, that's an example.
Many of the things that I worked on- -and a lot of them were
together with Walter Langbein--were both complicated and not very
well received.
Lage: By--?
Leopold: By scientists in general. Like a lot of things that go on in
science, things can be simply sitting on the shelf for years
without anybody picking them up, especially if they're
complicated. In other words, it's a lot easier to take some
relatively simple picture.
A lot of things we worked on, especially my work with Walter
Langbein, have not really been followed up by people because they
are complicated, they are different. And all this was going on
when I was chief, you see. In other words, I always had
something on my desk that I was working on in my own research.
One of the things that I did, for example, was to say to my
senior officers in the Washington office, "I want each of you to
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take at least a month, preferably two months in a year and go
away. Any time that you want to, walk out of the office and go
someplace and do something else. I don't care what you do. Go
to the district office and help them with administration, or
collect data, or go out and measure streams, or measure wells, 1
don't care. But get out of the office and go get some new
ideas . "
No one in the whole organization did that except I . 1 would
simply walk out in the summer and say, "Okay, you guys run it;
I'm going out to do my own .work."
Lage : Why did they not get out? It seems like you would pick the kind
of people --
Leopold: Because most of the people who had gotten up in higher grades had
not followed research for a long time and they had lost touch.
Lage: They almost didn't know how to do it?
Leopold: They didn't know how, and they were afraid to go back to data
collection. They were either too old to get help measuring
streams, or--. There are a lot of reasons why they didn't. But
the point being that the difference was that the organization was
being run by somebody who was on the research team himself, and
that made a lot of difference. And when I left, you see, the
whole thing fell apart because they didn't put back in that job
people that were actually research people themselves.
So this was simply a hiatus in the history of the
organization, and it's pretty much gone back to where it was
before, except that now research is spread widely through the
organization. But the top people are not research people.
Lage: But the research program, it seems, is still ongoing.
Leopold: The programs kept going. But the idea of somebody himself doing
research at the top level has simply not been duplicated.
Independence for Researchers
Lage: Earlier you were talking about hiring the young scientists and
letting them finish their Ph.D. work, and then you said, "After
that, we'll talk about your program." After that, how did you
work with them on what they would research?
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Leopold: All right. I would call a man in to talk to me, and I'd say,
"What I expect of you is this--" and you can imagine how much
this has changed. I said, "1 want once a year a one -page
statement to tell me what you are doing and what you intend to
do. That's all I'm asking." That was it.
Lage: What if you didn't like their one-page statement? What if they
weren't significant problems or didn't fit the goals of the
organization?
Leopold: Then there are lots of ways to urge and encourage and that sort
of thing, but I did not tell people what to do.
Lage: You didn't tell them what to research?
Leopold: No. I said, "You know the field better than I. You pick out
what you think are important problems, and you do it your own
way." And then further, I said to them, "I'm going to give each
of you--" this is the research people-- "I'm going to give each
of you an amount of money equal to your salary to do with
whatever you like. You can have a secretary, or you can go to
the field, you can spend it for travel, you can spend it on your
office, you can spend it any way you want to. Beyond that, you
then have to compete with everybody else. If you want a big
laboratory, then you have to wait. We'll program that."
For example, some people said, "I need a chemical
laboratory." "Fine," I said. "Okay. Your turn will come up
such-and-such a year. You will have to wait, but the time will
come up, then we'll built this whole damn laboratory from scratch
and set it up the way you want it." So that everybody had enough
money to do something.
Lage: Did this system work, do you feel?
Leopold: Oh, it worked extremely well. Oh, yes, you bet. Oh, everybody
loved it. Because in the first place, they were doing what they
wanted to do. Within about six years after I was chief, the
papers that were coming out by the Geological Survey were the
most famous papers ever written in the field of water, on every
kind of subject. No question about it; this was the place to
look for the current thinking. And of course, that's all gone to
hell too.
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Raisinz Expectations in Publications and Hirinz
Lage: You did something with publications, too.
Leopold: Oh, yes, you bet. Firstand this was not entirely my idea, but
I was the one that was pushing it- -we had always worried about
the fact that it took such a long time for the surface water
records to be published, because they were published in the Water
Supply Papers by river basins. Most of us felt that one office
was slow, one office was fast, and you had to wait four or five
years before you could get hold of the data. So we decided we
were going to split it up by states. So the district chief of
that state would get out his report as soon as he could.
Well, this has been tremendously successful. And then, of
course, everybody was competing with the other guy to see who'd
get it out first. So instead of waiting five to six years on the
average, they were getting their reports out in about six months.
Lage: What happened when the river basin cut across several states?
Leopold: No. The state still took all the stations that it was
responsible for.
Lage : You have a book there .
Leopold: Yes, here's one. [gets book] Now, here, the new ones have
quality water, sediment, and surface water, whereas the older
ones, you see, had nothing but surface water. So that the
gradual change that was made by the integration of the offices
allowed us to publish on a rather quick basis all the aspects of
water that were being studied. So that was a big improvement.
Another thing that came up through the branches as a result
of encouragement of research was this. Under the leadership of
Joe Wells when he was the chief of the Surface Water Branch, we
wanted to develop a method by which you could somehow scan the
ink trace that we'd get from the water surface chart and turn it
into numbers. So they were looking at essentially a scanner
which nowadays would be relatively easy to do.
But at that time, they spent a lot of money on it and it
wasn't working out terribly well, and one of their chief
scientists in the Surface Water Branch, whose name was Rolland
Carter, he said, "Let's try it a different way. Let's see
whether we can put it punched on a tape." Well, now, this is the
way it's done. He worked with one of the manufacturing companies
to replace the inkline with a punch, basically like the computers
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now. Now what they can do is take the punched tape and read it
like you read the yes and no answers on an examination. You can
read the tape and turn that into a computer. And now
everything's done by computer. So anyhow, a lot of things were
going on.
Lage: A first step towards automation.
Leopold: Automating the whole system. That came out of the encouragement
of the research activities in the branches. It was Carter's
idea--
Lage: Was Carter a research person then? Not a surface water person.
Leopold: He was both. I don't know exactly how he was described, but I
would call him one of their chief researchers. At least I
thought that he was a chief researcher. And I think he was paid
as a researcher.
Lage: Were these kinds of changes accepted well, or was there
resistance?
Leopold: Yes. It took the district quite a long while to get used to
putting the data out by states, but as soon as they saw the
possibilities, then they became very enthusiastic about it.
And then there was another very important thing that we did,
We found, you see, that we didn't have the right kind of people
coming to work for us. Now, this took two forms.
In the first place, in addition to the district hydrologist
who was in charge of a state, we divided the whole country into
regions. One of our regions was in St. Louis, and it was run by
the young surface water man whose name was Wilson. We'd had a
long discussion about how to get good people to come to work for
us, and I said to Harry Wilson, "What we ought to do," I said,
"is to not hire anybody but Ph.D.'s."
He went through the ceiling: "That's impossible. For
goodness sakes, right now we can't even get the lowest engineer.
The poorest grades, they won't come to work for us." I said,
"The problem is that you're not setting your standards high
enough. I'm convinced that if you said, 'We won't take anything
but the very best,' that you will improve the position of
hiring." "No," he said, "it absolutely won't work. My God, we
can't even get the lowest one on the totem pole."
I was passing through St. Louis, and I had a conversation
with Wilson, and I said, "Have you thought about my plan?" He
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Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
said, "Well, I'll tell you. Why don't we do this? I'll agree to
use your plan for six months, and if it works, we'll do it. But
if it doesn't work, I want to prove to you that it simply won't
go." I said, "All right, Harry, you do it. I'll give you six
months. You follow completely my plan."
So they went to the schools in that state or in the states
around, and they were interviewing people and said, "We're not
even interested unless you're in the top 10 percent of the
class." All of a sudden, by God, we started to have people that
were applying all over the place. Nothing but the best. I said,
"Okay, you see?" So now the thing changed entirely. After that,
the survey wouldn't even talk to college students unless you were
in the very top of a class, whether you would be a chemist or an
engineer or a geologist. Well, it changed everything.
So you had a convert, I would guess, after that six months.
Oh, yes. He said, "I wouldn't have believed it. It really
worked." So anyhow, then the whole business of hiring changed.
Were this hiring for the research program or for data collection?
For both. Usually--. Well, you see, we needed engineers to run
the district programs too. And we needed geologists to run the
district programs. So we wanted people that were the best people
that were being trained.
Promoting Education in Hydrology in the Universities
Leopold: In addition to that, Langbein and I decided we had to start a
school. We weren't getting the people that we wanted because
either they were engineers or they were chemists or they were
geologists, but nobody was across the field where you were a
hydrologist.
One of our people that we admired a lot was John Harshbarger
who was a geologist in Tucson. He was interested in the kinds of
things that we were doing, so Walter and I talked to John and
said, "How about starting a school for hydrologists under you?"
I said, "We will furnish the teachers, and you make arrangements
with the university." John had very close relationships with the
university.
Lage: Was John with the survey?
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Leopold: Yes. He was a groundvater man with us, and he was the kind of
man who was very, very good at dealing with people and persuading
them and that sort of thing. So it was decided that we would set
up a school for hydrologists in the University of Arizona at
Tucson. John would be a teacher, and we sent three other people
to be teachers.
Herb Skibitzke, my friend with whom I flew all the time,
lived in Phoenix. Herb used to take off from Phoenix in his
airplane and write his lecture notes on the airplane while it
took three-quarters of an hour to fly to Tucson. He'd leave his
airplane, go to school, teach, fly back to Phoenix.
Lage: He'd be flying himself as a pilot and writing his lecture notes?
[ laughs ]
Leopold: Yes. He was a marvelous guy. Veil, it was very successful.
Lage: What level of training was this?
Leopold: In the graduate school. I think that the credits were applicable
in the graduate school, but I suspect that some of the students
that came to take those courses were also undergraduate. But
they could get graduate credit if they wanted to.
Lage: So they got this kind of synthetic approach.
Leopold: Yes. But you see, we were teaching groundwater, surface water,
and water quality altogether. Herb Skibitzke was teaching
groundwater theory. Harshbarger was teaching about groundwater
practice in the field. One of the men was teaching the
mathematics of what they called systems analysis. The
mathematics of systems analysis applied to water resources work.
We had one man who was a groundwater theoretician. I don't
remember who was teaching the surface water part.
But once we started to turn out people now who were trained
across the board in hydrology, then everybody could see that this
was going to be very successful and other schools started to do
the same thing. So within two or three years there were
hydrology courses being taught practically everywhere. Everybody
just jumped on the bandwagon. Other schools could see that this
was a field where there was opportunity to be hired, it was a
broad scientific field of inquiry, and so now we have hydrology
being taught in at least dozens of universities throughout the
country. That was the first time that hydrology was taught as a
field.
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Redrawing Civil Service Requirements for Hvdrologists
Leopold: At this time, we weren't satisfied with the kinds of people we
were getting, and the civil service began to realize that they
were too narrow. So the civil service called me in and said, "We
would like to have a new program of a civil servant called
hydro legist." I said, "Fine. I'll write it for you."
So I personally wrote the civil service requirements for
hydrology patterned on my own experience at Wisconsin, where I
was in the engineering school, but I took plant physiology,
geology, botany, ecology, taxonomy. Then various levels of
geology, including paleontology. So in my own experience I could
see how this could be done. To be a hydrologist, the civil
service requirements that I wrote included a certain amount of
work at the college level in chemistry, physics, mathematics,
biology, geology. That was basically it.
Lage : Did you write those before you got these schools stimulated?
Leopold: It must have been about the same time. That's what we were
teaching in the university. So we were teaching people who
fitted into the field of hydrology.
Now, to show you how different this is and how it's been
degraded: in connection with this big law case that I've been
involved in for the Forest Service, it became quite clear that
the Forest Service was very short of hydrologists that knew the
field. Although they have a big research organization, the
research organization is so disparate from the operational part
of the Forest Service that the Forest Service operations had no
hydrologic help.
It was decided by one of the assistant chiefs of the Forest
Service that they were going to finance some work by one of my
students. When I heard about this, I went to the Forest Service
and said, "That's not the way to spend your money. You can put a
lot of money into one person, but that's not what you need to do.
What we need to do is to train people already in your
organization on a much wider basis." I said, "Use the same
amount of money, and you hire me and my friend Dave Rosgen," who
used to be in the Forest Service- -he is a very competent
hydrologist-- "and we will teach your people."
126
So last summer Rosgen and I gave two courses, thirty
students each. Each course lasted a week. We took them to
Pagosa Springs, Colorado. They were all Forest Service
personnel.
Lage : With different backgrounds?
Leopold: Yes, various backgrounds. Most of them had some possible
smattering of hydrologic background, but usually not. Quite a
few of them were called hydrologists.
At the end of one of the two courses, I was talking to a
young person who was the hydrologist for one of the forests in
Alaska. She had been quite quiet during the course. The course
was over and they were all about ready to leave, and 1 happened
to fall in conversation with her. I said, "Tell me, how did you
get to be a hydrologist in the United States Forest Service?"
She said, "1 have a degree in environmental science." A
bachelor's degree. 1 said, "That's interesting. How much
hydrology did you have?" She said, "I didn't even have a course
in hydrology." I said, "You're called a hydrologist and you've
never had a course in hydrology?" "No," she said, "everything
you talked about was brand new to me . "
Lage: And yet civil service hired her as a hydrologist.
Leopold: But what I'm saying is, you see the difference. In other words,
we were saying, "We know what a hydrologist has to know." You
can't teach him everything, but he's got to have a background
that involves a whole lot of things, including hydrology.
Lage: And these requirements weren't just used to be hired by your
organization, but by other- -
Leopold: No, it's for the whole government. All of the government
agencies. But over the years the requirements I wrote have been
changed and diluted.
Revising Publications Policies: The Pink Terror Memos
Leopold: So anyhow, you can see that a lot of things were going on at that
time. Training, the expansion of the field of inquiry in the
whole field of water, writing, and publication. The survey has
always been very proud of its publication program, and indeed the
publications have always been extremely good and very carefully
reviewed.
127
Leopold: But publication has also been very slow.
Lage:
Leopold: Both. Yes. Mostly the research publications.
Two interesting aspects of this. One of the young people
that I hired was writing a report on a certain geomorphic problem
in California. He was one of the people we sent to school. He
had taken his degree at Harvard but was relatively new both in
the survey and the research team. He wrote me a long letter in
which he complained that the more senior people in the
organization were basically directing his research. They didn't
like his ideas, and he felt that he was being prevented from
being innovative and fresh.
So I wrote a letter to him, without his name on it. Such
policy memoranda came to be known as the "Pink Terrors."
Lage: The Pink Terror memo?
Leopold: Yes. They were published on pink paper. This one said--
Lage: Oh, there was more than one?
Leopold: Oh, yes, there were quite a few. This one said, "It has long
been supposed in the Geological Survey that what the survey
agrees to publish is true." I said, "In science, that cannot be
guaranteed. My policy in this division is as follows: I will
guarantee you that I will publish anything you write, no matter
how different than the usual thinking, provided that you have a
copy read by somebody in or out of the survey who will give you
comments." This was a kind of peer review, but I think I asked
for two people to read it. I said, "All I want you to do is to
write a memorandum which tells me what were their criticisms and
what you did about it, but you do not have to follow their
advice. You merely have to pay attention. With that
understanding, we will publish whatever you write."
Well, this made a lot of difference. Because now people
were feeling they could write what they wanted to, what they
believed to be true. But I said, "We cannot guarantee the truth
of what you say. We'll only guarantee your right to say it."
Lage: Previous to that, the publications of the survey--
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Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
It was always supposed, you see, that unless something could be
tacked down to be absolutely right, it wasn't going to be
published by the survey.
It couldn't be very theoretical.
It prevented people from expanding into new ideas. So I sent a
copy of this to the chief geologist- -the division chief
comparable to my own position. I said, "Here's my policy. I
wonder if you will publish the same thing, or something like it."
He turned me down. We were the only ones who said, "We want any
ideas that you've got, providing it's well thought out, carefully
presented. "
Did you run into any trouble with that?
unfortunate research?
No, no, no, everybody loved it.
Did you get any
But did you get any unfortunate papers as a result?
Yes. I remember one guy we sent to school. He had really gotten
right up to the end of the Ph.D. program. At that time, I was
reading, myself, every single paper that anybody prepared for
publication. In other words, when they came through for our
permission, I read it. ! read it. Now it's not done that way at
all, anymore. I saw this manuscript, and I called this guy in,
and I said, "In the mapping of this geology, you said that this
particular feature was a kame terrace."
Now, a kame terrace, if you possibly remember, is the
collection of material on a hill slope up against a glacier.
When the glacier melts, the terrace is simply a little sort of a
hanging deposit on the side of the hill. I said to the young
man, "How did you know this was a kame terrace?" He said, "I
don't remember." I said, "Why don't you get your notes out?" It
turns out he didn't have any notes. I said, "I won't publish
this. That's not the kind of science that we do." There's an
example .
So you had a way of checking on quality.
The thing is, in this particular case not only was he supposed to
have somebody else read it, but I picked up this thing and I
said, "I want to know how you did this," because it was in a
situation where I didn't think that this could be seen, and I
wanted to know how the heck he'd made this statement. This is
what peer review is supposed to pick up. So yes, we had some
129
cases where people were turned down because they didn't prove to
their compatriots that this was a well-reasoned argument.
Encouraging the Flow of Ideas
Leopold: Then there was another aspect of it. One of them was that I
wanted somebody on our staff at all times, some person from a
foreign country. So I set out to bring people over to work for
us for a year and let them do whatever they want. So that
somebody from another country got acquainted with what we did,
and our people got to know how other people thought.
Well, that was very successful in certain cases and less
successful in others, depending upon the type of person that I
actually chose.
Lage: Would you have some way of introducing them? Did they give
Leopold: Usually they picked a problem where they wanted to go to various
parts of the country. So they got to know people in various
parts of the country.
Then I was very concerned about presentation. In the
Washington office, whenever somebody arrived in town that I
thought had interesting things to say, I could immediately pick
up the telephone and within a half an hour have a dozen research
people in the Washington office get to my office and hear this
guy give a seminar. So I was very concerned about the constant
flow of ideas, particularly when somebody came through town that
we didn't know.
But then I was also concerned about how people learned to
speak. I'm still laughing about this one. The Surface Water
Branch was holding a big seminar, people from all over the United
States. Many of these seminars or discussions that the branches
had, I would go and listen to myself. Well, I went to listen to
this one. A man got up and started to talk, and he started to
show some slides. They were so bad that in the first place,
nobody could read them, and nobody could understand what he was
saying.
Right in the middle of this crowd of a hundred people or so,
I stood up and said, "Stop." I said, "I won't stand for it. I'm
paying you people, and by George, if you're going to come here
and take up the time of a hundred people, you're going to be
Lage:
Lage:
130
better prepared and you're going to speak clearly, and you're
going to have slides that we can read. Would you please take a
piece of chalk in your hand and go to that blackboard, and you
tell us in words that we can understand what you have to say."
I'll tell you, it had never happened before. But God, you could
hear a pin drop.
Did that kind of thing have repercussions? I think that would
make them just shudder, the thought of your walking into one of
these seminars.
Leopold: But everybody started to pay attention. But boy, that had a hell
of an impact. It had never been done before.
What were some of the other Pink Terror memos?
Leopold: I don't remember, but somebody told me a week ago, somebody told
me that one of the Pink Terrors had been reproduced and was now
passing through the survey offices here in the western United
States last week. He said, "The same thing. Just what you
wrote. It's so applicable to what's going on."
Lage: [laughs] Fascinating.
Leopold: I don't remember what they were about.
Retrospective Views on Leopold's Changes in PrPgfflP
Management
Leopold: The thing that people talk about now in the division is how they
disliked and distrusted what we were doing. Looking back at it,
they said it's the best damn thing that ever happened to us.
They realize now that we were on the right track, but they didn't
like it at the time. That was really the key to what was going
on.
Lage: So you've had that kind of feedback since you left?
Leopold: Oh, yes. And they're still talking about it. Those were the
days when things were really going on. And to everybody's
advantage. The thing that is amazing is why this kind of
management did not persist. What we did structurally, the
importance of the research program, that has expanded greatly,
but the management view has not persisted.
131
I'll give you one example of this. I hired one biologist- -
we'd never had a biologist before- -to start a program of biology
and water. There are now forty research people in the field of
biology, in the division. You can see what happened. Once you
got it started, then all of a sudden they see, "Gee, biology is
very important in the field of water." It's involved in water
quality, involved in the flora and fauna of streams, in
hydraulics --the effect on roughness --and particularly in
chemistry. Anyhow, these things are ongoing, but, as I say, the
management style has not persisted.
Lage: But when you say management style, I think of sort of the
technique of management.
Leopold: No, that's not what I mean. The only thing you can say about
technique is this. Differing from anything that went on before,
when I went to the field office, I never talked money. The
district chiefs used to get so angry at me because I'd say hello
to them, then I'd walk down the hall with all these people, you
see, in a big room doing something. I would sit down with
somebody I'd never met before and I'd say, "Hi, I'm Luna Leopold.
What do you do?" "I do this." "Tell me about your work."
Instead of talking about budget, my idea was I wanted to know
what the people do, what they think about, what's important to
them. Those were things that I think were- -that's what I call
style.
Lage: So you worked with rank and file too.
Leopold: I tried desperately to do so.
Lage: Did you keep in touch?
Leopold: I had 360 offices, and I visited a large number. Certainly not
all, but I visited offices overseas as well as in most states.
Lage: If you didn't like what this rank-and-f ile person told you, was
there --
Leopold: Then I never criticized him. I would say, "Here's a suggestion.
You might consider this." And then I'd talk to the boss, you
see. But it never was critical. Rather, the thing is that I had
a lot of ideas about how things might be done. They usually felt
that they got kind of a lift. They said, "Gee, here's somebody
132
thinking about my problem and giving me suggestions of how I
could do this better."
Lage: It makes his work seem significant also.
Leopold: Yes.
133
VII EXPANDED SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS IN THE WATER RESOURCES DIVISION
[Interview 5: February 6, 1991 ]#//
Changes in Data Collection: Network Design. Benchmark Gauging
Stations, the Vizil Network
Lage: Today is February 6, 1991, and this is the fifth interview with
Luna Leopold. We're in the midst of talking about the Geological
Survey and your experiences in managing the Water Resources
Division. I had a few questions about the data collection
program. You have mentioned that you made an attempt to expand
data collection, but I think the implication was it wasn't as
successful as you had hoped. Were you trying to get new kinds of
data?
Leopold: Yes. Let me explain a couple of things about that. I forgot
exactly how many gauging stations we were running at that time.
It was about 11,000, I believe. It was quite clear that the
original idea that had been long held by engineers in the Water
Resources Division, with regard to the longevity of the gauging
station, was not going to work, in that you could not afford to
keep all gauging stations going indefinitely. The question came
up, what are we going to do about this? You can't, in other
words, have gauging stations running forever and still increasing
the number without limit.
About the middle 1950s, Walter Langbein published a paper
anonymously in which he said, "How long should we run a gauging
station?" Well, this caused quite a stir. In the first place,
nobody was supposed to know who it was. Later on it became clear
who wrote it, but he was saying, in effect, "We're going to have
some sort of a scheme to determine how long a gauging station
should be run. "
134
Remember, now, that there are two kinds of gauging stations.
A small number were financed completely out of federal funds.
Most of them were financed cooperatively by having the state pay
50 percent. In the latter type of gauge, the location was
usually chosen by the state. In other words, the state needed it
for water management purposes or for the distribution of water or
for measurement, and they simply put up half the money, and the
Geological Survey ran the station for them.
What Langbein had suggested was that we basically should
have two types of stations. One would be called a water
management station and the other would be basically a base
station, if you like. The base stations were to be chosen to be
representative of various parts of the country, and they were to
be run more or less indefinitely. The water management stations
were to run for a short period of time and then be discontinued.
But before they were discontinued, the idea was that their
records would be compared with one of the base stations until a
correlation could be developed so that you could make an estimate
on the basis of correlation. If the base station had a certain
discharge in a particular year, by correlation you could estimate
what the coordinate or the simultaneous discharge was at the
discontinued station. This actually did become the procedure
that we adopted.
Lage : Did this mean disruption in people's jobs?
Leopold: No, no, it was simply that it was so different than what
everybody had assumed, that the longer the record, the better the
record was going to be.
Now, what we finally decided on was that there were to be
stations that were to be run indefinitely, but all these
stations, of course, were subject to not only the changes of
climate but also to the changes caused by man. Therefore I
devised a scheme that we have another set of stations which I
would call the benchmark gauging stations. I started out with a
small number; I think there were about ten about that time. We
asked the district offices to find places where there would be a
stream that for one reason or another would be indefinitely
protected against man's incursions, such as in a national park,
in a national monument, in certain kinds of other protected
areas.
We would install a gauging station at these selected points,
and they were to be really the long-term stations that represent
the natural condition unchanged by anthropogenic effects. We
visualized that the first type of measurement which was to be
made would be ordinarily the same kind of measurement of water
135
discharge that would be made at an ordinary gauging station, but
the idea would be that these stations would later on have
chemical, biologic, and other water quality parameters in
addition to the flow rate.
Lage: That was something- -
Leopold: That was brand new. I called those the benchmark gauging
stations.
Well, this has been now, let's see, it's been forty- odd
years since the first benchmark gauging station was run. They've
turned out to be so successful that the Water Resources Division
has gradually expanded this program, and now we have, I
understand, something in the order of forty of these. They are
considered to be one of the best things that the division's ever
done.
Lage: So that's something that continued after you left.
Leopold: Yes. That's one of the things that did continue. As a matter of
fact, it expanded.
The other thing that I started was another system of data
collection which I ended up calling the Vigil Network. Have I
spoken about that?
Lage: No, not at all.
Leopold: It started this way. When I was in New Mexico in the 1930s, we
were trying to determine the rate at which the great trenches or
gullies were enlarging through time, which started with the
climatic change in the last century. We knew that Professor Kirk
Bryan from Harvard had surveyed several cross -sections on the Rio
Pureco, one of the great gullies of the world. We wanted to re
run those surveys that he made in order to find out what had
happened since his survey was made in the 1920s.
Well, there were no notes and nobody could find the cross-
sections. So 1 said, "Since we can't find them, let us start
over again, and we will put in some cross -sect ions that would be
well monumented and would be carefully recorded so that twenty
years from that time we could re-run our own cross-sections."
I came back after the war and found that when I tried to
send somebody out to locate these stations, the notes had been
lost. Then I wanted to look back at the measurements that I had
made on the Navajo reservation in 1933, where I had been employed
by the Soil Erosion Service to actually map the vegetation on
136
certain fenced plots. Those were supposed to be long-term
measurements of what would happen if you didn't graze in that
kind of an area.
I went to the Department of Agriculture and said, "I'd like
to see the maps that I made in 1933 on the experiment station,"
and all the maps were lost. So here are two times in my life the
things that I knew were very important had actually been lost. I
said, "Let's then start something brand new. Let's have a
procedure by which the original notes from surveys of this kind
will be stored in two places forever: the Library of the United
States Geological Survey in Washington, and the Laboratory of
Geomorphology in Uppsala, Sweden. Duplicate copies therefore
will be available, so that a hundred years from now somebody
could go back and redo what we had done many years before." I
presented this at an international conference in Italy, and the
Italian words that I used to describe the system created the
acronym "vigil," which means "watching."
Well, now this has become extremely important. I think
there's something like two hundred-odd such surveys now in the
Vigil Network file. Just this year, in 1990, two of my friends
in the Geological Survey in Denver are now trying to advertise,
if you like, to get more people to contribute to it. So there is
a paper now in press which is calling attention to people
throughout the world that there is something that is vitally
needed for science, and if they will make the survey according to
the descriptions that we have written and published, they would
be on file forever in two places.
Lage: So there's a description of how the data should be collected and
what kind of data.
Leopold: Yes. It's very simple. Very simple. In other words, this is
not something very fancy. The point is, if you put two iron
stakes in the ground and survey between them so that you get the
cross -section of the channel, if you didn't do anything else,
that would be useful. You'd come back and say, "How much has the
channel changed over a period of time?" It has nothing to do
with why the channel changed; it simply said what did happen.
So that although Ray Nace and I were criticized for paying
too little attention to the data collection program, at least in
the eyes of many of the older people in the survey, indeed, we
had gone much farther than they had done and tried to expand the
theory or the policy of how gauging stations should be done.
This was one of the great contributions that Walter Langbein made
where he mathematically attempted to determine how long stations
137
should be run under certain circumstances,
design In those days.
It was called network
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold;
Yes, because If it was a question of correlation, you see. But
his mathematics had to do with what is the most efficient
combination between length and dispersal of the station
locations. In connection with the change in the method of
publication of the water surface records, that became an
important matter.
And also, another thing that had not been done before: I
felt that sooner or later we were going to have to get into the
biological aspects of water. So I hired a small number, I think
one or two, limnologists.
Limnologists?
Limnologists, people who are interested in the biologic aspects,
the creatures and the plants that grow in the streams.
This has been so successful that now the biologic part of
the Water Resources Division is probably the largest part of this
whole research effort. They have something like forty scientists
working on nothing but stream biology. By stream biology I mean
also the chemistry, and part of their job is to deal with the
most complicated and esoteric aspects of water chemistry.
Is this because of the interest in water pollution, water
quality?
Yes, not only pollution but the whole question of all the aspects
of water quality, which include the use of water for human
consumption as well as heavy metals, poisonous substances, and
especially petroleum products that get into water, such as
phenols and things like that.
So during that period of time between 1956 and 1966, there
were important changes in the data collection program. So that
the people in the field may not have seen the extent to which we
were actually expanding and making more useful the data
collection program. But because it was different than what they
were used to, it came in for considerable criticism.
138
Backyard Research: Strawberry Creek. Hawaiian Dew
Lage: The program of backyard research, what was that?
Leopold: That was another aspect of something I invented. Backyard
research is well exemplified by my and my students' work on
Strawberry Creek [on the UC Berkeley campus] . It is my opinion
that a lot of very useful scientific work can be done with
practically no money and using very simple procedures if people
take the trouble to decide what should be measured. So when 1
came to this university, I installed a staff gauge out here
behind Haviland Hall. When it rained, I went out there, put a
rain gauge out on the lawn, and I sat there and watched the water
rise on my little gauge. The gauge was nothing but a meter
stick, you see, stuck in the ground. So that by measuring the
depth of water every two minutes and the measurement of the
rainfall every five minutes, then I could put them together and
figure out what was the effect of man's use in Strawberry Creek.
How would it compare with a similar watershed that was not
urbanized?
That went on from 1972 until 1990. This year I have in
press right now, in a scientific publication published in
Germany, the report of my ten years of work on Strawberry Creek
and the other creeks around here. I call this backyard research
because it costs nothing. You can get a rain gauge for two
dollars. You can make a staff gauge, and many of my students
did, out of a stick. You simply put it in the ground. And you
use your wristwatch. So it takes nothing except time and
thought. I said that this kind of research could be very useful,
and I tried to encourage people in the survey to do this kind of
work.
Lage: People who were out in the field?
Leopold: People could do it at home or do it out in the field- -observe
something. I said, really, you can do this in your backyard, and
it was called backyard research.
Lage: How did you communicate these ideas to people? Were they
published?
Leopold: No, these were memoranda. Furthermore, then 1 could give
examples of what 1 was doing. For example, 1 lived in Hawaii for
five years. Every morning at breakfast time I went out and
measured my rain gauge and read the temperature and the wind
anemometer, but in addition, I made an estimate of how much dew
there was on my feet. So I had five years of record, every day,
139
of how much dew collected on my lawn, that was very qualitative.
So when I got to Washington after five years in Hawaii, I wrote a
paper about this which I called "Dew as a Source of Plant
Moisture." It turned out that this was the first paper of
something that later on grabbed the interest of scientists
throughout the world, and all of a sudden the thing expanded and
lots of people were working on dew.
When my paper was done, 1 went to Walter Langbein and asked
him to read it. He really berated me and said, "You did it Just
by looking at your shoes? You should have had more quantitative
measurement." I said, "Walter, that's what 1 did. This is my
backyard research."
Lage: But the ideas were there.
Leopold: The idea, and the point is that when 1 made a statistical
analysis of my results, they were qualitative. I could turn
those estimates into numbers that came out to be very good.
Lage: How did you measure it by your shoes? How wet they got?
Leopold: I said light, medium, heavy, or none. But then when 1 had enough
data, then I could go back to other kinds of records, you see.
For example, we found that in many kinds of plants like a
pineapple plant, the leaves are shaped such that when dewfall
forms on the leaf, the dew slides down the leaf right to the root
and becomes extremely important in providing moisture to the
roots. Well, this is true of all desert plants. This was the
first paper, to my knowledge, that brought out the fact that in
the desert, dew is very important, and here's an idea of how
often dew occurs and how much water was involved. So that's an
example of what I mean by backyard research.
Lage : And how did it work out in the survey? Did people take this up?
Leopold: A few.
Attempt to Stimulate Publication of Hydrology Series
Leopold: Well, then I had another idea that didn't pan out as well as I
thought. We now had, after five to ten years of research, we now
had people that were probably the most expert people in the world
on glaciers, on water quality, on groundwater, on water levels,
on discharge. I thought, why don't we write a series of books to
fill a whole shelf of the library, in which there would be a book
140
on each one of these subjects on which we have now become really
expert? The problem of climate and its effect on water supply;
glaciers; river channels; geomorphology in general; on and on and
on. 1 said, now, if this is really going to be successful, this
series of books should not be published by the government.
So I went to a close friend of mine, a very important
publisher by the name of William H. Freeman, who was the
president of V. H. Freeman Company and who had a great interest
in geology and was very helpful to the geological profession. 1
laid that idea out for him, and he said, "That's fine. I'll
publish the series of books." So then I divided the subjects up
among the people in the survey, mostly the research people. 1
said, "1 would like to have you agree to write a book on the
subject which is your specialty." I think there were about ten
of them. 1 was in the middle, at that time, of writing my book
on geomorphology, so that was sort of a prototype of what we were
trying to do.
Well, then 1 took the idea up with the director, and the
director said, "That's such a good idea, 1 want us to do it." I
said to the director, "That's not going to work. If it's a
government publication, this will not get the kind of publicity
we're talking about when we're trying to advertise the Geological
Survey. Government publications in general do not receive the
kind of publicity and the kind of distribution that a private
firm can give it." 1 said, "Bill Freeman has agreed to publish
this." "No," he said, "the idea is too good. We'll do it."
Lage: This is Director Nolan?
Leopold: No, no, this was after Nolan left. Nolan would never have done
that. Nolan would have said, "Sure, go ahead." No, this was
right after Bill Pecora became the director.
Well, of course the thing fell apart immediately because no
one was interested in doing this. They could write a water
supply paper or a professional paper any time they wanted to, but
the idea of writing a book was something that had never been done
before. I was the first one in the Geological Survey who ever
published a book while I was in the survey.
But anyhow, the idea fell apart. Now, after twenty- five
years , one of the books that was proposed at that time is now in
print, or it's coming out. Dr. William Bull of the University of
Arizona, who was on our staff at that time, is now publishing a
book that was started with that idea. He was asked to write a
book on climatic geomorphology, and 1 understand that his book is
141
now done and is in press at the present time. So there were lots
of ideas that were being kicked around, some of which worked and
some of which didn't.
Maintaining Staff Productivity and Initiative
Leopold: The thing that is important about all of this is that somebody
who runs an organization of this kind, in my view, will be most
successful if he comes at it from a scientific point of view
where he's trying to not just sort of flow with the wind but have
an independent course: "This is what we're going to do and we're
going to stick to this because this is our job." In my view,
there's been a tendency for the organization to be essentially
directed by the budget, and I think that's too bad.
Now, for example, one of the great troubles that we had,
that I think I mentioned before, was that as the staff gets
older, they become less productive. I had started the practice
that people were going to be moved, they were going to be
transferred. Maybe not transferred physically, but at least
changed into a new position, and that each year there should be a
certain number of younger people hired. Well, until quite
recently that was stopped, so the research staff got older and
older. No one was moved, no one had their job changed, so you
could imagine that the whole research productivity went down the
tubes because there weren't enough people with new ideas that
were coming up with, "Let's do things in a different manner." I
think that's been one of the great changes that--. Let's say
that they lost the initiative, they lost the momentum that we had
at that time.
Lage : The period when you came was a period of great change and
excitement, I can see that.
Leopold: Yes, because we made it so, you see.
Lage: Yes. New ideas, new people.
Leopold: That's right. And new people.
Lage: And how you get that institutionalized and continue the
excitement is a challenge.
Leopold: Then it deteriorates. At least that's been the experience.
142
The Tree Ring Laboratory: Documenting Climatic Change
Lage: There are a few other programs we haven't talked about that I'm
hoping you might have something to say about. You mentioned the
tree ring lab, the ocean programs, the hydraulics lab, but we
haven't talked about what they were, and what happened to them.
Leopold: Something that we had in mind then, something that's been of
interest to me for all of my life, is the matter of climatic
change, because my concentration on the processes and physical
characteristics of river channels and their changes, their
changes through time, these changes primarily occur as a result
of climatic change. Therefore, the whole matter of measuring
climatic parameters is important to ge onto rpho logy, not merely to
weather bureau people, not merely to meteorology. And of course,
at that time this was just before carbon 14 was invented by Dr.
Willard LIbby. The best procedures available for making
estimates of climate of the past were tree rings.
There's a distant cousin of mine by marriage, by the name of
Dr. Deric O'Brien, who was an expert archaeologist before the
Second World War, worked for a long time in New Mexico and
Arizona. He was a Rhodes scholar, took his Ph.D. at Oxford. He
came back from the war and went to work basically as a
geographer, if you like, an analytical geographer for the CIA.
He was concerned with such things as trying to explain to Army
people and to CIA people what were the indigenous characteristics
of people who lived in some foreign country.
He was moved from Africa to Virginia. I hadn't seen him for
many years. I met him and I asked about his work, and he told me
about it. I said, "That really is not as interesting as some of
the work you used to do before the war. Why don't you join the
Geological Survey as a social scientist, and we'll go back to the
work that you did many years ago on tree rings, and I'll build
you a tree ring laboratory?" Well, he took it up.
This is an interesting story. Deric O'Brien was the son of
a woman who was a very strong-minded gal. When he was a young
boy, they lived at Mesa Verde, and his stepfather was the
director of Mesa Verde National Park. That's where Deric got his
first training in archaeology, because he was in on all of the
excavation that was going on at that time. So at the age of ten
he wrote two books , and they were damn good books . They were not
143
just children's books; they were very interesting, but they were
written by a very young person.
ff
Leopold: One was called Deric in Mesa Verde, and the other was called
Deric with the Indians. Years later, for what reason I don't
know, he was always embarrassed any time anything was brought up
about the books that he had written when he was a young child.
Clearly his mother was very influential in getting those books
written. Although she didn't write them, she was very
influential. But looking back at it, I have the feeling that
Deric was always so, let's say cowed, by his mother, that he
never was able to stand up on his two feet and fight for himself.
That's my opinion.
Anyhow, I said, "You design a tree ring laboratory of the
most advanced sort," and indeed he did. He went all over the
United States getting ideas from people who ran tree ring work,
particularly the University of Arizona, which is very famous for
it. We set up in Washington a tree ring laboratory in which
there were microscopes that were set up so that you could look at
the tree rings under a microscope and images were thrown up onto
a very large screen. You could make accurate measurements, and
it was the most advanced in the world.
What Deric and 1 decided to do was to go to a place in
southwestern Colorado and get a series of cores from primarily
spruce trees in the climatic region where they're most sensitive
to the amount of rainfall. The idea was that we would take the
tree ring width for the years of record for which we actually had
current records and concurrent crop records from nearby farms.
We were going to correlate the width of the tree ring with how
many tons of beans or corn or crops that were grown in the nearby
area. Then we could go back to tree rings before the present
records were available and say, "What could the people have been
growing in tons per year per acre, under the conditions of the
climate which were indicated by the tree ring?"
So anyhow, the tree rings were collected. They were
analyzed in the laboratory, and the manuscript was nearly done.
We had at that time also a bunch of high- class mathematicians who
were very statistically oriented. Apparently this manuscript,
unbeknownst to me, was turned over to the statisticians, and they
said, "You ought to make statistical analyses of these data to
make sure that they are not random." So there developed a kind
of a controversy about whether this work should be published as
it was or whether there ought to be additional work done,
144
particularly in statistics, which is not my field and certainly
not Deric's field.
And then furthermore, it was so successful that there were
two other botanists on our staff who now wanted to work on the
tree ring problems in the eastern United States, and therefore
there began to be a competition for the time available of the
technician who was actually doing the detailed work in the
laboratory.
One day Deric O'Brien walked into my office and he said, "I
want to resign from the tree ring laboratory." I said, "What the
hell are you talking about?" He said, "There's such a
competition, people are imposing on the laboratory and they're
pushing me around. I'm tired of it." I said, "Now, that's a
bunch of nonsense. The laboratory was made for you. I'm going
to kick the guys out." "No," he said, "I'm through. I'm tired
of fighting it." I said, "Why the hell didn't you come and talk
to me about it a year ago?" "I didn't want to bother you." I
said, "Now, look. It's not that serious. I will tell these
people that they have low priority, and until you finish the work
that you're doing, the laboratory's not available to them."
"No," he said, "I'm tired of it."
Veil, Deric died about two years ago. I saw him a couple of
years before he died, in England, and I said, "Deric, let me
finish the manuscript." This manuscript had been held for
twenty-five years. I said, "I will pull it out. I will put your
name on it, but let me finish it." "No. I will do it," he said.
And twenty-five years, and then he died. So anyhow, it was very
disappointing. I think that the laboratory has been completely
dismantled. Terribly disappointing.
Lage: Was it going to be used for other research as well?
Leopold: It could be used for lots of things, but the thing is that the
main purpose for which it was made was dealing with southwestern
problems, where tree rings are so critical. But they became
overshadowed. An indicator of this is that the work that the
other people were doing on eastern problems never received any
recognition because they were working on problems that were not
very important. So basically, the tree ring laboratory got
wasted on problems that were unimportant.
145
The Hvdraulic Laboratories
Leopold: Now, with regard to the hydraulic lab--. When Walter and I
divided up the money for research programs, I said, "One of the
things that 1 want to do is to have a hydraulic laboratory in
which there would be experiments to determine the roughness- -we
call it the roughness --in alluvial channels." Now, the roughness
in alluvial channels is not determined by the size of the rock
but really by the dunes and other bars and things that form in a
channel that's made up of fine-grained material --sand, for
example .
So two of our men- -I think one of them was with the survey
at the time, the other I employed anew. I assigned them to Fort
Collins, Colorado, where there already was a modest hydraulics
laboratory. I said, "You build a flume and work on this
problem," which they did. They were very successful and got
international recognition for what they'd done. That has had its
difficulties too, because these same people later resigned from
the Geological Survey and set themselves up as engineering
consultants and became very well known, but in many cases their
engineering was problematic. Anyhow, we're not going to go into
that.
But anyhow, the hydraulics laboratory set up at Fort Collins
was quite successful, but it also had some areas that were less
than successful. Personality problems, among other things. In
addition to that, 1 decided that 1 wanted a hydraulics laboratory
for my own work, so I finally made an arrangement with the
University of Maryland to go to the basement of one of their
buildings and build a flume, which I did. It was a very high-
class structure. The flume was about three feet wide and about
sixty feet long, and it had everything that was needed for good
flume work. I had paid to have Brigadier Bagnold come from
England to work with us, we devised an experiment, which was a
very successful experiment indeed.
I mentioned that I have tried to have one foreign scientist
on our staff at all times. Ralph A. Bagnold was a very famous
scientist and a very famous officer in the British Army, a
brigadier. The brother of Enid Bagnold, the famous playwright.
A very distinguished family.
Lage: What was his field?
Leopold: Rivers and sediment transport, but he'd made his reputation in
desert studies. This is a long, long story. Last week I went to
England for the specific purpose of participating in the memorial
146
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
service held at Trafalgar Square in the great cathedral at St.
Martin's in the Field, and 1 spoke at this memorial service for
my friend Brigadier Bagnold. I just returned a couple of days
ago. That was another one of the great successes we had. We had
this great scientist on our staff. I brought him over 'half a
dozen times, at least.
And you worked out of the hydraulic laboratory?
Mostly, we started out by working together in the hydraulics
laboratory that I had built for my work. Then we collaborated on
many other projects, including the big project in Wyoming at East
Fork River. 1 set up this very fancy bedload trap, which we ran
for the period from 1973 to 1980. Bagnold was very important in
both helping with the design and also with the analysis of the
data.
Did the hydraulic lab set up an artificial river?
work? You mentioned the flume .
How did it
Yes, it's really an artificial river, if you like. But one of
the big problems in hydraulics has always been that the
difference between a river and an artificial river in the
laboratory is obvious in certain respects and very subtle in
other respects. One of the difficulties was that it was not well
known at that time what you could and could not do with the
artificial river water flowing down a channel if you made it in
the laboratory.
Is that why you moved to this outdoor- -the East Fork river- -
Oh, no. They were two different problems.
Well, then we had only run this laboratory for about a year
and a half, I guess, and the University of Maryland for some
reason or another said they didn't want us there anymore. So
here was this tremendous piece of equipment that had to be moved.
So I really had to work hard to try to find some other place in
Washington. My administrative assistant finally found me a place
in the so-called old gun factory in Washington where they used to
make cannons. They had this very, very large, extremely old
building that looked like a deserted warehouse. Indeed, though,
it had an overhead crane that hadn't been used for anything for a
long, long time, and it was an absolutely splendid place. The
overhead crane was very helpful , and it was large and had a high
ceiling. Bill Emmett and I designed and really built by
ourselves a very much better laboratory than we ever had at the
University of Maryland.
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Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
So I took one of the young scientists that I had hired, and
Bagnold and I devised a scheme of what he was to work on in this
new laboratory. That was a very successful part. Then when--.
Everything was going splendidly. Ue had not only the big flume
there, but there vas enough space to make a whole area that could
be sprinkled. I wanted to build essentially a homemade watershed
so we could have artificial rainfall falling in this large area
and collecting it down the mountain. Just as we were getting
started on that, Lady Bird Johnson started her famous "We will
beautify the countryside." Because of something Lady Bird
Johnson said to somebody, they were going to improve this very
old building, so they told us to get out.
What a shame.
So having built this marvelous laboratory, it had to be moved to
another place, and by the time it was moved, everything had gone
to hell and it never was used again.
Oh, that's too bad. Lady Bird probably never really knew.
No, she had no idea. As a matter of fact, nothing ever happened,
of course. She didn't beautify it all, and it was actually
silly. That's the kind of thing that happens.
The Ocean and Glacial Programs
Lage: How about the ocean program?
Leopold: That's another whole story. There was a gentleman hired by the
Geological Survey in the Geologic Division to really put us in
the ocean business, because after all, geomorphology of the ocean
floor is a very important matter, and oceans are terribly
important in hydrology. The one thing that he did during the
short time that he worked for the Geologic Division was he said,
"There's now just been freed a great oceanographic location at
Tiburon in San Francisco Bay. It's free. Take it. You can have
it from the Navy." The director said, "No." Because here, in
Tiburon, now it's an environmental station, as you know, but at
that time it had everything; it had ships, and it had docks, and
it had buildings. It was just too big a bite for the director to
grab.
There was another aspect of this. I said, "Let's not put
all our eggs in that one basket. Let's have a joint program with
the Woods Hole oceanographic experiment station." So we sent
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Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold;
several people up to Woods Hole to work there under the
jurisdiction of one of the famous oceanographers of the day,
whose name is Dr. Emory. So we associated ourselves with one of
the best people in the world. That was moderately successful,
but compared with what Woods Hole has done before and since, it
really was a very small part, so our incursion into the
oceanographic thing was too small and too narrow in scope, too
narrow in scientific view.
For example, right after that it was discovered by Alan Cox
at Stanford, and some associates, the whole business about the
Central Atlantic Ridge which at that time had Just recently been
mapped, the whole question about sea floor spreading, the change
in magnetism of the areas parallel to the central mountain range
under the Atlantic. We missed out on that. In other words, had
we had a larger scope, we might have been in on that, but we
weren't.
You'd need more staff, more money?
inspiration?
Is that the idea? Or more
All those things, I think, yes. It's not always money. It's
really a combination of the way people think and their energy and
that sort of thing. So again, here was an incursion into a new
field, but some of it was extremely successful and some of it was
less than successful.
Did the survey stay with the oceanography program?
No. In other words, their collaboration with Woods Hole ended
shortly, I think, after I no longer was chief. It was dropped
entirely.
What happened with the glacial program?
The glacial program always remained small but very successful.
Dr. Mark Meier, whom I hired to run that, turned out to make a
big reputation in glaciology. He had only one important
assistant, Dr. Post, and I don't know whether they had any
technicians or not, but the two of them really did it, and they
were very successful at what they did, but it always remained
small. I had always hoped that that program could be expanded,
but you can't do everything. After I left, the organization
didn't choose to try to expand Meier's program.
149
Influence of Western Irricators on the Research Program
Lage: You had mentioned, I think, in the video that one of your
attempts was to broaden the scope of the research program beyond
the interests of western irrigators. I can see that all these
programs did that. What did you mean by the interests of western
irrigators? Did they exert influence on the survey program
somewhat?
Leopold: I see what you mean. A large proportion of the gauging stations
were run by the Geological Survey when I came in. They were in
the first place in the Vest, and mostly for purposes of
irrigation. Not entirely, but there was quite a concentration of
gauging stations in the western United States. Without question,
the work on the quality of water was really directed entirely
toward irrigation matters because they were interested,
basically, in the salts dissolved in water which affect
irrigation. In other words, how much calcium carbonate, how much
iron and silica and the other things. That's why there was never
any consideration of all the other kinds of pollutants, such as
heavy metals themselves, things like arsenic, like boron, like
fluorine .
And then the whole business of the biological aspect of
water pollution. That was not part of the water quality program,
so you might say the water quality measurements were indeed
directed entirely at the kinds of things that irrigators want to
know. But with this expansion of water use everywhere and the
pollution problems recurring throughout the United States, I
said, "For goodness sakes, let's go beyond that and start
biological studies and studies of the trace elements and the
other things that are likely to affect water quality."
Lage: Did the irrigators represent an interest group?
Leopold: They represented the people who were putting up the money.
Lage: Through the states?
Leopold: Yes. It was done through the cooperative program.
Lage: So they may have had the influence on the states as to what the
state requested?
Leopold: Yes, indeed. Oh, yes. Look at California. I mean, look this
week and see what's happening. This morning's paper said that
the state is going to pay people two and a half times their
normal income for each acre to take it out of cultivation in
Lage:
150
order to save water. Irrigated agriculture is a dominating
political force in many of the western states. A dominating
force .
So as you can see, the problem was to expand the view of
what hydrology was supposed to do. In that we were really quite
successful, and less successful in some other aspects. We
certainly did expand into a lot of things that the Geological
Survey didn't do before. Many of these things are being carried
on in ways that we couldn't have foreseen. As I said with regard
to the biology program, there are something like forty biologists
now overseeing the water quality program.
Good things were going on also with regard to
instrumentation. I told you that under the influence of Rolland
Carter and Joe Wells, who was the branch chief of the Surface
Water Branch, we got into new kinds of instruments for recording,
so a lot of progress was being made on that. Now, with the
influence of computers and radio, it's again changing in a very
progressive way.
Any other programs that we should talk about, or specifics of
research and data collection?
Leopold: I'll have to think about that. [tape interruption]
Cooperation with the Geologic and Topographic Divisions
Leopold: One of the things that had been true of the survey in general is
that the Geologic Division not only had a different subject
matter, but a different way of handling their personnel, as I've
told you before. The man might be assigned from geologic work in
the field to two or three years being an administrator, and then
was put back into the scientific work. That was entirely
different than what was done in the Water Resources Division.
In many respects, I tried to emulate that in our procedure.
But because I'm a geologist as well as a hydrologist, I have a
lot more appreciation for what the Geologic Division is trying to
do, so there was a much larger amount of interest and cooperation
between our divisions when I became chief than had been the case
in the past. The oceanographic program was an example of that.
And then I was also trying to move our division much closer to
the Topographic Division, which made maps.
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One of the things that interested me was the fact that as
geomorphologists, we're very much interested in how the river is
designated on a topographic map, and the blue lines on a
topographic map representing rivers had no real scientific basis.
So I went to the chief topographer and said, "I wonder if we
could collaborate on the idea that we might try to work out a
scheme which would tell you under what circumstances you put a
blue line down and some circumstances when you don't, because the
blue line ends at some place that's really quite arbitrary."
"Yes," he said, "that would be a very good idea, but you
have to keep in mind now that the people who put the blue lines
on the map, they're GS-2s, and they have no technical training
whatsoever, and therefore, really, the blue line on the map is
simply an artistic--."
Lage: That's not very encouraging.
Leopold: I said, "That I would like to change. Let us try to devise a
scheme." My scheme was basically this: "I'll try to design a
scheme so that the blue line ends at the place where the water is
in the stream a certain number of days each year. So it's a very
specific, a statistical measure of how often the stream is dry."
Well, we did. Walter Langbein and I came up with a tentative
plan of how this could be done from our statistical
relationships. None of them suited the Topographic Division at
all. It was all too complicated because the people that did the
actual drawing of the blue line were simply such low- level people
that they had a very hard time following detailed instructions.
Lage : Did you have enough data?
Leopold: We were trying to explore it. In other words, yes, we could have
done it, all right, but the question was, in what form do you
give this to the topographer who's going to draw the blue line?
And that's where we never had a chance to develop it to such
detail that it became a practical matter. It was completely
turned down because it was just too complicated in their view.
Lage: So we can't count on the blue lines when we're looking for water
on our hikes.
Lage:
Leopold:
How about the Division of Conservation?
there?
Was there any overlap
No, the Division of Conservation was something we were always
very chary about because they did not do any scientific work at
152
all. The word "conservation" should not have been used at all.
They were the people that took in the money in gas royalties for
the federal government. That's all they did. In relatively
recent years that has been taken out of the Geological Survey and
put under the Interior Department itself because it was not the
kind of work that the Geological Survey should be doing.
Lage: Did the budget of your division grow in relation to the other
divisions during your years? Was there a concerted effort made
to increase the size of the Water Resources Division?
Leopold: I simply don't remember, with regard to that particular
comparison. We did very well because our cooperative program
kept growing, and there was never any question about the Congress
being willing to give money to match state money. We never had
any trouble with that. The matter of federal funds, I am told
just in the last year that the level of federal funds for our
research effort is exactly the way it was when I first put it in
the budget. It hasn't changed at all.
Lage: It has not changed in all these years?
Leopold: No. I may be not entirely correct on that. That's my
recollection of what I was told within the last year. Somebody
said to me, "Do you know that the amount of money that we use for
federal research is the same as the amount of money you put in?"
and I said, "No, I did not."
Relations with Congress: The Senate Select Committee on Water
Resources
Lage:
Leopold;
Yes. In many respects, yes. Generally, our director, Director
Nolan, was so good at dealing with that kind of matter that
although we accompanied him to the hill, usually we did not
actually speak to the congressional committees ourselves. In
some cases we did, but it was not a very important part of our
testimony.
On the other hand, when Senator [Robert S.] Kerr started to
hold hearings of what they ended up by calling a Senate Select
Committee on Water, then I got busy immediately. I was asked to
testify before the Kerr people on the Hill. I said to the staff,
"All right, now, we're going to have to do this. I'd like to
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develop very simple statements of water facts so that Congress
can really understand every bit of it." We got a lot of people
to work on it in a very short time and came up with a series of
slides called the Senate Select Committee slides that were used
over and over again, and tried to explain to people the water
facts about the United States. It was very successfully done.
[Water Facts and Problems," U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Water Resources, 1959.]
But then when the Kerr Committee, after we'd made our
testimony, then they went on to do a lot of things that were
perhaps less than useful, and ended up by setting up this
business of grants for water resources research which were to be
administered not by the Geological Survey but by the Interior
Department. They set up a special organization in the Interior
Department to give this grant money away.
Lage: To give it to universities?
Leopold: Yes. Well, every state was to have, at the agricultural
university, a program comparable to the agricultural experiment
station, and that was to be called the Water Resources Center.
The Water Resources Center in California now is at UC Riverside.
Lage: And the survey wasn't tied into it in any way to coordinate- -
Leopold: No, unfortunately they were not. Now they are, because now it
has been taken out of the Interior Department specifically and
given to the survey, and now the survey has to have an
organization to give the money away to the water resources
centers . Some of the centers did very good work and some of the
centers were less successful. Organizations that had strong
interest and scientific work in water such as the University of
California, were very successful, and they set up good schemes
for determining what research they were going to finance.
Unfortunately, in my opinion- -and a lot of people will
disagree with this- -a large amount of money was set aside and
still is set aside to work strictly on desalinization. I would
consider desalinization one of the small problems. There are not
very many places in the United States where desalinization plants
are terribly important. Santa Barbara is apparently coming up
with plans to have such a plant. There are at least one or two
in Texas. How this program has contributed to the desalinization
that goes on the Middle East, for example, in the desert
countries, I simply don't know. But I felt that that was not a
high-priority matter for our water resources research.
154
Lage: Do you know what the impetus was for that Senate Select Committee
on Water Resources?
Leopold: Yes. Senator Kerr wanted to set up something in Oklahoma that
would bring a lot of money into Oklahoma, which he did. He set
up a very large research facility in Ada, Oklahoma, which is now
run by the EPA. At that time it was being run by the Public
Health Service, as I recall. But he was a very powerful man in
the Senate, and was responsible basically for the great dredging
program of the Missouri River, one of the great boondoggles of
all time, it seems to me. There was a time, 1 know, when the
barges of the Corps of Engineers, going up and down the river for
the river dredging, constituted practically all the commerce
there was in the river, and the big dredging program was supposed
to increase the boat commerce in the system.
Lage: Did that happen within your program at all, where Congress would
look at your budget closely to see how they could benefit their
states? Did they try to get your labs put in certain districts,
for instance?
Leopold: No, our operation was just too small to monkey with, really.
Lage: They were going for the Bureau of Reclamation, the Corps of
Engineers?
Leopold: They were going for something much bigger.
Lage: So you didn't have this kind of oversight of your budget in great
detail from Congress?
Leopold: Congress has become more and more directive, writing into law
that this agency will do that, or the National Academy of
Sciences will do such and such. It's much more directive than it
used to be.
Lage: When you talk about the program being driven by the budget now,
what do you mean by that?
Leopold: Remember, now, I'm far enough away from it that what I say is my
opinion, but it may not really be the truth and the whole truth.
The tendency is presently, in my opinion, to see how the wind is
blowing and put in the budget things that they think Congress
might want, whether you want it or not. There's this very large
program developing, a lot of money behind it, to put in the
gauging station water measurement program a large number of
parameters, and they're all to be put on computer. It's a very
large expansion in the nature of what is to be measured in the
gauging station network. I'm simply far enough away from it that
155
I don't know, but It just seems to me that that is a proposal
that was made not because it's scientifically needed but because
that's what they think the Congress wants.
Lage: So they don't think in terms of what the science requires.
Leopold: That's my opinion.
Lage: Did you ever have to do what 1 hear the Forest Service does --a
lot of building local support for projects in order to get
congressional support? Was there that much politics involved in
your division?
Leopold: The main thing was to find out what the states really wanted. I
set up an advisory committee consisting of a large number of
people from various states that met in our office in Washington
to discuss our program with us and see what they thought we
should be doing, to make sure we were not simply getting too
provincial as far as what we thought the states needed. That was
again discontinued after 1 left. But this was not a matter of
coercion, this was a matter of asking them to advise us. Some
advisory committees, you see, are useful and some are not.
Lage: Was that one useful?
Leopold: It was useful in a certain way, that the states that were putting
up money at least felt that we were trying to be responsive to
what they considered to be their needs. So that yes, I think it
was modestly useful, yes. I think, however, the director's
advisory committee that met in the director's office once a year
to advise the director, I thought that was a waste of time.
Lage: What groups were they from?
Leopold: These were prominent people in science and academia, and
consulting people. A small group.
Lage: And then would they meet with all the division heads?
Leopold: Yes. Then the division heads told them what they'd do and that
sort of thing.
Lage: You didn't get any valuable input there?
Leopold: I never felt that we did. Every year I made a big presentation
to the committee as to what we were trying to do, and I never
felt that they told me anything that I wanted to know.
156
Interazencv Conflicts over Water Quality
Lage:
Leopold: Oh, brother.
Lage: That sounds like a big topic.
Leopold: Yes, that's a big topic. The conflict was, is, and continues to
be in the matter of water quality. In those days, the Public
Health Service was manned by a group of people that were bound
and determined that they were going to take all the water
pollution problems under their own wing. The question is, what
do you need to measure? Clearly, we were the ones that measured
the water, and they felt that they were the ones to measure the
quality of the water. But somehow or other, to separate the
quality of the water from the water itself seemed rather
unreasonable.
So there was continual pressure at the interagency
committees and that sort of thing. Really fights, if you like.
Disagreements among these agencies as to who should do what.
That's where Senator Kerr came in. A lot of these people were
very political, and they had very close contacts with people on
the Hill, and we did not. One thing Director Nolan was insistent
upon, and that is that we had no contact with the Congress at
all. Now, good, bad, or indifferent, that was his policy.
There were times when I went to him and said, "Look, we're
losing out. Why don't we invite Congressman So-and-so to come
and talk to us, and let us show him in our laboratories what we
do and why it's important?" "No," he said, "I don't want it done
that way. I'm going to make the presentation to Congress, and
they're going to do what they're going to do, but I'm not going
to appear to cater to Congress . "
Well, these other agencies did not feel that way. They
went, and they had these congressmen all lined up. The Public
Health Service had Senator Kerr, one of the most important people
in this area. Therefore, they got a lot of money. They got
facilities, they got buildings, they got a lot of things that we
didn't get.
157
Then when the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] was
formed, many of these people who were antagonists of ourselves
vent over to the EPA.
Lage: From Public Health?
Leopold: Yes. And people that I know tell ne that EPA would like very
much to take over the Water Resources Division of the Geological
Survey. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but there's
that fear. It simply is a continuation of this long fight about
what are the important parts of the water field?
I'll give you an example. I got in great trouble with the
White House because I was the chairman of a committee, an
interagency committee dealing with certain aspects of water.
Lage: This is water quality again?
Leopold: A lot of things about water. Water quality would be involved.
We were trying to advise the president's office with regard to
certain aspects of what we thought the policy of the government
ought to be with regard to certain aspects of water. I've
forgotten what these aspects were.
In one of these meetings, I said to the representatives from
the commerce department, the Army, the Public Health Service,
Agriculture, the other representatives, "There often is a
difference between how we, as scientists and as professionals in
the water field, think things ought to be done, and how our
departments or our organizations think. What I think we ought to
do is to advise the White House of the difference between what we
think and what our ostensible departments are saying, because in
many cases the departments are thinking politically and not
scientifically." That was the gist of it. Everybody said, "Yes,
that's absolutely right. Let us try to write into this report
those things that we ourselves conclude from our own professional
experience are the right things to say."
The Public Health Service man said, "I have no intention of
doing that. I will give you the line that is dictated by my
director, and I will not give you anything else." I said, "Look,
that undercuts the whole thing. That's not what we're being
asked for. They know what the line is that the bureaus want.
They want a scientific opinion." He said, "I won't do it any
other way. "
Lage: These were scientists from the agencies?
Leopold: They were professionals. They weren't necessarily scientists,
but they were the professionals, the top professionals.
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So I vent to the scientific advisor to the president, Jerome
Weisner, there in the executive building. I said, "Dr. Weisner,
I am going to have to resign from this committee. The. committee
refuses to do what I think you are telling us to do, and that is
to write a report which represents our best idea, because you
don't have to be told what the departments want." Veil, he was
very angry.
Lage: Angry with you?
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: What was his reasoning?
Leopold: I don't know. I never found out.
And then there was another place 1 got in trouble right at
the same time. The politicians decided that they were going to
try to tell the country of Pakistan what they ought to do about
the groundwater problem. They asked me to be on this committee
to go to Pakistan, and I said, "I know what these people are
going to say to you. They're going to talk about drilling more
wells. I don't agree with that, and I don't think that you're
going to get the thing that's needed. I said, "No, I don't want
to be on the committee." The White House was mad at me about
that, too. So anyhow, I had my troubles with some of those
people up there.
Lage: It sounds like you made a few waves.
Leopold: Oh, yes.
Battling the Bureau of Reclamation over Colorado River Water
Quality
Lage: What about the Corps of Engineers? Did the two agencies have, or
you yourself have, differences of opinion with the Corps of
Engineers?
Leopold: We went up and down. We went definitely up and down, and also
with TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] . We were very influential
in some of the joint projects such as the sedimentation survey at
Lake Mead in which the Navy, the Commerce Department, and
ourselves made this very successful survey. The big problem that
we had was basically with the Bureau of Reclamation.
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Lage: And what was the core of that?
Leopold: The core of that was that the Bureau of Reclamation did not want
the public to be told in any way or form that irrigation makes
the water quality deteriorate by the addition of salts, despite
the fact that everybody knows about it.
Lage: Why were they--
Leopold: Because, you see, they were building all these big dams, and they
weren't about to tell anybody that the irrigation water that they
were putting on the land was going to deteriorate the water
quality.
1 had a contingent of people from California representing a
certain aspect of water users, and they came to me and said, "We
will back a bill in Congress to direct you to make a study of the
water quality of the Colorado River and the effect of irrigation
on it, if you do--" what? And I forget what. Or something like,
"If we went and got this money for you, would you make such a
study?" I said, "You're darn right we'll make such a study.
That's exactly what we ought to be doing, controversial as it
will be."
So they got the money and we were ordered by Congress to
make a study, a complete study of the water quality and the
effect of irrigation on water quality of the whole Colorado
system from the headwaters down to the Gulf of Mexico. So we put
some very competent people on this, and over a period of three
years they came up with this thick report. But in order to
publish it, the question was, it had to be reviewed. The Bureau
of Reclamation stopped it on every count again and again. It
took two years.
Lage: It had to be reviewed by the Bureau of Reclamation?
Leopold: It was going to be an Interior Department report, you see, so
that the Interior Department went to the secretary and said,
"Look, you can't let the survey say these damn things." All we
were doing was taking one irrigation project after another and
making an estimate on how much water was put on, how much
rainfall, how much evaporation, and measured the increase in
salt, because we know that the salt increases so much that when
you get to Yuma, Arizona, it now has something like 365 parts per
million, just on the edge of whether it can be used for
irrigation. Gradually, as you go down the river, this salt
coming from the irrigation project gets larger and larger. The
Bureau of Reclamation didn't want us to say that.
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Lage:
Leopold:
When would this have been? Do you remember?
controversy about damning the Grand Canyon?
Was this before the
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
It was still before Glen Canyon was closed. Hoover Dan was in,
Glen Canyon was not. I was still chief, so it must have been
about 1965. I put one of our most distinguished people on this
report review. They went over the thing with this fine -toothed
comb to find out every damn place that the Bureau of Reclamation
wanted changed. This went on for two years, and finally I went
to the director and I said, "Look, director, this is a bunch of
stuff. Here's a scientific report that's ready to be published,
and we've checked with all this very great amount of effort.
Let's publish it." He said, "Okay, go ahead." So anyhow, it was
published. A very important report, and should be done again.
What was it called? Do you remember?
When we get back to my office, I'll look it up for you.
Did it have an impact on congressional discussions of Glen
Canyon or the Grand Canyon Dam, do you remember? Or did
conservationists pick it up?
I don't think it did have much of an impact, unfortunately. The
big impact came in another way. The Bureau of Reclamation, in
trying to develop an irrigation project, put in a series of wells
in a place not far from Yuma, Arizona, called the Velton Mohawk
project. They were going to irrigate a large expanse of land
down there in the desert near Yuma. I don't remember the details
of how this worked, but I recall that they had to pump water out
to lower the water table in order to get the drainage system to
work. The water table was too high; therefore, by pumping the
groundwater table down, then the irrigated water that was put on
the land from the Colorado River would have a place to drain out
of the drains back into the river. But in order to lower the
water table, they had to pump an aquifer that was salty. They
started to pump this into the Colorado River right there at Yuma,
and of course put Mexico out of business because the water was
all salty. Veil, that caused a hell of a big stir.
They called a secret meeting, and no one was supposed to
know about it, in the Bureau of Reclamation offices in Yuma, I
guess it was. 1 went down there, and there was a big discussion
among all of us about the groundwater and the effect of the
pumping and that sort of thing. 1 said to the Bureau of
Reclamation people, I said, "Look, haven't you made a statistical
analysis of what is the effect of this pumping?" No, they didn't
make such an analysis. 1 said, "Damn it, I'll do it." So I went
161
out in the hall and I took the doggone data that they had, and I
came back in a half an hour and handed this to them, and I said,
"Here are the answers to the things that you should have done two
years ago." Well, anyhow, it was very bitter.
So inmediately after that, President Kennedy flew to Mexico
for a big discussion with the president of Mexico about this.
The president of Mexico was very, very angry, you see, because
here was the salt water coming into Mexico. Kennedy agreed to
build a multimillion-dollar bypass to take the salty water past
the irrigated fields of Mexico and dump them into the Gulf of
California. All caused by one of our government agencies doing
something they never should have done in the first place.
Lage: I bet there are a lot of stories like that.
Leopold: Oh, yes, there's plenty of them.
Professor John P. Miller at
Chadron, South Dakota, 1951.
Robert M. Myrick at
Seneca Creek,
Dawsonville ,
Maryland, circa 1960
opold points to
leoindian hearth
ried in valley
luvium, Coyote C.
royo, New Mexico,
66.
Leopold (left) and
Engineer W. L.
Heckler, at rock
group , Arroyo
Frijoles, near Santa
Fe, New Mexico, circa
1966.
Leopold on the East Fork River, Wyoming, circa 1980.
Above: Leopold-Nelson cabin in Wind
River Range , Wyoming
Right: After-class party, Teton
Science School, Wyoming, 1990.
River trip down the Salmon River, Idaho, 1990.
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VIII FUN, GAMES, AND PRODUCTIVE RESEARCH IN THE GEOLOGICAL
SURVEY
[Interview 6: March 5, 1991]##
The Pick and Hammer Show
Lage: Ve have been talking before we turned on the tape recorder about
the fact that our interviews have missed a lot of the fun that
comes through so much in your journals that I've been reading.
Leopold: One of the things that we should mention is the Pick and Hammer
Club of the Geological Survey, something that was started soon
after the survey was organized. It must have been going- -I don't
know the beginning, but at least at the turn of the century.
It's a show, a whole evening's show, written by and acted by
members of the survey, and the whole purpose is to throw jokes at
each other and to make fun of the people, particularly the people
at the top. Some of the shows were sort of written after well-
known musical comedies. We had a show of Peter Pan, for example,
with all the subjects were changed, and all these people
represented the director, and the chief geologist, and so forth.
Then, often the club spent a whole show taking off on one person.
It was very complimentary in a way--
Lage: Someone in the division?
Leopold: Yes. In other words, it was complimentary in a way, but also
very critical in a way. One of the best--. Let's see. I could
never forget it. In the first place, you remember that these
people are very clever. They have big laboratories and they know
how to do things properly. This Pick and Hammer show was about
my friend Meyer Rubin. Meyer is a very good-looking man who is a
geologist who runs the carbon- 14 laboratory, which has all kinds
of glassware and beautiful things in the laboratory, you see, and
he always wears a white coat.
The second scene goes up, and the stage is perfectly dark.
Then all of a sudden you see coming up in a piece of glassware a
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yellow liquid which is now starting to go through the glassware.
It goes around until finally it circles a woman's body, and then
two red lights go on, and then the curtain goes up. Absolutely
marvelous .
And then there was a show partly devoted to me. Much of the
program was that they were kidding me about my wonderful office.
I had my office redone. The show was Camelot. and oh, gee, what
they did to some of that. The songs were just marvelous.
Lage: What were they picking on in your office?
Leopold: Veil, because 1 had a very large office and a beautiful new blue
rug and new furniture, and everything was really slick, even
better than the director, you see. Boy, they could really make
something out of that, 1 could tell you.
Lage: Who were the people who put them on? Was it the same group each
time?
Leopold: Everybody. No, all of us.
Lage : Everybody?
Leopold: Oh, yes. Everybody. Everybody wanted to. You could write
music. You could play, or you could be in the chorus, or you
could do the stage scenery. You could do anything you want, but
the point is that everybody pitched in because it was fun.
Lage: And it was once a year?
Leopold: Once a year, yes. In the spring. It was a terrific show.
The Geologic Division pretty much had run the Pick and
Hammer Show for a long time, and the man who directed the show
for many years was a very talented geologist in the Geologic
Division.
Leopold: Then there was always some person in the survey who played the
piano to provide the music. We had nothing quite like it in the
Water Resources Division. We all contributed to and acted in the
Pick and Hammer show, although it was primarily run by the
Geologic Division.
Lage: That must have created kind of an esprit de corps in the
organization.
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Leopold: Oh, yes, you bet. Particularly when they take off the big guys,
you see. You felt pretty good when they took you off, because
they're paying attention to what you're doing.
Lage: Did they ever border on the unkind?
Leopold: Yes. They often did.
Lage: So sometimes there were people --
Leopold: Some people didn't like it much, but in general, people just
laughed like the dickens. Oh, they did one to me that was
absolutely wonderful. In the show that was mostly about me,
there was an intermission. While they were changing scenery,
they put on this movie. The movie was a take-off of an instance
that happened in the field.
It was about mid- afternoon, and 1 had a plane to catch
someplace in central Wyoming. 1 looked at the clock and 1 said
to these guys, all of my young colleagues, I said, "My goodness,
there's still two and a half hours to work. Let's go do
something." So we all piled in the car and we were traveling
across the desert, and we came to a great big wash and got stuck.
We were a mile, two miles from the highway, I could tell you.
There must have been eight or nine of us, 1 suppose, and
everybody hopped out and tried to get the car out. The car
wasn't going to get out, that was quite clear; nor was 1 going to
make my plane. So 1 said, "What we'll do is I'm going to go to
the highway, which was only a couple of miles away, and I'll
hitch a ride into town and have a tow car sent out to help you
out with the thing. In the meantime, then I'll get on the
airplane. "
So some of the guys said, "Okay, we'll go with you." So
everybody ran for the two miles, and everybody was trotting
along. When we got there, here with all these guys, I said,
"Hey, I'll never get a ride with all these people standing
around. You guys hide in the bushes." I went out there and
started to thumb a ride.
Well, you can imagine what they did with that. I'll tell
you, when you got through with that, that was the funniest show
I've ever seen in my life. Then they had me running for the
airplane and all this sort of--. But to see these guys on the
stage looking out from these artificial bushes [laughs]--. God,
it was funny. It was absolutely a tremendous thing.
Lage: I think you wrote that incident up in your journal.
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Leopold: Did I?
Lage: I read that. The Jack wasn't adequate in the truck, and then you
put on--
Poems. Sones. Literary Allusions
Leopold: What they did in the Pick and Hammer show was absolutely
wonderful. Veil, then we used to write poetry to each other.
Every time that you got an opportunity, you wrote a poem.
Then we had little procedures, or little sayings, most of
which I invented, of course. For example, we would start out in
some place in camp, and I would say, "All right, everybody." The
idea was you took your hat off, you see, and hold it down like
this and say, "Hats off to science!" Everybody yells, "Hats off
to science!" and off we go. Little things of that kind that were
really a lot of fun.
And then, of course, there was a lot of music. 1 always had
a guitar, and we would often play these Pick and Hammer show
songs that were very funny.
Lage: So the Pick and Hammer show songs lived on, it sounds like.
Leopold: Oh, yes, you bet they do.
Lage: Did people write them down?
Leopold: They were all published, but many people forgot. Very few people
remember back that far to be able to sing them, but they were
really wonderful.
1 got a letter just yesterday from a man that 1 had brought
over from England to work for the Water Resources Division. 1
have told you that I always wanted someone from Europe or from
another country to be on our staff at all times. 1 wrote him a
few weeks ago --he's now re tired- -and I said, "Say, what are you
doing about literary allusions?" He knows exactly what I mean,
because what we used to do is this: 1 would send him notes about
things you picked up in your reading that were little quotes from
the literature that you read that had something to do with
hydrology. For example, I can remember very well finding one of
the best ones 1 know in Shakespeare. I was writing, you see,
about water in channels. Here's one from Gertrude Stein, for
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Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
example, that we quote here. This is one of the literary
allusions, and here's another one.
You quote them in one of your journal articles?
No, they were really put together for this kind of thing. 1 was
writing a book and I wanted to include them under the chapter
titles. Here, for example. Under the title of the chapter is a
quotation from Shakespeare. This is about channels, you see.
Shakespeare wrote on Venus and Adonis, and you can imagine what
he was writing about. "Rain added to a river that is rank,
perforce will force it overbank its bank." You see what 1 mean?
So you traded those?
We traded those, you see. They were referred to in my stuff as
"literary allusions." Allusions to something that you're
thinking about. Well, George knew exactly what I was talking
about. He said, "I'm still collecting literary allusions."
And then there was one poem that 1 wrote that had to do with
a field trip that 1 took with two geologists and a very famous
soils man. Some friends were writing a kind of a little memorial
to one of these people that were on the trip. They wrote to me
and said, "Have you got anything to add?" I said, "Sure, I'll
send you a copy of the poem that I wrote about this trip," again
kidding ourselves.
Then there was a Pick and Hammer show about a canoe trip
that I took. I took one of my botanist friends. I said, "Okay,
we're going to do a canoe trip on the Shenandoah." We drove up
to some of the middle parts of the Shenandoah. Four or five
days, we floated down the river.
Well, apparently there must have been some things that
happened that I didn't remember at all. It had something to do
with my drinking, it had something to do with my wanting to sit
on a stool or on a log or something. But boy, when they got
through with that at the Pick and Hammer show, they really made
something out of it.
And you weren't even sure it ever happened.
I didn't remember all these details that this other fellow had
recalled, that you could make sound very funny. And they did,
too.
Do you think that still goes on?
continuing tradition?
Is the Pick and Hammer show a
167
Leopold: I understand that the Pick and Hammer show these days are
sometimes good, but not as uniformly good as they used to be.
The Menlo Park office tried to pick it up, the Denver office
tried to pick it up, and it Just never stuck in those offices.
Lage: You need some talented people, it seems to me, to really put it
together.
Leopold: Oh, they were very talented people. My God. Oh, yes. Some of
the songs that were written were just absolutely terrific.
Oh, and there were little things that you'd never hear
about. For example, I had a practice over twenty years: every
time that I published a paper, 1 brought my secretary a box of
candy. Just a little thing, but there were customs that we
developed that were very nice.
Field Trips: Canoeing. Surveying. Mapmaking
Lage: Anything in general on your field trips that you'd want to
mention? Sort of the fun side of it?
Leopold: When we were in Wyoming for a good long time, after we worked all
day we practically always--. When we were working on the eastern
side of the Wind River Mountains, and it was always springtime
when the water was high, we would run the rivers in the canoe.
We nearly lost a couple of guys on one of these trips, but that
was the fun. When you got through working about four o'clock in
the afternoon, then you'd go about and put the canoe in, and
somebody drove around and picked the people up down below.
Lage: You keep referring in your journals to "the river boys."
Leopold: Yes. Because we did a lot of canoeing. Even the bow of the boat
had the label "River Boys" on it.
Lage: Were they the same people that went over and over, basically?
Leopold: To some extent. Bob Myrick and Bill Emmet t and 1 were the
principal ones. And then there were people that joined us at
times. But these were the two people that had been my assistants
for a long, long time. Bill Emmet t was one of the people I sent
to school to get a Ph.D. , so he and I had been working together,
oh, for thirty years I guess, something like that. Later on, of
course, he was no longer my assistant but my equal colleague.
168
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
It sounds as if there was a mix of fun and a lot of observation.
Yes. And there was an awful lot to be learned because both of
these aen, particularly Bill Enmett, were fantastic in surveying,
and levelling is a lot of what we did. Surveying. Bill is
extremely good on the plane table, but surveying was really what
we did. I introduced the idea, for example, of everybody carries
the same kind of notebook, and this has spread through all my
colleagues and all y students. Everybody carries the same kind
of notebook that's done in a certain way.
How did the journals and the notebook relate?
The notebooks are completely technical, and the journals are
simply a personal story, if you like.
But you do have, in the journals, some sketches of how the river
is laid out, and a bit about what you're doing.
Yes, but the technical data, all of our surveying data, are in
the notebooks . But the kinds of things that we did- - . Did I
ever show you any of the maps?
No.
They're really beautiful things. [takes out maps] Here's one.
Would you tend to be the mapmaker, or did everybody get in on
that?
No, 1 tended to be the mapmaker. The other boys were rodmen
for me. But 1 have always felt that mapping is one of the most
important things that we do. So John Miller and I pretty well
got this started. This is the kind of stuff that really has to
go with the notebooks, because the notes that go along with this
are there in the notebooks, you see. This just gives you an idea
of the kind of stuff that we did.
You must have quite a collection,
already named places?
'Forsaken Gully." Were these
Oh, no, many of them I named myself. Oh, no. You ought to see
the one in the Czechoslovakian journal. You read this article in
Czech; it says, "Dumb Cowboy Wash." [laughter] Another will
say, "Meet Mustache Wash." Oh, on and on and on. We made up
names for these things. 1 always told people you shouldn't
number things; you should name them. Name them something that
reminds you. "Aching Back Wash," for example.
169
Lage: You'll never forget it.
Leopold: You'll never forget it. But if you had labeled it a number,
you'll forget it immediately. But I can tell you about every one
of these places where we were, because they've all got names that
I know exactly what they meant.
Lage: No wonder you tried to get out in the field frequently.
Leopold: Oh, yes. That was a good time.
First River Raft Trip: Down Lodore Canvon with Herb Skibitzke
Lage: You took a lot of river trips, it sounds like, on rafts.
Leopold: Later on. 1 told you that Herb Skibitzke was one of my closest
friends who taught me to fly. He has been an expert pilot all
his life. He flew in World War II for the Navy. When he got
through, there just wasn't anything he didn't know about flying,
and he also knew a hell of a lot about the Navy.
I decided we were going to take a river trip about 1963 so I
picked one of the trips on a commercial expedition. I'd never
been on one before, never on a commercial expedition. We'd
always just used canoes. But we were going down Lodore Canyon,
which is one of the places that John Wesley Powell really lost
his shirt. The first part he called Disaster Falls, where he
lost a boat relatively early in his trip. And then there
followed below that what he named "Hell's Half -Mile." I wanted
to see this thing.
So anyhow, we went down there. I had recently sent a team
to the Amazon to make the first measurement of the Amazon. They
had just gotten back, and they had this big machine that was an
echo depth- sounder. I said, "Fine. I'm going to take the echo
depth- sounder with me and we're going to measure the depth of
this river as we go."
Lage: As you go down Disaster Falls?
Leopold: Yes. So we started out on the trip, and I took this depth-
sounder out, and Herb Skibitzke was with me. After that he never
wanted to go on a river trip again. We tried to run the machine
and it wouldn't run. Well, Herb is an absolutely superb
170
Lage:
Lage:
electronics man, a real expert, so I said to him, "Herb, this
thing isn't running. You'd better take it apart and fix it." So
at camp that night he took the damn thing apart. It had all this
wonderful inside of it that I'd never seen before. He said,
"Gee, Luna, without tools I can't fix this thing." He reached in
his pocket and he pulled out a little piece of wire about that
long, and something that he was holding in his hand like this.
He held it to his mouth and he said, "I wish you would send me by
parachute" a certain this and that, and then he named the tools
that he wanted. He said, "I want them to come into this canyon
at 6:15 tonight. He put this thing away.
And, at 6:15, here in this big box canyon, I saw this little
airplane come in and I saw the flaps go down, and here it came
right over the top of the trees , and out came a parachute with a
little box in it. The parachute was made out of a sheet off the
motel bedroom. So 1 walked over there, 1 picked up the box,
brought it back. Herb took the tools out, and he started fooling
with this thing. He said, "Luna, it's incredible. This thing
will never work. As a matter of fact, 1 don't think any of this
thing is going to work."
The next day, we started down through Hell's Half -Mile. The
main boatman, who was supposed to be a real expert, lost the
motor, and then he lost an oar, and all of a sudden we were at
the mercy of the river. There were two of us at midship. Herb
Skibitzke was a great big man, and he and 1 grabbed the oars, and
we started pulling the damn oars. You ought to see the movie of
it. My God.
There's a movie of it?
Leopold: Yes, because at that moment, when we grabbed the oars, the movie
camera was still running, and it dropped on the floor of the boat
and was still going. You see this thing with the movie camera
jumping up and down. It looks up and you see us at the oars.
I'll have to give you one of these tapes; it's absolutely
terrific.
Well, we got past this terrible rapid, and Herb said to me,
"This will never do. Why don't you leave it up to me? I'll get
you some boats and we'll run our own."
He didn't like the way that the outfit ran the boats.
Leopold: No, he didn't like any part of it. But we liked one of the
boatmen .
Lage:
Was this the Hatch company?
171
Leopold: It was the Hatch company.
Lage: They did all the early trips, I think.
Leopold: Yes.
At the end of the trip, I went to Smuss Allen, who was our
boatman on this trip, and I said, * Smuss, how would you like to
run a boat trip for Herb and me? I will try to straighten it out
with Hatch." He said, "I've worked for Hatch for a long time,
but you straighten it out with him, and if he'll let me go, I
will." So I went to Hatch and I said, "I'd like to hire Smuss
Allen when you don't use him, and I would like to work out with
you your schedule, so that during times when you're not using him
at all, then I will hire him."
Well, Hatch wasn't very happy about this, but he said,
"Okay." But after the first river trip that we took, then all of
a sudden Herb had these boats. Everything was surplus, you see.
Everything was surplus. He got everything from the Navy. We had
airplanes, we had boats, we had everything, and now we had a
boatman. After our first trip, Smuss decided he didn't want to
go back to Hatch, so we hired him permanently. So he worked for
us.
Lage: You could keep him busy enough?
Leopold: Oh, God, yes, because he had to fix the boats. For example, when
we went to Alaska, he hauled the whole thing from Phoenix,
Arizona, to the North Slope of Alaska with the boats and
everything, for us to take our trip. Herb and I flew up there,
you see, but hell, look at how much there was to do. We had to
carry all this equipment up there and carry it all back.
Lage: You did a lot of trips in the sixties, it seems from your
j ournal .
Leopold: Oh, yes, you bet. So anyhow, that got us into the boating
business. So then we made the thing work, you see. We got a
depth sounder that really worked, a nice, simple one. The stuff
that we got was just marvelous.
172
Research on the River Trips
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
No one had ever measured the depth of these rapids. No one knew
how deep they were. No one had ever really taken the trouble to
study them, so that on that big trip down the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado (that was ay biggest expedition), I think I made six
thousand measurements of the depth.
How did you do that while you were going through the rapids?
I'll show you how. Turn that off for a minute.
Okay. [tape interruption- -shows aerial photographs]
These are all depths.
So this is the Green River.
This is the Green River. It had never been measured before.
What we did was, one person kept track of where we were, and the
other person wrote down the numbers that were being read off the
machine .
How did the machine function?
what's that?
How did the machine function?
going down quickly?
1 mean, are you in the boat, and
You're going down, and it's sending an echo signal off the bed.
A radar type of thing. Then it measures the depth, you see, and
it was showing on the dial so that we could read it. I said,
"We'll just keep reading it." So they kept reading it about
every fifteen seconds or ten seconds. But what we did when I had
my air force is Herb went out and photographed these rivers .
[shows photos]
I see.
So we'd simply unroll the photographs as we went. We could tell
every rock. You could see every bush, so you knew exactly where
you were all the time.
173
Leopold: Then written on here--. You can't see them yet, but open up a
few. This is what I'm giving to the Bancroft. [unrolls photos]
Lage: Wonderful. Would these also be of interest to study how the
river changes over time?
Leopold: Yes. Now, here, those photographs were taken in the field.
Those are the depths, and you can see how quickly we were reading
them. And now I've transferred all of those onto another big map
that they've made for me.
There's so much duplication because the airplane has to fly
around. It's really quite continuous, as a matter of fact.
There. You see you pick it up again on the next photograph.
Lage: Yes, I see.
Leopold: But to have our own airplanes, you see, and then Herb set up a
wonderful photographic laboratory in his own office , so these
were made in Herb's office.
Lage: And then you got your pilot's license. Did you do a lot of
flying?
Leopold: Yes. Yes, we went to Alaska, we went to--. We went a lot of
places.
Lage: Which rivers in Alaska were you--
Leopold: We did a wilderness trip on the John River in the Brooks Range, a
very uncomfortable trip, but a wonderful trip. We had a
wonderful time.
a
Leopold: After every river trip, I wrote a scientific paper about it, a
procedure different from that of most field people. For example,
this paper is a comparison of two rivers that we ran. One was
the John River in Alaska, and one was the Middle Fork of the
Salmon in Idaho. This paper, which I called "Observations on
Unmeasured Rivers," is to check out to see how much information I
could get by simply taking a river trip without any data except
what I could observe. I compared that on the Middle Fork of the
Salmon, where there's lots and lots of data, but I didn't look at
the data until I came back, and I made a comparison between what
I could do just going down the river, and what I could do with
many, many years of record, and showed that I did very well
indeed.
174
Lage : Which helped you validate- -
Leopold: Then you could validate some of the flow characteristics of the
Alaska River, where there were no records now, but might be some
time in the future.
Lage: You say that you differed from others--
Leopold: Veil, because most people go on a field trip and they don't write
a paper about it; it's just for fun. When 1 went on a river
trip, 1 wrote something about it. Here, for example. Yes,
here's a comparison of river trip observations against gauging
station observations, and you see how close they are. They're
really very close indeed.
Lage: Yes, very much so.
Leopold: The purpose here is to show what 1 could do on a river trip, just
going once.
Lage: It sounds like a very valid thing to do when you really have no
idea how good your data is.
Leopold: And then our expedition down the Grand Canyon. I wrote this
paper about the Grand Canyon.
Lage: "The Rapids and the Pools: Grand Canyon."
Leopold: Here's a picture of one of our boats, you see.
Lage: Yes. "Types of waves and causes of rapids."
Leopold: And then in this paper I discuss the question of what forms the
rapids, which 1 try to describe here. Again, you see, we had an
airplane flying over us all the time. Here are the depth
measurements in one section of the river, you can see. This
diagram shows different kinds of rapids. What forms the rapids
under various circumstances.
Lage: How much of the time were you on the side of the river making
these observations? The thing that comes to my mind is what a
quick observer you are, because I think of the boat just moving
down the river and you're picking up all this information. Did
you get out and observe?
Leopold: Yes. But for the most part, in Alaska, every time we crossed a
tributary we got out and measured it. Now, that took us several
hours, but to a great extent there were all kinds of observations
that I was making. For example, I was trying to compute the
175
speed of the water, you see, at different places. There were
only a few places in the Grand Canyon where that had been
measured. So we learned a lot from our river trips.
John Weslev Powell and the Intrigue of Unanswered Questions
Lage: This is a wonderful book, The Colorado Region and John Weslev
Powell . Was this trip made with the idea of contributing to this
book?
Leopold: No. As a matter of fact, later on, some years afterwards, Mary
Rabbit, who is a geological historian in Washington, had been
working for a long time on Major Powell's life history. She and
the director, I think, decided that it would be good to publish a
book to commemorate the founding of the Geological Survey by John
Wesley Powell. So that this book is the commemoration of the
foundation of the survey, and it is really a tribute to John
Wesley Powell from the survey.
Lage: 1 notice that you, in your journal, were bringing up some of
Powell's observations and trying to prove or add to them. What
did you think of his observations after you went down the
Colorado River yourself?
Leopold: The paper I'm writing right now goes back to John Wesley Powell
and what the geologists have done with his ideas since then. Not
much.
Lage: They haven't done much with his--?
Leopold: Well, there are some very important problems in geomorphology
that people have skipped over, that were brought up by Powell
when he went down the Grand Canyon. The problem of base level,
primarily. This is the matter that I sort of followed up, off
and on at various times in my life. It's greatly oversimplified
in geologic teaching, greatly oversimplified, and nobody- -
students are not even told how complicated the matter is because
nobody puts it in quantitative terms, which I've tried to do.
This is my 150th paper, I guess- -the only time I ever wrote a
scientific paper in order to say that I don't know how to answer
the question.
Lage: That's a good one for your 150th.
Leopold: Yes. I don't know how to answer it.
176
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
But you think it's a question that needs to be examined?
Oh, I should say so. A very important question.
Do you give some guideposts on what directions to take towards an
answer?
Yes. The problem basically is this. The reason I got into
geology is because of this question. When 1 was about fourteen
years old, I was working as a field assistant to a scientist on
the Navajo reservation. I was working under an engineer who
said, "If we take these gullies that are cutting in this
landscape, and we build a check dam, behind the check dam the
sediment will accumulate and it will go all the way up the wash
until the whole thing is filled up." I said to him, "That's not
what you observe. What you observe is that it goes up a little
ways and stops." "Well," he said, "you haven't got time. You
give it time . "
So I put in a check dam myself, and we surveyed it over
years .
Where did you put in your check dam?
In New Mexico. John Miller and I put in these check dams, and we
surveyed them over a period of years. And then finally I wrote a
paper about that several years ago. But we had observed for only
fifteen or twenty years, so I went to Israel for the purpose of
looking at the dams that were built two thousand years ago by the
Nabateans. 1 showed that they're exactly the same as we saw in
New Mexico after five years .
The same pattern of sedimentation?
Exactly the same pattern. That's what I'm writing about now.
This is what happens; there was no question about that, and 1
proved that time is not the problem. The hydraulic problem
basically is why the gradient of the deposition is so small. Why
is it so small? Fifty percent of the original slope. So that's
what I'm writing about, and I'm simply saying, "I don't know." I
s imp ly don ' t know .
So what we did is this: several years ago I asked Bill
Emmet t to help me. We went to one of my friends in Wyoming and I
said, "I'd like to divert one of your irrigation ditches and make
a little channel and put in a check dam so I can get some real
measurements. Not just what happened; I want to make
measurements of velocity and depth and width." He said, "I've
already got one in. Why don't you go measure that?" So we went
177
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
over there. We now have a set of very carefully done
observations on a little check dan, and what I'm writing about
now is I 'a saying, "Here are the observations, but they don't
answer the questions.* In other words, I have all the
observations I made on this little check dam, but I still can't
compute what the slope of the river ought to be.
So you can't find a pattern that would predict another- -
No, there's no formula that predicts it. Something is going on
that we don't understand. Don't understand at all, and that's
what I'm writing about, in the hopes that I can get some young
geomorpho legist to pick up the problem and say, "I know how to do
that." Because I can't do it. I've spent thirty years at it and
I still don't know. I've got file after file of studies of this
matter, but until we went to this little dam in the field in
Wyoming, there weren't any measurements at all. There weren't
any measurements of velocity or the depth.
But a friend of mine has a larger dam in southern Colorado,
and I'm going to go down there this summer, and we're going to
make the same kind of measurements as we did in Wyoming, on a
little larger place. It's a very subtle problem, but we simply
don't know why it does what it does.
I suppose that's what makes it all very intriguing,
questions that can't be answered.
It's very intriguing, yes.
The
Choosing the Important Problems in Geomorpholoev
Lage: Did this kind of study about the sediment have something to do
with the dams on the Colorado? Does it relate to the problem
that you did get somewhat involved in, of should there be dams on
the Colorado?
Leopold: No. That's another problem that's closely related, and still an
unsolved problem. Back when I was first with the Bureau of
Reclamation, as a matter of fact, there was started this very
intensive study of the sediment in Lake Mead after the dam had
been built about ten years. When I went down twenty years later,
when I went down the Colorado, we came into Lake Mead. I said,
"By George, I'm going to see what the delta did," because we
studied it years ago. So I made measurements all the way down
the river as we went over the delta.
178
Lage: The delta?
Leopold: The delta is the underwater deposition, which also turns out to
have a gradient about 50 percent of the original slope of the
river. The tope of the delta is underwater. So really, nobody's
measured that either. Nobody's even taken the trouble to make
these measurements .
Lage: And they seem so crucial.
Leopold: They Just don't seem to be able to pick important problems, in my
opinion. That's in geomorphology. Though 1 found that the
sediment had indeed, the front had moved down the Colorado River
about twenty miles, 1 guess, something like that. But 1 mapped
it all the way to the end. And no one's ever taken velocity
measurements to see what happens. And again, no one's asked the
question, why should the deposition be at that gradient? Nobody
knows .
Anyhow, there are some very important problems in
geomorphology. For example, 1 have said to all my students--!
don't think anyone's ever done it- -I said, "I would like to
suggest that you do the same thing I do and have a private file
in your office that's labeled "Idea File," in which you keep a
record of what you currently think are the most important
problems of your science. Every once in a while take that file
out and ask yourself this question. Keep in mind what I'm
telling you, that you can waste your life on three small
problems. Every once in a while you ought to go back and say,
"What do I think is really important to work on?" Here are two
problems that I have in my file , and have had for thirty years .
No one's ever worked on them. So it's peculiar.
179
IX INVOLVEMENT IN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES AND ORGANIZATIONS
Basic Hvdrological Research and Environmental Problems
Lage : Do you pick problems at all because they relate to, say,
environmental issues, or is that not the reason? I mean, is the
reason not that practical?
Leopold: No. Some of the things that I've done for the environment are
simply outgrowths of something I've done elsewhere. It really
works the other way. You can't solve environmental problems
without knowing something about basic process. My job has always
been basic process, and I can then apply our findings to things
of an environmental manner.
Lage: But the basic process is the main--
Leopold: That's the difficulty. You take the problem of global warming,
you take the problem of the ozone layer, weather forecasting, you
name it. We were wonderful at now being able to make
observations, but we may not be keeping up with our theoretical
knowledge of why this phenomenon is as we see it. I just
mentioned in my field two of the phenomena which are simply not
known.
We still argue about global warming. We've had beautiful
observations on the increase of carbon dioxide, but we are not
really quite sure now how our mathematical models of the climate
take that piece of information and turn it into a result that you
can operate on. As you know, there's a lot of discussion, and
the present administration doesn't want to pay any attention to
it. They say it's like acid rain; we need more research instead
of going and doing something about it.
Lage: You mentioned the global warming in one of these Sierra Club
papers I looked at, in one of the Wilderness Conference books. I
hadn't realized that people had been talking about it that far
back. You were asked a question about the effect of man on
180
climate, and mentioned the increased carbon dioxide back in, oh,
it must have been '59, 1 think.
Leopold: You see, practically my whole life in geomorphology hag
concentrated on the effect of climatic change, what's happened to
rivers as the climate changed. That has been a very large
influence on my scientific work. So as far as I know, and I
don't nean to claia credit for it, as far as 1 know, I was the
first one who ever brought it up.
Lage: Brought up the global warming?
Leopold: No, the question of what would you do with the water supply
problem if you had a change of climate? 1 said this in a
conference at La Jolla, back in about 1956. Now lots of people
have gotten on top of that, but as far as I know, 1 was the first
one who asked that question.
Lage: The question that we're dealing with in California now?
Leopold: Yes, exactly. One short piece that you might be interested in
reading is the one that I called "A Reverence for Rivers . " Did
you ever see that?
Lage : No .
Leopold: It's a little, short paper. I was asked by Governor Brown to
give the keynote speech at the governor's drought conference in
1977. He sent Stewart Brandt to talk to me, and I asked Stewart,
"Why does he want me to do it?" "Because he knows that you'll
say something that he would like you to say but he won't say it."
So I said, "Don't build any more dams. Start conserving your
groundwater , " and a few things like that. Of course, nobody paid
any attention to it. It's only a one-page paper. It might be of
interest to you.
Aeencv Politics and Dams on the Colorado River
Lage: Let's talk a little more about your relationship with the
environmental movement. I came across something in the Sierra
Club Bulletin (1967) where David Brower, in an article or maybe
it's a speech about the Colorado River, says that he was told
that the USGS couldn't make sedimentary projections on the
Colorado. They were forbidden to make them. Is that anything
that rings a bell?
181
Leopold: Yes. You're quoting David Brower?
Lage: Yes. Who was quoting Hugh Nash.
Leopold: Who was quoting me.
Lage: Okay. What was that all about?
Leopold: The problem was, you see, that again and again, the Geological
Survey is pointing out scientific facts that the Bureau of
Reclamation doesn't like because it was going to interrupt their
development plan. You know the story of the Teton Dam. A year
before the Teton Dam failed, where they had $3 billion dollars in
loss, there was a memorandum written by more than one geologist
which was aimed at the Bureau of Reclamation saying, "Look, this
is wrong. You're putting that dam in a very unsafe place."
This always happens in a department such as Department of
Interior. There's always a tendency to, at the top level, not to
allow the bureaus seem to compete with each other, nor to be
critical of each other.
The problem came up in this way. Dave Brower finally
agreed, and he's been very unhappy with it ever since, that if
they would not build the dam at Echo Park, in Dinosaur National
Monument, that he would not have the Sierra Club object to
building one at Glen Canyon. And of course, we've been sorry
about that ever since, but anyhow, that's what we knew at the
time.
Lage : Do you know anything about why he made that agreement? Were you
involved in that at all?
Leopold: Yes, because we were all very much interested in saving the
national monument, but no one had ever thought what would happen
if you put another dam in the Grand Canyon. Then later on, when
they saw what was going to get flooded, then everybody was sorry.
But there were a lot of other reasons --legal reasons and
administrative reasons- -why the dam was probably going to be
built no matter what any of us said.
Lage: Did you advise Dave Brower in the matter of Glen Canyon Dam?
Leopold: No. Anyhow, as the water rose in Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon
Dam, the water was going to come up practically to the base of
Rainbow Bridge, the great sandstone arch, the most famous in the
world. Dave Brower was looking for ways to- -and Rainbow Bridge
was a national monument again- -for ways to protect it. He came
182
In the first place, in some manner or another, a geologist
was sent by the Geological Survey to look at it, and he wrote a
report, again which the Bureau of Reclamation didn't like. That
was kind of squashed. There was some talk about whether they
ought to put a dan in the canyon downstream from the arch to keep
the water from going up to the base of the arch. The question
Brower brought to me was, what would happen if we put a dam
there? I replied to him that I couldn't do this officially. So
this was all done sub rosa.
Lage : You couldn't comment officially?
Leopold: No. I couldn't make an official statement because the Bureau of
Reclamation would raise hell with the director and all that sort
of thing. By private communication, I told Brower what my ideas
were so that he was getting a certain amount of information from
the survey. The directors of the survey have always been very
squeamish about facing 'off other bureaus in the Department of the
Interior even for good scientific reason. Unfortunately, you see
that there's an awful lot of things that go on in government
where even agencies in the same department are really doing
opposite things and they're doing things that are clearly
antithetical.
So I made an estimate for the Sierra Club in an unofficial
way on the Rainbow Bridge matter, and it didn't come out in the
way that all this trouble has come out recently. The Geological
Survey got themselves in a hell of a spot, you know, a year ago.
Lage: Regarding Rainbow Bridge?
Leopold: No, no. Regarding advising organizations on scientific matters.
There's a member of the Geologic Division whose name is Howard
Vilshire, in Menlo Park, and as I understand the story, he had
been working, as many people had, on the question of off -road
vehicles and their effect on the desert. Someone in one of the
conservation groups asked Vilshire to go on a field trip for one
day, which he did on a weekend, on his own time, to talk about
the problem of what his research had shown.
I think it was the Forest Service that brought the matter up
to the director of the Geological Survey. The director ordered
Dr. Vilshire to not only cease and desist, but he was going to
take him off the payroll for a month and give him an official
letter of reprimand, so this has become a great issue now as to
what is freedom of speech. So now within the last couple of
183
months there now la an underground letter formed in the
Geological Survey to report on this whole matter of freedom of
speech and what you can and can't do. Boy, the scientific
community went up in smoke about it. They said, "Look, the man's
giving his discussion on his own time on things that are not
affecting the Geological Survey." The director never did back
down, but he got in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Testifying in Arizona vs. California
Lage : Did things like that come up with you also?
Leopold: It did in one respect, but that was a little bit different.
About 1958 I was asked to testify before the United States
Supreme Court in the case of Arizona versus California, the most
famous law case ever tried in the field of water.
Lage : What was that about?
Leopold: The case concerned what water in the Colorado system was to be
included under the 1922 compact, what water rights do the Indians
have, what water in ephemeral streams is included, and other
issues .
1 was asked by California to appear, and I said, "I will
appear but it may not help you at all. I will talk about the
facts as I know them, but whether it hurts California or helps
California, or hurts Arizona or helps Arizona, I'm not able to
say." But I said, "Further, everything that I say I'm going to
publish in the scientific literature, and only on that condition
will I appear." So I did, and the paper which I wrote in that
testimony is called "Statistical Methods applied to a Water
Supply Problem."
This raised a hell of a big to-do because the Salt Lake City
paper had a banner headline saying, "Leopold Takes Two Million
Acre-Feet Out of the Colorado River." The governors of several
states sent delegations of their state engineers to Washington to
talk to the secretary of the Interior about discharging me.
Lage: What was the gist of your testimony that was so controversial?
Leopold: That the Bureau of Reclamation should have known that their
estimate of the amount of water in the Colorado might have been
wrong, as it turned out to be wrong. I said there was a
reasonable chance that the figure was 13 million acre -feet or 17
184
million, rather than the 15 million acre -feet the Bureau was
estimating. So the Salt Lake City newspaper said I took 2
million acre -feet out.
I was telling the Supreme Court that the numbers could be
wrong, you see. Everything that the Bureau of Reclamation had
argued about was dependent upon their estimate of how much water
there was. But the records have shown gradually that they were
wrong, that they were overestimating. So that when I said to the
Supreme Court, "Look, the number is probably not right and that
can make a lot of difference," well, they had this conference
with the secretary of the Interior.
Lage: It was Fred Seaton at the time, as I recall.
Leopold: Seaton, yes. In the next couple of days, Seaton came out with a
press conference in which he said- -and no one's ever said it
before or since- -"The Geological Survey is a scientific agency in
which they're supposed to give their best opinion. That's what
Leopold did, and I'm backing him. You're not going to fire him."
A very clear statement about what that secretary felt the survey
ought to do.
Lage: Was there support to get him to make that statement? Did you
yourself have to appeal to him, or your director?
Leopold: I don't know.
Lage: You yourself didn't?
Leopold: I did not, no.
Lage : But there may have been someone behind the scenes .
Leopold: I don't know the details of how that came about.
Lage: I would think that kind of pressure would create an atmosphere in
the agency that would really stifle intellectual freedom.
Leopold: That, of course, was one of the things that I was fighting for
all this time, to see to it that people were given a chance to
write what they thought, regardless of what the department said,
and for the most part, it was very successful.
185
Pressures for River Development vs. Scientific Fact and Public
Interest
Lage: Did you get any acre involved in advising the Sierra Club on the
Colorado River issue?
Leopold: Yes, indeed. We weren't advising the Bureau of Reclamation, 1
can tell you. We were writing scientific papers. Yes, indeed.
As a result of ny testimony, my friend Walter Langbein
continued to work on that same problem, and he wrote a paper that
was a real eye-opener to everybody. He showed, from scientific
analysis, that by continuing to build more storage dams you don't
increase the amount of water at all, but you decrease the amount
of water, which was the opposite of what everybody thought. The
reason is that in the problem of providing storage, the purpose
of storage, as you imagine, is to smooth out the record so that
in dry years you can take some of the stored water and increase
your supply. You store it in wet years, water that you don't
really need now. Now, as you make more storage, then you are
basically increasing your supply by storing water so you can use
it in a later time, but the more storage you build, the less
efficient it is.
Lage: The more evaporation?
Leopold: And you get to the point where the slight increase in the amount
of water is balanced by the evaporation, so that you start losing
instead of increasing. No one ever said that before. Here was
something that really flew in the face of the Bureau of
Reclamation, you see.
Lage: Isn't that point something that Brower used rather extensively in
his arguments against Grand Canyon dams?
Leopold: Yes, that certainly came up.
fl
Lage: Did you have any dealings with Floyd Dominy [Commissioner of
Reclamation]?
Leopold: Oh, yes. Not personal dealings. I can remember one time I was
on the airplane, on a commercial airplane, and close by me was
sitting the famous Congressman Aspinall from Colorado. He was
traveling with Dominy. I heard them say, "Oh, yes. There's that
son of a bitch Leopold." They knew that what we were doing at
186
the survey was not to their liking at all. Personally, I had
practically nothing to do with him.
Lage: You didn't have a professional contact?
Leopold: No. I met him in meetings and that sort of thing, but no, it was
not that.
Lage: There was no love lost, it sounds like.
Leopold: Veil, because people like that, you see, don't want scientific
facts, because it gets in their way. You can see this all the
time.
Lage: Dominy seemed to have kind of a crusading spirit about all of
this.
Leopold: Indeed, yes. A hell of a lot of those reclamation people did.
Lage: What was their- -
Leopold: Veil, because there was a group of western congressmen who really
wanted money spent in their state, and the one way you could get
money, of course, was to build dams, and you'd get a lot of
money. So that a tremendous amount of federal money was put into
states in the water program that was running between about 1960
and 1975 or 1980, and as it gradually became clearer that there
were a lot of troubles with doing this, then the Congress began
to back away from this. They thought, "This is not really as
good as we thought it was going to be." With the environmental
movement, even the Corps of Engineers got backed up to the wall.
But when you had people like Senator Kerr and Congressman
Aspinall, people like that who are really getting a lot of
mileage out of federal money spent on water, the Corps of
Engineers was going wild and so was the Soil Conservation
Service, so was the Bureau of Reclamation. It took a while to
find out that this had many disadvantages.
Then as the environmental movement got under way, and this
came more to the public's attention, the public began to perceive
that this is not the way they really wanted to spend their money,
just as now in the question of timber harvesting the public is
beginning to see that if you chop down all of the old- growth
forest in the Northwest, that there's going to be a tremendous
loss to the public in some manner or another, even if people
can't quite see exactly what that loss is going to be. That's a
big shift, you see, in the public attitude.
187
Advice to Secretary of Interior Udall
Lage: You had some discussion with Secretary of Interior Udall, you had
mentioned, regarding the Grand Canyon.
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: Tell me a little bit about how you came to know him and what--
Leopold: In the first place, you understand that my father's writings were
very famous, he was a famous man, and Stewart Udall felt that he
was going to be the conservation secretary of the Interior, and
indeed he was. He did some wonderful things. Later on Mo
[Morris] Udall more or less took it over, and he became the
conservation spokesman in the Congress. But because they're both
from Arizona, they both, as well as Senator Goldwater, were
backing a dam at Marble Canyon in the Grand Canyon, and they were
going to push it through. It was about 1966, it must have been.
Lage: Were you still chief?
Leopold: Yes, I was still chief. It was rather embarrassing. I think I
told you that Udall knew me, but he didn't know my director. I
would often get a call from his office saying, "Come on over for
lunch," or something, but then I had to rush up to the director
and say, "I don't know what he's going to talk about but here's
what I think, and I'll be back immediately and tell you what
happened. "
Lage: So what kinds of things would he talk to you about?
Leopold: Well, this was one. I came into his office and he had his feet
up on the desk and he was chewing an apple. He said, "Luna,
you've been down the Grand Canyon. Is it worth saving?" I
looked at him and said, "Well, Mr. Secretary, if you want to save
it for a bunch of damn tourists who are going to mess the place
up," I said, "no, it's not worth it. But if you are going to
make a real name for yourself as a conservationist, which I know
you'd like to do, the one thing that will make you famous for the
rest of time is if you come out against the dam in the Grand
Canyon." Then we talked a little about it, and sure enough, two
weeks later he came out in public and said he was against the
dam. That killed it. Without the secretary of the Interior in
favor of it, it was not going to go.
188
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
I talked to him about quite a- - . That was certainly the
most dramatic, and I'm not sure how much say I had. Maybe he was
leaning to it, but there was no hint up to that moment that there
was anything except complete support for the dam. I think that I
may have just pushed him over the edge, that he saw that that was
not going to be to his credit.
Can you remember other things that he'd call you in about?
[laughs] I can remember more than once I got a call that he
wanted to have lunch with me. He had a lunch room that was a
very, very large room with a very, very long table, and very
often we would be served alone in this very large room. The next
day I got a bill: $2.20 or something like that, for lunch.
You're kidding.
I couldn't believe it. I don't know. For some reason. The
things that happen in the government are just--
[ laughing] That's wonderful.
Did you get so that you felt friendly with him, or was it
always kind of a formal--
No, he certainly felt very friendly to me, called me by my first
name. I never felt like I could talk to him by his first name.
I talked to Mr. Secretary. But I had lots of contact, of course,
with people on his staff at lower levels. Immediately below him,
and his personal staff, and the undersecretary, and the deputy
undersecretary.
Yes, sure. Nathaniel Reed from Florida, of course. I'll think
of some other names. One of my own staff, Frank Clarke, a very
close friend of mine, was asked to be the deputy undersecretary,
I think it was under Nat Reed, as a matter of fact.
Which actually was later; Reed was there under the Nixon
administration.
Yes, of course, and that's when I got into the Everglades
jetport.
Yes, which we're going to talk about, but let's finish up on the
Grand Canyon. On kind of a personal note, I notice that your
189
daughter had given congressional testimony about the Grand
Canyon?
Leopold: Yes. She made a big impression. She had been down the Grand
Canyon. Not on a trip with me; on another trip. She was about
thirteen or twelve or come thing like that, and she took it on
herself. She got admission to this hearing, got a place on the
program.
Lage : On her own?
Leopold: All by herself. I remember a couple of days after that- -I didn't
hear her talk, I read her talk- -I was flying with Herb. We
landed at Edmonton, Canada- -we were on our way to Alaska- -and I
heard my name called on the paging system. I went to the
telephone, and a person said, "Senator So-and-so wants to talk to
you." I said, "Very well, put him on." So he said, "Are you the
father of that girl that I heard a couple of days ago testify for
my committee?" I said, "Madelyn? Yes." "Well," he said, "that
was very impressive. She must come from somebody who knows
something. I wonder if you'd give me some advice," and on and on
and on.
Lage: He probably didn't realize she'd done this all on her own.
Leopold: 1 don't know, but 1 made it pretty clear that I had nothing to do
with it.
The First Environmental Impact Review: Everglades Jetoort
Lage: Shall we talk about the Everglades jetport? That sounds like a
very interesting tale involving a couple of different government
agencies. That was in 1969.
Leopold: Yes, that must have been about '69. I knew very little about the
Everglades problem, very little indeed. 1 was in Pinedale
[Wyoming] and 1 got a call from the undersecretary saying, "I
want you to do a job for me. 1 want you to go to Florida and
look into this whole business that we're very concerned about.
The Department of Transportation wants to build a big jetport
there which is going to be larger than John F. Kennedy jetport in
New York. We don't know what our position ought to be. We'd
like to have some advice." I said, "I'm busy, but if you'll wait
a week or two, I'll get over there."
Lage: Was this Russell Train, by chance?
190
Leopold: Yes. So I was told then by the deputy undersecretary that this
was going to be a Joint report between the Department of
Transportation, which was really behind the Jetport, and the
Department of Interior. Interior was involved because it was so
close to their land.
Lage: To the [Everglades] national park.
Leopold: Yes. Veil, a couple of weeks later I arrived there in Miami.
They took me to the park and flew me around in an airplane. They
put me in a jet boat, and we went all through the Everglades.
Then I sat down and talked with all these people that knew
different things: the Fish and Wildlife people who knew about
birds, the Fish and Wildlife people who knew about big game, some
of them who had experience with fire, and then there were people
who had experience with the whole business of water. I wanted to
know about alligators, I wanted to know about the special species
that occur only there, like the Florida kite and things like
that.
So I said, "Very well, I see now what we should do. I have
to go back to Wyoming, and since all of you are really the
experts, I'd like to have you do this. I'm going to assign
portions of this to you, and when I come back in about three
weeks I want you to have written something on the order of three
pages on these things on which you are specialists." And I
assigned all these things.
Lage: Did you get to choose these people, or were they--
Leopold: They were all the people that were there. The people from the
Interior Department, people from the Park Service, people from
the Fish and Wildlife Service, people in transportation. I
wanted to know, for example, about the chances of killing birds
with an airplane. Not only killing birds but killing people, if
a big bird got in the engine. So I assigned these things. I
said, "Here's what I'd like to have you do." All these people
were experts, you see, so there should be no problem.
I came back in three weeks. I got them all together and I
said, "All right, now if you'll just hand me everything that
you've written, then I can start discussing with you how we're
going to edit it." I looked around, and nobody had written
anything. I said, "Wait a minute. This is August, and do you
know that the report is due on October 15 or something like that?
We only have six weeks to go to write a major report." I said,
"You haven't done anything?" No, they hadn't done anything.
191
Lage: Did they have a reason? Was there something behind it?
Leopold: No. Simply they Just didn't get to it. So I turned to the chief
man and 1 said, "All right. I want three secretaries full time.
I want a dictating machine. I want typewriters. I want an
artist. I'll write the report." So I sat down with a dictating
machine and I wrote a report.
Lage: Based on the verbal- -
Leopold: --most everything they told me. And, I'd seen a lot of stuff. I
remember I was in the middle of writing this, and everybody else
was looking at the television in this motel room. I walked up to
the room where they were watching, and I saw Neil Armstrong
taking the first step on the moon. I said, "I haven't got time
to look at that." I went back in the room and continued my work,
and in a day and a half I had a report written.
The wife of one of the men was a graphic artist, so I said,
"Okay, I'm going to make some sketches. Here is what I want to
illustrate. I want to illustrate fire and its relationship to
alligators, relationship to deer." I made out these sketches,
and I said, "I want you to put these in final form. Redo them
but in a nice way." She was very good; she did a good job.
Within three days, I had a report written, so I got back to
Washington.
Now, I had written a report but I had nothing about
transportation. I had lots about airplanes and lots about
pollution and lots about water and lots about birds and wildlife,
but nothing about how many airplanes, how much transportation, so
I called a representative of the Department of Transportation and
said, "Well, you know, now, we're only two weeks away. I've got
to have your input so I can work it into this edited draft."
Nothing happened, and nothing happened, until I made several
telephone calls. Finally the day arrived when the report was
due. The day before, I called this guy. I called him into my
office and I said, "Look, you have on my desk, tomorrow morning
at eight o'clock so I can do it tomorrow morning, whatever you're
going to submit. If you're not going to give me anything, I'm
going to take your name off the report. It's not going to be
your report at all. It's going to be my report." Eight o'clock
came and nothing happened so I took his name off the report and
had the top cover page retyped and sent it in to the secretary of
Interior. Well, this was the first environmental impact
statement, and it made quite a hit.
192
Here's where Nat Reed came in. Nat Reed at that time was
the scientific advisor to the governor of Florida [Claude Kirk] .
I think I told you that without the backing of the governor of
Florida, we would have gotten nowhere. Nat Reed persuaded the
governor that he was going to be smart to go along with this
report and say, "No, we're not going to have this jetport here,"
and he did. So there Nat Reed was very important in utilizing
our report to persuade the governor, "Don't fight it. Go with
it."
Lage: Was there any such thing as an environmental impact statement,
then? That was just about the time that NEPA had been passed.
Leopold: No, that was it. That was the original.
Lage: So that was found to be useful as a model, then.
Leopold: And was useful as a model. As a matter of fact, that's one of
the problems, is that they copied my report. The Council on
Environmental Quality required thereafter that everybody use the
same format that I used.
Lage: Russell Train then became head of the Council of Environmental
Quality.
Leopold: I'd forgotten that. Previously, he was head of the Conservation
Foundation.
Lage: Yes. Did you use the method of looking at the relative impact of
different alternatives courses of action?
Leopold: Yes. Definitely. Yes. Exactly. [tape interruption]
I must have bound it in here. Yes.
Lage: "Environmental Impact of Big Cypress Swamp Jetport" [U.S.
Department of Interior, September 1969]
Leopold: And that was where the name came from.
Lage: Even the name "Environmental Impact."
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: That's fascinating. Do you know the path by which this became
the model?
Leopold: No, I don't. No, except I know that the CEQ had a lot to do with
it.
193
Lage: They were probably bustling around trying to think of how to deal
with NEPA.
Leopold: Probably.
Lage: Did you have a model as you went through this, sitting down and
dictating the report? What was your conception of what it should
be, or how did you--
Leopold: 1 was simply trying to write a report on what 1 thought the
jetport was going to do, what were the advantages, what were the
disadvantages, and what was going to be the final outcome. The
main thing is that the final conclusion was picked up by the
newspaper, you see, and spread all over the map in Florida.
Those were the drawings that 1 made that I asked this lady to
prepare in a little better form for me, but 1 made the original
drawings, showed her exactly what 1 wanted, and 1 had her just do
them.
Lage: [Looking at report] From what I've seen of your drawings, I think
they're the equal of these. Graphs. It sounds like the jetport
would have been a real disaster.
Leopold: Yes. Oh, it would have, no question about it, yes.
Lage: And you hadn't been that aware of it before you were called down
there .
Leopold: No, no, I learned everything that had to be learned when I was
there, in just a short time.
Preventing an 111 -Conceived Trans -Alaska Pipeline
Lage: Just before this, you got involved in the Alaska pipeline. How
did that happen, and what did it involve?
Leopold: That was even worse. Alaska was required by law to prepare a
plan of the whole route of the pipeline, which was to go up the
John River, which was the river that 1 had taken this expedition
down.
Lage : Had you taken the expedition on the John River for this reason?
Leopold: No, not at all.
194
So they had taken all these survey maps, and they showed the
route of the pipeline, and all these maps had to be folded. When
they got done, there was a stack about this high [indicates].
There was an assistant to the director of the Geological Survey
that I didn't know very well, who was kind of a liaison for the
director with the Department of Interior across the street. He
had been following this matter, and apparently he brought it to
the attention of the secretary that the Geological Survey better
review this report before the permit was given for the building
of the line.
All right, this is what happened. He phoned me from the
director's office and said, "They've got this report and I'd like
to have you read it for us and tell the director's office what
you think. Should we make any objection to the issue of a
permit?" I said, "Send it over." Well, I didn't know what the
report was going to look like, but they brought on a cart like
this and stood it in my office. It stood about this high
[indicates height].
Lage: Three feet.
Leopold: Oh, at least. More than that. Four and a half feet. So I said
to the man, "How much time am I given to review this report?" He
said, "Fifteen minutes." I said, "All right, sit down." So I
took the top volume off and opened it up, and the only thing I
wanted to see was a cross section as to what they were going to
do with that pipe. The cross section in it was about this large
[2 inches] and it showed a circle for the pipe, ground surface,
and some dots showing gravel, and that was it. No dimensions,
nothing.
So I said, "Thank you. I've reviewed the report." I put it
back, and I said, "You can take it back to the secretary." So I
went up to the director's office, and I said, "This is one real
disaster. They have never heard about permafrost. They have not
even thought about how they're going to cross the river." I
said, "I've been on this river. I know what this river looks
like. It's going to be a mess."
Lage: You could tell just from this quick look that it wasn't- -
Leopold: Well I mean, if that's all they had, they didn't know what they
were doing.
The director then said to me, "Very well. You'd better go
take a look at this if it's that serious." I said, "All right,
I'll take a look at it, but I'm going to choose the people to
write the report with me, and we're going to do it on our own. I
195
want Herb Skibitzke on our own airplane, and I want Bob Curry."
Bob Curry was a friend of mine who had a degree from this
department [UC Berkeley Department of Geology] , who was teaching
at that time at Santa Barbara. Bob had written his thesis on the
High Sierra, so he knew a lot about ice and he knew a lot about
frost action and he knew a lot about permafrost and that sort of
thing.
So anyhow, Herb and Bob and I got in our own airplane and we
flew up there. Veil, you ought to see the pictures. We were
flying over the places where the bulldozer was making the track
there that ran up the river.
Lage: They were already started?
Leopold: Oh, they were started, all right. You could see the bulldozer
come up to the river. It wouldn't know what to do, so you'd see
a bulldozer knocking down trees over here and knocking down trees
over here until he found a place to cross. He'd cross the river
and then go on. Here was this bulldozer track going on and on
and on up this river.
Lage: And you were taking photos from the air?
Leopold: Oh, you bet. We had started out from a place called Crevice
Creek where we had met a man who was from the eastern United
States who had gotten tired of civilization. He moved up there
in the middle of the wilderness in the Brooks Range near this
river that I was talking about. He married an Eskimo girl, had
two little children that they were teaching themselves, and he
was making his money by taking people in his little light plane
to go hunting up there.
So at this little airstrip, just a little gravel strip in
his front yard, we landed our airplane there and we went to see
Bill. We said, "The damn bulldozers have gone through your place
a couple of days ago." "Yes," he said, "they went through my
back yard and they didn't even stop to say hello. I was at least
going to go out and say, 'Come in and have a cup of coffee,' but
they bulldozed my trees right down, right through my back yard."
I looked out, and sure enough, that's what they did.
So we flew then up over to Anaktuvik Pass. We went out onto
the ice toward Prudhoe Bay. We could see where the bulldozers
were still working at the present time. Then we came back to
Fairbanks and I started this series of conferences with different
peoplepeople who represented the Bureau of Reclamation, the
people who represented the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the
Bureau of Land Management. The Bureau of Land Management had a
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Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
big stake in it because they controlled a lot of land up there.
We were appalled at how all these local people, they thought this
was just fine.
All these people you conferred with were for it.
Very few people were against it, and they didn't want to say if
they did oppose it, because everything was for, you know, "We're
going to get a lot of money out of this . "
So I came back and I sat down and wrote a report that really
told them where to step off. For example, 1 recommended--. I
made certain specific recommendations: first, that certain parts
of the pipe had to be elevated above the ground.
Because?
Oil is hot, you know, and I didn't want it to go through the
permafrost and melt the permafrost. I recommended that there
would be a mile on either side of the road as a reserve with no
hunting. I didn't want people shooting as 1 saw them doing there
on the ground where they'd lean out of the truck and shoot things
from the road that they were building. I wanted a stop on the
killing of wolves, and several other recommendations of that
kind.
So when the director read my report, he got pretty excited
about it. This was a new director. This was when Pecora had
just moved in, just before I quit.
Now, you say he got excited,
excitement?
Was it good excitement or bad
He could see that this was a disaster.
It was hot.
Yes. It turned out this just coincided with the Santa Barbara
oil spill.
Good timing.
As soon as the oil spill happened, there was Bob Curry at the
University of California in Santa Barbara. He got all of his
students together and they were out there walking the beaches
making notes on everything that was happening. When the people
finally woke up to the fact that this was serious for the tourist
industry and that sort of thing, the only person who had any data
was Bob Curry.
197
The secretary of the Interior decided he had to go take a
look at this.
Lage: Now, this was Hickel, was it not?
Leopold: This was Hickel. The director, now, was Bill Pecora, Just newly
appointed director.
a
Leopold: They got to Santa Barbara, and there were lots of things
happening right then and there. First, no one seemed to know
anything except Bob Curry. He was the only one that had any
data, the only one that had really been out there looking. And
then it turned out that all the people that were supposedly
knowledgeable, they didn't even know where the oil was.
Veil, apparently in the hearing that was held, Curry was
saying effectively to the Geological Survey, to the director,
"You people better get on this because this is an important
geomorphic, geologic matter." He made the director very angry. 1
don't know how exactly it happened, but the director was very
angry.
The director got back in town, and about that time my report
was on his desk. It said, "Leopold, Skibitzke, and Curry." He
looked at that and said, "Is that the same Curry I met in
California?" "Yes, sir, it sure is." He said, "Well, take his
goddamn name off of that, because I won't have it around."
Lage: You're kidding.
Leopold: I said, "What?" I said, "I wrote the report, but they were
people on my team." I took the name off. The report then went
from the director to the secretary, and then they began to see
that it was very serious.
Lage: Was this a report of the same thoroughness as the Everglades?
Leopold: No, no, this was much shorter.
Lage: Much shorter. More of a recommendation?
Leopold: "For God's sake, don't give them a permit," is what I was saying.
Then at that time, because we were always causing trouble
anyhow, the new director said, "You keep that Skibitzke out of
that oil spill business." I told Herb, "You just hang on. The
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Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold;
time will come when your talents will be needed." Veil, they
couldn't find the oil. They had ships out there, great navy
ships going back and forth, and they couldn't map the oil slick.
Finally the director called and said, "Skibitzke says he can find
that oil for me." I said, "You're damn right he can." He said,
"Well, get him out there." [laughter]
So as usual, Herb had obtained one of these radar units, a
big disk, you know, about six feet in diameter, sitting up on top
of a truck. It was for tracking some kind of airplane. No one
knew how to run this, but Herb took the thing apart, and he
taught himself how to run it. He rewired the whole thing and got
it running so that he then could pick up one of our little
planes. So he rolled this damn machine out there to Santa
Barbara and set it up on a cliff, and flew one of our light
planes out there, and told my friend Howard Chapman, Chappie, who
was one of our boatmen, "All right, you fly out there and you
find that oil, and we are mapping it in this machine as the radar
picks it up." As the airplane flew, a map of its course was
automatically made in this trailer accompanying the radar disc.
So Chappie got out there. He called back and said, "Okay,
I'm on the edge of the slick. Now I'm going to go flying around
it. Now, you start mapping." So here was this great big slick,
here came a little airplane. All those Navy ships down there
couldn't find it. The little airplane flew all the way around.
He flew around the circumference of it?
traced where the--
And then the radar
Yes. So in an hour we had a map of the whole thing, you see.
Herb sounds very clever.
Oh, God, he's clever as hell.
So within an hour we had the whole thing mapped. That
settled that matter. The survey had shown that we knew how to do
things that nobody else could do.
How was the report on Alaska received?
The Alaskan report was in the director's hands. He essentially
told the secretary of the Interior, "You can't use that route and
you can't build it. We're not going to give you a permit because
you don't--"
Lage:
So USGS had the right to give the permit?
199
Leopold: USGS had enough influence to say, "Look, here are the problems."
They were quoting my report. Here are the things that they
hadn't thought about. If you melt the ice, then what happens to
the pipe? Does it move downhill? It will break. How fast is
the ice going to be melted by this hot oil? What about the
caribou? On and on and on.
Lage: In every area.
Leopold: Yes. Because those are all the things that I was talking about
in my report. Well, anyhow, it stopped them. The Interior
Department didn't give them a permit, so for five years the
consortium had to start a big research program, which they did
very intelligently. They set up a model pipe of the same
diameter, a great big thing, up there at the University of Alaska
at Fairbanks, and they put hot oil through the thing, measured
the temperatures, and then they had a buried section, so they
really learned a hell of a lot. So when they got through, they
knew quite a lot about how to build that pipe so that it was
worthwhile, but it cost them millions, of course, to be stopped.
But it would have cost them millions if it hadn't been stopped,
as a matter of fact.
Lage: And it would have cost more than that in damage.
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: Those are great tales.
Leopold: Yes, they are.
Lage: And important.
Recommendation on Redwoods National Park
Lage: What did you have to do with the Redwoods National Park? Did you
make a report of the same type about that?
Leopold: No. When the secretary's office finally got onto the fact that
the highest trees in the United States are in Redwood Creek, and
the National Geographic Society wanted, what?- -to buy it--? Or
maybe--. Anyhow, there was something that came up about the
National Geographic Society and the two big trees.
Lage: They funded a study, I think, and gave it publicity.
200
Leopold: It became quite clear that this was a serious matter, that the
river was going to hell because the upper part, you see, is all
cut over. There's nothing but this little strip of redwoods down
the center of the creek, and all the rest of it is devastation.
It's Just devastated.
That was when Nat Reed was undersecretary (about 1974) . He
called a meeting here in San Francisco in which he asked various
people to get up and discuss the whole matter of what do we know
about what's going on, how serious are the floods, where is the
sediment coming from, how fast is the river building up its bed,
and what are the chances of destroying the trees, and on and on
and on. Veil, this went on for a day. I just was listening. I
didn't know anything about it. I was learning a lot. Right at
the end of the day I was sitting next to the secretary, and he
turned to me and he said, "Very well, Luna, you summarize the
whole thing and tell us what we ought to do."
Lage: That's quite a compliment.
Leopold: So I said, "All right, 1 will." I got up and I said, "Here's
what you need to do. You have to set up gauging stations, you've
got to make measurements of this and measurements of that." I
said, "I'll even tell you the people who ought to do it. My
first choice is Ed Helley, my second choice is Richard Janda."
They're all survey people. They will do the job for you." The
secretary said, "Fine."
So we immediately set up a program in which there were very
competent people from the survey assigned to work with some of
the National Park Service people, and over a period of several
years they did a hell of a good job. They got all the
measurements they needed and wrote a lot of reports, published
the reports.
Lage: But you didn't have anything to do with--
Leopold: No, they wanted me to run it, you see, and I said, "No, I won't
run it."
Lage: That was about the time you were leaving the survey.
Leopold: Yes. I said, "No, that's really not what I want to do. We've
got lots of younger people that can do it just as well, and here
are their names." The leader is one of the people that I
recommended. Richard Janda was appointed by the secretary and
did a very first-class job. My goodness, it took him- -he must
have worked five or six, seven years on it, and ran it very well,
so the survey did itself proud on that job.
Lage
201
It's a good example- -and you mentioned five or six years of how
long these things take. It's not overnight.
Leopold: No, you bet.
Lage: This took place after the Redwood Park had been established but
before it had been enlarged. In '78 it was enlarged. Did you
have any thoughts about the wisdom of where it was established?
Leopold: That was long past. In other words, we all knew at that time
that the Sierra Club was really suckered into this thing. It was
true we need a national park, but they would have, in my opinion-
-and a lot of people feel this waythey would have been far
better to have said, "Give us a very small park consisting of
virgin, uncut forest, and we'll stay with that," but because the
big trees are out along the creek, the Sierra Club went for this
little strip that has been called the worm, with all this
devastation on either side, for the whole purpose of saving some
of the big trees. In my opinion, it was a great mistake.
But anyhow, that's what we were stuck with, and therefore we
couldn't do anything about that, but we could then start to talk
about what's causing the problem, what are the dangers to the
trees, and that's what the survey people did.
Scientists as Consultants on JSnvironmental Issues
Lage: Do you think overall the environmental movement has used
scientists well?
Leopold: Yes, in lots of respects they've used the scientists very well,
but the scientific community simply is a poor match against the
big money people, the developers and those groups. The
environmental movement, after all, has very little money. They
are beginning to get political clout, but not because they've got
money but because they have standing.
This is one of the other things that's happening. There are
an awful lot of people in this world, professional people, who
are willing to sell their souls for money, and we see this all
the time. Probably the best example that I know of is the delta
of the Sacramento River. Several of my friends and I testified
before Bay-Delta hearings of the California State Water Resources
Control Board trying to point out to them what the dangers are.
All these people, these big agriculturists in the central part of
202
the valley, have all kinds of money and all kinds of lawyers, and
they have a lot of people who are willing to get up and swear
under oath things that I think are simply clearly not true.
Lage: They hire scientists?
Leopold: They hire pseudo-scientists, not people with scientific
reputations. They hire consultants, and there's the difference.
Usually scientists stay away from consulting. The only
consulting 1 ever do, except for one occasion which I got sort of
caught in, are for places where 1 think that the environmental
issue is so important that I have to get in and pitch. But
ordinarily I'd just as soon not turn my scientific knowledge
into--. In a lot of cases consulting is very traumatic.
The Forest Service and the Denver Water Board
Leopold: So this past year I've been completely tied up in this big ruckus
in Colorado. It's not fun, but we used our science very well.
Ve started out with considerable disadvantage because of things
that had been written prior to the time that we all got in it.
But yes, I think science is used very nicely, very well in
environmental causes, but science doesn't take the place of
money, really. It's not very often, for example, that you have
the money to pay the consultants that went into this law case in
Colorado.
Lage: This is the Denver water board case?
Leopold: Yes. The U.S. Forest Service requests the water court in
Colorado to give the government a water right for instream flow
in basins within the national forests of Water Division No. 1.
Lage: And who was paying you? The government?
Leopold: Yes. The Justice Department and the Forest Service. The Forest
Service was putting up most of the money. The Justice Department
was putting up the rest because the Justice Department was having
to support its own lawyers. I think that most of our salaries as
expert witnesses, came from the Forest Service.
Lage: Is there a whole group of you?
203
Leopold: Oh, yes. Most of them people I picked out. I was probably the
one that pretty much laid out what we were going to try to do,
and a lot of my friends were in it. One of my colleagues, David
Dawdy, a former survey man who now is a consultant here in San
Francisco, is a very important man in the case. We had some very
good help from the Geological Survey. Dr. Richard Madole was our
geologist, wonderful testimony. My friend Dave Rosgen, who was
fired from the Forest Service and is now a consultant, was a very
important person. One of my students, Dr. Ned Andrews, who now
works for the Geological Survey, was extremely important, so all
these people had to be paid.
Lage: Give me, just so we have this in the record, what the case is
about .
Leopold: The case is about instream flow. It happened this way. About in
the early 1980s, the Indian tribe on the east side of the Wind
River decided that since a lot of water came into the Wind River
from their reservation, they felt that that water belonged to
them, because it originated on their reservation. So they asked
that a water right be given to them for water which originated on
their reservation.
At that time the Justice Department was involved in that
case, and they went to the Forest Service. A friend of mine in
Denver went to the Forest Service and said, "Look, if the Indians
can do that, why in the world doesn't the Forest Service do it?
Why don't you go and say, 'We don't want people diverting all the
water out of the forest land, drying up all the rivers'? Why
don't you ask for a water right?" Well, the Forest Service took
them up on it.
So right at that time, one of the Justice Department lawyers
and two of the Forest Service men, Lee Silvey and my friend Dave
Rosgen, the two hydrologists for the Forest Service, were
involved in trying to advise the Justice Department what the
Forest Service ought to ask for and how to compute how much water
they would like. Remember, now, they're not going to divert it.
They asked for a water right to leave the water flowing in the
stream on Forest Service land. Below the Forest Service boundary
you can do whatever you want to. If you wanted to use it for
urbanization, that's all right.
Lage: What area were they working on?
Leopold: This was Wyoming.
Lage: Still in Wyoming.
204
Leopold: Yes.
They settled out of court, and then several years later, the
Supreme Court said we were right, and they gave the Indians a
hell of a lot of water, because it was taken all the way to the
Supreme Court. Well, then we knew that the situation in Colorado
was not going to be so easy; they weren't going to settle, they
were going to fight it. So the Forest Service asked the court,
the water court in Greeley, Colorado, to give them a water right;
they applied for a water right through the water court, which is
according to the state rules. And then the other side, the
developers, particularly the attorney general of Colorado and the
Denver Water Board and a whole lot of little irrigation districts
on that side of the mountain, they all got together to fight it.
Lage: Because they had been using water that originated in--
Leopold: No, they were afraid that they would be prevented from taking
additional water out of the forest. They were already taking a
lot, but they were talking about the future. And of course, we
were saying, "We're not preventing you from developing. Our
argument is, we want only enough water to see that the streams
don't go dry, that the streams maintain themselves." Our
computations ended up by shoving that if the streams were allowed
to keep half of the water divided in a certain way, that that
would be sufficient to keep the streams operating as usual. But
the other side is not interested in half. They want all. They
want to dry it up. They really want to dry up every stream on
the mountain. That's what we were fighting.
We were in very bad shape because the Forest Service years
ago, soon after the Wind River case in the early eighties, had
already made a claim, and now we came in here ten or more years
later, and we said, "We don't like the way that was computed."
So three times since the beginning, the Forest Service claim was
changed. The last was changed two weeks before the court case
ended. The judge said, "That's enough. I won't allow that."
But we were stuck with things that had been done earlier. The
state said--
Lage: Before you came on the case?
Leopold: Yes. Things that were done before we had anything to do with it.
I think that we would have been better off if Justice had
decided, "No, even though that may be better from the standpoint
of you hydrologists, from the standpoint of winning this court
case, we'd better not ask for any more change." But they did. I
didn't have anything to do with that decision. I had a lot to do
with what was going to be recommended, but the decision was made
205
Lage:
Leopold:
Lagc:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold;
Lage:
Leopold:
by the Justice Department as to what they thought they could do.
So it set us back a lot, and we don't know how the outcome's
going to be.
Is it in front of the court now?
Yes. Ve don't get an opinion until next December.
But the work on it is finished. You're Just waiting.
And I'm sure it will be appealed.
Supreme Court.
It's going to go to the
It would set quite a precedent in many, many places.
That's the reason we're fighting, because we'll have the same
problem in- - .
The Forest Service has made some tremendous mistakes in
this. The most important mistake that hurt us the most was in a
case in southern New Mexico on the Mimbres River. There were
objections to the Forest Service asking for water, and it was
taken to the court. The Forest Service really didn't call in
experts and say, "This is an important matter. We'd better do
this carefully." They got licked. The Supreme Court said this:
"We think you deserve some water, but you cannot claim it for
anything other than what was written by the Congress in the time
the Forest Service was formed in 1897. You cannot claim Fish and
Wildlife, you cannot claim recreation, you cannot claim
aesthetics, you cannot claim anything else" except the two things
that the Congress said, that "We will set up the Forest Service
reserves for two things: one, to grow timber, and two, 'for
favorable conditions of streamflow. ' "
Well, at least that was in there.
All right, but the whole court case hangs on what those words
mean. Everything hung on those words, because we couldn't use
anything else. So we were trying to prove from the geomorphic
standpoint what the Congress must have meant.
Even though so many things have intervened since then that give
the Forest Service jurisdiction or protection.
The Supreme Court said, "No, you can't claim it for any other
purpose than the original purpose of the Forest Service as stated
by Congress, because we were asking for a priority date of 1897.
Lage:
Oh, I see.
206
Leopold: Ve were asking for a priority date. Now, one of the things that
I recommended, and I don't think that they're doing, is I said,
Look, if we don't win this case, go in and claim a 1990 date.
Go in and ask for the same thing with a 1990 date.* I don't
think they've done that. Ve have already decided not to impinge
on any present rights. We're only talking about future rights.
Lage:
So you'd asked for the amount of water that they have now.
Leopold: Yes. Ve were not asking for what they have now. Ve were asking
for the stuff that they haven't yet used.
So as I say, there have been a lot of things that have been
decided but have not boded well for us. But it's very early to
tell. I haven't any idea of what's going to come up.
Lage: Did you spend a lot of time on this? Has this been a major
commitment?
Leopold: Oh, yes, a lot of time.
A Turbulent Time on the Sierra Club Board of Directors. 1968-
1221*1
Lage: 1 wanted to talk about the Sierra Club and your service on the
board of directors.
Leopold: That's not a very important story, actually.
Lage: I've done a lot of interviewing of Sierra Club people, and you
brought kind of an outside perspective to the board and to the
turbulent time in the club that you were plucked down into. How
did you happen to run for the board of directors?
Leopold: Because one of my friends in the UC Department of Geography had
been very active in the business. He said, "I wonder if you
would be willing to run for the board of directors?"
Lage: Who was this?
Leopold: It was Dan Luten. I said, "Sure.* I ran for the board never
thinking I was going to get on it. Veil, anyhow, I got on the
board.
Lage: It wasn't Dave Brower, then, who asked you?
207
Leopold: No.
Lage: So this was 1968- -from '68 to '71.
Leopold: Yes. There was plenty to argue about, because Dave had greatly
expanded the publication business, especially overseas. His
original idea of having these coffee-table books turned out at
first to be very successful, but then he had other ideas that 1
can't renember in detail that were expensive ideas that just
didn't seem like they were going to be as successful. The
financial way in which the Sierra Club was going was very
troublesome, and Dave was essentially embarking on one rather
questionable ventures.
Lage: In the financial field?
Leopold: In the financial field, yes. Primarily in publishing. Then
there was the other thing. It appeared to people who had worked
with him over a long period of time that he tended to pretty much
do things his own way, even when the board was essentially
warning him not to do it. So even the people that admired Dave a
lot, like Ansel Adams, were just tired of having the financial
thing so really out of control.
Lage: You came in at the point where Brower's opposition was starting
to bring charges, formally.
Leopold: Yes. Right at the time that they were basically bringing charges
against him.
Well, when the thing finally came down--. After lots of
discussion, the thing finally came down to a vote, and only three
of us voted on Brower's side.
Lage: This was after the May 1969 election [when Brower and a
supporting slate of candidates ran for the board of directors and
were defeated by an ant i- Brower slate] .
Leopold: This was when the question was, were they going to fire him, is
really what it amounted to. In effect, that's what it amounted
to. Eliot Porter and Martin Litton and I were standing up for
Dave. Phil Berry and Ansel and Dr.--
Lage : - - Wayburn .
Leopold: --Dr. Vayburn and Will Siri as well as a couple of other people
were on the other side.
208
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
How did you make your choice?
I felt that the thing that the conservation movement needed was
to keep this very flamboyant, well -recognized man as our
spokesman. I felt that we should be able to find some other way
to curb the problems that we were having with money in order to
maintain the charismatic leadership that Dave was furnishing to
us. Furnishing to the whole movement. I still say I would have
voted the same way. I'd still feel that, although I think that
Dave got even more difficult to work with, because, you see, they
had this breakdown in Friends of the Earth, so it is true that
Dave is a person that people find very hard to get along with. I
don't know the details of what happened at Friends of the Earth,
but the fact that it happened again indicates that something
similar must have been going on.
After he left, you were still on board for a couple of years.
Yes.
Did you see a change of direction or a great loss in any
particular way? Phil Berry became president.
Let me give you an example. Dave felt that the Sierra Club
should be completely against the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, and
1 definitely agreed with that, for a lot of different reasons.
But I got in a big argument with one of the persons on the board
about the question of what would happen to the cooling water.
The argument that I was given was, well, the water will come out
hot, but it will be good for the fish. I said it may be good for
increasing the number of fish, but if you start changing the
character of the ecology of the coast, I would say that's really
not the way that the Sierra Club ought to go.
Then the fact that we weren't just talking about Diablo
Canyon, we were talking about cutting these swathes across the
whole Coast Range for the transmission lines, that's one example
of the place that I supported Dave in this, and most people were
on the other side.
Were you concerned about nuclear power at that point? Or not?
1 don't think anybody was as worried about nuclear power as the
question of disposal of wastes and the question of water. That's
where the big argument was.
And the scar on the land.
Yes.
209
Lage: Fred Eissler, if you remember him, was on the board. I think he
was the only one who was bringing up the question of the safety
of nuclear power per se, but 1 Just wondered if you'd had a--
Leopold: I don't remember that. No. I remember that at a meeting in
Greece of the International Association for the Conservation of
Nature and Natural Resources in 1958, there was introduced a
motion saying that what we ought to do is to go for- -how was it
first stated? It was a question of hydroelectric power versus
nuclear power. I said, "Gee, you don't seem to understand that
there are great difficulties with each of these two things. For
goodness sakes, don't land on one as better than the other."
Anyhow, I cut that one down to size.
But there were a lot of things that had not yet surfaced at
that time. The whole question of nuclear accidents was not the
thing that was the most important. My recollection is the things
that were primarily the problem was disposal of waste and the
question of water and also the whole question of earthquakes,
which was why they stopped the nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay.
Lage: Did you get to know Martin Litton on the Sierra Club board, or
had you known him before?
Leopold: I hadn't known him before, but I've been down the Colorado with
him since, so that I've always been an admirer of Martin.
Lage: He's a pilot also.
Leopold: Yes, indeed, he is. As a matter of fact, when he left Sunset
Magazine, he unfortunately had to leave his airplane.
Lage: He seems like a man who will always find a way.
Anyone else on the board that you'd want to comment on, or
qualities about the club?
Leopold: I've worked with Phil Berry since then very closely. I'm a great
admirer of Phil's.
Lage: On what did you work with him?
Leopold: I was one of his expert witnesses on a trial that we had a couple
of year ago down in Orange County, where we tried to save the
islands on Newport Bay. I didn't know Phil very well when we
were on the board together, but much later, when Phil asked me to
210
join him on this lav case and 1 pitched in and did it, I became
very fond of Phil. I had never met Michele [Perrault, Phil
Berry's wife and also a former president of the Sierra Club]
before that lav case either, but I'm a very great supporter of
both of them.
Lage: Was this a recent lav case? Because when he vas president, there
vas a lav case he got involved in in Newport Bay.
Leopold: That vas it.
Lage: But that vas vay back at the time you vere on the board.
Leopold: No, no. No, that's another one then. This is one about five
years ago. We enlisted a lot of university people on our side.
It's my personal opinion that no one could vin a lawsuit against
the Irvine Company in Orange County. Just the vay the judge
ruled and the words that were used in the ruling make me think
that we didn't get a fair trial at all.
Lage: So it wasn't a successful suit?
Leopold: No, we lost the suit.
Lage: During the time you were on the Sierra Club board, the club, or
at least the club president, took stands and testified against
the nomination of Secretary Hickel and then Rogers Morton, for
secretary of Interior. Would you have gotten any flak in the
USGS about membership on the Sierra Club board?
Leopold: Yes. This comes up again and again. I don't know of any law
cases I was ever in but what they brought it up.
Lage: In law cases they bring it up as if this were a disqualifying
thing?
Leopold: Sure. Oh, you bet. No, I can think of at least two--. I'm sure
I'm right about this. Yes, I have a very definite recollection
that this is brought up against my record, that you have been
connected with the Sierra Club. I said, "Sure, I've been
connected with the Sierra Club. I'm very glad to do it." My
testimony and my opinions have mostly been shaped by my
scientific work. Yes, that has not been a useful qualification
in some of these things where we have really big fights about
conservation.
Lage: I see. Because you're being presented as a scientific witness,
an expert witness.
211
Leopold: Yes. And of course, they're trying to make us sound biased, you
see. I said, "You don't have to be biased to be a
conservationist.* As a natter of fact, one wonders how anybody
can know anything about science and not become a conservationist
in trying to protect some of these things that are under siege.
In other words, I never tried to make out that there was anything
wrong with that. One wonders how you can deal with scientific
matters and not see the need for the protection of some of these
natural values .
Lage: Did the USGS object to your being a member of the Sierra Club
board of directors?
Leopold: It was never brought up for discussion as far as I know.
Importance of Aesthetic Values: Hells Canvon
Lage: You'd also been part of the Wilderness Conference presentations
before your board service. Were those something that stand out
in your mind at all? The Sierra Club Wilderness Conferences?
Leopold: Well, I gave papers there. I haven't read those papers for a
long time. I can't even remember. One was called "The Dragon to
Slay."
Lage: Right. It seemed like one of the themes- -maybe in both of them
that I read- -had to do with the importance of the non-monetary
aspect of wilderness.
Leopold: Well, of course, that's what I worked a lot on. That's been a
very important part of what I accomplished, I think.
Lage: Your paper on Hells Canyon [of the Snake River], is that an
outgrowth of this concern with the aesthetic, non-economic
values?
Leopold: Yes. ["Quantitative Comparison of Aesthetic Factors among
Rivers" (USGS Circular Series, 1969).]
Lage: How did that come about? You did that while you were with USGS.
Did that come about in response to the effort to save Hells
Canyon?
Leopold: It came about because there was a hearing before the Federal
Power Commission on whether they were going to grant a license
for another dam in Hells Canyon. Alan Kneese was working for
212
Resources for the Future. He and another well-known economist
were going to give testimony before the committee on the
economics of recreation. In some Banner or another, Alan Kneese
got me Interested In looking at other aspects of It. I said, "It
seems to me that one of the things that Is most Important Is to
recognize that they are undervaluing the aesthetic aspect of the
canyon In Its original condition." So I made a trip to Idaho and
learned a lot about Hells Canyon. I wrote this paper on how one
might compare different scenic areas. That made quite a splash
but I don't think we won the case at that time.
Lage: You talked about quantifying the aesthetic features.
Leopold: Yes. It was a way of trying to deal with non- quantifiable things
to put them into forms that people could see.
Lage: Did that get taken up at all, do you know, say, in making EIR
[environmental impact review] statements?
Leopold: It was certainly taken up in Canada. I was invited to go to
Winnipeg. I was teaching for a semester at the University of
Ottawa, and the Canadian Park Service asked me to go with them to
Winnipeg and talk to them about how they might use my scheme in
the choosing of areas to be protected as wild rivers and national
parks. So they probably did more with it than anybody here has
done with it. I heard later that indeed one of the places that
Herb and I flew to was, because of the scheme, turned into a
national park.
Lage: That's gratifying.
Leopold: Yes.
213
X LEAVING THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
[Interview 7: March 12,
Resigning as Chief Hvdrologist and Subsequent Changes in the
Division
Lage : You mentioned earlier that when you left the position of chief of
the Water Resources Division, they made a lot of changes.
Leopold: Yes.
Lage: Did they change your policy of sending people to school?
Leopold: Yes. For a long time there was nobody sent to school after that.
I don't know. They kept me so far away from it that I really
couldn't tell you very much about what the operation was.
Lage: So when you left the directorship and became senior hydrologist
[1966], you were no longer involved in the management arena?
Leopold: They prohibited people from talking to me.
Lage: Tell me about that. We haven't recorded anything about that.
Leopold: They appointed my assistant chief as chief.
Lage: You decided yourself to resign?
Leopold: Yes, well, that happened this way. After I had been in the
chief's job for some time, I went to a man in the Geologic
Division whose name was Dr. Pecora, who was a well -thought of
geologist in the Geologic Division. Ue had been talking about
the survey, and I said to him, "What do you think? In your
experience with the Geologic Division where you trade people, how
long should a man keep his job?" He said, "I'd say five years
because that's what we do in the Geologic Division." He said,
214
"On the whole, we trade people in and out of the administrative
jobs about every five years."
I'd been in this job for ten years, and now this man,
Pecora, was just Bade the director. I went to him and said, "Do
you remember that some years ago, you and 1 had a discussion
about this matter about trading? I think that we need some new
thoughts and some new ideas. At that time you suggested to me
that five years is what you did in the Geologic Division. I've
been here ten, and I think it's time for me to move." He said,
"Yes, I think that's a good idea." But the people that took
over--
Lage: Who was appointed to replace you?
Leopold: The man who was my assistant, Roy Hendricks. I had not
recommended him for that job, but anyhow, that's what the
director decided. The main difference was, or the thing that
precipitated it--. Well, there were a lot of other things, too.
I was very unhappy at home and was to get a divorce after a short
time, so I wanted a change anyhow.
But right at that time, I started to enforce for the first
time, against anybody's will, the idea that I wanted people to
move. There was a man in my office that I wanted to move. I'd
set up good jobs for these people. He's the first one that said,
"No, I won't do it." It had always been the custom in the survey
that when they asked you to move, you moved. But on the other
hand, there was also the custom in the survey that they treated
you very well, that the move was always to your advantage, not to
your disadvantage, but the point is that you were moved at the
discretion of the organization.
There was some kind of a pressure being brought in the
director's office against this decision that I'd made. I'd
worked this out very carefully with the assistant director.
Well, it was at a GSA [Geological Society of America] meeting,
and I happened to bump into the new director. He pulled me aside
and said, "Hey, what the heck's going on? I hear all this
trouble that you're causing." I said, "What trouble?" He said,
"You're trying to transfer Mr. So-and-so and he didn't want to be
transferred, and they're objecting to my office that you
shouldn't do this." In effect, he was saying, "You're
embarrassing me."
I said, "Director, that isn't true. I've been working for
months on this problem, and I have it all straightened out with
your assistant director. I have his approval. It's been worked
215
out with your office over a long period of time." "Oh," he said,
"I didn't know that." I said, "That's the way it is."
Veil, right after I left my job, it was decided that the man
need not move. From that time on no one has ever been moved
against his will. It changed the whole character of the organi
zation. It made a lot of difference because people could say,
"You didn't move him. He objected, and you didn't move him."
Lage: Were there other aspects of your policies that were rescinded?
Leopold: Well, you see, anybody who is trying to do things in a new way--
and we've spoken before about the fact that they thought I gave
too much attention to research and not enough attention to basic
data, so I made a lot of people unhappy. The man who took my
place came up through that line of work, you see. He had all
these friends in the field, and therefore all these things that I
was doing were now considered to be the wrong things to do
because I had paid too much attention to the young research
people and not enough attention to the old guard. So it changed
radically.
Lage: You said that they sort of kept you separate.
Leopold: People in the organization were advised not to talk to me. In
something like four years in the Washington office, only one
person walked in my office in four years. They were enforcing
it. They didn't want anybody to talk to me.
Lage: It gave you more time for your work.
Leopold: Yes, but the point is, you see, what they were afraid of is that
I was going to mess in their business, which I had no intention
of doing, but that's what they were fearful of, apparently.
Anyhow, the word went around that that was not acceptable; they
couldn't talk to me.
Anyhow, a lot of things might have been done differently.
One would suppose that the new administrators might seek the
advice of more experienced people, but the idea that you were
actually prevented from saying anything was really too bad, I
thought .
Lage: I would think so. Would you say that certain of your programs
have survived? Surely the ten years that you were there must
have made a difference in the organization.
Leopold: Oh, it changed everything. Now people look back at it, you see.
"Those were the halcyon days of when things were really going."
216
Many things that I started that they didn't like at the time now
have been expanded greatly. For example, I finally decided 1 was
going to hire one biologist. There was not biologist in our
whole division of 3,000 people. Now they have forty biologists.
Many of the prograns I started they found were darn good programs
that they've expanded all over the place.
Lage: And just the whole building up of the research division certainly
didn't change.
Leopold: Oh, yes. They never added to that, in fact, but that's one of
the big problems they've got now, is that they've not added to it
except very incrementally, in very small amounts. I was told a
short time ago, within the last year, that the whole research
organization is still running on the money that I got the first
year, which is twenty- five years ago. With everything else
expanding, you'd suppose that they'd have expanded that, but they
never have.
Problems of Maintaining Productivity in a Research Staff
Leopold: And now many of the people I hired are now not very productive
because they're of such an age that production goes down, of
course, but they won't be moved. In other words, once they
didn't do what I said when we were going to move people- -and 1
was putting myself in the same position- -now they're stuck with
overage people, and they don't know what to do with them. As a
matter of fact, one person that I hired, 1 saw some years ago,
not very many years ago. I happened to drop into his office--!
forget where he was- -and I said to him, "What do you do with your
time?" He said, "I come to the office to draw my pay. I sit
here and carve with my pen knife on a piece of wood. That's what
I do." I said, "You're serious?" He said, "Yes, I'll show you."
Lage: He sounds very bitter- -or very cynical.
Leopold: Both, I think. I don't know. I think he was one of the kind of
people that I thought was doing very interesting work that was
different than most people did, but I suspect that he was not
much appreciated by the new outfit.
About four or five years ago, I guess it was --this is now
twenty- odd years later--! was asked by one of the research men to
come to Denver and give a talk to all the research people for all
217
the western states, which I did. There were a lot of people that
didn't care much for what I was saying, either.
Lage: What was your talk about? The survey?
Leopold: I was saying about the research organization, I said, "The main
problem that you've got now is that you have a bunch of people
that are overage, and they're not as productive as they used to
be. You ought to find some way to change it. I suggest you do
the following. First, set up a senior- -I'm not sure what to call
it. Send them to school. Send the senior people back to school.
Let them come to universities and get retreaded with new ideas.
Meet some younger people, meet some different people, get the
heck out of the office. That's going to take money, but get hold
of some travel funds and send people back to school."
Lage: Were you suggesting this for the research people in particular?
Leopold: Yes. 1 said, "These people now, that 1 hired," and I was talking
to many of them, 1 said, "you guys are just overaged. What you
need is some refurbishing. In the university, boy, you'd get
refurbished in a hurry because you meet young people with lots of
ideas, people who want to do something, and they will keep you on
the ball. I think that what would do us a great deal of good
would be to give our people a chance to go back to school . "
Then there are other problems: the problem of promotion, the
problem of direction, the problem of judging scientific
productivity. I think that improvements could be made in all of
those things .
They didn't go for these ideas, but last year I was at a
meeting, and 1 met one of the young people who was in the
research organization and moved up to being kind of a supervisor.
He was complaining to me about how things used to be and how
things were now. Now, this was a younger man who actually worked
at one time under Tom Haddock. I said to him, "I think you've
already now been in administration too long. You went from
research into administration, you've been there, you've tried to
do a good job. You need refurbishing. I'll tell you, you come
to Berkeley. You come and share my office with me. All you have
to do is sit and go to the library and think and write and do
what you want. You don't have to work for credit, you don't have
to try for a degree, you don't have to do anything. Just come
and meet some of the young people that come through the
university, and sort of get some new ideas."
Well, nothing happened with that, but later last year, in
the fall, the same problem came up with the Forest Service in
218
connection with a court case. I was dealing with all these
Forest Service people and 1 could see that--. Because, you see,
I'd been giving courses for Forest Service people last year. I
gave eight courses last year.
Lage: For hydrologists in the Forest Service?
Leopold: For trying to give some up-to-date hydrology or some detailed
hydrology to Forest Service officers.
They had just appointed a new hydrologist- -the regional
hydrologist in the Denver region. His name was Jim Maxwell, and
he was very impressive young man. Ve were talking about the fact
that the Forest Service had run out of hydrologists, and we were
now trying to bring it up to date with the courses that we were
giving, and 1 said the same thing to him.
I said, "Say, Jim, why don't you do this? Why don't you
promote in your organization what I suggested to the Geological
Survey? Set up a sabbatical leave." He said, "That's a
wonderful idea." I said, "1 will assure you that if you do so, 1
can get you places at Johns Hopkins, at the University of
Washington, the University of Arizona, Berkeley, and possibly
other places. We would be delighted, and I would be delighted to
make arrangements for you to have your people welcomed in the
office of some hydrologist in one of the good universities where
you'd have no responsibilities except to just participate as you
wish, to write and think and read." So it may turn out that
maybe somebody will do something about it.
There are two parallel problems that have to be addressed by
a supervisor in a game of this kind. First, as people get older,
they lose the sort of intuitive ability to keep going at a rapid
pace. Secondly, there's so much literature to read that unless
there's some very specific way that people have seminars where
they have students, they have weekly meetings, they trade ideas,
they soon are not following the science. Those two things are
parallel and they have to be attacked simultaneously. In fact,
so rapidly does the literature grow that no one can really keep
up with the literature of the whole field that you might be
interested in. Therefore a lot of it has to be seeing people and
talking to people and finding out what other people do, which
will stimulate you to do things.
219
Deficiencies in University Reviews for Promotion and Ph.D.'s
Lage: Has there been a tendency towards more specialization all along,
in order to cope with all this literature?
Leopold: Yes. I would say ouch nore subtle and much more serious is that
we have now in science in general, at the universities, in
university departments, in research units, the idea, the crazy
idea, that the way you get ahead in this game is to write a lot
of short papers so that you actually have- -you' re just counting
numbers of things you've published- -not the content, but how many
papers you published.
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Now, this is serious because, in fact, the way promotion is going
on nowadays in university departments--! can tell you in the
departments 1 know in this university, as well as in government
agencies, they are paying attention primarily to how many papers,
not what the paper says. Now, this simply has to be reversed if
we're going to maintain our ability to do science. Far better,
there are several ways we can do it.
One, when a person comes up for promotion, the thing 1 would
recommend is that the nominee should pick out for the visiting
committee or the committee who's judging him three to five papers
that he considers the most important work he's done. Let them
judge on that, but do not let them see the great number of papers
one paragraph long that were published in a fancy journal.
Because do you think they only look at the titles and don't
review the papers themselves?
Exactly,
so.
I can assure you they don't. I can assure you that's
It's such an important process, this review of people--
1 can tell you that that's what happens. As a matter of fact,
there are good reasons to believe that supervising professors are
not really making a real study of the Ph.D. theses that their
students produce, that they kind of take an overall look at it,
but not the same kind of careful review they would make if they
were working in that subject themselves.
I think that that's a very harsh thing to say, but I think
it's true, even, as I say, when a supervising professor is not
220
actually understanding the details of what a student of his is
saying. That's a pretty serious matter.
As a matter of fact, this is a procedure that I'm describing
so prevalent that the young people talk about it. "Oh, well, the
way to get ahead is I'm going to write a lot of papers, even if
they ' re only one paragraph long . "
Lage: It's a real career ism attitude, instead of a professional
attitude .
When you were chair of the Geology Department here at
Berkeley, did you try to address this? Or at other times, have
you tried to address it here?
Leopold: Yes, there were a lot of times. Yes, there were things that
happened that were so unbelievable that--. That's another whole
yarn.
Lage: Shall we talk about that now?
Leopold: I was on a Ph.D. committee in another department; I was one of
the outside examiners. This person was in the middle of the
examination. It turned out to be a field in the field of water.
Lage: So this was an oral exam?
Leopold: An oral exam. This was a Ph.D. oral. I said, "This proposal
that you're making to do this research, how much water is
involved?" The student said, "I don't know." I said, "Can you
make some kind of a guess?" "No." I said, "How would you
measure the amount of water?" "I don't know that." I said,
"You're writing a paper on water? We're talking about amounts of
water, and you don't even know what the units are?" I said, "You
flunk." The chairman of the department, at the end of the
examination, turned to me and said, "Well, Luna, you're going to
keep us honest, aren't you?" I said, "You're goddamned right."
At this university.
Lage: Did you sense resentment on the part of the chairman of the
department? Would they have let that go by?
Leopold: They would let it go by. As a matter of fact, that student took
another two years, I think, to finally change thesis subjects and
do something else. So it goes.
Then there was another Ph.D. oral, same kind of a problem.
Anyhow, I'm absolutely convinced that there are many real holes
in the way students are being handled at the universities and the
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Lage:
way research is being handled throughout the whole system. I
think it's a very serious matter.
Is it based on this sort of careerist attitude?
Leopold: I'm not sure that's the right word.
Lage: What word could we use here?
Leopold: Lack of objectivity on the part of supervisors, and peer review.
Lack of objectivity. There's an awful lot of personal chumminess
that goes on in these matters- -promotions, for example, in
government agencies. Now, in universities it's being done
correctly and incorrectly. It depends upon where you are. The
best systems for promotion that I know were the systems that I
experienced that were going on at Harvard. In my opinion,
they're far better than what I find here at Berkeley.
For example, there was a time when a friend of mine at
Harvard was up for promotion. This was John Miller. One of the
most famous geologists in the world came to see me in Washington
and said, "I am on the committee that has to do with the
promotion for John Miller, whom you know." I said, "Yes, John
Miller and I worked together very closely." He said, "We're
having a hard time because we're not sure, on your joint papers,
how much he did and how much you did." I said, "Let me try to
explain to you." I did my best to explain what each of us did,
what our contributions were, for several of the papers we'd
written together. Then they turned him down, temporarily, you
see.
So next time I saw John, I said, "John, you and I have to
stop working together. We'll have a lot of conversation, but
we're not going to work together and publish papers together
because you have to do some of these things on your own and prove
to these people that indeed your contribution is certainly equal
to my own, and that's what we're going to do."
After several years I had another caller, and this time who
was it but McGeorge Bundy, the famous man who at that time,
before he was on the president's staff during the Vietnam War,
was the dean of graduate studies at Harvard. He came to see me.
He said, "We have a proposition for promotion for John Miller."
I said, "Let me explain to you what happened in the past. For
the past four years, as you know, we haven't worked together so
that he could prove to all you people that he really is a man of
great competence in his own right." He was immediately promoted,
but that kind of care that Harvard was taking in this particular
222
case that I know about was in my opinion far different from what
I see go on here.
Lage: When you read about the process here, it sounds extremely
careful. For instance, I was Just reading the controversy about
the woman mathematician. I don't know if you've heard of that.
Leopold: No, I don't know.
Lage: There was a recent article about a woman in the mathematics
department who was not promoted. Hers, in fact, was a case of
working on what's considered an important problem, but she had
one important problem. Anyway, as they described the process, it
sounded very careful. You know, the ad hoc committee that
reviews it, and then the department chairman, and then the
College of Letters and Science dean, and then it goes to the
Academic Senate Budget Committee.
Leopold: Yes, that sounds great, but there's only one level at which the
actual production of the person is actually reviewed.
Lage: Where they actually look at the work. And which level is that?
Leopold: That's the level of the ad hoc committee. And then you're not
sure how much care the ad hoc committee took itself. When 1 was
in the Department of Landscape Architecture one of the things
that I was very firm on- -and they never followed my advice --was
that I suggested to them that since many of the people in our
department were coming up for promotion to an ad hoc committee
made up of scientists, that their artistic work was not judged
properly because they say, "This is a piece of art," despite the
fact that it says artistic production, music, poetry, all these
things, they all count. But the fact is that so many ad hoc
committees on this campus are made up of people that come from
the sciences that they look at these things and say, "How am I
supposed to judge this?"
Lage: You mean a committee with scientists would be judging landscape
architecture?
Leopold: Yes. So 1 suggested that we all work together to prepare a kind
of a model to show how to present a piece of artistic work,
original artistic work, to a committee that has really no way of
judging it. I saw one man turned down; I saw what they had
presented to the committee. It had been reduced in size from
some large panel to something that was page size. You couldn't
read the doggone thing. It wasn't in the proper color. It was
poorly prepared, despite the fact that his work might have been
good.
223
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Lage:
Leopold:
Well, I thought that was just plain--. Well, it was
inexcusable, because the fact is that the artist ought to be the
one who knows how to present things so that you really -make an
impression, so 1 wanted a sort of a model in that department.
Well, they never did it. And there were a lot of people that
were turned down because they didn't make the grade in the ad hoc
committee.
Have you served on the ad hoc committees yourself?
Oh, yes, indeed, I certainly have. Yes, many times.
For people in various departments. Is it hard to judge the work?
They wouldn't put you judging a mathematician, surely.
No. Nor would I accept it if they did. But things that I can
judge, yes. For example, forestry, soils, engineering, landscape
architecture, geology- -I've served on all of those committees.
And physics.
Yes. One is lucky if there's one man on the committee that
really sits down and does the homework.
Is doing the homework most often to the individual's advantage or
his disadvantage? Are you more often to find fault or to--
To his advantage. Very definitely to his advantage. No, I would
say without question to his advantage.
Trend toward Unimportant Problems and Short Research Papers
Leopold: We've gotten onto a subject that goes to the totality of one's
experience dealing with scientific matters and organizations.
The other thing I want to say about this whole field is that I
find that the people that I know, many of the people I know, are
concerning themselves with problems that I consider so small and
so relatively unimportant that it's neither worth their time nor
the department's time. I think I've said to you that I've urged
people , both when I was in the Geological Survey and when I was
here, that I suggest to all people who are in science that they
should keep in their private file a little folder called "idea
file" which deals with their ideas of what are the most important
224
Lage:
Leopold:
problems in their science. I said, "Look at it once in a while.
Here you've thought about these as really important problems.
Are you the right one to do it? Can you do it? If you do it,
it's worth it."
Secondly, the Geological Survey people fall in the same trap
that the university people are in, and for the same reason.
They're led that way by the promotion route. What the people
look at is how many papers? Not what the papers said. The idea
of writing a thick tome on something that you've spent ten years
on, people nowadays say, "That's not worth it to me. I can't get
promoted on that," when the fact is that the detailed work
usually turns out to be much more significant than just a whole
series of short papers. Much more.
When you say
page?
'short papers," you're really talking short- -half a
I'm saying that I've heard the younger people in this department
say, "The way to get ahead is to write a paper that's less than
one page long, and publish it in Nature . and do it five times a
year. That will get you ahead."
So the idea of writing a book--. Well, there hasn't been a
book written in this department since [Howel] Williams and [Ian]
Carmichael, and [Charles] Gilbert on petrography [1958]. The
[John] Verhoogen book was quite some time ago; my book. The idea
of compiling something of some detail.
And of course, the book is not necessarily the way to deal
with new ideas. It's really the difference between compiling a
lot of things and striking out on absolutely new ground. So
forget about books for a minute, but I'm talking about papers
prepared over a long period of time that result in a Ph.D.
thesis. For example, I will warrant you that most people that I
know have never and probably will never write anything as
detailed as their Ph.D. thesis. But after they get their Ph.D.,
then "We're going to go to the short paper stuff, and we can't
waste three or four years on anything."
Lage: Does the Ph.D. thesis get published in an article form?
Leopold: As a matter of fact, to my knowledge mine was the first one that
ever was done that way. The professors at Harvard didn't like it
at all, but I said to my professor, "Look, I'm dealing with four
different subjects, very different, and I would suggest that I
publish this as separate papers and that each paper is written
for a particular journal." He said, "That's fine. Let's just do
225
It." Then I heard later that the rest of the department didn't
like that at all.
Lage: The idea of breaking it into four papers?
Leopold: Or five or whatever it was. They wanted the same old thing where
you wrote a great tome and everything was tied together. 1 have
the same problem with one of my Ph.D. students here. One of the
other people on her committee, in another department, my lord,
went back to the old idea that you have to spend the first year
on studying the bibliography, and then your thesis has to start
with a review of the literature, and then you go on to the method
of research, and then you go on and on and on- -things that were
outmoded fifty years ago. That's really not the way modern
science is done.
Lage: Why do you suppose her professor brought that up?
Leopold: I don't know. I said to the student, "Okay, if that's what is
required, you just do it, but keep in mind, now, that you're
going to break the thing down into the units that you can publish
separately. All you want to do is get your degree. 1 don't care
how you do it. Get your degree. This is a bunch of nonsense."
The thesis itself was one of the longest theses I ever read, and
the reason it was so darn long was that another professor had
forced that student to really make one great big tome out of it
when it should have been, in my opinion, divided up into units
that were logically publishable. But these long tomes- -which is
another problem in science.
In the Geological Survey, as I've told you, in some of my
publication policies, the one thing that I guaranteed was that
people could publish what they wrote with a minimum of careful
review, and that there would be no limit on length. Now, the way
science is going now, there aren't very many places in the world
you can publish a long paper anymore. I'm told that even the
Geological Survey now is getting unhappy about publishing papers
that I used to think were the right size- -fifty or a hundred
printed pages.
Lage: Is this a cost consideration?
Leopold: That's partly cost, yes. Partly cost. For example, you hear
again and again of important journals that will send a manuscript
back to the author and say, "This is an interesting paper, but
cut it to two -thirds of its length, or cut it in half." Well,
you can't cut a paper in half and still have what you originally
sent in.
226
Lage : You also don't give the reader quite as much background on how
you came to your conclusions and your methods of research.
Leopold: Another thing that is very hard to do now, which I insisted on
doing in the Geological Survey, is publish your data in tabular
form. I said to my people, "What you say is going to run out of
date, but the numbers that you produce will never be out of date.
They can always be reanalyzed by somebody. The 
