The United States Geological Survey was created over 50 years ago to coordinate the efforts of several agencies that were engaged in exploring the great and unknown West. Major John W. Powell, Director of the Survey from 1881 to 1894, was a broad philosophical naturalist rather than a specialist in the field of geology. During his explorations in the arid regions he became interested in the struggles of the settlers to bring water to their lands for irrigation. He laid the ground work for a systematic study of the problems of these settlers, including the determination of the available water supply, and organized the irrigation survey as a branch of the Geological Survey for this purpose in 1888. The first step was the establishment of an instruction camp for the hydrographic phase of this survey at Embudo, New Mexico, in the fall of that year. Out of this branch grew the Reclamation Act and later the establishment of the Reclamation Service as an independent bureau.As the East has become more densely settled, water consciousness has traveled from the arid regions eastward across the continent. Our great cities are confronted with problems of water supply scarcely less acute than those that confronted the early settlers along the meager streams of the arid Southwest. These cities must foresee their needs a decade or a generation ahead and provide for those needs by acquiring sources of water for their constantly growing population; 1185
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.