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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
The Life of Herbert Hoover, the Engineer - Chapter 4: A California Apprenticeship (PH 6-12)(1983) (5 pages)
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Page: of 5
spas H O70°V FE eR
Life asa government geologist, then, was rarely uninteresting. “Don’t worry
about anything happening to me,” Hoover told his sister with characteristically dry humor, “for we always leave definitely with hotel clerks the route
We expect to travel during the day with explicit directions as to what use is
to be made of the corpse.” '4
As the summer of 1895 wore on, Hoover faced an increasingly pressing
question: what would he do when autumn came and work in the Sierras
ended for the season? His prospects a year before for a permanent position
with the Survey after graduation were now uncertain. Summer work with
Lindgren would end on October 1, he told his sister May during the summer, although, he added, “I have some good chances then I think.”!5 When
a friend informed him of some kind of opening at the University of Oregon,
he acknowledged that he would “very much like to have it,” but doubted that
he could obtain the job without political influence in Oregon.'®
Instead, in early September, he disclosed his plans to a correspondent:
I shall not return to Stanford. I am going to work at the mines in Nevada
City [California] at the expiration of this work and hope to get a fellowship
in Geology at Columbia or John{s] Hopkins the year following. . am trying
to make a specialty of mining geology for it offers the widest field. '7
Because of a cut in federal appropriations, Hoover's hope for continued work
with the Survey was lost.'8
Passing through the Nevada City region in mid-September while still
working with Lindgren, Hoover met an unemployed Stanford classmate and
fellow fledgling geologist, E. B. Kimball. The two headed north to Forest
City and American Hill, Where for six days Kimball assisted Hoover in
resurveying the local topography and correcting the mistakes of their predecessors. Lindgren was pleased that Hoover had been able to save him the
trouble of calling in a professional topographer. No longer was his assistant
the “pale and slender” student he had first met a year before. In Lindgren’s
appreciative eyes, Hoover had become a “full size” geologist capable of doing
independent work."
As it turned out, Hoover remained with Lindgren until October 15. On
that day he made a final entry in his field notebook, took leave of the U.S.
Geological Survey, and headed for Nevada City, fifty miles northeast of Sacramento: forty-niner country, gold-mining country, in the foothills of the
High Sierras.?°
Jest
I x the 1890s Nevada County was the principal gold-mining county of Cal‘fornia. The auriferous Grass Valley belt near Nevada City—home of the