Episode 1 of 2
Congressional Establishment
- When
- March 3, 1879
- Where
- Seat of Congress
Congress established the USGS as a last-minute amendment to a sundry appropriations bill on March 3, 1879, following a National Academy of Sciences report.
The report recommended an agency dedicated to the study of geology and environmental resources on public domain. This recommendation prompted Congress to pass the legislation, which was signed into law by President Rutherford B. Hayes, formally creating the Geological Survey under the Department of the Interior.
Sources
- United States Geological Survey Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-27
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.