Outcrop Mapping and Avoiding Moonshiners The Adventures of 1930 HGS President

One colorful geologist who left an impact in Houston, and the rest of the country, was our 1930 president, J. Brian Eby. His autobiography titled My Two Roads , published in 1974, is one adventure after another. It's well worth reading, if you can find it (the Houston Public Library had the only copy I could find in its storage stacks). Eby came to Houston in 1925 with Roxana (Royal Dutch Shell) after working a few years with the USGS. From Houston, his travels took him all over the world for both business and the search of petroleum. Ellen Sue Blakey retells this story in her book To the Waters and the Wild.
Every postgraduate student had one eye on employment with the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington in the early years of the century, even after World War I. James Brian Eby was one of them. To qualify, each person had to pass the geologic aide examination before they submitted an application. The director of the USGS in 1920 was George Otis Smith, a Johns Hopkins doctor of philosophy in geology.
Although Eby's exam score was low, he managed to get in because of his ability to write and his former training as a newspaper reporter. He was sent to Virginia. "After I arrived at Big Stone Gap early in the summer and checked into the local hotel, [Chester K.] Wentworth casually asked me if I ever mapped an outcrop by plane table. Truthfully, I said no. Taking me to a second floor hotel window he pointed to a large fenced field that was perfectly flat, except for a huge sandstone rock near the center. The line where the sofl of the field meets the edge of the rock is a geologic outcrop. Tomorrow morning, he said, I would map it and if it took more than ten minutes I would crack up that boulder with a sledge hammer for a week. Recalling my planetable and transit experience in the ROTC and the Army, my outcrop lesson was done in nothing flat."
After the first few weeks, Wentworth and Eby paired up to work alone or with a native guide. Plane table work was impractical in the area, so they used a Brunton compass, a chisel-edge hammer and aneroid barometer. With that they carried notebook cases, a canteen and lunch. If coal sampling, they handled a 30- pound sampling outfit. They used a Ford car when and where roads existed.
Eby managed well with the native mountain people and even found the mountain moonshiners hos- pitable - to a point. "Mr. Horsley, the Big Stone Gap postmaster, suggested that on my mountain treks it would be prudent to hire a 'reliable' guide for a few trips to get myself acquainted with the mountain brethren" Eby wrote. "This I did. Newspaper accounts told me that one county, state or national lawman had been murdered every month for the past four months in the county. My khaki clothes, big hat and leather goods made me look 'powerfully suspicious.' How the news got through the mountains I'll never know, but when I wandered into one still in full bloom I was not only welcomed but offered a mug of 'mountain dew.' I settled for undiluted and unpolluted spring water. I kept their friendship but sure lost their esteem."
Moonshiners were not the only danger in the mountains. Eby was walking along the edge of the river in the five-mile Guest River Gorge in central Wise County, Virginia, on a ledge about 15 feet above the water. "Suddenly I stepped into a concealed crevice in the sandstone floor and I fell about eight feet untfl the crevice narrowed to about 20 inches, pinning me between the walls, wedged in place by the knapsack strapped to my back. I had no cuts or bruises, so I used the principle of the inchworm, fists and elbows for top leverage-and my hobnailed boots as bottom leverage. Once I reached the top, I spotted my wide-briinmed Stetson stfll care- fully draped over the point of my entry. My only loss was my chisel-edged hammer and professional dignity. Recovering the latter, I thanked the good Lord for the pardon and went on my way."