Houghton's Field Notes
Surveying the wilderness was among the most important tasks set out for the American government of Michigan. The orderly settlement of land required the ability to write clear legal descriptions of the land. Such descriptions required detailed land surveys. Thus, for much of the nineteenth century, surveyors walked the land, taking careful measurements that were first recorded in field notebooks. These measurements formed the basis which establishes the boundaries for virtually every parcel of land in the state.
The Clarke Historical Library contains various writings and many of the original field survey notebooks of Douglass Houghton, among the best remembered of these surveyors. Houghton served as mayor of Detroit but is more often remembered as the, first State Geologist of Michigan, one of the earliest surveyors of the Upper Peninsula, and the man whose field notes help begin the exploitation of the Upper Peninsula's vast mineral reserves .
As state geologist, between 1837 and his untimely death in 1846, Houghton organized and participated in a detailed study of the State's resources. It was Houghton's evaluation of the State's copper deposits that led to the Michigan Copper boom in 1846. Included in this collection are Houghton's field notes from these surveys.
Although the mineral wealth described in these notes has largely been mined, the notes continue to be of importance both historically and because they enable environmentalists and geologists to compare today' conditions with those that existed more than a century ago.