Roger Barron Morrison (1914-2006)
Quaternary Geology Scientist, Colleague, and Close Friend.
By M.D. Mifflin
I feel exceptionally privileged to offer an overview of Roger Barron Morrison’s contributions to the sciences of the Quaternary, and some idea of the man, from the perspective of a close friend and colleague for over forty years. Roger, normally an extremely private man, in relaxed moments over many years, told me bits and pieces of his experiences, and from memory with the help of his resume, I offer the following:
Roger was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of a Professor of Animal Science, one of two original editors that published what became, with many updated revisions, the bible on animal nutrition for the next 60 or so years. The Morrison family became rather wealthy from this independent source of income, and Roger’s father rose through the ranks of academia to become the Dean of the College of Animal Science at Cornell University.
It seems that great-grandfather Morrison had been captain and owner of a sailing ship out of Boston in the China trade. A family tradition held that the captain had children on both sides of the Pacific, but there was no indication from recorded names if children with Chinese blood were included and brought to the U.S. Roger, an objective scientist, suspected, with considerable amusement, his family could well be descended from the Chinese side. For example, Roger was small in stature, with a hint of eye folds. None of his family, however, acknowledged the possibility.
Roger earned a BS in Geology and an MA (1934) in Economic Geology by age 20 at Cornell. In the 1934-1935 academic year, he began work on a Ph.D. in Economic Geology, University of California, Berkeley, then transferred to Stanford (1935-1938) and completed all requirements, but never completed revising his dissertation (Structural and Mineralogical Evolution of Ore deposits in the Bald Mountain – Elkhorn Ridge area, Baker and Grant Counties, Oregon) “because of illness and WWII duties.” The illness was brucellosis, and he was pretty much incapacitated for more than a year. He had picked it up from drinking raw milk during field work. He initially chose economic geology – one of the lead geoscience specialties of that era, because of his father’s interests. His father invested in mining ventures. Roger described his first paid professional assignment (on his summer break) at Olinghouse, a gold property his father was considering near Wadsworth, Nevada. Roger spent the summer of 1934 reviewing the mine (located, I might add, within sight of the Wadsworth Amphitheater stratigraphic section of the Lake Lahontan, the most complete exposure of the Eetza Alloformation known). He managed to uncover evidence that it had been “salted”, and was essentially mined out. Roger would have been 20 years old that summer, and 60 years later when I heard the account he was still pleased that he saved his father from a carefully planned scam.
In 1935 Roger published his first professional paper based on his Master’s thesis – on the occurrence and origin of celestite and fluorite at Clay Center, Ohio, in the American Mineralogist. In 1940, as second author (with Joe Poland) “An electrical resistivity apparatus for testing well waters” was published in the American Geophysical Union Transactions, a basic design that is still marketed. Roger had begun his career with the US Geological Survey in 1939, and his first open file report was on groundwater resources, Big Sandy Valley, Mojave Co., Arizona. From 1942 to 1947, Roger was with the Military Geology Branch, USGS, and basically prepared military intelligence maps and reports dealing with geomorphology, materials, and water supply for areas in Europe, South America, and Asia. He prepared military issued manuals on water-supply development. At times, he worked directly on key intelligence questions: river bank conditions for crossing the Rhine, and beach conditions for the invasion of the Philippines. I noticed in Roger’s subsequent work, that, whatever topic he was dealing with, he was expert in establishing comprehensive literature searches and often incorporated earlier findings into his writings. This talent is well illustrated in the sections he authored in the DNAG volume K-2, Quaternary Nonglacial Geology: Conterminous U.S. His writing style – clear, and concise, was also much admired by me – he was always close to getting it right on the first draft when we worked together on reports.
Roger’s interest in Quaternary geology was likely stimulated by the military intelligence work (European geologic literature) and the period of groundwater studies in the basins of Arizona and New Mexico, before WWII. He got his opportunity in 1949 to pursue this interest when he was named Chief of the Fallon, Nevada Project, a study of Tertiary and Quaternary stratigraphy in four 15-minute quadrangles in the Carson Desert of Nevada. The occurrence of several water wells yielding natural gas had caused much speculation and provided the incentive for the study. I never thought to ask Roger how he landed the project, but I suspect it might have been up for grabs because of its flat, desolate nature (but it’s also the largest sub-basin of Lake Lahontan).
It did not take long after beginning this project for Roger, often with coauthors, to begin publishing on Quaternary topics. In 1952 he submitted two abstracts (GSA Bulletin) on the stratigraphy of Lake Lahontan, and the Lake Quaternary climatic history of the northern Great Basin. With Gerry Richmond and Howard Bissell as co-authors, another GSA Bulletin abstract was offered that year on correlations of Late Quaternary deposits in the La Sal Mountains, Lake Lahontan and Lake Bonneville basins based on interglacial soils. In 1957 two more publications came out with additional company as co-authors, James Gilluly, and Charles Hunt. During these years, all of these co-authors were well known. James Gilluly was the most famous geologist at the time. From that period on Roger was publishing frequently on Lake Lahontan, Lake Bonneville, and regional correlations of Quaternary deposits based on geosols (the topic of another Morrison Ph.D. dissertation, this one at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). This time around he was granted the Ph.D. in 1964 (the first issued by this institution). Roger’s mentor at UNR was George Burke Maxey. Dr. Maxey (my boss at the Desert Research Institute, a research branch of UNR) formerly taught at the University of Illinois, and was a close friend of John Frye, widely recognized for his work on glacial tills and associated stratigraphy in the Midwest. Roger and John Frye published (1964) on a proposed correlation of Middle and Late Quaternary sequences, beginning in the Lake Lahontan basin, to Lake Bonneville, to the Wasatch Range, to the Southern Great Plains and western Midwest sequences. Roger was publishing with the elite in the US geologic profession, cooperative efforts triggered by his detailed stratigraphic work in the Lahontan basin and the use of geosols for long distant correlations of widely varying Quaternary deposits and climates.
It was during this period (1963-1965) that I met and worked with Roger for the first time. He was extremely busy with the combination of finishing up his dissertation, USGS work on Lake Bonneville’s stratigraphy, preparing the paper co-authored with John Frye, and putting the finishing editorial touches on his U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 401 on Lake Lahontan (1964). In addition, he was a co-organizer, with Clyde Wahrhaftig, for the Northern Great Basin and California Field Excursion of the 1965 Congress of INQUA. He was more than spread thin, and during a GSA meeting the Fall of 1963 at Reno, he asked me if I would help him by giving backup support to Margaret (Peg) Wheat while she measured and described some key Lake Lahontan stratigraphic sections that winter and spring. The request came as a surprise—he barely knew who I was, but I quickly agreed.
At the time, I didn’t know any of the above, or question how it was that he came to ask me for help—in retrospect, it was likely Burke Maxey who recommended me to Roger. Burke knew that I was interested in Quaternary geology and that I had already attempted to break out and map some of Roger’s stratigraphic units at the eastern margin of the Carson Desert (unsuccessfully). I was ready to learn something from the “master” as Burke referred to Roger’s position in the Quaternary sciences.
Over the next year and a half, I worked with Roger and Peg Wheat on the two localities where the stratigraphic relationships of early lake cycles were exposed, plus saw many other localities of the younger lake cycles with key relationships, benefiting from the last 15 years of Roger’s efforts. And so began two working relationships (and friendships) that would endure until their deaths decades later.
Roger and I got off to a good understanding at a major highway cut through the root zone of a Lake Lahontan pointbar. It offers a 3-D exposure of Sehoo gravels overlying the subaerial Wyemaha alluvium and eolian sand, with the well developed Churchill Geosol preserved in some areas, and underlying Eetza bar gravels also exposed. It was the last field day to finalize the 1965 INQUA fieldtrip road log and send it off to the printer. We had run out of daylight, and were making up the descriptions with the aid of headlights. In frustration with the poor, indirect light, I muttered aloud the question of what the B horizon colors might prove to be in natural daylight, as Roger stood by taking notes. Roger said nothing for a long pause – then something to the effect, “You know, this highway is too dangerous for 50 people to be crossing the highway and wandering around. We will make it a slowdown locality.” By this time, I was well aware of Roger’s quest for accuracy and detail in anticipation of several European experts on geosols participating in the field trip. I began to laugh, as only a few minutes before this was to be a half hour stop. Roger also began to chuckle, too, as he knew that I knew he didn’t want to be beat up over some poor guesses on colors, and he had just made an executive decision to avoid such problems. We selected the color matches (?) together, and headed for closet town, Lovelock, and food at the only place still open, a small, rather seedy casino. Roger promptly orders the finest wine on the well-worn wine list, and after the traditional taste, refused it as spoiled! The young waiter, trained to offer the first taste, had no idea of what to do if the most expensive bottle in the house was refused. Roger, suspecting that all the good wines on the list had been stored upright for years—-then orders the house wine. Roger, the master of the Quaternary, and Roger, the Character, all in one day!
Seemingly minor because its old hat now, but perhaps one of the more important contributions that Roger’s early work established was the 3-D mapping approach to facies changes and age relationships in the lacustral and interbedded subaerial bolson deposits, with lateral mapping of varying marker horizons—geosols and tephra, and also diagnostic lithologic characteristics would sometimes prove useful. What appears to be look alike fine-grained deposits in disjunct exposures begin to have real character, with predictable facies changes. This detailed 3-D mapping strategy later helped Roger’s disciples to sort out lacustrine deposits from “lake beds” of a different origin. Experienced (and highly respected) field geologists had mapped “lake beds” in nearly all southern basins of the Great Basin to that period. However, in some areas extensive “lake beds” occurred where there was no hydrographic closure, and a few of these were dated as Late Quaternary by the 1960’s. It was a big initial puzzle, at least to me. After Peg Wheat and I established quantitative analyses of catchment basin sizes necessary for maintenance of carefully mapped extents of Late Quaternary lakes in the northern and central portions of the Great Basin (Roger’s age relationships in the Lahontan basin set the stage for this work) I was convinced many southern “lake beds” were related to a different process—the bottomline being paleogroundwater discharge deposits with many of the fined grained units of paludal (marsh deposit) origins. This alternative interpretation went on hold for over a decade, but by the mid-1980’s Jay Quade was conducting careful studies of these southern basin deposits—basically using Roger’s 3-D mapping approach. With a number of co-authors, he began publishing on the fascinating details of the paleogroundwater discharge deposits, complete with rather systematic facies representing a host of depositional environments that were repeated in basin after basin. Similar paleogroundwater discharge deposits appear to be common globally in semi-arid and arid regions, often interpreted as “lake beds”.
After looking back at some of Roger’s early publications, I decided to review the three chapters that he contributed to the DNAG Volume K-2 published in 1991. I became hooked and finished reading the entire volume (about a week later). Roger’s fingerprints are present throughout the volume, and it’s an exceptional compilation from both the topical and regional chapter perspectives. This may not have been Roger’s last hurrah, but in my view, it’s his best. It incorporates excellent summaries of his major contributions, and he is in excellent company with 100 other authors both detailing and summarizing regional relationships and providing comprehensive discussions of supporting sciences. As editor and contributor, he established his own memorial and his place in the Quaternary sciences. Each of us may have differing views of the contributions he has made, but this volume lays out the full spectrum for consideration. I found it fascinating how extensive his field work and knowledge was of many regions. Not only did Roger make the volume happen (see the Foreword), but he guided it into a major scientific contribution. The structuring of the chapters allows the one hundred additional authors to offer their best analyses and reviews, and every chapter is excellent.
One of the interesting aspects I never gave much thought to until this review was the apparent splash of Roger’s Lake Lahontan-Lake Bonneville work and inter-regional correlations generated in the 1950’s and 1960’s. From our current perspective, it may seem surprising, but in the context of the stage of development of Quaternary sciences at this period, these detailed records were somewhat analogous to the impacts of subsequent detailed long records – such as the ocean core analyses and ice core records – major contributions in terms of long Quaternary records offering much greater detail and new insights into varying climates than had been documented before. Also, the inter-regional correlations using geosols came at a time when none of the currently adopted constraining dating techniques had been fully developed or applied; such were in the beginning phases of development in the 1950’s, and coming into the literature by the mid 1960’s. Suddenly, here were two records (Bonneville and Lahontan) with complete records of pluvial lake cycles and stages accompanied by major soil forming interludes. Other regions had the geosols and continental deposits, but not the essentially continuous sedimentation records to establish more confidence in the comprehensive nature of the records. The new records were a major breakthrough at the time, with two continuous records of multiple pluvial and interpluvial states and the associated geosols for correlation with the geosols of other regions.
Roger ranked the Lahontan, Bonneville, and Tecopa basin Quaternary studies as his most important contributions. He believed these basins offered the longest, most complete and most detailed paleoclimatic records in continental settings. He often referred to his efforts in the Tecopa basin as his “last hurrah” and he was clearly the most excited researcher I’ve known when it became clear that funding to support his fieldwork in this basin was forthcoming through State of Nevada technical oversight program for the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level waste repository. In his 70’s when the field support became available (Roger was my choice for this important study of the paleoclimates in this hydrographic basin) he was confronted with a dilemma shortly thereafter – he had the editorship of the DNAG volume if he chose to take it on, but he wasn’t convinced he could manage both the Tecopa study and editorial efforts at the same time. He asked me what I thought (pointing out his age) and I think if I had said no to the editorship, he may have followed the advice. However, I urged him to take on the editorship.
I admit I had a few guilt pangs during the next several years, because the DNAG volume effort was likely his greatest challenge, and Roger made sure I heard about some of his problems of execution. However, these pangs evaporated when I saw the published results, that is, until my recent reading of the entire volume. For the first time I realized how much effort he put into it, all while spending the winter months in the field for the Tecopa study, plus executing other technical review activities associated with oversight of the proposed repository. I think Roger’s greatest achievement in contributions to the Quaternary sciences will prove to be his recognition of the need for the DNAG volume on the nonglaciated areas of the US, successfully pushing the concept and recruiting chapter leaders, and by following through as editor, helping to make it such an outstanding volume dealing with the Quaternary. He pulled together the broad aspects of the Quaternary sciences which tells the bigger story, but made sure all detailed stories as currently understood were intact and in perspective in the process.
No memorial to Roger would be complete without elaborating on his other claim to fame, Roger the Character. In 1963 I was briefed by two colleagues before I met Roger in person. Burke Maxey (also considered by many as a character) pointed out that if I was interested in Quaternary geology —“he was the master”. Another colleague, however, while acknowledging Roger’s impressive Lake Lahontan work, couldn’t wait to tell me about Roger, the Character. Roger’s standard field attire in warm weather up to about that time (Roger began to cover up shortly before I met him due to a bout with skin cancer) was essentially nothing but a cowboy hat, boots, and the minimum (controversy continues as to exactly what) in terms of modesty. This attire, when added to Roger’s favorite mode of transportation for fieldwork in the desert bolsons— a horse, created quite a sight. One can imagine the effect of a seemingly naked cowboy riding around the desert, brown as a berry, going nowhere, as he rode up and down the dry washes. Roger used the horse (he owned a series) because he would systematically examine every wash bank or topographic feature that offered the possibility of an exposure, however limited, plus the horse offered efficient access to key localities often widely spaced in the typically soft ground terrain. Roger’s field technique was to review possible stratigraphic relationships in a reconnaissance sense, and then begin more detailed studies of the key localities. He could cover very large areas, systematically checking possible exposures without wearing himself out.
One account (provided initially by my new colleague, but verified later by participants) captures some of the behavior patterns that set Roger apart. It seems that, on the day of moving to a new field camp location in the eastern Carson Desert (SE corner of Eightmile Flat, a very large, puffy ground playa) Peg Wheat, his field assistant, was left to set up camp, while Roger took off by horseback for reconnaissance in the new area (Roger rarely wasted any time available for field work). It seems that around midday, Roger was close to Salt Wells, a former Pony Express stop and at that time the location of an isolated bar-restaurant on US Highway 50, near the northwest corner of Eightmile Flat. Roger stopped in to order two cases of fine French wine (Roger, regardless of location or conditions, liked his creature comforts, one of which was a glass or two of top quality wine for dinner). He also expected good service (also regardless of location or conditions). Apparently, out of nowhere, he marched though the door and up to the bar in his warm weather field attire. Without preliminaries, he asked if he could order the two cases of wine (the husband and wife owners had never seen anything quite like this and at first suspected a prank). The order, however, if real, would make them a good profit. They agreed, but suggested he check back after they could find out from their distributor the price and time of delivery. This satisfied Roger as reasonable, and he walked out the door, got on the horse, and rode southeast out across Eightmile Flat, a direction to absolutely nowhere (except the new field camp). All of this, including the transportation mode and the direction, was observed with total amazement by the owners. He was their first almost naked cowboy, and his order (high-end French wine by the case?) was beyond anything the locals could cook up. There was a happy ending, as Peg Wheat was assigned to check back, knew the couple, and assured them that Roger was real and good for the wine. Roger got his supply of camp wine without missing a beat in his field work, the husband-wife owners had a bar story that was hard to make better by exaggeration, and some 50 years later it gives the reader some insight as to why many thought Roger was a character. From Roger’s standpoint it was just good logistics. Or was it?
During the past 20 some years, I interacted with Roger frequently. We traveled together, several trips in rough foreign settings, and his demeanor never changed—he expected good service and quality wine and food—and again, it didn’t matter the circumstances (which at times just getting by was my objective). During these years Roger’s appearance was such that he was sometimes mistaken for Willie Nelson (especially in foreign settings). He got a kick out of this, and once he confided that during his undergraduate years at Cornell he had become very active in theatre—even considering it as a career! Until he told me this, I had assumed he was oblivious to what was “normal” behavior. Was it possible that Roger, the Character was, at least in part, staged?
Roger’s primary focus in life was his professional work, which largely dealt with Quaternary research whenever possible. From the time I met him, until the last two months of his life at the age of 92, he was actively engaged and remarkably productive. He met and married Harriet, his wife, in 1941 who was, at that time, a geologist employed by an oil company. She had just been evacuated to the US after being stationed in the Philippines. Harriet was his loving helpmate and companion—she looked after Roger in all matters domestic, as well as helped him with his work (see the DNAG volume K-2 Forward). Roger spoke of Harriet and his family often (three sons and daughter-in-laws, and associated grand-children) and he ranked his family very high in his priorities. However, other than Harriet, who knew him very well, the rest of his family may not have known the complete Roger—if one did not work with him and share in his primary interests and goals, he was opaque; he rarely revealed his feelings and passions (unless he disagreed with you on something he considered important!).
He had strong feelings about some conservation issues—and what he perceived as bad government drove him wild. He felt this way about the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain (a “dry” design in highly fractured welded tuffs in the vadose zone didn’t seem that dry during pluvial climates to Roger, or to me, for that matter). Another major issue led Roger into forming, with several others, the Colorado Chapter of the Sierra Club when the Bureau of Reclamation planned to dam all the major canyons of the Colorado River (they added the Marble Canyon Dam, but not the next one as planned).
Roger liked horses well enough to keep them, at his own expense, until his last favorite got too old for field work, and Roger thought that he, too, was too old to start a new horse. One casual conversation indicated why —- I had started it by telling him of horses I had known that had given me some close calls in mountain work. Roger related that he had had several very good horses, but one new one he was trying out almost got him. He was doing reconnaissance in a remote Arizona valley, and the horse seemed steady the first day, so the second day he started early and headed out to a distant area with poor access. About noon the horse reared without warning, and landed at a full gallop without Roger, but with the water bag. A big buzzing rattlesnake under a nearby bush told the story. Roger said he managed to get back to the vehicle about dusk—thirsty. The only thing that saved him was the morning ride had been via washes, and he said he cut straight across country toward the vehicle, which maybe cut the distance by about a third, which was enough. He found the horse three days later at the only water in the valley—about 12 miles from the point last seen.
Roger was very fond of cats—-all varieties—domestic or wild. With several partners, Roger and I bought large tracts of forests in S. America—the idea was to preserve habitat from land clearing—the region is loaded with exotic wildlife, including several cats—with jaguars the top predators. Two tracts were purchased sight unseen—-Roger and I went to see what we had bought (a local partner and I knew the general areas from previous experience, some knew what to expect). One tract Roger didn’t like—-but the other happened to offer up fresh jaguar tracks very close to our campsite. Roger bought the adjacent tract (~16,000 acres) on his own when it also came on the market at a bargain price! I’m convinced the jaguar tracks had much to do with Roger’s purchase, but the terrain may have helped – an area of N-S trending very large dune ridges and swales currently stabilized by hardwood forest, surrounded by hundreds of miles of alluvial plain with essentially no relief. A single bulldozer-cut-road across the dune field (I had briefed Roger of these observations in another area) exposes buried geosols, suggesting multiple periods of stability and activity and a Quaternary age.
Anybody who has attempted research has their secret list of heroes in science; I’m fortunate to have known two as colleagues and friends – Roger was one of them.