Field Station History

The department has from its beginning required a summer field course for its undergraduate geology majors. Since 1948, Iowa State has operated its own field station to support this requirement. The first field station was established in an old hotel in the canyon of Little Fountain Creek about 12 miles southwest of Colorado Springs. By 1956, the classes had outgrown this leased facility. Repairs and expansion would have been too expensive. It was decided that the field program should be moved to a new location. Preliminary study indicated that the most favorable place for a new field station would be in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. During the summer of 1957, Dr. Chalmer Roy took a splinter group of 11 students to the basin. They found the people of the basin very hospitable, the geology spectacular and easily accessible, and the weather hot and dry but amenable to fieldwork. At the end of the field season a five-acre tract along Shell Creek two miles east of the village of Shell, Wyoming was purchased. The field station, then the Iowa State Geology Camp, was established during the following summer. Two large barracks buildings, once used to house Japanese-Americans interned during World War II at Ralston, Wyoming and later used to house low income families in Greybull were leased from the town of Greybull and moved to the site and mounted on three-foot concrete columns. Nearly all windows in the buildings were broken. There was no furniture, no electricity, no water, and no kitchen equipment. The buildings were repaired by the faculty and a student crew of 39, which had enrolled for the field course during the summer of 1958. Windows were repaired, electricity and water installed and used kitchen equipment and bunk beds obtained and set up. The 1959 class constructed a shower house, outdoor toilets and two other small buildings. A third barracks building was moved to the field station and repaired in 1965.
From the summer of 1958 on, students and faculty have contributed much time and labor each year to improve the facilities. All construction and remodeling were and continue to be accomplished by students and faculty during their free time. No university, state, or federal funds have been used for any construction, remodeling, equipment, maintenance, or operation of the field station. Only the salaries of the teaching faculty and graduate assistants have been provided by the University.

Enrollment in the undergraduate geology field course has varied from a low of 5 students in 1948 to a high of 53 in 1984. Since 1958, 1057 undergraduate students have completed the course, and approximately 75 graduate students have used the Field Station as a base of operation to carry on research concerning various facets of the geology of Wyoming and Montana.

Geology is traditionally a field-related discipline. Its concepts and theoretical background can be presented in a classroom, but they are brought together only when students actually study rocks in the field. Almost every undergraduate geology program in the world requires that students study field geology. The field experience provides the student with a sense of scale and spatial relationship (both vertical and lateral). Most importantly, it provides the framework that the student will later use in modeling.

The field course taught at the ISU Geology Field Station is an intense 6-credit course involving 10 to 12 hours per day, 6 days per week for 6 weeks in June and July. A typical day begins with breakfast at 6:30 AM and includes 8 to 9 hours of field work during the day and 1 to 4 hours of lecture, reading assignments, and/or report writing at the field station in the evening. The course consists of closely supervised instruction in areas representing a wide spectrum of problems of variable difficulty. Emphasis is placed on the recognition and evaluation of geologic phenomena and problems and on geologic reasoning. The standard field techniques, ranging from careful note taking to photo-geological analysis and global positioning (GPS) are introduced as methods of acquiring and recording field data. During the first week, the student is exposed to the diversity and complexity of the geology of the region through field reconnaissance, lectures, and discussion. The second week is devoted to measuring and describing the stratigraphic sequence and to recording carefully the observations obtained. Detailed geologic mapping on large-scale conventional aerial photographs is emphasized during the first half of the third week. This is followed by five-day project involving the preparation of a geologic map on a topographic base and a report summarizing the geologic history of the map area. The metamorphic and igneous geology of the Precambrian South Pass Granite-Greenstone Belt in the southern Wind River Range is studied and mapped in detail during the fourth week. The fifth week is devoted to one-day problems of varying difficulty. These are graded nightly and then reviewed in the field with the students so that they learn from their mistakes. A guided excursion to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national Parks is scheduled for the sixth and final week.

During the summer of 1988, computer mapping was introduced as part of the field course. This project was accomplished with assistance from ISU alumnus David Hamilton (B.S. 1974; M.S. 1979), currently with Subsurface Mapping Inc. Students were given hands-on experience using sophisticated mapping software on IBM-AT computers. Exercises were designed to show not only how powerful a tool the computer can be to geologists but also to illustrate the principle of GIGO (garbage in-garbage out). The project received wide acclaim and was the feature article in the 1988 October issue of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Explorer. This was dropped from the summer course in 1990; instead computer mapping was introduced on campus as part of the geology curriculum.

In late 1987, a questionnaire was sent to the 250 institutions offering a geology field course. The questionnaire solicited information about field course enrollment for 1985, 1986, and 1987. In addition, available information regarding the course duration, credit, and cost were compiled and compared to the Iowa State geology field course. Although the database was not complete, the figures obtained were representative of levels of enrollment and the decline in enrollment infield courses since 1984. They show that field course enrollment was 3,441 students in 1985; 2,361 students in 1986; and 2,002 students in 1987. From this sample, it can be seen that 1986 enrollment was 32% lower than 1985 and that 1987 enrollment dropped another 15% for a total drop of 42% since 1985. In 1985 44 camps had more than 30 students. In 1987, only 15 camps had more than 30 students, whereas 60 camps had fewer than 15 students, double the number of camps with this low of an enrollment in 1985. Enrollments continued to drop but at a lower rate through the years of 1988, 1989, and 1990. Enrollments increased slightly during the first half of the 1990s.

Clearly there were not enough students during this interval to cover the costs of faculty salaries and of operating the field stations. However, a surprisingly small number of field stations closed (only 10%) during the late 1980s and early 1990s because field station directors and geology departments recognized how difficult it is to revive a dead field program. Iowa State field course enrollments declined from 1985 through 1989 but remained at a moderate level when compared to other institutions and in 1990 through 1995 showed a progressive increase. During the past three years enrollments have averaged 29 students per year.