Clarence Dutton

Who was Clarence Dutton?

Clarence Edward Dutton was an American geologist and US Army officer. Dutton was born in Wallingford, Connecticut on May 15, 1841. He graduated from Yale College in 1860 and took postgraduate courses there until 1862, when he enlisted in the 21st Connecticut Volunteers; he fought at Fredericksburg, Suffolk, Nashville and Petersburg.

In 1875 he began work as a geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Working chiefly in the Colorado Plateau region, he wrote several classic papers, including geological studies of the high plateaus of Utah, the Cenozoic history of the Grand Canyon district, and the Charleston, SC earthquake of 1886. As head of the division of volcanic geology at the USGS, he studied volcanism in Hawaii, California, and Oregon. He helped coordinate the scientific response to a large earthquake in the Mexican state of Sonora in 1887. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1884.

In 1886, Dutton led a USGS party to Crater Lake, Oregon. His team carried a half-ton survey boat, the Cleetwood, up the steep mountain slope and lowered it 2,000 feet into the lake. From the Cleetwood, Dutton used piano wire with lead weights to measure the depth of the lake at 168 different points. The survey team determined the lake was 1,996 feet deep. The currently-accepted maximum depth figure, measured by sonar, is 1,943 feet.²