Edward Morehouse Douglas
About
Edward Morehouse Douglas was one of the first topographers employed by the U.S. Geological Survey. When Douglas began work in 1882, the goal of the new government agency was to produce an integrated topographic map of the United States to support development of natural resources including land, water, and forests. This was the plan of its director, appointed the previous year, John Wesley Powell (1834-1902). Douglas remained at the USGS for the next forty-eight years. A civil engineer who earned a degree at Columbia School of Mines in 1881, he eventually supervised all crews in the Rocky Mountain region extending from Montana to Arizona. In 1911 he became director of the Topographic Branch’s Computing Division. In 1923 he authored the standard work on boundary surveys that remained in use through the 1960s.
