The state geologist in 1888, John Branner, produced a prodigious amount of geological information and details about the state after being appointed state geologist in 1887, including this map of Washington County. It shows Fayetteville when the town consisted of some 47 blocks plus the university.
John Branner |
Frederic Simonds |
Frederic William Simonds, a professor at Arkansas Industrial University, was assistant geologist to Branner. Both of them attended Cornell University in the early 1870s and ended up in Arkansas. Simonds soon left to be chair of the geology department at the University of Texas, and Branner eventually became the second president of Stanford University, all the while continuing their geological studies in Arkansas for several more years.
The map is one of the few showing the route of the Pacific & Great Eastern Railroad, which ran from Fayetteville east to Wyman. Just four years later, when a similar updated geological map of Washington County was printed in 1892, the PG&E had disappeared from the map, but the roadbed of the Ozark & Cherokee Central, then referred to as the Arkansas Western Railway, had been added.
This map was engraved and printed by G.W. & C.B. Colton of New York.