FIFTY YEARS OF THE PENINSULA GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Mike Diggles

Photo showing David Howell, USGS Geologist (Menlo Park, CA) leading a PGS field trip.

The Peninsula Geological Society (PGS) was formed in 1954 as a group of scientists who focus their attention and research on the San Francisco Peninsula in particular as well as San Francisco Bay Area, California, and western Cordilleran geology in general. They meet about monthly during the academic year, as well as have two or three field trips a year. The operation of PGS is mostly run out of the USGS in Menlo Park and the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences. Most meetings are dinner meetings and are commonly held at Stanford. Other institutions that are closely, or at least loosely, involved with PGS include Hayward State University, U.C. Berkeley, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, California Council of Geoscience Organizations, Sonoma State University, U.C. Santa Cruz, U.C. Davis, the Association of Engineering Geologists, the Helatite Field Club at U.C. Santa Cruz, and the Northwest Geological Society. The PGS Web site is http://www.diggles.com/pgs/

The April, 2004, meeting is the 362nd meeting since December 2, 1954, when Adolph Knopf gave a paper at Meeting No. 1 titled "Bathyliths in Time." The complete listing of speakers and presentation titles since 1954 is available at http://www.diggles.com/pgs/pgstalks.html, where one can follow the development of geologic thought over the last half century. It is particularly interesting to browse through the titles around the late 1960s and the 1970s. Those years saw the "revolution in Earth sciences"--the blossoming of modern plate-tectonic theory.

Officers in PGS are listed at http://www.diggles.com/pgs/pgsoff2.html and include a fair share of luminaries including USGS Director Vincent E. McKelvey (Vice President, 1955).

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