Epilogue

This paper has undergone several metamorphoses in the four years of its writing, and yet it is far from thorough or complete, Many changes to my text occurred as circumstances changed, plans modified, and buildings built or demolished. In following the storyline, I have become more aware how the future evolves from the past, and can be influenced by consequences of the present. You, the reader, are enabled by this knowledge and power, and can put to use your understanding of the past and circumstances of the present, to be applied toward an enlightened and visionary future. Your thoughts and actions can influence what transpires, both here and elsewhere.

The distribution of oak trees and topographic expression of natural levees suggests that a former channel of San Francisquito might have meandered through the campus, giving more credence to prehistoric occupation of the site. It might be possible that GSA contractors could dig up some anthropologic evidence of the Ohlone Indians, Spanish rancheros, the Latham & Hopkins Estates, or the Dibble Hospital in the process of excavating the basement of the "new" building. Surficial traverses and excavations of the Middlefield lawn by GSA archeological contractors have already turned up a prehistoric bone owl, macoma clams, oysters, periwinkles, and abalone, from the pre-historic period, and 19th century items found included bricks, glass, apothecary bottles, square nails, stoneware beer bottles, fragments of a porcelain rice bowl, clay pipes, and anthracite coal. Future archaeologists may find pipes, vaults, wires and fiber-optic cables, etc. as artifacts of a USGS presence here. Whatever one's time frame of reference, there is certainly an appreciable history of human activity manifest in the environs of the Menlo Park USGS campus, and in our quest of lifelong learning and personal voyages of discovery, there is much history yet to be made.

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