Stop 2

Continue down the central hallway to the Earth Science Information Center (ESIC). The ESIC offers an opportunity to browse through topographic and geologic maps, books, and other USGS publications and to purchase items of interest. In addition to these items, assistance is available for locating and (or) ordering products such as aerial photographs, historical maps, or digital data. If you have only a limited time to visit the USGS, this should be your one stop!

As you enter the ESIC, notice the display cases containing traditional surveying instruments from the 19th and 20th centuries. Because of the advent of computers, satellites, and radar, these instruments are no longer used by the USGS to establish “control points” needed to determine elevations and distances for map making. Instruments like these, however, played a large role in mapping unknown territory during the settlement of North America, from the time of the earliest surveyors, such as George Washington, into the second half of the 20th century.

Next to the ESIC entrance you will see a large, colorful painting. This painting was done by a USGS fieldman, Hal Shelton, in 1940. The painting depicts mapping techniques used in the early days of cartography, including an alidade and stadia rod for determining distances and elevation and a plane-table for sketching contour lines. Note the “U.S.” marking on the canteen; many of the field supplies were from Army surplus.

Adjacent to this painting are shelves containing numerous brochures on subjects from fossils to map reading. These publications are free, but please take only what you need. If you are planning a full tour of the USGS campus, you may want to make the ESIC your final stop, so that you won’t have to carry the materials and purchases as you tour.

Leaving the ESIC office, return to the California raised-relief map on the lobby pillar, turn left, and follow the long hallway. As you exit Building 3, under the stairwell on your left is a large specimen of gold ore from the McLaughlin Mine situated at the junction of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake Counties. The siliceous sinter (a hot-water deposition of layers of silica) contains minute bits of gold and mercury. Historically a mercury mine during the California gold rush, the McLaughlin Mine was reopened in the 1980s to mine gold, but is now closed once more.

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