ABSTRACT
Geography is not a mere twentieth-century development in government service. Geography is old in official Washington, as old as the government itself. In those earlier years there were expeditions and explorations, surveys and reports, maps and charts, all an integral part of the discovery and advancing settlement of our great land. Such information was a practical necessity to the expanding functions of government. Hutchins, Lewis and Clarke, Schoolcraft, Emory, Wheeler, King, Hayden, Powell, Gilbert, and Gannett, were among the practising government geographers of the earlier period who loom large. Their interests, techniques, and accomplishments, in keeping with their day and age, can be observed best in their official work and publication. Those persons doing geographic work during the first century of the Republic were in most part classified officially under some other title; in fiscal year 1894, more than 100 years after our government was organized under the Constitution, of 11,471 positions paying annual salaries totalling more than $13,364,000 in the several Executive Departments and other government establishments of the nation’s capital, only two geographers, specifically named as such, were provided. 1 The total number, including those geographers in disguise under some other title, was not large in comparison with total Federal employment.
