Clarence Rivers King (January 6, 1842 – December 24, 1901) was an American geologist, mountaineer, and author. He was the first director of the United States Geological Survey from 1879 to 1881. Nominated by Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes, King was noted for his exploration of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Clarence King was born on January 6, 1842, the son of James Rivers King and Florence Little King. Clarence's father was part of a family firm engaged in trade with China, which kept him away from home a great deal, and he died in 1848, so Clarence was brought up primarily by his mother. By 1848, his two sisters, named Florence King and Grace King, had died early in their lives.
Clarence developed an early interest in outdoor exploration and natural history, which was encouraged by his mother and by Reverend Dr. Roswell Park, head of the Christ Church Hall school in Pomfret, Connecticut, that Clarence attended until he was ten. He then attended schools in Boston and New Haven and, at age thirteen, was accepted to the prestigious Hartford High School. He was a good student and a versatile athlete, of short stature but unusually strong.
His mother received an income from the King family business until it met with a series of problems and dissolved in 1857. After a few years of straitened circumstances, during part of which Clarence suffered from a serious depression, his mother married George S. Howland in July 1860 and had a daughter with him named Marian Howland. Howland financed Clarence's enrollment in the Sheffield Scientific School, affiliated with Yale College, in 1860.
At Yale, King specialized in "applied chemistry" and also studied physics and geology. One inspiring teacher was James Dwight Dana, a highly regarded geologist who had participated in the United States Exploring Expedition, a scientific expedition to the South Atlantic, South Pacific and the west coasts of South and North America. At Yale, King enjoyed many sports, as he was a skilled athlete, but rowing was his main passion. He joined the rowing team at the university, and eventually became its captain. The Undine team competed on a four-man rowing boat, with King at the stroke oar. King later graduated with a Ph.B. in July 1862. That summer, he and several friends borrowed one of Yale's rowboats for a trip along the shores of Lake Champlain and a series of Canadian rivers, then returned to New Haven for the fall regatta.
In October 1862, on a visit to the home of his former professor, George Jarvis Brush, King heard Brush read aloud a letter he had received from William Henry Brewer telling of an ascent of Mount Shasta in California, then believed to be the tallest mountain in the United States. King began to read more about geology, attended a lecture by Louis Agassiz, and soon wrote to Brush that he had "pretty much made up my mind to be a geologist if I can get work in that direction". He was also fascinated by descriptions of the Alps by John Tyndall and John Ruskin.
In late 1862 or early 1863, King moved to New York City to share an apartment with James Terry Gardiner, a close friend from high school and college (who spelled his last name Gardner at the time). They associated with a group of American artists, writers and architects who were admirers of Ruskin. In February 1863, King became one of the founders, along with John William Hill, Clarence Cook and others, of the Ruskinian Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art, an American group similar to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was elected its first secretary. But he was anxious to see the mountains of the American West, and his friend Gardiner was miserable in law school.
As Gardiner and King started to quickly plan for the journey, their final destination being San Francisco, another friend named William Hyde became interested and decided to join them. They met in April 1863 in Niagara, New York, and boarded a train. On the train King met the Speers family and entertained the Speers children while they traveled to St. Joseph, Missouri. The Speers, grateful for King's help with entertaining their children, invited King, Gardiner, and Hyde to join their wagon party. The three men would be provided food as long as they helped care for the livestock that the Speers were bringing.
On May 1, 1863, with St. Joseph as their starting point, the three men officially started to travel west. Five days later, just past Troy, Kansas, the party succeeded in hunting two buffalo, which was a welcomed treat. Near Fort Kearny, 200 miles into their journey, King tried hunting buffalo, but he did not succeed and ended up with a wounded leg and a dead horse. On May 29, the traveling party passed Chimney Rock in northwest Nebraska, and a few days after that, they arrived at Fort Laramie in what is now Wyoming. On June 29, the party crested the ridge of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah to see the Great Salt Lake below them, a place of refuge before they began to travel across the desert to the west of the lake. More than a month later, on August 6, the wagon train arrived at Carson City, Nevada. Here, King, Gardiner, and Hyde decided to leave the wagon party to head towards the nearby town of Gold Hill because Hyde's father owned a ranch and foundry there.
That night, the foundry caught on fire, burning everything the three men owned, including King's letter to William Henry Brewer at the California Geologic Survey. As they helped rebuild the foundry, King and Gardiner were able to save up enough supplies to continue on while Hyde stayed with his father. Planning to travel the rest of the way on foot, Gardiner and King left Gold Hill near the end of August 1863. On September 1, the two friends boarded a steamboat heading towards San Francisco. While on the steamboat, King met Brewer and explained to him what happened to the letter. King expressed his willingness to work for the survey without pay because he liked Brewer and knew it would be a good experience. Joining the California Geological Survey was the first step in King's career.
Once Gardner and King arrived at the California Geological Society's office, they met the director of the survey Josiah Whitney. In 1863, with the permission of Whitney, King was asked by Brewer to accompany him on his exploration of the northern part of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. While King was on this expedition, Gardner would stay in San Francisco. On this trip with Brewer and King was a mule packer named John Hoesch. As the group traveled, they passed through the Sierra gold fields, and at a creek named Genesee, Brewer found fossils of the Jurassic or Triassic age. This find would help them pinpoint the age of the Mother Lode gold belt, which was one of their goals on this journey. Near Lassen Peak in northern California, Brewer and King investigated hot springs and other thermal features. At nights around the campfire, the party discussed geologic topics such as the young Cascade volcanoes, the age of gold veins, and the action of glaciers. During one of these conversations, Brewer brought up Whitney's plan to propose a geologic study across the continent, and King thought that there may be a chance of funding this because, as Whitney noted, railroad companies would benefit from it.
Upon returning from his first expedition, King immediately began preparing for another. This time, he was traveling with a mining engineer named William Ashburner and a topographer named Charles Hoffmann. The trio's job was to survey the Mariposa Estate, one of the most important gold-vein regions in the area. During this job, King had a habit of staring at views, as opposed to working, which irritated his fellow team members. Eventually, after his coworkers brought their concerns to him, he refocused on his assigned work for the rest of the job. King's next big job would be a scientific exploration into the southern Sierra mountains.
Leaving in May 1864, the party consisted of Brewer, Hoffmann, Gardner, King and a man named Dick Cotter. During the early stages of this journey, in Visalia, King was able to acquire a new horse, a decision that would later save his life. Leaving Visalia, the team ended up at what is the present site of Sequoia Lake, where they stayed for a week studying the Sequoia trees. The party used triangulation as their main method of mapping the areas they traveled through. At one point, they reached a spot where the animals could not continue, so they made base at an unknown mountain lake. The next day, Hoffmann and Brewer climbed the unknown peak nearby (now known as Mount Brewer), where they discovered that they were not on the main Sierra Nevada Crest like they thought they were. Brewer and Hoffmann also named Mount Tyndall, Mount Goddard, and Mount Whitney while they were up there. King, upon hearing what Hoffmann and Brewer saw, begged to be allowed to backpack up Mount Whitney with Cotter. In King's own words, "It was a trying moment for Brewer when we found him and volunteered to attempt a campaign for the top of California, because he felt a certain fatherly responsibility over our youth." Brewer eventually gave his permission even though King had no real plan. The duo, however, started to run out of provisions before they even made it to Mount Whitney so, they had to turn back.