The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

W. H. HEARDING ---an early surveyor Recalling Some Early LAKE SURVEYS The United States Lake Survey, an arm of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, 1S a unique and interesting govern- ment agency. Itsvalue is monumental, yet save for the familiarity of the charts it publishes, little is known of tis past. jin the year [65 Mr. W. 4. Hearding presented a report to the Houghton County (Michigan) Hist- orical Society in the form of a talk in which he outlined the Lake Survey activities to that time. A copy of his text has been made available to Telescope by Mr. Clyde Tyndall, and we are pleased to pass it on as an interesting footnote to Great Lakes history. At the time Mr. Hearding gave this talk it had not yet been 30 years since the attention of Congress had been particularly directed to the vast developments being made in the great Northwest, bordering im- mediately upon the Lakes, and but little had been done to assist the navigator in laying his course, that he might avoid the dangers of reefs, shoals, and sunken rocks, and it was not until 1845 that an appropriation of sufficient magnitude was made to defray the expense of commencing the important work, althoughk-a small portion of the shoreline of Lake Erie had been surveyed in 1839. At this point we join Mr. Hearding to tell his own story. Similar surveys were made in Green Bay, Lake Michigan, and the Straits of Mackinac, by Capts. Howard Stans- bury and W. G. Williams, and Lt. Webster in 1841. The lamented Capt. I. W. Gunnison also made surveys in Green Bay in 1846-7. The horrible massacre of this highly cultivated and experienced officer and his par- ty by Indians, in the fall of 1853 sent a thrill of horror throughout the country. He was engaged in the survey of one of the Pacific rail-