Land lover

Is there anything we
take for granted more than the shape of the land around us? Sure, we’re
conscious of the streets and sidewalks, and we know how to find the malls and
the parks. But how many of us ever stop to consider how the contours of the
land came to be over millions of years? And how often do we consider just how
much humans have transformed them in the last 200?

            One man who gave these issues
thorough consideration was Herman LeRoy Fairchild. Over his long lifetime,
Fairchild (1850-1943) did more to investigate the origins of our region’s
topography and record them for posterity than anyone in the area’s history. Frozen in Time: Herman LeRoy Fairchild’s
Photographic Record of Rochester’s Geologic Past, on display at the Rare
Books and Special Collections Department of the University of Rochester’s Rush
Rhees Library, examines Fairchild’s career through his photographs, writing,
equipment, and ideas.

            “He was a tireless popularizer of
science, giving endless public lectures and writing many natural history
articles for a general audience,” says Bill Chaisson, adjunct assistant
professor of earth and environmental sciences at the UR. “I would be pretty
surprised if someone came away from the exhibit or from reading something
Fairchild had written without thinking ‘This guy was pretty cool.'” Chaisson,
who is also a City Newspaper contributing writer, organized the exhibition with rare books librarian Melissa
Mead and Margaret Johnson, an undergraduate student.

            Chaisson isn’t exaggerating
Fairchild’s role as an educator. He began teaching at the age of 16, worked at
the UR as professor of geology and natural history from 1888 to 1920, and
continued to lecture as professor emeritus from his retirement until his death.
In 1888 he was one of the founding members of the Geological Society of
America.

            The Rare Book Department is the
repository for thousands of Fairchild’s photographs along with his collected
writings, letters, scrapbooks, memorabilia, and his collection of United States
Geological Survey Maps.

            In many ways, the exhibition
continues to do the work Fairchild was so passionate about. The show offers
contemporary information about the sites Fairchild documented, and gently
instructs viewers in the fine points of geology by using examples that — although
most of us are unaware of them — are all around us.

Visitors will learn what kame-moraines are: masses of sand, gravel, and cobblestones accumulated at
the edges of glaciers by ice or melt-water streams. One of them is now known as
Pinnacle Hill.

            And if you have ever wondered about
those somewhat circular depressions in the earth that provide Mt. Hope Cemetery
with no small part of its beauty, the exhibition will enlighten you. They’re
called kettles, and they were caused by melting blocks of ice when the glacier
retreated. In locations where these kettles were below the water table and had
a clay lining, there is now a lake. That would explain Mendon Ponds. To
Fairchild, this kind of knowledge was crucial for scientist and layman alike.

            “He was completely convinced that
greater knowledge of the land would lead to wiser land-use decisions,” Chaisson
says. “He had a sort of ‘to know it is to love it’ attitude about the land. He
felt that if you really understood the story that was being preserved in these
landforms and sediments, there was just no way you would want to obliterate
them to build houses or widen roads.”

            The exhibition also includes
Fairchild’s early photographs of geological formations like Sugar Loaf, a large
mound of silt and fine sand at Corbett’s Glen in Brighton. Chaisson has
provided present-day snapshots of many of these sites, giving you the
opportunity to see how much things have changed or, in this case, remained
pretty much the same. Still, just a few years ago, Corbett’s Glen was
threatened with development.

            Some areas of Rochester are so
overdeveloped, it is almost impossible to visualize them as they once were.
Think about how Ridge Road must have looked when it earned its name, and then
consider the way it looks today. Where’s the ridge?

            “Around here, anytime you level the
landscape to erect a building or put in a parking lot, you are destroying the
work of the ice ages,” Chaisson says. “Ridge Road is a sort of off-shore bar
that paralleled the shore of Glacial Lake Iroquois [a precursor to Lake
Ontario]. It would be pretty hard to study any of the details of that feature
today. One of my more arcane reasons for opposing the expansion of the Seneca
Park Zoo is that the parking lot they want to build will fill in the old [Genesee]
river channel there.”

            In the late-1800s, when Fairchild
did much of his work, Rochester was relatively undeveloped. Fairchild could
study the Pinnacle moraine and take pictures with unobstructed views that
beautifully illustrated the contours of the land as it was shaped by the Ice
Age.

            But even as he recorded these
geological phenomena, human progress was gradually obscuring the work of
nature. One of Fairchild’s photographs depicts a view of South Goodman Street
in 1894, where a hilltop is being cut for the street extension that we drive on
today.

Some of the causes Fairchild fought for more than seven decades ago could have appeared in today’s
newspaper.

            In a 1929 article titled “Dr.
Fairchild Urges City Make Park of Pinnacle Hill Range,” Fairchild complained to
the Times Union that private
ownership was “despoiling the most attractive parts” of the region. Calling
attention to the fact that Frederick Law Olmstead had pointed to the Pinnacle
range and said “there is your park,” Fairchild said: “Right then the range
should have been taken for a pleasure ground for the people and for its scenic,
scientific, and educational value.”

            Of course, it wasn’t. And much of it
to this day is privately owned.

            “It’s amazing to me that Pinnacle
Hill has managed to survive relatively intact all these years,” Chaisson says.
“The ‘Pinnacle’ is the highest point of the Pinnacle Range, which is a very
cool hybrid landform that is partly a delta deposited into a glacial lake and
partly sediment ejected directly from the ice sheet. Fairchild was part of a
vocal minority that was seeking to preserve it in the early 20th century, when
extensive quarrying of gravel began in the south side of the hill. He couldn’t
believe that anyone would want to destroy something so rare and dramatic.”

            Driving around the area, most of us
simply see houses with woods on a slope behind them. Like Fairchild before him,
Chaisson can look at the big picture and see the range in the context of
geological history. But geological history has been ignored in many parts of
the country — the hills around Los Angeles, the flood plains of the
Mississippi River — to the eventual peril of the people who develop the land.

            “Pinnacle Hill managed to survive
the quarrying; the houses of Far View Hill Drive are built on the floor of the
west end of the excavation,” Chaisson says. “Fairchild and his contemporaries
urged the city to make it into a public park, and this suggestion has been made
two or three times since, whenever the current landowner comes up with some
scheme to develop it. But the very thing that makes it attractive — the
dramatic steepness — makes it almost impossible, and frankly unwise, to
develop. It really should remain heavily vegetated in order to prevent
California-style mudslides from causing adjacent neighborhoods all kinds of
headaches.”

            The land was to some extent already
transformed in Fairchild’s day, but the transformation was not as radical or
haphazard as what we tend to encounter today.

            “Fairchild’s landscapes are not
wilderness,” Chaisson says. “They are working landscapes: farms, pastures,
quarries, and railroad beds. The big difference that you see today is that no
one is using the land itself anymore. Instead there are just structures sitting
on top of the land, structures that really could be anywhere. Places are now
regarded as desirable either because they are scenic or because you can get it
for a good price. The land itself is now beside the point. I think this fact
about the post-modern world would make Fairchild extremely melancholy.”

In an essay written to accompany the exhibition, Chaisson explains Fairchild’s belief that
contingency, in terms of natural resources, determined the history of a given
place. For instance, the ice sheet’s grinding action loosened and spread
minerals from the bedrock, providing the Rochester area with rich soil and,
therefore, a healthy economy.

            The wheat grown in this soil was
ground in mills made possible by the relatively recent geologic history of the
Genesee River, which, after being diverted by glacial deposits, carved a narrow
gorge through bedrock, around which the city would grow.

            And the river’s waterfalls — which
powered the mills — were made possible by the alternate deposits of hard and
soft rock.

            “Those are his connections,”
Chaisson says. “You will find them all in The Geology of the Genesee, which is a compilation of articles he wrote for
the RG&E newsletter. Can you imagine getting a newsletter with your utility
bill that included articles about local geology? Fairchild was keenly aware of
the connections between natural resources and the economy of a region. He
thought that if people understood how geologic history had produced natural
resources, it would make them more mindful of their use.”

            Fairchild was obviously ahead of his
time on environmental issues. But his enlightenment also extended into the
social sphere. He wrote the following words in a letter to University of
Rochester officials when the school decided to move male students to a separate
campus. He was urging the administration not to leave women out when it came to
studying the sciences.

            “It may be claimed that no one is
truly educated without some appreciation of plant and animal life, of the earth
on which we dwell, of the stars overhead, and of the air in which we move. A
fair course in geology involves all these, because this science is the
application of all knowledge to the study of the earth and its history.”

By including pages of Fairchild’s reminiscences, the exhibit provides a vivid sense of what it was
like to teach the sciences at the turn of the century. He describes the lecture
room in Sibley Hall and how the kerosene lamp was discarded along with the
chimney extension and flame chamber.

            Fairchild writes about what it took
to show his classes photographs that were quite literally “lantern slides.”
According to Chaisson, Fairchild was the first to make extensive use of slides
as a visual aid at the University. The lantern slide projector that Fairchild
used for 28 years is also on display.

            In another display case, a Vest
Pocket Kodak and a Blair Company Whole Plate Box Camera show us the kind of
cameras Fairchild used to take these pictures. Posters advertise illustrated
talks Fairchild gave around the state on subjects like Yellowstone National
Park.

            Also on view are examples of
photographs Fairchild took during a trip to Mexico in the mid-1880s. In keeping
with his endlessly inquisitive nature, the images range from depictions of
industrial techniques to a view of the landscape through the opening of a
magnificent painted cave.

            Fairchild’s regard for aesthetics,
present in many of the Mexican and geological photographs, was also apparent in
the legacy he left to our community in the arts. The Lillian Fairchild Award
was named for his daughter, a promising artist and designer who died in her
early 30s of tuberculosis. The award honors the Rochester resident who produced
the best visual, literary, or musical work of art each year.

            But it was the shapes and forms
created by nature that most intrigued Fairchild. And because of his fascination
with the land, we have an enhanced understanding of our region’s past that may
help us in guiding its future.

Frozen in Time: Herman LeRoy
Fairchild’s Photographic Record of Rochester’s Geologic Past continues through February 28 at the Rare Books and Special
Collections Department, second floor, Rush Rhees Library, University of
Rochester. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; 9 a.m. to
8 p.m. Wednesday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The exhibit is free. Info:
275-4477.

This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2004.