Arthur Lakes

Arthur Lakes
Born	December 21, 1844 Martock, Somerset, England
Died	November 21, 1917 (1917-11-22) (aged 72) Nelson, British Columbia, Canada
Alma mater	The Queen's College, Oxford
Scientific career
Fields	Geology Art
Institutions	Colorado School of Mines

Arthur Lakes (December 21, 1844—November 21, 1917) was an American geologist, artist, writer, teacher and Episcopalian minister. He captured much of his geological and palaeontological field work in sketches and watercolours. Lakes is credited with successfully deciphering much of the geology of Colorado and, as an economic geologist, guiding mineral exploration which was so important to the State.^[1]

Career

Lakes's sketch of expedition members in Como Bluff

Sketch of bones in skeleton by Arthur Lakes, 1879

Lakes was a part-time professor at what later became the Colorado School of Mines. Having sent a fossilized vertebra specimen from the Morrison Formation in the [Kansas Territory]] to Othniel Charles Marsh in 1877, he was then employed by Marsh to seek other discoveries, in the so-called Bone Wars. He went on to unearth fossilized remains of Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Camptosaurus, and Allosaurus. One of Lakes's students, Peter Dotson, has been credited with finding one of the first - if not the first - fossil of Tyrannosaurus Rex - a tooth - in 1874 while hunting fossils with him on South Table Mountain in Golden Colorado. Lakes sent the tooth to Marsh identifying it as a "saurian tooth". It remained unidentified until around 2000 when it was rediscovered by Kenneth Carpenter of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science while he was looking at Lakes' fossils at the Yale Peabody Museum.

Although he was employed by Marsh, Lakes was visited by Marsh's Bone Wars opponent Edward Drinker Cope, while working at Como Bluff. Although it was the last thing he intended, Lakes was the cause of increased animosity between Cope and Marsh, by co-operating with both. Lakes made the original discovery of the fossils in the formation of the Dinosaur Ridge near Morrison, Colorado. Lakes also drilled several test oil wells in the Golden and Morrison area, however they were not successful producing wells.

During this time, he also worked as a teacher at what is now the Colorado School of Mines and as a clergyman. When he retired from fossil hunting, he went on to work for the U.S. Geological Survey. He edited a succession of geological and mining journals. His byline appears on over 800 newspaper and journal articles. Lakes and his two well-educated sons eventually went into business as mining engineers, relocating from Colorado to Ymir, British Columbia in 1912. Arthur Lakes died there in 1917, still "tanned from the outdoors life he led."^[2][3][4]

Awards and honors

Lakes was inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame in Leadville, Colorado, in September 2010.

The Arthur Lakes Library at the Colorado School of Mines is named in his honor.

Publications

• Lakes, Arthur (1888). Geology of Colorado Ore Deposits. Denver, Colorado: News Print Co. OCLC 3309768.
• Lakes, Arthur (1896). Prospecting for Gold and Silver in North America. Scranton, Pennsylvania: Colliery Engineer Co. OCLC 1084372317.

References

1. "Arthur Lakes Library". Campus Tour. Colorado School of Mines. Archived from the original on January 7, 2009. Retrieved February 5, 2009.
2. Jaffe, Mark (1999). The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science. New York: Crown Publishing Group/Random House. ISBN 0-517-70760-8.
3. Scott, Michon. "Rocky Road: Arthur Lakes". Strange Science. Retrieved February 5, 2009.
4. Simmons, Beth (October 30, 2007). The Legacy of Arthur Lakes. 2007 GSA Denver Annual Meeting. The Geological Society of America. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2009.

External links

• Arthur Lakes Library website