He graduated from Yale College in 1860 and took postgraduate courses there until 1862, when he enlisted in the 21st Connecticut Volunteer Infantry; he fought at Fredericksburg, Suffolk, Nashville and Petersburg.

[2] Working chiefly in the Colorado Plateau region, he wrote several classic papers, including geological studies of the high plateaus of Utah (1879–80), the Cenozoic history of the Grand Canyon district (1882), and the Charleston, South Carolina, earthquake of 1886.

His team carried a half-ton survey boat, the Cleetwood, up the steep mountain slope and lowered it 2,000 feet (610 m) into the lake.

[7] When this was printed in 1892, the term isostasy was formally proposed, Dutton having, on the advice of Greek scholars, changed the ‘c’ to an ‘s’.

Dutton was a close associate of John Wesley Powell, G.K. Gilbert, and William Henry Holmes at the USGS.