United States Lake Survey
By 1882, the Survey had completed the original Congressional mandate, producing 76 charts, then disbanded.
He was assisted by Howard Stansbury, James H. Simpson, Joseph E. Johnston, Thomas J. Cram and I. Carle Woodruff.
In the first summer, a detailed topographical survey of Mackinac Island was completed, reconnaissance surveys in the northern part of Lake Michigan were made and a site for a baseline near the entrance to Green Bay was selected and partly cleared.
[2] The first four years of the survey largely dealt with the baseline at Green Bay, and building triangulation stations.
Surveying work was additionally done on Lakes Michigan, St. Clair, and Erie, and at the Straits of Mackinac.
He oversaw a dramatic expansion in the survey, including the construction of an observatory in Detroit and the first systematic recording of lake water levels.
Meade would later write that he considered his early work on the lakes survey as among the most important duties of his extensive career.
[8] James D. Graham replaced Meade in 1861, and led the survey through much of the Civil War, during which it was the only active topographical field office still operating.
In 1869, distribution was further expanded as the Lake Survey was authorized to sell surplus charts for the first time.
A survey of the St. Lawrence began during 1871 at the boundary line near St. Regis, New York, and ended at the head of the river on Lake Ontario in 1873.
The survey work on the Mississippi, for which Congress appropriated $16,000 in 1876, began in Cairo, Illinois, and was completed at the mouth of the Arkansas River in 1879.
In fact, the navigation of the lakes would of necessity almost entirely cease but for the information thus supplied.In the decade after the original survey was ended, it became clear that the charts were not sufficient; for example, since the deepest draft vessels used in the Great Lakes in the mid-late 1800s drew only 12 feet (3.7 m) of water, the Survey's charts only showed depths of 18 feet (5.5 m) or less.
[1] For the first time, the Survey published maps in color, and the Great Lakes Bulletin.
[1] After several other expansions, in 1914, it became responsible for "an inland waterway system extending nearly halfway across the continental United States".
Funding shrunk at the onset of the Great Depression, but aerial photography was introduced.
It published a "Submarine Training Chart of Upper Lake Michigan" pamphlet.
The Lake Survey, with its cartographic and lithographic specialists, directed a major portion of the military's mapping activity.
It took over and consolidated the former WPA cartographic units in New York, Chicago, and Detroit on 1 June 1942.
The Center conducted strong programs in coastal engineering and water resources.
