THE NEIGC CENTENNIAL—A LEGACY OF WILLIAM MORRIS DAVIS

The New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference (NEIGC) celebrates its Centennial in 2001 with a meeting in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The first such meeting, in 1901, was organized by William Morris Davis, the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology at Harvard, and one of the leading authorities of his day on landforms and erosion. That field trip was to the river terraces of the Westfield River, Massachusetts. Its purpose was to test, in the field, competing hypotheses about the origin of the river terraces. Davis (American Journal of Science,1902) wrote that "This district was the scene of an intercollegiate excursion in the autumn of 1901, in which Yale, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Institute of Technology, and Harvard, together with six secondary schools, were represented by teachers and students to the number of forty-six..." It is clear from Davis' words that his experiment with an intercollegiate activity was satisfactory, and he may have held some idea of continuing with similar trips in the future. Others took up the baton, and such excursions became a regular feature of the New England autumn.

NEIGC does not exist in the ordinary sense of the word: It has no bylaws, no members, no dues, no assets, no place of business. But it lives on nevertheless because its essential agenda is timeless: three days of geologic field trips in beautiful fall weather. NEIGC has one official, the Secretary, appointed by common consent. The Secretary's duty is to assure that there will be an NEIGC meeting, somewhere in the Northern Appalachians, in each succeeding year. Meetings are separately organized by a faculty member from a regional university in the Northeastern U.S. or Eastern Canada. For the past 40 years or so, each annual meeting has been accompanied by a guidebook containing field trip descriptions. Together, the set of guidebooks and field trip descriptions is a priceless collection of scientific literature: many innovative and provocative ideas are published nowhere else.