FIFTY YEARS OF USGS SCIENTIFIC DRILLING IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES: REMINISCING ABOUT PEOPLE, PLACES, AND PROJECTS

The U.S. Geological Survey operated a scientific drilling program in the eastern US from the late 1960s to 2017 that was housed in the Branch of Eastern Regional Geology and its successor Centers. Coring and auger drilling were conducted primarily in the Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico Coastal Plains but also in New England surficial deposits, the Appalachian orogen, the early Mesozoic rift basins, the Great Lakes region, and Missouri. The program supported geologic-mapping, geohydrologic, stratigraphic, tectonic, earthquake, mineral-resource, paleoclimate, and impact-structure studies. The chief drillers with long tenures in this program were Dennis Duty, Don Queen, Gene Cobbs, Jr., Gene Cobbs, III, and Jeff Grey, in chronologic order.

The program began modestly, using a truck-mounted power auger to collect sediment samples to depths of tens of feet in the New Jersey and Delmarva Coastal Plains. Ultimately, this rig produced well over two thousand auger holes, including a few to depths >100 ft. Coring drills mounted on hovercrafts were used in later decades to core Quaternary sediments, primarily in coastal environments. A truck-mounted wireline coring rig arrived near the end of the 1970s that was used to conduct intermittent and continuous coring to depths of several hundreds of feet. This rig was replaced in about 1989 by a larger wireline rig that was used to drill continuously cored holes to depths of a few hundred to 1,200 ft and occasionally as deep as 1,800 ft. By the end of the coring program, over 300 coreholes had been drilled. A large majority of these coreholes were drilled in cooperation with universities and state geologic and hydrologic agencies, and many of these cores still reside at those institutions. These curated drilling samples are a legacy to present and future scientists in terms of continuity of research and time and cost savings.