King sometimes used file folders twice, simply folding them the other way so that they ended up with two labels. I wanted to confirm which label was correct before giving them to the park. There are about 7 linear feet of records plus a large folder of oversize maps and research charts and two thin boxes of smaller oversize research materials dealing especially with the ancient Tuolumne River and Yosemite Valley depths. King told me and his family that he wanted his papers to go to Yosemite. The USGS was not interested in them but did keep his three field note books which they are required to keep and house with their collections in Denver. There are two groups of files, although King's "system" was pretty lax. One group is correspondence; the other group is research, publications, and historical geology. In addition, there is what must be a nearly complete set of King's publications, a large group of geologic maps, some monographs, and his bibliographic file of cards. Some of the maps and monographs were King's working copies and have notes in them. King also worked by xerox from the USGS and other libraries, so that his research files have extensive xeroxes with notes. In this way King's files have in them copies of many Sierra related articles and monographs that are rather difficult to find in the original now without traveling some distance. His correspondence files include many of his review comments on impending publications and sometimes heated geological arguments. One of these especially concerned the work of Jeffrey Schaffer, a writer for Wilderness Press who has felt compelled to attack most of the USGS work in the Sierra that he came across. Schaffer managed to turn just about every disagreement into a personal matter--which he still does, having written a long, negative comment about King's last book, recently published by YA/Heyday. Among the other unpublished manuscripts in King's papers, there is a book length treatment of the Walker Party's crossing the Sierra in 1833 by Scott Stine which seems to be in limbo at present but which use or quotation of would require contact with Stine.

7 LF plus oversize materials.

No restrictions