Irving B. Crosby papers

The Irving B. Crosby Papers contain correspondence, consulting reports, manuscript drafts of articles and a book, and reprints of articles. The material spans the years from 1914 to 1959. The papers are arranged into three series: 1. Correspondence Files, 1923-1959; 2. Geological Reports, 1914-1959; and 3. Writings by Crosby and Others

The bulk of the collection consists of geological consulting reports which serve to document Crosby's thirty-nine years as an engineering geologist consultant. He worked on a wide variety of projects, but he specialized in water-power and water-supply dam sites, groundwater resources, and mineral resources. Reports from the New England projects form the largest group, although there are reports from twenty-one states, almost all the states where Crosby worked.

Irving Crosby had many types of clients and the reports document investigations for federal, state, and county government as well as his work for private industry. For example, there are several reports from one of his biggest projects, a study of many dam, powerhouse, and lock sites at Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project in Maine for the US Army Corps of Engineers (see Boxes 3 and 4). His study of New Jersey glass sand for Owens-Illinois Glass Company is documented by two reports (Box 6) and by correspondence (Box 2).

Crosby received consulting assignments from many foreign countries. He began to work in Canada soon after he started his private practice and a number of these early reports remain in the collection. In the 1940s and 1950s, his consulting work expanded to include the Belgian Congo, Chile, Costa Rica, Crete, Haiti, India, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the islands of the Western Pacific. In Crete, he investigated groundwater resources for the Rockefeller Foundation (Box 10). The Punjab government of India asked Crosby to report on the Bhakra Dam, and he was working for the International Bank in Chile when he studied the Rio Elqui Valley (Box 10). Towards the end of his career international consulting projects dominated Crosby’s practice and the collection's later reports are primarily from other countries.

Some of Crosby’s earliest work can be found in the collection. Series 2 contains an MIT class report on a geological study he made of part of Boston (Box 4), as well as some of his undergraduate thesis notebooks (Box 6) and a report for Columbia University on a 1925 Catskill Field Trip (Box 7). Two consulting reports that Crosby wrote jointly with his father also remain in the collection. Crosby’s correspondence files (Series 2) closely related to his consulting reports. His files were maintained alphabetically in two separate chronological sequences and primarily concern scientific and professional projects, but some personal letters do exist. He corresponded with a number of well-known geologists and engineers, including John Ripley Freeman and Karl Terzaghi. Many of the letters deal with his consulting work. These include letters that inquire about consulting prospects’ fees and contract information on specific projects as well as geological inquiries. There is also some financial information, travel data, and reports that concern consulting projects.

Late in his career, Crosby served as an expert witness in several lawsuits. The letters from Carlo Bianchi and Company concern their suit against the Army Corps of Engineers and Crosby's role as expert witness for the Almond Dam Project, Almond, New York. This correspondence contains his testimony.

The correspondence files also reflect Crosby’s involvement in professional organizations. As a member of the Soil Mechanics and Foundations Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers, he was on the joint committee of Waterways Division and Bearing Value of Pile Foundations. The files contain reports and recommendations as well as correspondence from the joint committee members.

Some of Crosby’s manuscript drafts that concern geology are also in the collection. In the 1950s he started to write a book about dam geology. It remained unfinished and was never published, but there is a typescript of it in the papers (Boxes 12 and 13). Series 3 contains a manuscript of a Crosby article and an article and book outline by his wife, Gerda Crosby. Also in Series 3 are reprints of articles by Crosby and a small group of articles written by others that relate to Crosby's work.

A list of Crosby's consulting engagements can be found in R. R. Schrock's "Memorial to Irving Ballard Crosby (1891-1959)" published in the Proceedings Volume of the Geological Society of America, Annual Report for 1959, p. 119.