| Geology courses have been offered at West Virginia University since its founding in 1867. Courses in geology and mineralogy were taught to students in their junior year by Prof. Samuel Stevens as part of the offerings of the Department of Natural Sciences. Additional courses were offered by Dr. John J. Stevenson, a distinguished geologist from New York. It was Dr. Stevenson who, in an address to the West Virginia Historical Society, first advocated a need for a state geological survey. Until a state geological survey was finally established thirty years later, most of the geological investigations within West Virginia were conducted by the geology faculty and their students. It was in fact the growth and prestige of the department within the scientific community that was to be a deciding factor in the establishment of the state geological survey in 1897. One of the seven members of the original WVU student body, Israel C. White, deserves special mention because of the impact he was to have on both the early history of the department and on the science of geology within the Appalachians, in particular, the early development of the State's oil and gas industry. White was born on November 1, 1848 on a farm in Monongalia County and was raised in Morgantown; the White home was located on the land now occupied by the Wise Library. Originally intending to become a physician, White changed his major to geology in his junior year, largely as a result of being exposed to the dynamic teaching of Dr. Stevenson. After graduating from the University in June, 1872 with an A.B. in Geology, White went to work as a school teacher but returned to Morgantown in 1874 and received an M.A. degree in geology in 1875. While working on a doctorate degree at the Columbia College of Mines in New York City, he was temporarily lured away from his graduate studies by his old professor, Dr. Stevenson to join the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania. So successful was he in his first professional endeavor as a geologist that he was elected to the Chair of Geology at West Virginia University in 1876. The following year, the Department of Geology was officially split from the Department of Natural Science and White was appointed the first departmental chairperson, a mere five years after having graduated from WVU. Dr. White received his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas in 1880.
While on faculty at WVU, Dr. White became particularly well known by his unique new style of teaching that involved taking his students on field trips. One of his first was a month-long trip during the Spring recess of 1882 that visited 17 counties between Morgantown and the Kanawha Valley, all on horseback! In the following year, he took another month-long trip with his students, the first leg of which was a 200-mile trip down the Ohio River to Point Pleasant in a row boat he had purchased in Wheeling!
Dr. White resigned his faculty position in 1892 to become involved full time in a petroleum business he had established based on his research into the occurrence of oil and gas. In the years that followed, White became a leader in the new oil and gas industry. To the early oil and gas industry, science, including geology, was of little importance. Wildcat well locations were based on a variety of reasons ranging from random chance siting to a driller having visualized a particular scene during a dream. All that was to change in 1882 when White published his historic paper on the anticlinal theory of petroleum accumulation in which he suggested that the most likely place for oil and gas to accumulate was in the crestal regions of anticlines. This single idea resulted in geology becoming an important part of the petroleum industry, a position that it retains to this day.
A special relationship exists between the Department and the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey (WVGES) that dates back to the very beginning of the Survey. When the WVGES was finally formed by an act of the Legislature on February 26, 1897, Dr. White was appointed State Geologist. The first offices of the WVGES were, in fact, located in a small brick building located behind Dr. White's home, approximately at the location of the present Wise Library. During his tenure, the WVGES was to become one of the nation's premier geological surveys.
From the year of its founding in 1877 until 1912, the Dept. of Geology was housed in Martin Hall, one of the original university buildings located on Woodburn Circle. From 1912 until 1942, the department was housed in various buildings but eventually ended up sharing the northern end of the first two floors of Clark Hall (the Chemistry building) with the WVGES. Largely due to the political influence of Dr. Paul H. Price, who was at the time chairperson of the Department of Geology, one million dollars was appropriated for the construction of a building at WVU to house those units whose mission was the development of the economic resources of the State. The Mineral Industries Building was dedicated in 1942. Upon his return from military duty at the end of World War II, Dr. Price stepped down as departmental chair and assumed the position of Director of the WVGES.
Following its dedication, the Minerals Industries Building became the new home of the WVGES, who occupied the fourth floor, with the Department of Geology occupying the third floor, and the School of Mines (until recently the College of Mineral and Energy Resources - COMER) occupying the remainder of the building. When the WVGES moved to their present offices at Mont Chateau on Cheat Lake in the late 1970s, the Department, now officially the Department of Geology and Geography since the hiring of the first geographer in 1946, took over the fourth floor. The Mineral Industries Building was rededicated on July 2, 1986 as White Hall in recognition of Dr. I.C. White. With the departure of COMER to a new building on the Evansdale campus in July of 1990, the Department moved into its present space.
In 2006 the department started plans to move from our location in White Hall to a new location in Brooks Hall. Brooks Hall had formerly housed Biology and other life sciences departments. They are now howsed in a new facility. This meant that we could renovate Brooks Hall to bring our accomodations into the 21st century.
In July 2007 the department took it's place in the newly renovated and expanded Brooks Hall.
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