Description

This document contains scanned images of Hugh H. Bennett's field diary documenting his trip to Panama in 1924. The diary had been damaged by fire. It is from the Hugh H. Bennett Papers, MS 164 in the Special Collections Department of the Iowa State University Library. (http://www.lib.iastate.e du/spcl/manuscripts/MS164 .pdf)

Father of the soil conservation movement in the U.S. Hugh Hammond Bennett was born in Wadesboro, N.C. in 1881. He received a B.S. from the University of North Carolina (1903) and joined the Bureau of Soils of the USDA as a soil scientist. Thus began a career characterized as a "life devoted to the prevention of land wastage."
In 1909 Bennett was given general supervision of the soil survey work in the Eastern and Southern States and portions of Central and Southwestern divisions, a position he held until 1928. He was also in charge of the Chugach National Forest Commission (1915), the Guatemala-Honduras Boundary Commission (1919), the Rubber Commission sent to Central and South America and the West Indies (1923-1924) and an agricultural and soil survey of Cuba (winters of 1925-1932).
Having preached soil conservation since 1905, Bennett convinced enough congressmen of the need for erosion control so that in 1929 federal funds were allotted for the purpose of studying erosion and installing methods of control. He was placed in charge of soil erosion for the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils (1928-1932). He organized and headed the Soil Erosion Service of the Dept. of Interior (1933-1935). In 1935 the Service was transferred to the USDA and renamed the Soil Conservation Service which he headed until 1952 when he retired. He was a founder and fellow of the Soil Conservation Society of America, president of the Association of American Geographers and honorary president of the International Union for the Protection of Nature.