A Google Earth–based virtual field trip, part of an introductory geology class, has been developed to illustrate the geology of the Presidential Range, New Hampshire. During a class field trip to Mt. Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast, students record GPS locations of exposures and collect information in the form of field notes and digital images from outcrops. Students upload the GPS waypoints into Google Earth and their images into a class PicasaWeb album, and they also make video clips that are uploaded into a class YouTube account. In Google Earth, the students embed and geologically annotate their images and embed their video clips. The final product is a Google Earth .kmz file or what is termed a mashup. The mashup provides a permanent record of the excursion and, if made available on the Internet, allows any user the ability to easily view the geology at any time. Constructing the mashup from the real field trip initiated reflective, independent, student-motivated learning and group work using technology that the students regularly use and enjoy doing. The resulting mashups have been very good, with an appropriate level of geologic content for an introductory course. Grading, which normally is onerous, is actually enjoyable, entertaining, and easy.

The Laurentide Ice Sheet flowed southeast across the northern White Mountains during the Wisconsinan Stage. In late Wisconsinan time, the regional snowline was probably elevated above the highest peaks. Downwasting ice masses progressively ceased to flow (stagnated) as they became cut off from regional sources to the northwest. Indirect lines of geomorphic evidence and a short radiocarbon chronology indicate that deglaciation proceeded very rapidly once major elements of the regional terrain were exhumed from beneath the ice; there is a distinct downward and locally north-westward progression of deglacial events. North of the city of Berlin, regional ice flow was sustained in the Androscoggin and Dead River valleys. Ice eventually retreated in these valleys and left sequences of stratified drift graded to bedrock at the head of the 70-m knickpoint in the Androscoggin Valley at Berlin Falls. Stratified moraines record temporary positions of these retreating ice fronts. Outwash began to accumulate in the deepest part of the Androscoggin Valley downstream from Berlin after the ice in this area was beheaded at the falls. The local deglaciation was probably complete between 12,100 and 12,600 yr B.P. There is evidence for two separate phases of activity in the relict rock glacier in King Ravine in the Presidential Range. The earliest rock glacier may have formed from a stranded remnant of Laurentide ice. Later activity may have occurred during a period of significant climatic cooling.

Charles Doolittle Walcott, who became the third Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and the fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was author of a paper in volume 1, number 1, of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. From 1890 through 1906, he published six scientific papers, one abstract, eight discussions, and a presidential address in that journal. Examination of these four categories of publication helps trace the history of the Society and the Bulletin through their early years. Walcott made a very few errors of fact and of judgment in the six papers. Notwithstanding those, the quality and breadth of the papers demonstrate that he was a geologist of wide-ranging interests and confirm his importance in American geology; only part of his scientific activities during this 16-year interval were published in the Bulletin . The subsequent impact of Walcott’s scientific papers is included in this historical review.