If you've worked as a geologist in the West, it's a fairly safe bet that J.T. Pardee visited your field area decades before you arrived. Pardee, a geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, traveled as far as his little Ford Model T could take him—to hard rock mines in the Rockies, oil prospects in the swamps of Florida, phosphate seams in Montana, fault scarps in the Basin and Range, and the desolate coulees of the Channeled Scablands. For more than 30 years, the government m