Roy Walter Simonson Papers

Collection

Identifier: MS0415

Staff Only

Content Description

The Roy Walter Simonson Papers contain notes, correspondence, and memoranda from soil surveys in the United States from 1899 through 1953. The collection also contains notes on specific regions' soils, scientific aspects of soils, and soil classification. Notable records include notes, memoranda, and correspondence related to the controversy surrounding the soil survey in the Southern Region of the U.S. in the 1940s. There are also autobiographical writings by Simonson, along with 14 foreign travel journals Simonson compiled between 1947 and 1978 that document his trips to Western and Central Europe, Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka), India, South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Dates

Creation: 1899-1978
Creation: Majority of material found within 1940-1970

Conditions Governing Access

Contact Special Collections for access.

Biographical Sketch

Roy Walter Simonson (1908-2008) earned a bachelor's degree in soils and chemistry from North Dakota Agricultural College. He completed his Ph.D. in soils at the University of Wisconsin. In 1938, he joined Iowa State College as a faculty member and supervisor of the soil survey program. In 1943, he became soil correlator for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Division of Soil Survey in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was promoted to assistant chief of the Division of Soil Survey and transferred to Beltsville, Maryland in 1949. Upon consolidation of the USDA's soil survey activities under the Soil Conservation Service in 1952, he supervised the classification, correlation, and nomenclature of soils throughout the United States. He retired from USDA in 1973.