William Sherzer, Geologist of Detroit

Among the EMU faculty’s most notable contributions to the scholarly literature on Detroit are William Sherzer’s publications on the geology of Wayne and Monroe counties. William Hittell Sherzer (1860-1932) is one of the best-remembered EMU professors of the Normal College era, in part because the 1903 natural science building he helped design was renamed in his honor in 1957. Dr. Sherzer served as Department Head and Professor in the Department of Natural Science from 1892 to 1932. As the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters reported, Sherzer was both a popular and effective instructor and an accomplished scientist. He published more than two dozen scientific articles and books, many of them based on his geological fieldwork in the Rockies, Hawaii, and Michigan. Sherzer’s groundbreaking works on the geology of Wayne and Monroe counties remain a pleasure to read, and are worth seeking out online or in the collections of Halle Library.

The most accessible and attractive of Sherzer’s publications on Michigan geology is the Detroit Folio of the Geologic Atlas of the United States (1917). Sherzer wrote the text of the report and he also supplied the geological data for eleven detailed plates showing the topography, areal geology, bedrock geology, and artesian water resources of the Detroit area. Readers can consult the folio in the Halle Library map room or view high quality scans on the USGS website. (Washtenaw county readers may also wish to explore the Ann Arbor Folio, which covers the area directly to the west of the Detroit district.)

Sherzer wrote two scientific monographs for the Geological and Biological Survey of Michigan, Geological Report on Monroe County, Michigan (1900) and Geological Report on Wayne County (1913). These reports describe in depth the glacial history, surface and bedrock geology, and water and mineral resources of our region, and they reveal Sherzer’s wide-ranging interests, extending into history, human geography, paleontology, mining, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Sherzer also co-authored The Monroe Formation of Southern Michigan and Adjoining Regions (1910), a book-length study of a rock and sand formation that underlies the Detroit region.

In 1925 the Department of Water Supply for the City of Detroit commissioned Sherzer to help them situate a new intake tunnel for the city’s water supply. Sherzer’s "Geological Report Upon the Region Adjacent to the Water Works Park and Head of Belle Isle" (1926) recommended “four entirely feasible routes, each with its special advantages and disadvantages.” On the basis of Sherzer’s report, in 1931 the city built a new water tunnel and a new intake house on Belle Isle, which is still in use today.

Sherzer loved to take students into the field, and we are fortunate to have a guide he prepared for an excursion to Put-In-Bay Island in Lake Erie. His "Itinerary of Geological Excursion to Put-In-Bay" (1905) describes the geological features students would see along the route from Ypsilanti to Detroit, and then by boat to Put-In-Bay Island. The Arrow Steamer company’s brochure helps paint the picture of a field trip with Professor Sherzer in the summer of 1905.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dr. Rick Sambrook for telling me about Sherzer’s connection to Detroit, and to Alexis Braun Marks, Matt Jones, and Amber Davis for making available Sherzer’s papers, including the article from the 1933 Annual Report of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters. The excursion itinerary is provided by the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Michigan.