Topographical Engineers

U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers
Active	1838 – 63
Country	United States of America
Allegiance	United States Army
Branch	Regular Army
Commanders
Notable commanders	John James Abert (1838-61) Stephen Harriman Long (1861-63)

The U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, authorized on 4 July 1838, consisted only of officers and was used for mapping and the design and construction of federal civil works such as lighthouses and other coastal fortifications and navigational routes. It included such officers as George Meade, John C. Frémont and Stephen Long. It was merged with the United States Army Corps of Engineers on 31 March 1863, at which point the Corps of Engineers also assumed the Lakes Survey District mission for the Great Lakes. In the mid-19th century, Corps of Engineers' officers ran Lighthouse Districts in tandem with U.S. Naval officers.

In 1841, Congress created the Lake Survey. The Survey, based in Detroit, Mich., was charged with conducting a hydrographical survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes and preparing and publishing nautical charts and other navigation aids. The Lake Survey published its first charts in 1852.

William Goetzmann has written:

From the year 1838 down to the Civil War, there existed a small but highly significant branch of the Army called the Corps of Topographical Engineers.... The Engineers were concerned with recording all of the western phenomena as accurately as possible, whether main-traveled roads or uncharted wilderness. As Army officers they represented the direct concern of the national government the settling of the West.... , the Corps of Topographical Engineers was a central institution of Manifest Destiny, and in the years before the Civil War its officers made explorations which resulted in the first scientific mapping of the West. They laid out national boundaries and directly promoted the advance of settlement by locating and constructing wagon roads, improving rivers and harbors, even performing experiments for the location of subsurface water in the arid regions. In short, they functioned as a department of public works for the West - and indeed for the whole nation, since the operations of the Corps extended to every state and territory of the United States.

The work of the Corps in the West had still broader significance. Since a major part of its work was to assemble scientific information in the form of maps, pictures, statistics, and narrative reports about the West, it contributed importantly to the compilation of scientific knowledge about the interior of the North American continent. The Topographical Engineers were sophisticated men of their time who worked closely with the foremost scholars in American and European centers of learning. Scientists and artists of all nationalities accompanied their expeditions as partners and co-workers. The Army Topographer considered himself by schooling and profession as one of a company of savants. By virtue of his West Point training and status he was an engineer, something above the ordinary field officer, whose duties were confined usually to strictly military tasks. As a Topographical Engineer he on occasion might address the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He probably subscribed to Silliman's American Journal of Science and he was a pillar of the Smithsonian Institution.

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