Ralph Arnold papers

The collection contains letters, documents, including 190,000 reports, 1200 maps, 500 photographs, and 8200 pieces of printed material related to the life and career of geologist and petroleum engineer Ralph Arnold. Subjects represented in the collection include: mining, petroleum, and seismology in the Western United States as well as Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and South America; political papers from 1914 to 1956, mostly concerning the campaign of Herbert Hoover for president; family and personal papers from 1836 to 1961 of Arnold and his father, Delos Arnold, containing source material on Pasadena and Southern California local history. The collection also contains Arnold's field books, including those made at Stanford University with the U.S. Geological Survey from 1900 to 1909. Arnold's petroleum reports, numbering about 1,000 reports, extending all over the United States, Alaska, Canada, and Mexico, are a valuable resource for studying the Petroleum industry during this period.