This is John Wesley Powell

Powell was the second Director of the US Geological Survey; he served in that post from 1881 to 1894. Before that he was an explorer and an emissary to the Native American nations.

This image is from an on-line collection of photos from the vaults of the USGS. There are some fascinating shots in there.

I've felt a connection to Powell since the Fall of 2003 when a team I was working with won the John Wesley Powell Award (PDF) from USGS, in recognition of our work on the Delaware DataMIL which was, briefly, on the cutting edge of on-line geospatial data.

We're not quite at the cutting edge anymore; things move fast in this on-line world. We'll get back out there. Eventually.