Dr. Thomas Condon

This undated portrait, probably taken in the 1870s, shows Dr. Thomas Condon, one of the most important scientific figures in Oregon history.

Thomas Condon was born in County Cork, Ireland, on March 3, 1822. At age eleven he emigrated to New York with his parents. He worked as a school teacher before entering a Presbyterian seminary in Auburn, New York, at the age of twenty-seven. After graduating in 1852, Condon accepted a position as a missionary in the newly settled territory of Oregon. He and his wife Cornelia struggled to make a living in western Oregon before moving to The Dalles in the spring of 1862 to lead the town’s Congregational church. It was in The Dalles where Condon would make his first contributions to the geological sciences.

Long interested in natural history, Condon began collecting fossils and giving public lectures on geology soon after moving to The Dalles. In 1865, he accompanied an army patrol from Ft. Dalles into the John Day country, where he had heard there was a rich deposit of fossils. Although he was not the first to discover fossils in the area, he was the first to recognize the significance of the deposit. Condon’s fossil discoveries in the John Day country soon became known to some of the nation’s top paleontologists and geologists, a number of whom—including Othniel C. Marsh, Joseph Leidy, and Edward Drinker Cope—wrote him requesting specimens. Many of the specimens Condon sent were species new to science, and several were named after him.

In 1871, Condon published his first paper on geology, an overview of Oregon’s geological past, written, like many of his subsequent works, for a popular audience. That same year he gave a series of lectures in Portland that would solidify his position as Oregon’s preeminent geologist. In 1872 the legislature appointed him Oregon’s first state geologist, and the following year Condon resigned his position with the Congregational church and moved to Forest Grove, where he assumed a professorship at Pacific University.

In 1876 Condon became the first geology professor at the newly opened University of Oregon, where he taught for nearly twenty years. Over the course of his long career, Condon made significant contributions to scientific understanding of Oregon’s ancient past, but he was also a respected educator who sought to encourage the public’s appreciation of the state’s geological history. He died in 1907, leaving behind a lasting legacy of scientific and educational achievement.

Further Reading:
Clark, Robert D. The Odyssey of Thomas Condon: Irish Immigrant, Frontier Missionary, Oregon Geologist. Portland, Oreg., 1989.

McCornack, Ellen Condon. Thomas Condon: Pioneer Geologist of Oregon. Eugene, Oreg., 1928.

Written by Cain Allen, © Oregon Historical Society, 2005.