Levi F. Noble


Levi Fatzinger Noble was an American geologist. He was born in 1882 into a prominent and wealthy family of Auburn, New York. He received his bachelor's degree in 1904 and his doctorate in 1909, both from Yale University.
In 1910, Noble married Dorothy Evans of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a wedding gift, Dorothy’s parents gave them a fruit ranch near Valyermo, California, at the foot of the north slope of the San Gabriel Mountains and athwart the San Andreas Fault zone. The ranch was their principal residence for the rest of their lives. Dorothy served as the Valyermo postmaster from 1914 to 1930.
His entire career was spent as a member of the United States Geological Survey; during WWII, he was associated with the USGS Military Geology Unit. Upon retirement, he received the Interior Department's gold medal for distinguished service. In his field investigations, which began in 1917 and continued off and on for 45 years, he observed and accurately recorded most of the major geologic features of Death Valley.
He also is remembered for his studies of Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks of the Grand Canyon and as the first to prepare a detailed geologic map of a large part of Grand Canyon National Park. In addition, he engaged in a long-term investigation of a fifty-mile segment of the San Andreas fault. He was the first to cite evidence for many miles of horizontal displacement along this major structural feature of western North America.

Publications