Louis Crawford Raymond
1906-1994

Louis Crawford Raymond died of cancer on October 19, 1994, in Chappaqua, New York, his home for 50 years. His long, vigorous, and active life left legacies not only in geology and mining engineering but also in archaeology, art, and his community.
Bud (or Lou) Raymond was born September 12, 1906, in Vancouver, Washington, and grew up in Astoria, Oregon. He graduated from the School of Mines at Oregon State College (now Oregon State University) with a Bachelor of Science in mining engineering. While in college, he drew a geologic map of Oregon that appeared in textbooks for many years. Then he crossed the country to study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which awarded him a Master of Science in geology in 1932.
Raymond returned to Corvallis for one year as a teaching assistant. There, he met and married Louvera Horn, a student in his geology class. They began married life in Iron Mountain, California, where he was assistant superintendent for Mountain Copper Company's gold and copper mining operation. Exploratory work took him to Honduras, El Salvador, and British Columbia, the first tastes of what was to be a peripatetic life.
Right after Pearl Harbor, Raymond took up his duties as mining specialist for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. His job was to locate and enhance production of minerals needed for the war effort. He spent one six-month stint in the tin mines of Bolivia and began what was to become the habit of recording his impressions in pencil and ink sketches. Upon returning home, he painted, in pastels or in oils, scenes of miners at work. Some of these paintings of a vanishing way of life are now in the collection of Oregon State University's Horner Museum.
In 1945, Raymond joined Ford, Bacon and Davis, Inc., then based in New York City. For nearly 30 years, he was involved in exploring, planning, developing, operating, and valuating mineral properties. In addition to searching for bread-and-butter minerals and ores (limestone, phosphates, granite, coal), he helped move a town in Quebec, became enthusiastic about underground storage of natural gas, and checked out the feasibility of diamond mines in Guyana.
He brought back rocks and minerals from almost every U.S. state, almost every Western Hemisphere country, the copper mines of the Middle East, and the bauxite deposits of West Africa. The best specimens of his collection were donated to the geology department at Oregon State University. He especially enjoyed a trip to Australia, whose ambiance reminded him of the Oregon of his youth. During these years, he wrote articles on economic development and on the evaluation of mineral properties. He continued as a consultant in these areas after his retirement in 1973.
After he retired, Raymond donated memorabilia of his career in geology and mining engineering to the American Heritage Collection of the University of Wyoming. The Louis C. Raymond Collection includes books, articles, flow sheets, photographs, maps, and paintings that document mid-century techniques and tools of mineral exploration.
Retirement freed Raymond so he could pursue his passion for archaeology, which had developed during his travels to other countries and cultures. He took courses at Pace College and was active on the historical Requa site in Tarrytown, New York. His geological eye saved much fruitless digging, and he was unflagging in cataloguing and writing up the unearthed objects, from clay pipes to bricks. Because of his experiences in Latin America, he became interested in an often ignored artifact, the spindle whorl. His book Spindle Whorls in Archaeology was published in 1984.
Raymond was a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and he served a term as a director of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. He belonged to Lambda Chi Alpha social fraternity and to Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi honorary fraternities. He was an active member of the New Castle Historical Society and of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Mt. Kisco, New York. To all of these organizations, Raymond gave time, energy, and enthusiasm.
Louis Raymond is survived by his wife, three children, and six grandchildren. All of them will remember hiking with him, looking for Herkimer diamonds, beryl, and tourmaline, or whatever else offered geological excitement. Raymond never lost his curiosity, which he has passed on to his descendants.