By 1823, seven years before the publication of the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, the University included a Department of Chemistry and Geology. By 1830, a substantial sum had been appropriated to begin a mineral collection for the University.

       Nothing is as yet known of the early faculty in Geology, but from 1853 to 1856 geology was taught by Joseph LeConte. Joseph was a Georgia native and an 1841 graduate of Frankln College (as UGA was then known). He was originally educated in medicine at Columbia, but he gave up medicine to study Geology at Harvard under Louis Agassiz (who had in turned studied under Georges Cuvier). Joseph's brother John was Professor of Physics here from 1845 to 1855. The two went on to the University of South Carolina and, after the Civil War, they went on to the University of California (Berkeley), where John was President of that university from 1875 to 1881 and Joseph was Professor of Geology and one of the founding members of the Sierra Club. Joseph was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1874 and was President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1891. LeConte Hall at UGA is named after them, as are buildings at the University of South Carolina and at Berkeley. LeConte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite National Park was specifically named after Joseph. LeConte Avenue in Athens and Mount LeConte in Great Smoky Mountain National Park also bear their name.

       In the 1860s and 1870s, geology (as well as botany and zoology) was taught by William Louis Jones on the third floor of the library (now the north part of the Academic Building). The ceiling of the classroom was painted with images of a variety of fossil organisms, including ichthyosaurs, and Professor Jones was called "Old Ichthy" by his students. The University's Bulletin for 1869-1870 reports the "excellent collection of minerals in the museum of the University" which "enables the student to acquire practical familiarity" with mineralogy. The bulletin also reports that "an elegant hall with enlarged pantings on the walls of representative fossils of all the geologic periods, enabling the student to take in at a glance the successive unfoldings of the life of the globe, has been especially fitted for this department. Besides, maps, sections, and collections of fossils are constantly employed in illustrating the lectures." None of these collections or paintings has survived on campus.

       Geology's affiliation with Chemistry at UGA continued until about 1872, when Geology became a separate department. In 1888 it was affiliated with Biology, and then it returned to its affiliation with Chemistry. In 1900, the University had a School of Mining and Metallurgy, but the 1918-1919 Bulletin reports that the Geology Department was "temporarily" vacant.

       By 1921, Geology had revived at UGA. A Professor White taught Geology from 1921 to 1923, and Dr. Sten Cullin taught Geology beginning in 1924. However, Geology was not taught for several years thereafter. In 1932, it reappeared in the College of Education and in the Department of Civil Engineering. (Only later did the University cede the study of Engineering to Georgia Tech).

       Geology reappeared later in the 1930s in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Geology was taught largely by Dr. Geoffrey Crickmay, a Yale Geology Ph.D who had studied under the likes of Chester Longwell, Adolph Knopf, Richard Flint, and Carl Dunbar. Crickmay and E. Scott Sell, author of Geography of Georgia, were housed in Meigs Hall in the late 1930s. Crickmay left the University of Georgia to serve in the armed forces during World War II. When he returned, he found that the geological collections had largely disappeared, and he only taught a few more years and worked with the Georgia Geological Survey before leaving to become chief geologist and later president of an oil company or companies in South America. Among the students present during Dr. Crickmay's last years here was the young Vernon J. Hurst, of whom more will be told below.

       A Department of Geography and Geology was begun in 1946 under the headship of Dr. Merle C. Prunty, Jr.  Prunty was a geographer, and the department of the late 1940s consisted of five geographers and one geologist.  That geologist was Eldon Parizek, whose Ph.D. was in petroleum geology and thus who had to retrain himself for the geology of the Piedmont and Blue Ridge.  By the 1950s the faculty of that department included a few more geologists, some of whom would be part of the Department of Geology in 1961.