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Bailey Willis was born on a country estate at Idlewild-on-Hudson, New York on May 31, 1857. He was schooled in England and Germany before returning to the U.S. to attend Columbia University where he received degrees in mechanical and civil engineering. He worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad (before it went bankrupt in 1884) surveying and making estimations on deposits of coal and iron ore in the Appalachian Mountains, Minnesota, Montana, and particularly Washington. From 1896 until 1902, he was the Chief Geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. While not busy in Washington D.C., he conducted extensive field work in the Puget Sound region and the Cascade Range in Washington State. His primary objectives were the study of coal beds, the physiographic history of the region, and Pleistocene glacial deposits. He interpreted the area as one which had been reduced to a lowland by erosion, had afterward been gently warped and then carved by stream and glacial erosion into its present detailed forms. In later years he applied the same theory to other areas in California, China and elsewhere. In 1915 he accepted an offer to become the head of the Department of Geology at Stanford University, a position he held until his retirement in 1922. At this time, he turned his attention to the study of the geology of California, seismography, and the inner earth. Throughout his career, Willis traveled the world extensively, notably leading a geological expedition to China in 1903 and organizing a geological survey on behalf of the Argentine government from 1910-1914. He provided geologic expertise to the U.S. government in both WWI and WWII. He died on February 19, 1949.