Created for the inaugural installations at the U.S. Department of the Interior Museum, which opened in 1938, this original diorama depicts activity at a typical U.S. Geological Survey river-measurement station of the 1930s. A man on a motorized cable car is suspended above a river. The cable car has winch-controlled cable with instrumentation extending from it to the water. In the central middle distance of the diorama, a second man onshore near an early model automobile is entering the gauge house, a concrete, tower-like structure. The river is at least somewhat based upon the Hackensack River, for which reference photos were provided to the model makers.