The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the Northeast's and Midwest's dominance in manufacturing. This unpublished report is a survey containing an analysis of seven large tracts near the company's lines in western New York State that were available for factory sites, including labor availability, population, climate, energy, and water supply.

Thomas Ellwood Gillingham, Jr. (1912-2004) was a geologist, he worked as an independet consultant and for the Atomic Energy Commission and the W.R. Grace & Company. The collection documents Gillingham's career as a geological consultant. The collection is arranged into six series: W.R. Grace & Co.; Uranium Mining; Phosphate Mining; Reports; Education; and Reference cards.