\tUnder Alexander Dallas Bache the United States Coast Survey grew into an important, perhaps the most important, institution for American science. With little graduate work available in the United States, it served as an essential training ground as well as a source of employment for American scientists. When Peirce took over the Coast Survey after Bache's death, he had no administrative experience. Yet he was able to garner even better congressional support for the Survey than had the politically savvy Bache. \tPeirce continued to support a broad spectrum of scientific activity. He was also successful in expanding the Survey my making a geodetic link between the existing surveys on the east and west coasts. This was not only a political triumph, but a scientific one. It was the longest arc of a parallel ever surveyed by one country. The extended scope of the Survey led to it being renamed the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. \tDuring his tenure as superintendent of the Coast Survey, Peirce maintained his professorship at Harvard and his residence in Cambridge. He also wrote his Linear Associate Algebra, his most important mathematical work, during this period.