Bartram in 1791 wrote of the pocket gopher of Florida, without formally describing it. The first available technical name is _Mus bursarius_ of Shaw in 1800. Rafinesque in 1817 proposed the first generic names for the geomyids when he described _Geomys_ and _Diplostoma_. In 1839, Waterhouse referred the genus _Geomys_ to his family Arvicolidae, considered by him to be a subgroup of muroids. In 1841, he suggested that _Geomys_ was related to _Bathyergus_ and _Spalax_. Waterhouse in 1848 (p. 8) treated the pocket gophers as a subgroup of rodents under the group name Saccomyina, in which he included the genera _Heteromys_, _Saccomys_, _Perognathus_, and _Dipodomys_. Hence, Waterhouse was the first to recognize the relationship between the heteromyids and geomyids. In the next year Gervais erected the family Pseudostomidae for a group of specialized squirrels to include _Geomys_ and _Thomomys_ and the same genera (at least in part) of heteromyids that Waterhouse classified in the "family" Saccomyina. In 1839 the name _Thomomys_ was proposed by Maximilian (Wied-Neuwied). All of the generic names previously proposed for pocket gophers were considered by subsequent authors to be synonyms of _Geomys_. A third family name, Sciurospalacoides, was proposed by Brandt (1855:188) who referred _Geomys_ and _Thomomys_ to that family. He placed his new family phylogenetically between the family Sciuridae and the family Spalacoides (a group in which Brandt included the genera _Spalax_, _Sipheus_, and _Ellobius_). Brandt took exception to the classification of Waterhouse (1848), who united the geomyids and heteromyids in one family. Brandt placed the heteromyid genera in other groups: _Perognathus_ in the Muridae, and _Macrocolus_ [= _Dipodomys_] in the Macrolini, a subfamily of the family Dipodoides. Modern classification of the pocket gophers begins with Baird in 1858. The important classifications are summarized in Table 1; a few that do not depart essentially from those listed have been omitted owing to limited space for the tabular arrangement, but are discussed in the following account. Baird probably was strongly influenced by the arrangement proposed by Waterhouse in 1848, but was opposed to separating geomyids from heteromyids as was done by Brandt. Baird was convinced of the close relationship of the geomyids and heteromyids, and referred both groups to one family, the Saccomyidae, as Waterhouse had done earlier. In order to recognize the morphological specializations he used two subfamilies, Geomyinae and the Saccomyinae. In the 20 years that followed, some authors followed Brandt and others followed Baird.