Charles Henry Hitchcock was born on August 23, 1836, in Amherst, Hampshire County, Massachusetts.

He was an American geologist. His father was Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864), a professor of geology and natural theology, and president of Amherst College. His mother Orra White Hitchcock (1796-1863) illustrated most of his father's work. Hitchcock graduated from Amherst College in 1856. He studied at the Royal School of Mines in London (1866-1867), examined fossils in the British Museum, and visited glaciers in Switzerland. He served as New Hampshire State Geologist from 1868 to 1878 and taught at Dartmouth College from 1868 to 1908, holding the Hall Professorship of Geology and Mineralogy. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1870. Hitchcock was a founder of the Geological Society of America and in 1883, he became vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He published "The Geology of New Hampshire" (3 vols., 1874-1878) and created a series of large relief maps of New England for display at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. In addition to geology, he contributed to a wide range of fields including fieldwork in paleontology, bedrock and glaciology, economic geology, and volcanology. Mount Hitchcock in California is named in his honour.

In 1862, he married Martha Bliss Barrows (1837-1892) and in 1894, he married Charlotte Malvina Barrows (1840–1922). He died on November 7, 1919, in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is buried in Hanover, Grafton County, New Hampshire.