Show A geological trip tr ip into w the uintah basin utah VI BY PROFESSOR EARL DOUGLASS breakfast everybody out the camp fires are burning and the odor of cooking meat and delicious coffee fills the desert air some who have seldom seen the sun rise now see its pure light over the desert hills and it almost seems the light of a new age instead of a new day it is good to sometimes start life all over again amid new scenes A new outer world often opens up a new inner world in the unexplored regions of our own beings how fresh and clear and pure is the air some who known what it was to be hungry in the morning for years can hardly wait for breakfast and when it is ready how good it tastes it takes some time especially the first morning to pick up camp and get things together but we get started at about 9 we are soon back on the uintah stage road and the professor stops the crow crowd d to explain the formations he says 1 I told you yesterday that from the other side of green river we came over the upper uintah deposits we are now in the lower portion of the upper uintah and entering P Z A 2 A gilsonite mine at little erosion you can see the southward facing bad land hills bills bluffs mesas and escarpments of the upper beds to the north and 1 l wa ti t I 1 6 4 J f sacked GlIs onite ore at bonanza and machinery used in lifting it out of the vein e top of the middle uintah through all the e country antry to the southward the upper beds liagre e been stripped away washed off by anft aisen jI 6 sen 80 utah ins tute sixth article geologist for the carnegie extending far to the westward you could follow them sixty miles or more in that direction through the regions of ouray randlett and north of myton to the country nor north th of duchesne Duc besne the beds are interesting 25 bonanza in uintah basin to scientists as they are not found anywhere else in the western world at least the fossil mammals in them are different from any that have been found elsewhere have any been found near here yes bones teeth and skulls have been discovered but I 1 know of but one complete skeleton that has been found in this formation that was an a water rhinoceros noc eros it was found in the hills only a mile or so north of our camp this skeleton was unearthed by 0 A peterson whom I 1 previously mentioned and it is on exhibition standing on its feet in the american mu of national history in new york city it is of course the only known skeleton of the kind in the world ha have ve the outcrops of these beds all been explored not thoroughly and an d some one on e who has perseverance and enthusiasm will yet make interesting and important d discoveries isco veries As we go southward we will be in the middle uintah until we get nearly to white river you see we are now going downward on the formations as we go south it is like going down a very large and very broad flight of stairs and as we go down a stair we pass to an older formation you can see that the rocks have changed there are heavier more continuous bands of sandstone and the color of the clays or between them changes the grays are not so light and there are only occasional bands of red these sandstone ledges to the east and south are undoubtedly river deposits and the were once mud deposited in lakes marshes and on flood plains rock beneath had been tilted and eroded before the formation of the coal swamp but this would be rare so the coal nearly always has the same bedding plane as the rocks above and below you see here the rocks lie nearly flat dipping only three or four de derees degrees 21 rees to the northward but the veins are nearly perpendicular metals are in veins similar to this gilsonite but they have wt Z Z 4 7 41 or I 1 t A gilsonite vein upon which representing work has been done in the sandstones of the middle uintah note extension of vein where holes have been fenced also notice manner of weathering of middle uintah deposits in many places usually near the bottoms of the sandstone beds skulls and bones of fossil mammals unlike anything now known on the earth have been found after a drive of three or four miles when at the top of a ridge over which the road goes the professor calls a halt do you see anything unusual around here he asked 1 I see some coal one man said there is a vein of it see said a lady it goes right acro acids Is the road are you sure its coal its black and shiny no that coal exclaimed another gentleman how do you know it look like coal its more glossy you see too its in a regular vein in the rock at right angles to the bedding plane the bedding plane well you see the rocks were once sand and mud which were brought from brome bome where else by winds or running streams and were laid down nearly horizontally the plane on which they were laid down is the bedding plane now coal it is supposed was formed principally from vegetation which grew luxuriously in marshes or wet land often in the place where the vegetation grew so it was deposited in the same bedding plane as the rocks below or above unless by some movement of the earth eaith the well what is its one of the bi what are bi they are hydrocarbons hydro carbons what are hydrocarbons hydro carbons i minerals rals composed of different proportional combinations of the elements carbia barka and hydrogen they include mineral pitch mineral tar asphalt petroleum etc boutwe but w usually speak of bi as the thicker compounds not including petroleum although the others are derived from petroleum how are they derived from petroleum by the evaporation of the more volatile constituents of the oil the bi remaining as a residue what do you mean by volatile the quality of vaporizing vapor izing readily A process of distillation only part of the process if we catch these volatile products and condense them into liquid naphtha benzine gasoline etc this would be distillation you say these bi are derived from petroleum how do you know we can take petroleum and duplicate the process in the laboratory of course there are many varieties of petroleum some are lighter oils and the residue after distillation til lation is a base other oils are heavier and the base is principally asphalt 6 P ut P 4 al C of veil walls GIs gilsonite onite vein at little bonanza notice timbers which are put in to prevent caving together after the ore is removed probably been leached beached out of the rocks and concentrated in fissures similar to these what is this then it evidently is not a metal can anyone tell its gilsonite said a gentleman who had picked up a sample ive seen that before what is gilsonite its the mineral is a very so you see petroleum COO compound or is made up of many es SUD pounds it is said that over that wa and have been derived from it said some time ago of 0 if this gilsonite is a product where is the oil the t the lighter part of it has gon gone e in into air long ago but is it likely that it is a where is natures chemical laboratory in which it was manufactured that is a great question scientifically and financially you dont want to depend on mere theories or opinions if you are looking for oil A wrong opinion may cause you to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and then only get cold water and disappointment while a right conjecture based on all the facts might bring millions so we can afford to go slow and keep our eyes open which we are now examining A well was dug there by the arroyo and the well and cabin were designated as ny welland ell and cabin no JL the fossils were collected in the bad lands on the edge of which we camped last night and in these rocky capped and banded hills and mesas of the middle uintah to the northwest of where we now stand after a short run and stop at bonanza where the gilsonite has been extensively dug the professor continued these veins run nearly parallel with the W f t up C gilsonite vein eighteen feet in thickness near white river Is this gilsonite on the hills to the southeastward yes that is where they have dug out the gilsonite to do representing work that is a continuation of this vein we will now go on to bonanza four miles south on the stage road where the veins have been worked and we can have a better opportunity of examining them W ja eare re now in the vicinity where a party f from rom the carnegie museum collected fossil marn mammals mals and reptiles in the summer of A skull ull of othere titan beaste beast from the uintah deposits De posts 1908 the camp was over there in that stone stile cabin about a half mile to the northeast the cabin was built by the gilsonite mcany near an extension of of the vein others which we crossed there are two to of them and it is said that they come together south of eastward near white river it is cc t jiin tin there is a very large vein there eighteen eghte en feet in width you see that the rocky walls of the veins are perpendicular and almost as smooth as if thye ehfe had been cawed instead of broken open at little bonanza an extension of one of these veins to the north of west there is a little mining camp and it is a good place to examine the veins and see how they are worked |