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Show lew Oil Sins' to li; Millions of years ago "Wyoming was covered hy the sea. In this ocean wnre fish of all sizes ami descriptions. There were crawling! sea animals, swimming animals, and those that neither swam nor; crawled. On this sea's floors there grew immense sea-water trees, bushes and other strange vegetable life. These sea animals and vegetables of strange forms and shapes contained fat. As they died the fat from them littered the ocean's floor for a while then sank into the deep marine sands. Through the passing centuries this process constantly occurred and recurred. Finally, a tremendous change took place. A giant hand pushed up the bottom ground of the sea and made of it mountains and valleys. val-leys. -The ocean sought its level; it receded from Wyoming. Only the mountains and valleys which had been the ocean's floor re-j mained. Underneath these valleys and mountains the collected animal and vegetable fats of millions of years were held fast. THEY HAD TURNED INTO OIL PETROLEUM ! They were bottled up tight, waiting for centuries to elapse before they would be taken from their rock, shale and sand entombments, by skilful men. In everyday language this is the story of how oil came into being. I Meanwhile, man proptressed from an animal state little better than that of the sea animals, whose fats were underneath under-neath the sands, shales and rocks. He bewail to notice natural phenomena and to write down his observations. The oil industry began centuries before the Christian era. It was the Greeks who invented the word "PETROLEUM." It literally means "rock oil." Probably that is he-, he-, cause oil first wa noticed by man seem-' seem-' Inly bubbling from the solid earth, However, How-ever, little progress In the use of oil was made. (.Copyrlsrht. 1517, by Geo. Batty.) In the middle of the nineteenth century the Appalachian oil fields, located in the southwestern part of Pennsylvania and a small section of New York, furnished nearly all of the country's supply of petroieum. The oil was made known to white men by the Indians, who sold it under I he name of Seneca Oil as a cure for various ills. The discovery of Us value for Illuminating purposes was made known a little later and the first petroleum petro-leum well in Pennsylvania was drilled in 1859 on the flat of Oil Creek, at Titus-viile. Titus-viile. That was known as the Drake well, and when 2r barrels were pumped from it in a day its production was considered enormous. But It remained for the West wonderful wonder-ful land of opportunity to start a scramble, scram-ble, the like of which has never been ; equaled, and although Wyoming was de-1 de-1 clared a territory In the kite sixties, to-i to-i dav this state leads in one of the largest j industries of the United states Oil Production. Pro-duction. As early as 1010 oil had been found in eighteen districts in Wyoming. Each year the quantity marketed has increased and during: 1916 the output amounted to 261,833.754 gallons, with a total to-tal market value of more than five and a half million dollars. The market value of the production from the Salt Creek and Shannon districts dis-tricts alone amounted to nearly four million mil-lion dollars. The increasing demand from various Industries, as well as the consta nt new uses to which petroleum or Its byproducts by-products are being applied, is creating a permanent demand that will always be far in excess of t lie supply. From automobile buyers alone the demand de-mand is rapidly Increasing; railroads are realizing the advantages of crude petroleum pe-troleum for motive power and to generate gen-erate steam. The by-products of petroleum petro-leum are being used extensively in many Industrial fields and the greatest fortune In the history of the world was obtained from oil. There is a great variety In the oils produced in Wyoming, ranging from the heavy asphaltlc oils of some fields to the high-grade lubricants and superior light products obtained from the wells in the Salt Creek districts. |