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Show HUGE UTAH AREA 1M FOR OIL Field AA'ithdrawn from Entry in 1909, But Thorougfi Test Delayed. For years the existence of oil seeps and springs in Utah, had been known to the geological survey, sur-vey, and written reports of their existence had been on file as early as the late seventies. Yet the state of Utah had never produced pro-duced oil. Immediately prior to the creation crea-tion of the oil reserves, drilling near -Virgin City resulted in a discovery well as early as 1907. This precipitated considerable local excitement. And several other oth-er small wells were drilled, most of therri grouped near Virgin City, but a few a considerable distance away. Following a rapid reconnaisance of the Virgin City and St. George areas, the geological survey recommended recom-mended to President Taft their withdrawal, along with the California Cali-fornia and Wyoming reserves. And on October 4, 1909, this was done. The recommendation of withdrawal with-drawal covered 1,128,960 acres. In April, 1910, because field investigations in-vestigations just completed show that certain lands in existing oil withdrawals, are not oil lands," certain parts were restored to public pub-lic entry, but at the same time, because "the same field investigations investi-gations show that it is advisable to withdraw the following lands in aid of proposed legislation affecting affect-ing the use and disposition of the petroleum deposits" an (additional 407,000 acres were placed in the reserves. However, because of three factors: fac-tors: First, at that time its inaccessibility; in-accessibility; second, the prompt action of the government in setting set-ting aside its reserves made it impossible for the large oil companies com-panies to gain a foothold; third, because of the barren character of the petroleum bearing lands there was practically no patented or privately owned acreage, because be-cause of these factors, the petroleum petro-leum reserves of the government in Utah today are intact, unexplored, unex-plored, and potentially at least represent rep-resent some the most valuable holdings now owned in the public pub-lic domain, and under President Hoover's famous conservation order, or-der, except in those instances where permits are outstanding, they are likely to remain so. Efforts now being made to explore ex-plore the Utah reserves are, almost al-most without exception, on government gov-ernment land, under the terms of the leasing act of 1920, and hence under the constant supervision and to a large extent under the direction of the geological survey. |