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Show 1 .11 i Writer Explains Developments Of Utah; Tells Of Mining Possibilities By Wallace Blake Mother nature has in her inscrutable in-scrutable way, knowingly or unknowingly un-knowingly set forth on the various areas of the earth's surface certain basic conditions under which man her ' supreme life creation may make his living in the most efficient ef-ficient manner. Man in his turn and exercising more or less his so-called free agency, can and does alter and vary his mode of life to conform to these conditions but he cannot change them greatly. great-ly. It he is to prosper, he must devote himself to finding out what they are in the different portions of the world in which he lives, without this knowledge he cannot fit himself to handle the existing condition that surround him. The purpose of this article is to inquire broadly into the scheme as it concerns the area in which we live, a subdivision of the earths surface situated somewhat south and considerably west of the center cen-ter of the North American Continent Con-tinent and known as the State of Utah. Perhaps the results of our inquiry may not be entirely to our liking. We may discover that ideas we have held almost as a tradition do not coincide with natures plan as well as we would like. The average parent does not relish the idea that one of every three of their children must leave the state to make a living, particularly particu-larly with the probability staring him in the face that an even greater proportion may have to leave in the future. Geographically, Geographical-ly, Utah consists of mountains, desert and valleys. The Wasatch Mountains and their extension form the backbone. To the east in the northern part and just below the Wyoming line runs the Uintahs and south are scattered Mountains and deserts with here and there a fertile spot. To the northwest is found the bed of old Lake Bonneville and westerly rising up from the general level of the terrain are the north-south ranges of mountains typical of the great Basin. Nature has left a book containing a record of rocks. If we open this book to the chapter entitled Mesozoic, we find most of the area now occupied by the Rocky Mountains and extending ex-tending east ward from the Wasatch Range was covered by water. A great bay or gulf extended extend-ed north westerly to Alaska and at times pointed to the Artie Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico thus dividing North America into two continents. The western continent was a land with high rainfall, and rivers flowing into this arm of the ocean deposited great quantities of silt to form deltas and alluvial plains. These in turn became the habitat of luxurious plant life. For perhaps hundreds of thousands of years this lived and died and became packed down to be succeeded by later generations of plant life. Thus were formed the great Cretaceous coal beds of the west. With the end of this period of record starts the beginning of the Rocky Mountain uplift. This record re-cord tells of the formation of the Great Basin, and how its rock formations were being squeezed and faulted and contorted between the Wasatch on the east and the Sierra Nevadas on the west, of how fissures and cracks were formed to allow the penetration of metal bearing solutions, and of how, in places, the surface surged up causing rhyolite flows, and porphyry and monozonite intrusions. intru-sions. Some of which as in Utah carried enough mineral to become valuable as ore. There is undoubtedly petroleum in Utah. This has actually been produced at Virgin near the mouth of the Zion Canyon. A number of deep test drills have been made for oil in Utah, but with this exception ex-ception no producing wells have been brought in. Geological structures, struc-tures, however, indicate the possibilities pos-sibilities of oil in Utah. The great Sierra Nevada mountains moun-tains form a barrier for the warm moisture laden winds of the Pacific causing them to drop their moisture mois-ture before they can pass. Therefore There-fore this area is deprived of its normal amount of rainfall which makes this region more or less arid. Inhabitants first consisted only of savages, the white colonizers came on July 24th., 1847. In number num-ber there were some forty of fifty thousand of them coming from Nauvoo, in the state of Illinois. Their leader, standing at the mouth of the canyon from which he could view the Salt Lake Valley and its streams emerging from the mountains said,' "This is the place". He realized fully that this was the place for his people to settle and that they could make the soil bounteous by leading the water from the mountains and distributing it upon the land. He could see that to raise crops water must be lead upon it by artificcal means. To him and his first band of people we owe a great deal for the development of modern irrigation. ir-rigation. These early comers adopted adopt-ed the policy of making themselves self-sustaining as to foodstuffs, rainment and housing. This is the basic group of the population in that it feeds itself, supplies most of the food for the rest of us and considerable of the clothing and shelter. It also has a surplus to sell to the outside world. Furthermore, it is the largest individual group from a standpoint of the manner of gaining a livlihood. The natural forces that restricted restrict-ed the amount of ore land in the state were the causes of the deposition de-position of mineral resources. At the time the present mountain ranges were being lifted it was creating the ore deposits of Alta, Park City, Bingham, Ophir, Stockton, Stock-ton, Mercury, Tintic and many others in the northern part of the state and Silver Reef, Apex, Gold Strike and many other mineral works in the southern part of the state. What are the markets for our farmers? The people directly in all the things of life which they did not produce for themselves. We have the minerals in Washington Washing-ton County, if worked, that would give employment to all unemployed unemploy-ed and make a ready market for the farm produce. |