Record. xxxi 



Shale, green 440 — 495 feet 



Shale, brown, sandy 495_505 feet 



Limestone 505 — 530 feet 



Shale, dark 530—540 feet 



Shale, sandy 540 — 575 feet 



Limestone (?) 575—610 feet 



Shale, green 610-680 feet 



Shale, black (Devonian) 680-710 feet 



? 710—765 feet 



First gas found at 505 (under the brown shale) and more gas at 

 760 feet with a little heavy, black oil ; salt water occurs at 550 feet and 

 sulphur water at 764, this overflows in a small quantity; hole is 8 inches 

 in diameter and cased to 600 feet; tools are now stuck at bottom of 

 hole. 



At the Fruin & Bambrick quarries, at Spring and Chouteau ave- 

 nues, two tests were drilled that yielded a little gas at 470 and 560 

 feet and considerable at 720 feet. A tank 30 feet in diameter was 

 erected to store the gas and pumps were installed to remove the salt 

 water which interfered with the gas. The west well is said to have 

 produced 6000 cubic feet of gas per day and to show a pressure of 90 

 pounds when shut in, but the corrosive action of the water on the 

 pumps has made it difficult to maintain them. 



Both wells are now full of water, although the owners hope to 

 recover them. The quarry face shows that these wells are on a small, 

 gentle anticline that has a northwesterly trend and on which undoubt- 

 edly occur the Tamm and Welle-Boettler wells. It also explains why 

 the amount of gas and oil is so discouraging in the area drilled, which 

 is about 2000 feet long by 500 feet wide. These wells inspired a prolific 

 crop of fakers, who for trifling fees claimed to be able to locate "gas 

 veins," "oil lakes" or metallic ores by the use of divining rods, silk- 

 covered canes and mysterious little boxes that "unerringly by scien- 

 tific principles" would give the size, depth and richness of the underly- 

 ing "buried wealth." 



The recent discovery of the rich oil fields of Eastern Illinois has 

 again stimulated prospecting about St. Louis. Test wells have recently 

 been drilled 1500 feet deep at Glencoe, about 1500 feet at Manchester 

 and 1080 feet at Ranken, in the western part of St. Louis County. As 

 they started at or about the outcrop of the Trenton limestone, it would 

 have been very remarkable had they proved otherwise than "dusters" 

 or barren, as the geological conditions below that horizon are not 

 favorable. 



A shallow test was drilled in the outcrop of the Trenton limestone 

 near Antonio, about twenty-two miles southwest of St. Louis, on the 

 strength of the "oil-rock" or thin brown oily shale that occurs at the 

 top of the Trenton. As splinters of this shale burn with a strong 

 empyreumatic odor, it has misled many to believe that a paying oil 

 pool occurs in the vicinity. As this thin oily shale caps the Trenton 

 as far north as Wisconsin, and thus underlies a large part of the 

 Mississippi Valley, it is liable in the future to deceive others by the 



