L98 I. C. WHITE THE MANNINGTON OIL FIELD. 



Washington coal is 155 feet above the Waynesburg bed, the gas and salt- 

 water limits were found to be 1,105 and 1.025 feet above tide respectively, 

 when referred to the Washington bed as a datum line. 



With these facts in hand, it was only a question of correct identifica- 

 tion, or tracing of coal beds, and a simple matter of leveling, in order to 

 follow the strike of the surface rocks at least, for a hundred miles or more. 

 But the query arose to me, " Suppose the surface rocks do not lie parallel 

 to the oil sand, then where will the oil belt be found?" The interval 

 between these coal beds and the oil sand might either thin awav consid- 

 erably or thicken up an equal amount in passing southward from Mount 

 Morris. ( If course, if either of these things should happen, the strike of 

 the oil sand would not run with the strike of the surface rocks, but would 

 gradually veer away from the latter either eastward or westward, depend- 

 ing upon whether the intervening measures should thicken up or thin 

 away. To meet any such possible contingencies, the territory within 

 which it was considered possible for oil to exist was gradually widened 

 southward, and at Mannington extended eastward to where the Waynes- 

 burg coal had an elevation of 1.025 feet instead of 950 (the eastern limit 

 of oil at Mount Morris), and carried westward to where it had an eleva- 

 tion of 800 instead of 870 feet (the western limit of oil at the north). 



In following the strike line from Mount Morris to Mannington its direc- 

 tion was found to vary greatly. For the first five or six miles between 

 Mount Morris and Dolls run the strike was about S. 30° W. : hut toward 

 the head of Dolls run, the line turned rapidly westward, making a great 

 curve or elbow and running westward past the village of Fairview, from 

 which, with many curves and sinuosities, it crossed successively Plum 

 run. Mods run and Buffalo creek at Mannington. on a general course of 

 S. 45° W., but varying from this 10° to 15° either way in certain local- 

 ities. The strike line carried on southward from Mannington passed 

 into Harrison county through the villages of Pleasantville and Grange- 

 ville. 



This course which I thus mapped out for the extension of the Mount 

 Morris oil belt was so crooked and passed so much farther westward than 

 the practical oil men had considered possible that my geological line, or 

 hypothetical belt, furnished occasion for many jokes and gibes at my ex- 

 pense among the oil fraternity : and it was with the greatest difficulty and 

 only by liberal gifts of supposed oil territory that I could induce any of 

 them to risk their money on a purely geological theory. Finally, how- 

 ever, a contract to drill a test well in the vicinity of Mannington was en- 

 tered into in the spring of 1889 with Mr. A. J. Montgomery, of Washing- 

 ton. Pennsylvania, a gentleman who had given considerable thought to 

 geology. As this was to be a crucial test of my theory, the proper Loca- 



