234 Kansas Academy of Science. 



exposed, though it is quite likely that they obtain their oil from 

 the Miocene shales adjacent by a seepage process. The supposed 

 Cretaceous rocks in many places also give oflt' a similar odor, and 

 oil seepages are known to occur at several locations along the coast 

 where these rocks are the country rocks. It is also likely that they, 

 too, have derived their oil by seepage from the Miocene shales 

 which they rim. 



As has been seen, the Miocene series rims the Quillayute trough, 

 and on the south side of this trough, where the older rock has been 

 removed by the invading ocean, it forms cliffs facing the sea, being 

 separated from the older rock by an erosive period and having its 

 basal member a conglomerate rock of from 100 to 400 feet in 

 thickness. The greater part of the series exposed is shale, but oc- 

 casionally there are massive to thin-bedded strata of soft gray 

 sandstone ; and in the interior the whole series is capped with the 

 sandstone of the Quillayute formation, which seems to be an 

 equivalent of the lower Purissima of California. Wherever this 

 Miocene formation is exposed there are oil indications, either in 

 the occurrence of the odor of benzine or an allied product of 

 crude oil, or in seepages. The latter are most prominently devel- 

 oped along the coast from the mouth of the Hoh river to the mouth 

 of the Quillayute river. On Hoh head, near the mouth of the 

 former stream, oil forms in pools so that one may dip it up with a 

 cup. This oil is said to be one of the best grade oils ever found, 

 having a forty-five per cent, paraffin base. 



An oil-well was sunk on the very rim of this field to a depth of 

 about BOO feet at a point some two miles south of the mouth of the 

 Quillayute river in 1902, but the side pressure was so great that it 

 caved in the pipes, and the work had to be abandoned without any 

 oil having been obtained. A Quillayute oil company, representing 

 people at Coalinga, Cal., is now preparing to put down a well near 

 the old site next year. The Standard Oil people have also become 

 interested in this field, and have now leased as much of the Forks 

 prairie and Quillayute country as they can get at ten per cent, of the 

 oil developed, agreeing to commence operation within three years 

 from last summer. 



It is the writer's opinion that the Standard Oil people have the 

 best field ; the seepage along the upturned broken edge of the 

 formation along the coast is only an indication of the oil in the 

 less-disturbed interior region. 



If indications are criteria to judge by, there is an abundance of 

 oil in the region south of the western extension of the Olympic 

 axis. 



