OIL IN THE REELFOOT AREA. 23 



What has been said is in the attempt to make it clear that 

 there is little or no connection between the earthquake and its 

 results and the possible occurrence of oil and gas. The sinking 

 was nowhere very great and it is the writer's belief that the 

 material affected did not reach far beneath the surface. It 

 was a superficial phenomenon, due mainly to the soft, mucky 

 nature of the material of the old abandoned river course, but 

 possibly in part to the soft Tertiary deposits immediately be- 

 neath, that were saturated with water. That this is true is 

 shown by the sinking having been confined to the old river 

 course. The area was underlain by muck and water-filled sand 

 and the low ridges were in a sense floating islands, on this ma- 

 terial. The writer believes that the sinking took place by the 

 settling of the material under the influence of the shake, by the 

 squeezing out of the muck into the sloughs and stream channels 

 and as mud spouts here and there over the surface, and by forc- 

 ing water from the saturated sand lenses to the surface. Cer- 

 tainly, the sinking was one of the results of the earthquake, and 

 not a cause.* 



Even if it be granted that the phenomenon was a deep-seated 

 one, this would be unfavorable to the presence of oil and gas in 

 the immediate vicinity of the lake. For the fissuring of the ma- 

 terial down to great depths probably would have left rents 

 from which they, especially the gas, could escape. 



Resemblance to the Louisiana field. There is a general re- 

 semblance between the Reelfoot Lake area and the Caddo oil 

 and gas field of Louisiana, in that they are both low and poorly 

 drained, and both contain shallow lakes. But these are super- 

 ficial matters that have no bearing on the occurrence of oil and 

 gas. The land of the Reelfoot Lake area is low because it, in 

 common with the region from the bluffs on its eastern margin, 

 westward to Crowleys Ridge in Arkansas, is one of river ero- 

 sion. There is no more reason to expect a successful oil well 

 on the border of the lake than at Dyersburg or Union City or 



*This discussion refers only to the Reelfoot Lake district ; but from what 

 the writer has seen of the "sunk land?" in northeast Arkansas he thinks the 

 same explanation of origin will in general apply to them. For a full discus- 

 sion of the New Madrid earthquake, see Shepard, E. M., Journal of Geology, 

 Vol. XIII, pp. 45-62. Also Fuller, M. L., U. S. Geol. Surv., Bull. 494. 



