42 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES 
with the discovery of deeper sand, rose to nearly 21,000,000 barrels in 
1927. The yield in 1930 was somewhat more than 6,000,000 bar- 
rels. The total production from 1901 to 1930 has been estimated at 
115,163,000 barrels from an area of 265 acres. Some of the wells 
yielding the later production from the deeper sand are as much as 
5,800 feet deep. The Spindletop mound is underlain by a salt core a 
mile in diameter with an anhydrite-gypsum cap, and the older sedi- 
mentary beds dip away steeply on all sides. The depth to the salt 
is 1,200 to 1,600 feet in greater part. (Fenneman; Barton and Pax- 
ton.) The relations are shown in Figure 3. The name is derived 
from a clump of timber near by which resembled an inverted spindle 
top. 
West of Beaumont the railroad passes over a smooth plain which 
has a nearly regular rise from an elevation of 29 feet at Amelia siding 
to 77 feet on the east rim of the Trinity Valley west of Ames siding. 
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Salt core 
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Fictre 3.—Section through Spindletop salt dome, Texas, Partly after 
Fenneman 
The geologic formation is clay and sandy clay (Beaumont), which is 
exposed at intervals in shallow road cuts and stream trenches. There 
are many wide prairies, with scattered woodlands, mostly of yellow 
pine and oak, and numerous plantations, some of them about Amelia 
devoted to fig raising. Rice fields occupy large areas, and ditches for 
water for their irrigation are crossed by the railroad at intervals. 
From China to Nome the configuration of the alluvial deposits 
: marks a wide old stream bed believed to have been 
_ Nome. the channel of the Trinity River in Pleistocene time. 
nner (Barton.) From Nome to Raywood, a distance of 
New Orleans 299 miles. 22 miles, there are many ridges composed of sand 
deposited by streams which formerly crossed the 
n. 
Seven miles south of Devers is the Hankamer oil field in a dome 
Sania: discovered in 1929 by torsion-balance exploration. It 
Elevation oo fect,  Yielded 546,000 barrels in 1930 from 13 wells. At 
ag eo Devers the railroad crosses the pipe line of the Pure 
‘Oil Co., one of the many pipe lines which con- 
vey petroleum from tbe oil fields to the refineries at Port Arthur. 
