COAL  AND  OIL  IN  SOUTHERN  UINTA  COUNTY,  WYO. 
By  A.  C.  Veatcii. 
INTRODUCTION. 
The  following  report  is  a  brief  preliminary  statement  of  a  portion  of  the  results  of  sur- 
veys made  by  Alfred  R.  Schultz,  Max  A.  Pishel,  and  the  writer,  during  the  summer  of  1905, 
in  Tps.  12  to  23  N.,  Rs.  115  to  121  W.,  inclusive,  Uinta  County,  Wyo.  Since  the  inves- 
tigation was  primarily  an  economic  one,  concerned  principally  with  coal  and  oil;  since 
coal  lands  can  be  acquired  only  in  ''legal  subdivisions,  as  made  by  the  regular  United 
States  [Land  Office]  survey,"  and  since  the  petroleum  "placer  claims"  in  this  region  are 
[always  entered  by  legal  subdivisions,  it  was  considered  imperative  to  do  the  work  from  a 
land-subdivision  standpoint  rather  than  as  an  abstract  piece  of  geographic  and  geologic 
mapping.  Such  a  method  is  necessary  in  all  regions  having  the  rectangular  subdivisions 
of  the  General  Land  Office,  to  render  the  economic  results  immediately  available  both  to 
the  investor  and  to  the  Land  Office. 
Land  lines  were  carefully  followed,  and  geologic  and  sketch  topographic  maps  prepared 
on  a  scale  of  2  miles  to  the  inch,  with  a  contour  interval  of  100  feet.  These  separate  field 
township  sheets,  covering  an  area  slightly  larger  than  the  Wyoming  portion  of  PL  X, 
are  now  being  compiled  into  a  single  map  on  a  scale  of  1  inch  to  the  mile.  This  map 
will  show  all  the  land  corners  found  in  this  examination,  and  enable  anyone  to  determine 
at  a  glance  the  degree  of  accuracy  of  any  location  under  consideration.  It  will  be  used 
as  a  base  for  the  several  maps  which  will  accompany  the  complete  report  now  in  prepara- 
tion. These  will  show  area!  geology,  structural  geology,  location  of  coal  beds,  and  depth 
of  principal  beds  throughout  the  area  underlain  by  them;  also  depths  to  the  oil-bearing 
shales  in  the  regions  where  they  may  be  found.  This  detailed  report  will  probably  be 
ready  for  distribution  in  the  spring  of  1907,  and  the  reader  is  referred  to  it  for  an  elabora- 
tion and  amplification  of  the  points  here  outlined  and  of  the  sketch  maps  here  presented. 
STRATIGRAPHY. 
The  fossils  collected  by  this  party  and  studied  by  Stanton,  Girty,  and  Knowlton,  as  well 
as  the  material  collected  by  former  expeditions,  indicate  that  the  several  formations 
observed  and  mapped  in  the  field  have  the  geologic  time  values  shown  in  the  accompany- 
ing table* 
331 
