Everette Lee DeGolyer and GeologyStudents Mapping in the Arbuckle Mountains, Oklahoma, 1905

摘要

The image on this month's cover shows several University of Oklahoma (OU) geology students on a field expedition in 1905, applying classroom lessons to vistas outside the classroom. Using simple tools including a plane table, a leveling instrument, and a vertical stick (out of frame), these students in Oklahoma's Arbuckle Mountains, fifty miles north of the Oklahoma-Texas border, were probably engaged in contact-point mapping. In contact-point mapping, surveyors aim to map the points in the region where different rock types (sandstone, shale, limestone, and so on) visibly come into contact with one another. In 1905 field trips like these were more than mere exercises; not only were the Arbuckles as yet poorly mapped, but they also provided a unique location where the geological substructure of the oil-rich state could be visualized and recorded for use by Oklahoma's booming oil industry. Knowing the nature of the subterranean rock (visible on the surface in the Arbuckles) made oil drilling more predictable and efficient.