The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1921-08-25

SOuAIAy dlO 0O1A5 d 1iOn . Sudl VI
the exploration work.
With nobody finding no oil no.
where" there was no encourage
ment. But still there were those, as
there always are, who persistently re-
fused TO entertain the foolish idea
that oil fields had any connection
with state lines, and still others un-
daunted by failures not their own
So, after Uncle Sam had attended to
his salvage contract overseas, the
quest was renewed, and in the last
half of the ninth, with two down, no
body on base and the tally nothing
to nothing, the theorists made a home
run and won the game, which only
goes to show that any perfectly logi-
cal theory can be proved if you keep
at it long enough. And just how it
finally came about is an interesting
story as are all stories of dreams and
theories and struggles and disap-
pointments and courage and persist
ence which eventuate in the realities
of progress and achievement. Of
course it was an accidental such
things are. You hear it every day
"the lucky fool"
Along in 1914 Gordon Campbell,
a g~eologist who had been working
quite steadily at his trade for some
twenty years, was prospecting for oil
in Alberta, Canada. He followed a
suspicious-looking structure down
into Montana without bothering
about extradition papers, and got a
conviction. Namely, hat the forma-
tion-cretaceous or czechoslovak, or
something of hat sort-in which oil
occurs (sometimes) would be found
o~ut-cropping in south central Mon
tana and would occur at compare
lively shallow depth and would con-
tain oil. So he got a railroad map,
picked out the town whose name ap-
peared in the biggest, blacklist type
Roundup it happened to be-and in
the spring of 1915 set sail. He liked
the name, too, better than any of
the others in that section, which sug-
gests that there is something in a
name after all.
Arriving there, he got the manag-
ing director of an auto stable to take
him out into the country-anywhere
just so it was somewhere. And be-
cause the roads were better in that
direction, the driver took him north.
After twenty odd miles horizontal
measurement only they came to a
vast hollow surrounded by a serrated
rim of eagle sandstone-to the oil
man in this country a magic tails
man. Somebody had well named it
the Devils Basin" although there
are lots of other basins which might
quite as pertinently be connected
with the Evil One.
Campbell took one look and cried,
in a loud voice, Eureka, Petroleum
skill have it," But being of the
genus g%eologicus he went to making
medicine" and evolved, of course, a
perfect structure" That means, by
the way, that he found no surface in
dications of any subterranean slips
whereby petroleum, having once been
lured to this God-forsaken place,
could make a getaway. In time the
folks Whereabouts learned what he
was up to and most of them, being
perfectly normal people, said he was
But he kept at it, getting
leases and then getting backing, and
1915, with nothing to encourage
but faith, he "spudded in" a
we'll.
You don't believe in dreams, or
mediums, or fortune t~ellers, or ouija
boards, or politicians promises, and
neither do I. Therefore, what hap
pened thereafter was merely an odd
coincidence. The lower deck of the
Basin (all that has been said
in it's derogation to the contrary not
withstanding) is good farm land
when the snowfall is reasonably
heavy and the rainfall normally nor
nal. Tom Pataja is only one of the
hardy souls who, for rea-
best known to themselves, have