197   A great shallow oil and gas find on Smackover Creek in July, 1922, led to one of the most romantic and spectacular developments of the century with all the glamor, excitement, sudden wealth, and sudden death long associated with the western frontier and boom mining towns of a past era. But greater even than this first strike was the more recent development of a deeper oil and gas bearing formation in the same general area. It, too, has taken on the name of Smackover. Oil ! Oil ! What a change has come about since the days of whetstones, salt licks, bear grease and deer skins. The Smackover lime, today yields a fortune every day in crude oil, distillate and gas in Union, Columbia, Miller and LaFayette Counties. Both Cotton Valley and Smackover formations are placed in the Jurassic by Imlay---1940. The discovery and development of oil bearing deposits in the lower Cretaceous and Jurassic formations in this area was the dawning of a new day in this state's petroleum and industrial development, if not in that of the nation. The most important of the oil bearing deposits are known generally as the Cotton Valley sands and the Smackover limestone; the upper portion of the latter, which is an oalitic limestone is know as the Reynolds zone of the Smackover limestone. This, the more important, it is believed, was first brought into production in 1937 when a deep test proved successful in the old Smackover shallow field in Union County. Methods of production previously employed, problems incidental thereto, rules and regulations necessary to the efficient and economic development of oil and gas were all outmoded and made inadequate by these discoveries. Previously, favorable surface geology had been considered sufficient evidence of probable productivity to hazard exploratory enterprise. The Smackover lime, however, had no surface outcroppings. An entire geological age, thousands of feet thick, had been superimposed upon this formation at its highest level, and its exploration on a big scale, as a possible source of oil and gas, had to await siesmorgraphic equipment and technique developed to a point of efficiency capable of locating and measuring the hills and valleys, domes and depressions, as they occurred in the formation. This within itself marked a revolutionary achievement of the petroleum industry.           Contents  Words  Study Questions  Related Sites Next Page