At a point one eighth of a mile S. 75° E. from the dead sheep, where the belt of asphaltum deposits first reaches the top of the southern brow of the hills, the sandstones are somewhat exposed, and strike N. 75° to 80° W., and dip steeply to the northeast. PUENTE. From "Puente Station" on the Southern Pacific Railroad, some twenty miles east of Los Angeles, it is about five miles southeasterly to the oil wells of Messrs. Lacy & Rowland, situated on Puente Gulch, a branch of Coyote Creek. The locality of the wells is on the north side of the main crest of the Puente range of hills; but a little farther west, Puente Gulch turns south, breaks through that crest, and joins Coyote Creek. The wells are partly on the southeast corner of La Puente Rancho, and partly on Sections 34 and 35, T. 2 S., R. 10 W., S. B. M. There are now (May 31, 1887) six pumping wells in operation here, all within a distance of some six hundred or eight hundred feet along the cañon, which here runs about west, magnetic. Of these wells, Nos. 1, 2, and 3 furnish a rather thick maltha, of about 20° B., and the others a lighter oil of 30° to 32° B. The first three wells are all pumped into the same tank, whence the oil is barreled and shipped to Los Angeles, where it is used for lubricating purposes, and for mixing with asphaltum for coating iron pipes, and for other purposes. These three wells furnish some forty or fifty barrels per month, which is worth $5 per barrel. The lighter oil, from Nos. 4, 5, and 6, is worth $1 50 per barrel. It is all pumped and mixed together in the same storage tanks at the wells, and is again pumped from them into a tank on the top of the hill, one fourth of a mile or so to the north, and several hundred feet above the wells, whence it runs by its own gravity, through a two-inch pipe, a distance of about five miles, to a tank alongside the railroad, not far from Puente Station. It is thence discharged into tank-cars, in which it goes to Los Angeles. Wells Nos. 1, 2, and 3, are old wells, and are situated some twenty or thirty feet south of the bed of the gulch. The others are from thirty to two hundred feet north of it, on the hillside. A streak of little croppings of bréa and maltha follows for nearly half a mile about an east and west course, just north of the bed of the cañon. The largest tank at the wells has a capacity of something over five hundred barrels, and the smaller one in the same building holds one hundred and thirty barrels. Nos. 1 and 2 were sunk previous to 1882, and are each one hundred and fifty feet deep. No. 3 began pumping in 1882, and is two hundred and, sixty feet deep. No. 4 has a twelve-inch casing at top, is one thousand feet deep, and began pumping in January, 1886. No. 5 is eight hundred feet deep, and began pumping in July, 1886. No. 6 is eight hundred feet deep, and began pumping in January, 1887. Since No. 6 was started the average aggregate production of all these wells has been about one hundred barrels per day, most of which comes from Nos. 4, 5, and 6, No. 4 being the most productive well. No. 7 is now drilling, with a thirteen-inch top casing, and is to-day (May thirty-first) down about one hundred and seventy-five feet. They say that they are making an average of about forty feet per day with it. This is the most westerly of all the wells here. Moreover, the grading is already done at the site of No. 8, which will soon be started, and will be the most easterly one of all. The rocks throughout this region are unaltered sandstones and shales, which often contain a good deal of lime. They generally strike about east and west, though in some places they are greatly disturbed and crumpled. On the south side of the cañon, where, however, the exposures are very few and poor, they seem generally to dip to the south, while on the north side, where the exposures are somewhat better, and where all the most productive wells are, they dip to the north at angles ranging from 60° to nearly horizontal, though the general average seems to be about 45°. At a point in the bluff on the south side of the cañon, about opposite Well No. 7, the sandstone seems to strike about N. 65° E., and dip northwesterly about 25°. But, in the brow of another bluff of about the same height, some three hundred or four hundred feet farther west, they again strike about east and west, and dip 40° or 45° to the south. As already stated, very few exposures of rock can be seen on the south side of the cañon. But it seems pretty certain that the general dip there is to the south, so that the cañon itself here occupies the place, either of a fault of considerable magnitude, or else of a sharp anticlinal fold in the rocks, the productive oil wells being on the north side of it where the dip is northerly. The oil-bearing rock itself, in all these wells, is sandstone. There is no record of the strata passed through in the shallow wells, Nos. 1, 2, and 3. But in the deeper wells a layer of asphaltum, or bituminous rock, was passed through before reaching the oil-bearing rock. The depths at which this asphaltum and the oil-bearing rock were struck in Wells Nos. 4, 5, and 6, respectively, were as follows: From the vertical depths here given, it is easy to compute the approximate actual thickness of the strata passed through, the average dip being about 45° to the north. None of the wells have passed entirely through the oil-bearing sandstone here, though Well No. 4 has penetrated to a vertical depth of six hundred and sixty-five feet into it. Immediately overlying the oil-sand there are a number of thin layers of fine-grained, hard, and compact sandstone, while the oil-sand itself is somewhat coarser grained and softer. All the wells furnish some gas, but very little gas is found until the top of the oil-sand is reached. The total quantity of gas furnished by Wells Nos. 4, 5, and 6 is about the equivalent, as fuel, of five barrels of oil per day. In addition to this gas, they also consume under the boilers about two barrels of oil per day in making steam. Mr. John Youle, Superintendent of these wells, thinks that four barrels, or about one thousand one hundred pounds, of this oil are about equal in value as fuel to one ton (two thousand pounds) of good coal. The gas ordinarily issues from the wells under very slight pressure, owing to the fact that its quantity is small and it is drawn directly from the wells to the furnaces. But Mr. Youle states that in Well No. 5, when it was once cased in tight and none allowed to escape for awhile, the pressure rose to at least one hundred pounds per square inch. They estimate that the total cost of sinking and fitting up the three deepest wells, Nos. 4, 5, and 6, was about $30,000, an average of $10,000 each, or a general average of $11 54 per foot of depth for all three wells. From the Puente wells the town of Anaheim bears S. 10° E., magnetic. Mr. Youle estimates that the total yield of all the wells throughout the State for the years 1884, 1885, and 1886 was as follows: 1884, an average of 511 barrels per day; 1885, an average of 564 barrels per day; 1886, an average of 658 barrels per day. The difficulty in burning petroleum under boilers with a blast of air only, is that, if sufficient air is not furnished, the combustion is very incomplete, and dense clouds of black smoke issue from the stack; while on the other hand, if sufficient air is furnished to insure complete combustion and produce no smoke, then the flame is very short, and the heat is concentrated under the front end of the boilers to such an extent as to rapidly burn out and destroy the iron. Instead, therefore, of a blast of air alone, a jet of steam is used, which atomizes the petroleum and delivers it into the furnace in the shape of an exceedingly fine spray, mixed with both air and steam, the further effect of the latter being to considerably retard the rapidity of combustion, thus producing a far longer, though smokeless flame, and preventing the excessive concentration of the heat under the front end of the boilers. By this method, of course, a certain amount of heat is carried off by the steam and lost. But this loss is small in comparison with the great advantage gained, of a far better distribution of the heat and the preservation of the boilers, while at the same time effecting a complete combustion. Considerable gas continues to escape from the petroleum for some time after it issues from the ground; and it appears that the gas thus evolved is capable, under some circumstances, of redepositing some liquid petroleum from it. At various localities between Los Angeles and the Puente wells, a little asphaltum and an occasional small tar spring may be found; but nothing of any considerable extent or quantity. In a cut on the road at the reservoir in East Los Angeles there is a sharp, beautiful, and perfect anticlinal fold, the strike being northeast and southwest, and the dip about 45° each way from the axis. But at a point less than two hundred yards northwest of this locality, the dip is unmistakably to the southeast, proving that there is also a synclinal fold somewhere between these two points. At a number of other points in East Los Angeles, and also in the northern part of the city proper, the strata are seen to strike northeast, but with varying dips. In the vertical banks, over twenty feet high, exposed in grading for new buildings on New High Street, just back of the Post Office and the St. Elmo Hotel, the soft, yellow, fine sand and clay shales strike N. 50° E. and dip about 50° southeast. There is here considerable selenite in thin streaks parallel with the stratification, and in a few spots the shales are stained nearly black with carbonaceous matter; but there is no sign here of liquid oil or asphaltum. Mr. McGinnis once sunk a well some three hundred feet deep on Boyle Heights, and another some five hundred or six hundred feet deep at Santa Monica, but struck nothing of any value. At the Protestant Orphans' Home, in the northern part of the City of Los Angeles (called "Sonora Town"), a well was sunk, in which, at the depth of sixty feet, a considerable volume of gas was struck. The pipe was seven inches in diameter, and when the gas was lighted, it burned a solid flame six feet high for over an hour. Another well, near Temple Street, was sunk by Mr. A. Polhemus, in 1865, to a depth of three hundred and ninety feet, through alternating layers of soft and hard sandstone. This well yielded water and some gas. latter, when ignited, gave a flame, half an inch in diameter and several The feet long, which would burn all night. The dip of the sandstones here is to the southeast. Near the Southern Pacific Railroad station, in the bed of the Los Angeles River, a well was drilled eighty feet deep, at the bottom of which they struck asphaltum, with some gas in sandstone. Just back of the United States Hotel is another well, in which they passed through soft materials to the depth of about eight hundred and fifty feet, where they struck hard rock, and below that again soft shale, with salt water strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen and other gases. In the outskirts of the City of Los Angeles, some three miles southwest of the City Hall, the crests of some low rolling hills are covered, over an area of several acres, with a deposit of asphaltum mixed with sand. At one place the bituminous strata are exposed for a distance of perhaps one hundred feet, in a bank some four or five feet high, and consist of finegrained and extremely thin bedded, sandy shales, which strike about N. 70° E., and dip 60° to 65° southeast. The upturned edges of these shales are covered over with a deposit of recent soil and gravel, through which the maltha, which issues from the shales, slowly percolates upwards to the surface, where it gradually hardens into asphaltum. There are many little pools, most of them not more than one or two feet, but a few as much as five or six feet in diameter, of black and very viscid maltha, like very thick and sticky tar. Bubbles of gas, an inch or more in diameter, may occasionally be seen on the surface of this maltha. At one point here a well was drilled by Mr. A. Polhemus, in 1865, to the depth of four hundred and forty feet, with three-inch casing. It went through fifteen feet of asphaltum and sand, and then through black shales to the bottom. It yielded salt water and a little oil. The tools are said to have been lost in the well. The latter is now full of maltha which, on May fifteenth, stood in the pipe (which rises about two and a half feet above the surface of the ground) at a level of about one and a half feet below the top of the pipe. But at times it rises and overflows the top of the pipe, and has formed around it quite a pool of maltha which is considerably more liquid than that of the other little pools which come from the little surface springs. To the north of this locality, for a distance of two miles or more, there are scattered small deposits of asphaltum and little springs of tar. About four miles northwesterly from the Los Angeles Court House, a well was drilled some years ago by Ivan A. Weid, concerning which the following information was obtained: Struck surface water in gravel at twenty-eight feet. Went down about one hundred feet in soft formations. Put in eight-inch casing. Went through a slate formation, requiring no casing, five hundred and fifty feet. At three hundred and fifty feet struck a streak of oil and bréa in a sandstone formation. At five hundred and seventy-five feet casing became necessary. The sandstone continued to six hundred and fifty feet. From six hundred and fifty to eight hundred and twenty feet in slate, with streaks of soft sandstone and bréa, the last thirty feet, from seven hundred and ninety to eight hundred and twenty feet, being in very soft sand rock requiring casing. At four hundred and fifty feet water commenced flowing from top of well with gas and oil. There were several streaks of soft sand at intervals with indications of oil; but no sufficient quantity of oil to be of any value. At La Bréa Rancho, described in the Fourth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist, page 287, the strata are but very little exposed anywhere, the ranch lying in the nearly level valley, several miles from the foot of the |