The Cook Inlet Basin in SE Alaska was first poked around in as early as 1904 based on numerous bubbly, oil seeps in creeks in the Katalla area, south of Cordova. Gas was found as shallow as 300 feet below the surface and then deeper, around 1,200 feet, and almost 160K barrels of very high gravity distillate was eventually produced until the late 1930's A refinery was built, then burned to the ground in 1934; some years later all of Katalla was heaved upwards 10 feet and split in half from...

Photograph by Todd Webb; 1947 What is this young man doing, why is he doing it, and where, most likely, would this rig be that he is doing it, on? The young man's name in the photograph, above, is a real-life coon ass boy named Joseph Boudreaux and he, and his pet coon, are the stars of the 1948 movie about Cajun swamp life. His character's name in the movie is Alex Latour. It's a very simple movie, with little dialogue, but beautiful scenery that actually won acclaim for Robert Flaherty....

Bitumen mining in Provinci di Pescara Italy; 1951. Photo courtesy Archivo Mino Gelsomro East of Rome, along the coastline of the Adriatic Sea, thick bitumen occurrences were quite common and as early as 1867 mining for the stuff happened for a host of uses we recently found to be the same as those in Mexico...for the sealing and repair of wooden ships, roofing, chalking and chinking, to make asphalt with, even medicinal purposes. After WWII, very commercial efforts were made at mining...