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Kevin

Travel Montana

A view from 1939:

KEVIN, (3,331 alt., 324 pop.), near which the first gusher of the Sweetgrass Arch was drilled in 1922.

The producing sand of this oil field lies at the contact (plane between adjacent bodies of dissimilar rock) of the Ellis formation and the Madison limestone, at an average depth of 1,200 to 1,500 feet; its thickness ranges from a few inches to more than 20 feet. In nearly every well here is oil, gas, or sulphur water, in some wells all three. Three hundred feet above the Ellis-Madison contact is the Sunburst sand, the gas-producing horizon (deposit of a particular geologic time).

Dry holes as well as old stripper wells (those from which oil must be pumped) have been made to produce again by, the acid treatment introduced in 1933. Gallons of a hydrochloric acid compound are dumped into the wells and when it reaches the Madison limestone a sulphur colored smoke rises. The acid makes the limestone porous and allows the oil or gas to gush through.

Source: Montana: A State Guide Book; Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Montana; September, 1939.