In the town of Pelly, on the north edge of the field, the geologists find fresh cracks in the ground, some of them running through houses. Always, the side closer to the oil fields is lower, by 16 inches or more in some places.

Investigators at a 16-inch drop along a fault fissure in Pelly, one-half mile north of Goose Creek, 1926. From Wallace E. Pratt and Douglas W. Johnson, "Local Subsidence of the Goose Creek Oil Field," Journal of Geology, October-November 1926. Copyright 1926 University of Chicago. Used with permission of the University of Chicago Press.

 

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