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Photographer and journalist Jeri Dobrowski sends photos of this winter's petroleum exploration work in her area of Western North Dakota/Eastern Montana, along with two vintage photos. She provides captions and descriptions:

These strange-looking vehicles are used in petroleum exploration, referred to as seismographing. They've been roaming western North Dakota and eastern Montana since last fall, administering coordinated "thumps" with a center-mounted piston; the readings recorded by a network of cables strung in carefully prepared grids.

With powerful headlights and flashing warning lights, they were quite the sight this winter when days were short. I often wondered what folks passing through must have thought. They could easily have thought some sort of military mission was taking place or perhaps that aliens had landed.

We've had seismographers around before, but never with this type of vehicle. These machines are less invasive than bore-hole technology of the past.

Servicing a Vibe

My husband and I had watched the vibes for several months and noticed them gathering in large clusters on occasion. We had no idea what they were doing, so went to investigate when the fleet established a base camp south of our house.

After spending an hour or so watching, we better understood the end-of-day ritual: check the oil, air up tires, scrape mud and compacted snow from the underside, blow off dust, clean the windows and mirrors, fuel up.

In the morning, it takes them about an hour to get the machines started, get the frost scraped from the windows, the diesel engines warmed up, and the thumping pistons functioning.

Seismic Recording Truck

The blue cord running through the snow to the truck is not an electric extension cord. It is part of the seismic grid.

The plentiful snow and fog we've had this winter has made the job utterly miserable for the crew. A large percentage of them are from Brownsville, Texas; some are from Mexico; some from El Salvador.

They head out each morning in work groups of six per pickup, laying cable and batteries on top of the ground. That means digging through the snow or having a snowplow go ahead of them.

Men on snowmobiles and four-wheel utility vehicles replace the batteries as needed. Once they have the cable grid in place, then the vibes do their work, thumping diagonally across the terrain, the results recorded by instruments in trucks such as this.

End of shift as the crews gather back at the supply depot near our home. The vans are waiting to take them back to Glendive, Montana, 58 miles to the west.

Heavy snowfall, wind, and fog have made for a perfectly miserable winter by our standards. These guys are from Texas and points south. We were constantly amazed at how they were always on the job, despite what the Northern Plains was dishing. I told Rob that they reminded me of our ancestors who settled this country: tough, adventurous, hard working.

They've made fine neighbors. Because they work everyday, and need to get the workers in and out, they hired snowplows to keep the roads open. There were several times it would have been impossible to have gotten to the highway, five miles away, had they not opened the roads.

GeoTechnical Corporation Crew
Miles City, Montana
Circa 1944-45

My father worked on a seismograph crew. That's him in the front row, far left.

Back then, they would drill a series of "shot holes" and put a charge of dynamite down each hole. Then, they'd string a series of receptors attached to a cable on top of the ground and set off the charges. They recorded the vibrations in a recording truck. The resulting information told geologists what type of formations were in the area, helping them determine where to drill for oil or natural gas.

(NOTE: Dad said this was the second time they took the group picture. The first time, he was dressed up like the rest of the crew. For whatever reason, they had to retake it, but he didn't get the memo. He was working on his truck when somebody came and told him he needed to come over for a picture--now! He came as he was.)

John Janssen Drilling Water Well
1948

Dad worked for GeoTech for a little more than two years, making 72 cents per hour. They worked in Montana and Wyoming in the summer. When it got cold, they went South. He spent one winter in Oklahoma and one winter in Texas.

When they ran out of work, the crew broke up. Dad came back to Montana and went to work for a drilling company.

Eventually, he got his own rig and started drilling water wells. Dad drilled for a number of years, traveling over quite a bit of eastern Montana. He also did some trucking and got started in farming and ranching.

Of his time spent operating a rig, he commented, "I done real well in the drilling business; made quite a lot of money. Course, I was a damn fool and wasn't able to keep any of it. I had to spend it all. It came too easy."