The Arkansas Museum of Natural Science offers students of all ages a unique learning experience of  how petroleum and brine are geologically formed and the processes that they to become useful products. The museum offers a walk through the history of Arkansas from the beginning of its oil and brine development to the boom times of its oil fields.

Some of the exhibits we most interested are found below.

Origin of Petroleum and Brine

The Organic Theory of oil formation is graphically presented in a series of exhibits including a Geologic Time Scale.

A focal point of this gallery is the fossil exhibition featuring specimens found in south Arkansas that date back thousands of years.

UNDERSEA DIORAMA AND TIME VOYAGE - When it is time to embark, elevator doors open and visitors enter the high-tech environment of a time capsule.

As the doors close and the lights dim, a voice-over explains that the visitor will voyage back in time, beginning on the bottom of the ancient Jurassic sea.  This magnified view of ancient sea life exhibits the true creatures that led to the eventual formation of oil.

The Changing Industry

You enter this gallery through a corrugated tin shed with wood plank flooring. Exhibit panels interpret the expansion of the Arkansas oil industry from 1922 through modern times. The shed also contains various tools found in such a building in the oil field.

The floor appears to be the packed soil of a back road in the Smackover oil field. In the middle of this space one will find a mechanical interactive exhibit which allows one to become the power source for a sucker rod pump. When you turn the crank you get an opportunity to see what's happening below ground as the pump pulls "oil" up to the surface.
                      

The last exhibit is the Oil Field Exhibit Park

Located on five acres adjacent to the Education Center, the Oil field Park includes seven operating examples of the oil producing methods used in the south Arkansas Oil Field from the 1920s through today. There is a tour that goes through this exhibit to explain and have questions answered.

*A 1920S STANDARD RIG WITH A 112' WOODEN DERRICK AND A BATTERY of wooden storage tanks. This exhibit serves as an example of the earliest production process used in Arkansas' oil fields.

*1920S-1930S 64' PIPE DERRICK AND GEAR DRIVEN PUMPING UNIT. Depicts the evolutionary process in derrick use and production methods.

*1930S-1940S CENTRAL POWER STATION. This building contains an eccentric wheel powered by a 45 H.P. Reid engine.

*1930S "GIN POLE" DERRICK AND OKLAHOMA PUMP JACK.   Located adjacent to the central power station, it typifies the necessity of "balancing" central power well sites.

*1930S-1940S 87' ANGLE IRON DERRICK WITH  PENNSYLVANIA-TYPE PUMP JACK. This well operates from a series of rods connected to the central power source.

*MODERN PRODUCTION UNIT. A Lufkin production unit sits atop an original wellhead and is counterbalanced by 2,125 feet of "down hole" equipment.

Besides these exhibits we will be participating in two of the science programs the museum has to offer.

1. Origin of Oil and Brine - We will examine drill bits, core samples, and oil samples

2. Arkansas Rocks and Minerals - This is a hands on program to discover many of the varied rock and mineral                    samples found in Arkansas.
 

Needed supplies - notebook

We are moving on to our last stop of the trip, The National Weather Service in Little Rock. We will Get on Hwy 7 south to Hwy 167 north. We will then get on  Hwy 79 to Pine Bluff. Get on US 65 north to Little Rock. They are located on Remont Rd. in North Little Rock (at the North Little Rock Airport).