From Forward: "The first edition of the record setting forth the history of the boundaries of the United States and the several States and Territories was prepared by Henry Gannett, assisted by Franklin G. Butterfield, and was published as Bulletin 13 of the United States Geological Survey in 1885. The present bulletin is a revision and enlargement of Bulletin 226 and includes additional matter incidentally connected with boundaries."

From Introduction: "Responding to the imperative need for increasing to the utmost the petroleum supply of the United States, the Geological Survey, since we entered the war, has largely concentrated its investigations of oil fields in the most promising undeveloped territory, such as Wyoming and the midcontinent-Texas region, and especially in the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma. This report is therefore issued to supply an evident need for geologic information regarding the Osage lands. In the separate papers the most practical and immediately available conclusions reached by geologists as to the structure and oil prospects in the townships already examined are published for the immediate use of the oil man."