Mission Statement

The Trust Fund will create autonomy and security for Utah's only publicly available repository of geologic cuttings and core, thus continuing a tradition of service to all interested individuals and organizations that require direct observation of actual samples for research and investigations of Utah's geologic legacy.

Objectives

The Utah Core Research Center has an annual operating budget of approximately $40,000, which includes equipment maintenance and building costs. By creating a Trust Fund capable of generating enough interest to meet that budget as well as maintain and replace equipment and shelving, the Utah Core Research Center will become financially independent and self-sustaining. That position will shelter the Utah Core Research Center's esoteric and scientific nature from the annual political scrutiny involved in public funding.

Reasons for the Fund Drive

The Utah Core Research Center was established in 1951 and now occupies an 11,800-square-foot warehouse. Its holdings consist of cuttings from more than 3,000 drill holes; core samples from more than 300 drill holes; representative samples from all producing formations in the state; represenative coal samples from producing coal mines; and miscellaneous samples of metallic minerals, industrial rocks and minerals, tar sands, oil shale, geothermal wells, and surface stratigraphic sections.

Seeking to assure the future of the facility, the Utah Legislature authorized construction of a state-owned building dedicated to, and the establishment of a trust fund to generate interest income that would benefit the Utah Core Research Center. The new facility is designed specifically for storing samples and conducting research, and it has considerably more shelf space. The Trust Fund is administered by the Director of the Utah Geological Survey; expenditures of the fund's principal requires concurrence of the UGS Board.

The Utah Core Research Center is being used more and more often for educational and research endeavors such as core workshops for oil company training sessions, geologic program short courses, college thesis work, and sample evaluations for UGS/industry cooperative projects.

The Utah Core Research Center also continues to be more aggressive in acquiring important new samples and finding and cultivating more customers. As part of that effort, the staff has inventoried and reindexed the entire collection.

In addition, the new facility is equipped with an automated Order Selector and has large layout tables for examination of core and samples using an on-site core saw, binocular microscope, seive shaker, drill press, and UV light. There is also a selection of reagents to use for simple chemical tests.