<P> The name tar sands was applied to bituminous sands in the late 19th and early 20th century . People who saw the bituminous sands during this period were familiar with the large amounts of tar residue produced in urban areas as a by - product of the manufacture of coal gas for urban heating and lighting . The word "tar" to describe these natural bitumen deposits is really a misnomer, since, chemically speaking, tar is a human - made substance produced by the destructive distillation of organic material, usually coal . </P> <P> Since then, coal gas has almost completely been replaced by natural gas as a fuel, and coal tar as a material for paving roads has been replaced by the petroleum product asphalt . Naturally occurring bitumen is chemically more similar to asphalt than to coal tar, and the term oil sands (or oilsands) is more commonly used by industry in the producing areas than tar sands because synthetic oil is manufactured from the bitumen, and due to the feeling that the terminology of tar sands is less politically acceptable to the public . Oil sands are now an alternative to conventional crude oil . </P> <P> In Canada, the First Nation peoples had used bitumen from seeps along the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers to waterproof their birch bark canoes from early prehistoric times . The Canadian oil sands first became known to Europeans in 1719 when a Cree native named Wa - Pa - Su brought a sample to Hudsons Bay Company fur trader Henry Kelsey, who commented on it in his journals . Fur trader Peter Pond paddled down the Clearwater River to Athabasca in 1778, saw the deposits and wrote of "springs of bitumen that flow along the ground ." In 1787, fur trader and explorer Alexander MacKenzie on his way to the Arctic Ocean saw the Athabasca oil sands, and commented, "At about 24 miles from the fork (of the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers) are some bituminous fountains into which a pole of 20 feet long may be inserted without the least resistance ." </P> <P> The commercial possibilities of Canada's vast oil sands were realized early by Canadian government researchers . In 1884, Robert Bell of the Geological Survey of Canada commented, "The banks of the Athabasca would furnish an inexhaustible supply of fuel...the material occurs in such enormous quantities that a profitable means of extracting oil...may be found". In 1915, Sidney Ells of the Federal Mines Branch experimented with separation techniques and used the material to pave 600 ft (200 m) of road in Edmonton, as well as in other places . In 1920, chemist Karl Clark of the Alberta Research Council began experimenting with methods to extract bitumen from the oil sands and, in 1928, he patented the first commercial hot water separation process . </P>

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