Kuto Buloh (also written Kuto Bulch in the OCR of Van Bemmelen’s text) is an iron-ore locality on the West coast of Atjeh, 27 km North of Tapa Tuan (itself 150 km SE of Meulaboh), recorded by Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp in 1922 and reproduced in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949). The Kuto Buloh locality is No. 9 in Van Bemmelen’s Fig. 41 key, and is the southernmost of the West-Atjeh iron-ore occurrences recorded by the 1922 survey.
The 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp observation
The 1922 report of Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp, as reproduced by Van Bemmelen, records simply:
“Locality: 27 km North of Tapa Tuan. No particulars available.”
As with the A. Pentuwa Gade locality (No. 8), the absence of detailed geological description for the Kuto Buloh locality indicates that the Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey did not have the time or the resources to conduct a detailed examination of every Atjeh iron-ore occurrence. The locality’s inclusion in Van Bemmelen’s Fig. 41 key, however, establishes it as one of the eight canonical Atjeh iron-ore localities of the colonial geological literature, and its position (27 km North of Tapa Tuan, which is itself 150 km SE of Meulaboh) makes it the southernmost of the West-Atjeh iron-ore occurrences — separated from the next-northern locality (A. Pentuwa Gade, 68 km SE of Meulaboh) by a gap of approximately 80 km.
Significance
Kuto Buloh is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is one of the eight canonical Atjeh iron-ore localities of the colonial geological literature, and the southernmost of the West-Atjeh iron-ore occurrences recorded by the 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey. The locality’s position (27 km North of Tapa Tuan, which is itself 150 km SE of Meulaboh) marks the southern limit of the West-Atjeh iron-ore zone as recorded in the colonial geological literature, and its inclusion in Van Bemmelen’s Fig. 41 key — despite the absence of detailed geological description — establishes it as part of the documented colonial-era iron-ore record of Atjeh.
See Also
- Acheh
- A. Pentuwa Gade
- Alu Talu
- B. B. Lindberg
- H. Wolvekamp
- Iron ores in Atjeh
- Kr. Ligan (Babah Loh)
- Kr. Rigaih
- Kwala Boe Tjot Plaj
- Meulaboh
- P. J. J. Jansen
- Tapa Tuan
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1922
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 208 (key to Fig. 41, No. 9, with locality description).