USA > Illinois > Logan County > History of Logan County, Illinois > Part 14
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"The following section of the Drift, afforded by a shaft sunk in the city of Bloomington, is of especial interest as showing both of these conditions at unusual depths. The shaft was sunk by the Bloomington Coal Mining Company, near the track of the Chica- go & St. Louis Railroad, about half a mile north of the depot:
Feet.
1. Surface soil and brown clay 10
2. Blue clay. 40
8. "Gravelly hard pan" 60
4. Black mold, with pieces of wood, etc. 13
5. Hard pan and clay. 89
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SOIENTIFIO. 163
Feet.
6. Black mold, etc.
6
7. Blue clay 34
8. Quicksand, buff and drab in color and containing fossil shells 9
Total 254
" Another shaft, a little over a mile distant from this one, passed through materially the same succession of strata, with only local variations in the thicknesses of the different beds. The quicksand, No. 8 of the above section, resembles somewhat in appearance the sands of the Loess, and the only species of the contained shells which could be identified was the Helicina occulta, which is also not uncommon in the Loess of the river valleys in this State. Beds of black vegetable mold are met with at less depth than in this section at various places in this district, as, for instance, in the vicinity of Pekin, Tazewell County, where it is said, in a few in- stances, to have tainted the wells which penetrated it to such an extent as to almost render the water unfit for use.
"Sections of the Drift are also afforded by the borings for coal which have been made in various parts of this district. In all cases they show variations of the material from blue to yellow clay, sand and gravel, but do not generally afford sections of such especial interest as the shafts at Bloomington, nor is the depth of the formation as great. At Chenoa its thickness was found to be ninety feet from the surface to the rock; at Lexington, 180 feet; at Atlanta, 126 feet ; at Lincoln, seventy feet ; at Cheney's Grove, 102 feet, and at several points in Tazewell County, from sixty to one hundred feet or more. Its thickness is quite irregular, but seems, however, to be greatest in the central and eastern portious of the district. In Mason County we have no reliable data upon which to base our estimates, but its average thickness in that por- tion, I think, may be safely put down at no less than fifty feet, and is probably much more.
" In the western part of Tazewell County,in the ravines and broken country along the Illinois River, I observed, in a number of places at the base of the Drift, a bed of cemented gravel or conglomerate, showing sometimes an irregular stratification similar to that of beach deposits. A ledge of this material, nine or ten feet in thick- ness, may be seen in the northwestern quarter of section 7, town- ship 25, range 4 west of the third principal meridian, up one of the side ravines which comes down through the Illinois River bluffs, a little south of Wesley City, in Tazewell County, and other
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164 HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.
similar ledges appear in several places in the vicinity of Fond du Lac, and also on the Mackinaw, in the eastern portion of the county. Another similar bed of cemented gravel of, however, a comparatively insignificant thickness, may be seen about half way up the face of the bluff, at the steamboat landing in the city of Pekin, where it does not appear to be more than a few inches thick. I have not obser ved any similar deposits in the eastern portion of the district, either in Logan or McLean counties, nor have I heard of its having been met with in sinking the different shafts or borings.
" Coal Measures .- All the stratified rocks which outcrop within the limits of this district belong, as has been already stated, to the Coal Measures, and the actual surface exposures are confined, for the most part, to a thickness of about sixty to eighty feet of the middle portion of the formation. In the whole district there is but one boring which affords an artificial section of the beds down to the base of this formation. This one is that made by Voris & Co. on the bottom lands on the Tazewell County side of the Illinois River, and directly opposite the City of Peoria. The first bed of the Coal Measures which is met with in the boring is about forty feet below the lower coal seam which is worked in this section, No. 5 of the Illinois River section, as given by Prof. Worthen.
" The following is a section of the first 459 feet of the boring. Below that depth the records kept by Messrs. Voris & Co. were not complete as to the thickness and material of all the different beds: Feet.
1. Alluvial soil of river bottom. 4
2. Sand . 4
3. Gravel (boulder drift) 20
4. Clay shale. 59
5. Bituminous slate. 3
6. Fire-clay 15
7. Clay shale 15
120
8. Coal 4
9. Clay shale .. 34
10. Sandy and argillaceous shales (very hard). 34
11. Sandstone. 4
12. Nodules of argillaceous limestone 6
13. Compact, fine-grained sandstone 5
18. Hard, dark-blue sandy shale. 25
15. Coal. 3
235
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Feet.
16. Sandy and argillaceous shale.
17. Bituminous shale, with thin bands of limestone. 57
25
18. Cherty rock. 44
19. Hard siliceous rock, mainly chert-possibly chert and limestone inter- mixed. 33
20. Fine grained sandstone. 65
459
"As nearly as the limits of the formations can be made out from this section, I think that at least that portion between the base of the Alluvium and Drift, and the bituminous shale and limestone, No. 17 of the section, may be referred to the Coal Measures. The remainder is Devonian, with perhaps some of the upper beds Lower Carboniferous. The exact equivalents of the two beds of coal passed through may perhaps not be stated with certainty; the lower one, however, is probably No. 1 of the Illinois River section. The greatest depth reached in the boring was 774 feet, and the lowest rock was a gray porous limestone, the frag- ments of which, brought up by the instruments, were exactly sim- ilar in appearance to some of the upper limestones of the Niagara group, exposed in the northern part of the State, with which for- mation this bed may doubtless be properly identified.
"The coal seam which is worked in this immediate neighborhood is No. 5, as has been already stated. A good exposure of this coal may be seen near the track of the Toledo, Peoria & Warsaw Rail- road, at the point of the bluff where the road enters the valley of Farm Creek. It is here immediately overlaid by the Loess and Drift, and is about four feet in thickness, the same as its average in other localities thereabouts. It is worked in various places, both in the river bluffs and for a mile or more up the valley of Farm Creek, by-horizontal drifts into the hillsides, some of which, in their various branches, are of considerable linear extent. The beds overlying the coal are not exposed at the surface at any point north of Farm Creek, but the seam is generally found to have a roof of sandstone or sandy shale in the interior portions of the drifts. South of the creek, however, this sandstone is exposed in many places up the side ravines, and in R. A. McClelland & Co.'s shaft, in the center of the southern part of section 34, township 26, range 4, it was found to be twenty-eight feet in thickness be- tween the coal and the overlying drift clay and gravel. This, however, is by no means to be taken as its full average thickness,
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166 HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.
as at this point it has probably lost much of the upper portion of the bed by denndation.
" Passing up a small branch, which comes down through the bluffs from the southward, just back of the village of Fond du Lac about half a mile, I observed a striking exposure of about twenty-five feet in vertical thickness of concretionary sandstone, sandy shales and soft argillaceous sand-rock, which belong to these same sandy strata overlying the lower bed of coal. The more shaly beds con- tained numerous iron-stone concretions, and I observed in the more massive portions what appeared to be indistinct vegetable impressions, but no other fossils. About half a mile or a little more still farther up the ravine the upper vein of coal has been worked to a very slight extent. In actual position it must be at this point at least seventy feet above the coal No. 5, and is possi- bly still more than that. It is here reported to be about three feet in thickness, and is overlaid by about two feet of grayish fossiliferous limestone, with occasionally an intermediate layer of black slate just over the coal, and forming its roof. Still another seam of coal about fifteen inches in thickness is said to outcrop further up the hollow, but after a careful search I was unable to discover its out- crop, and concluded that it must have been covered by the sliding of the drift, gravel, etc., from the bluff's above.
"Along the Illinois River bluffs, between Fond du Lac and Wesley City, there are several points where coal is now or has been worked, and there are a few exposures of the overlying sandstones in the bluffs near the main wagon road. South of Wesley City there are scarcely any exposures on the river face of the bluffs, but up the side ravines they are more numerous. In one of these ravines some distance from the road, on the land of Mr. Davis, I observed the following succession of beds in a vertical exposure for about sixty rods along the sides of the bluffs:
Feet. In,
1. Shale, passing downward into black slate 25
2. Coal.
1 6
3. Fire-clay, passing downward into nodular limestone 11 to 12 3
4. Limestone.
5. Sandstone exposed for only a few inches.
" It seems to re probable that the seam of coal observed here is still above both of the coal seams which are worked in this region ; the distance between this and the next seam below it I should not judge to be more than forty or fifty feet. The limestone which almost
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167
BOTENTIFIO.
always overlies the coal No. 6 is entirely wanting here, although, as may be seen by the section, a bed of limestone occurs below its under clay and further down the creek. Below the exposures from which the above section was made up, numerous thin beds of lime- stones are to be seen intercalated in sandstone outcrops. These limestone bands appeared to be somewhat fossiliferous, but no good specimens were obtained.
"In the northeastern part of section 24, township 25, range 5, on a northern fork of Lick Creek, I noticed a small quarry in a ledge of soft light-gray and brown micaceous sandstone, generally thin-bedded and shady, but in some places with the beds thick enough to answer for building purposes. The total vertical thick- ness of the exposure was less than twelve feet. Passing farther down the branch, in a general westerly and southerly direction, we find the hillside along its banks strewn thickly with fragments of similar sandstone indicating the probable existence of the same beds but a short distance under the soil. At a point on the imme- diate bank of the creek, near the center of the section, I observed an exposure of about twenty feet of sandy and argillaceous shales, containing a thin seam of coaly matter not over one or two inches thick at its best development, and from that down to nothing. About half a mile further east, near the center of the eastern line of the section, along side of the road that crosses the creek at this place, and well np the bluffs, I observed the outcrop of a coal seam which had been worked to some slight extent, and which I take to be the upper workable seam of this region, No. 6 of the Illinois River section. The whole exposure at this point presented the fol- lowing section: .
Feet.
1. Shale. 9
2. Limestone (light colored) 2
3. Dark-colored shaly beds, in some portions approaching black slate in ap.
pearance and texture
2
4. Bluish shaly clay. 1
5. Coal. 3
"Farther to the eastward from this point, and higher in the bluffs, I observed limited exposures of a reddish shaly sandstone or arenaceous shale, which seems, from its position, to overlie the uppermost beds of the above section.
"In the vicinity of Pekin there are but few natural exposures of the underlying rocks, but the lower coal is mined at several points in the neighborhood of the city. The coal istgenerally over-
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168 HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.
laid by black slate, with, as is stated, in some cases a foot or two of limestone. Above the slate there is generally from twenty to forty or fifty feet of sandstone or sandy shales, according to the locality of the shafts on the edge of the bluffs, or farther up toward the rolling upland. This sandstone may be seen in the bottoms of ditches at one or two points along the Tremont road, about a mile east of the city of Pekin and in the immediate vicinity of the prin- cipal coal mines.
" At Mr. Hawley's place, about five miles southeast of Pekin, a shaft was sunk, which passed through both the upper and lower coals, affording a section of the intermediate beds, which, as re- ported to me, was as follows:
Feet.
1. Argillaceous shale. 4
2. Ligh'-colored limestone. 2
3. Coal .. 4
4. Fire-clay 8
5. Sandstone. 50
6. Bluish-black slate 4
7. Coal .. 4 8. Fire-clay. 8
" About two miles east of Mr. Hawley's place, in the southwest quarter of section 20, township 24, range 4, on a branch called Lost Creek, there is said to be another exposure of brownish sand- stone, of very limited extent. I failed to find this locality myself, but if a sandstone occurs here, it may be that overlying the lower coal, or possibly a still higher bed not represented in the above section.
" In the central and eastern portions of Tazewell County there are a few localities where borings, etc., have been made, but satis- factory records of the variation in the strata could not in all cases be obtained. At Rapp's Mills, near the center of the north line of section 20, township 24, range 4, a shaft was sunk to the depth of eighty-five feet, and as it was reported to me, struck limestone at that depth. If this be the case, it was very possible the limestone overlying the upper coal, but, without more reliable data, it is impossible to speak with certainty. The shaft was abandoned be- fore completion, on ccount of the difficulty of keeping it free from water. At Delevan, in the southeastern portion of the county, a boring was made which was reported to have passed through sixty feet of sandstone, and below that, seventy-five feet more of arenaceous and argillaceous shales. No coal was reported in this boring.
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SCIENTIFIC.
" In Mason County there are no natural exposures of the older rocks, and, as far as I could ascertain, no good artificial sections aret afforded in shafts, wells, borings, etc. Passing eastward, how- ever, into Logan County, we find along Salt Creek, some distance above Middletown, a few tumbling masses of bluish limestone, which have evidently come out of the bluffs, but no good exposures. In the southeast quarter of section 13, township 19, range 4, a boring was made in the side of the bluff, by Messrs. Boyd, Paisly & Co., of Lincoln, which passed through 130 feet of alternating heds of limestone, and arenaceous and argillaceous shales, passing through the Drift and surface deposits at the depth of only fifteen feet. A seam of coal was also stated to have been met with near the boring, but its thickness could not be satisfactorily ascertained. I also heard it stated that a seam of coal, about two feet in thick- ness, had been worked by the early settlers of the county in this vicinity, and afterward abandoned on account of its poor quality. No traces of the outcrop, or the old workings, are now visible, and I am not able to state, with any degree of exactness, the place in the series of this seam of coal, though it is undoubtedly among the upper beds of the Coal Measures.
. "At Rankin's Mill, about two miles farther up stream, in the northwest quarter of section 7, township 19, range 3, the creek flows over a bed of limestone, which is also quarried at one or two places on the southern bank. The rock is a light gray, or bluish- gray, irregularly bedded limestone, and contains a few of the com- mon Coal Measure fossils, of which Spirifer cameratus, S. linea- tus, Athyris subtilita, and a few others only were collected. Its thickness here, as ascertained by means of a well dug in one of the quarries, was eleven feet ; and underneath it was found four feet of black slate, underlaid by seventeen feet of fire-clay, and then six feet of limestone. The hole was continued by boring to a depth of eighty feet from the surface, at which depth a seam of coal was struck, the thickness of which I was unable to ascertain. This, or a similar bed of limestone, outcrops on Lake Fork of Salt Creek, in section 23, township 19, range 8, in a ledge about three feet high, which has been quarried to a slight extent at one point, near the center of the section.
"The above comprises all the natural exposures within the limits of the district. There remain, however, various shafts, borings, etc., which, over the larger portion of the territory, afford us the only means whatever of ascertaining the character and thickness
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170
1 HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.
of the underlying beds. Of these, with one or two exceptions only, the shafts alone furnish sufficiently reliable sections of the strata, and as yet but two or three have been sunk. At Lincoln the shaft afforded the following section, after passing through about seventy feet of soil and Drift :
Feet. In.
1. Light-blue arenaceous shale. 6
2. Hard, bluish, impure limestone, containing many small corals, etc. 3
8. Black slate. 10
4. Coal. 1 6
5. Fire-clay 6
6. Arenaceous shale. 3
"The black slate which had been taken from the shaft was too much decomposed at the time of my visit for me to obtain from it any well-preserved fossils, although among the rubbish I ob- served various undistinguishable fragments of what had apparently been fossil sbells. The coal in this section is probably not below No. 6 of the Illinois River section, and may possibly be still higher. About four miles south of Lincoln, on the land of Mr. J. Brau- cher, near the center of the south line of section 14, township 19, range 4, a hole was sunk by boring to the depth of near 250 feet, and three separate seams of coal were reported to have been met with. Unfortunately, however, the particulars of the variation and thickness of the beds could not be obtained, and we are therefore unable to form an opinion as to the equivalents of these seams. In a boring at Atlanta, in the northern part of the county, a seam three. feet and six inches thick was reported at the depth of 242 feet, the overlying bed, as reported, consisting of alternating strata of ' slate,' 'soapstone,' 'rock ' (limestone ?), etc. This is probably coal No. 6, although, without more positive evidence than is afforded by an isolated boring, nothing can be stated with absolute certainty.
"The two shafts at Bloomington, which have been mentioned in the remarks concerning the Drift, in a previous portion of this chapter, afford us the most satisfactory section of any of the exca- vations in the district, enabling us to identify the two seams of coal which they penetrate, with numbers 5 and 6 of the general Illinois River section. The following section, made up from records afforded by both shafts, illustrates well the variation of the strata of the middle Coal Measures in this region. The section com- mences at the base of the Drift, and its upper portion, from 1 to 4 inclusive, was afforded by the Bloomington Coal Company's shaft,
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and the remainder by that of the McLean County Coal Mining Company, a mile further south, along the railroad track :*
Feet. In.
1. Clay shale .16
Sandstone. 32
3. Clay shale 1
4. Coal No. 6 4
5. Fire-clay 18
6. Limestone. 2 7
7. Fire-clay. 10
8. Clay shale. 8
9. Fire-clay 15
10. Shale. 5 .
6
11. Soft blue slate. 22
7
12. Black slate
5
13. Coal No. 5. 4 6
14. Fire-clay. 6
9
'No. 2 of this section is a light-colored laminated sandstone, containing a few remains of fossil plants; in the more southern shaft it seems to be replaced by a conglomerate. No fossils were obtained from any of the other beds, excepting the black slate (No. 12) over the lower coal, which contained in great abundance Lin- gula mytiloides, Avioulopecten rectilaterarius, Cardina? fragilis, and other fossils characteristic of this coal. A rather peculiar
* Since this report was written, the McLean County Coal Company have ex- tended their shaft down to a lower coal, which they struck at the depth of 513 feet 8 inches below the surface. The following is the section below No. 5 coal : Feet. In.
Fire-clay. 10
3
Fire-clay
4
6
Sand-rock 20
.62
5
Black slate
2
7
Fire-clay
1
7
Sulphurous rock
1
2
Gray slate.
.11
1
Shale.
1
2
Hard lime rock
2
1
Gray slate
2
8
Soapstone (clay shale).
8
8
Coal.
3
8
The distance between these lower seams is 133 feet 1 inch at this shaft, and from the thickness of the seam, and the character of the associated beds, I am inclined to regard the lower coal in this shaft as No. 3 of the Fulton County sec- tion. It is possible, however, that No. 3 is represented in this shaft by the 2 feet 7 inch bed of black slate, and that the lower coal here is really No. 2. A. H. W.
11
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Slate.
6
Soapstone (clay shale).
.
172
HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.
feature, however, is the comparative rarity of Discina nitida, usually the most abundant fossil in this slate, only one or two specimens being found in a rather protracted search.
" In the northern and eastern portions of McLean County we have only the records of several borings, which afford but few particulars as to the character of the underlying beds. Just over the county line, in Livingston County, about two miles from Che- noa, in a northeast direction, a ledge of bluish-gray, irregularly bedded limestone outcrops in the side of a ravine. In general appearauce this rock is very similar to that noticed in the preced- ing pages as occurring on Salt Creek in Logan County, and, like it, is probably in the upper part of the Coal Measures.
"ECONOMIC GEOLOGY.
" Coal .- From the preceding remarks it will be seen that although at least four or five different seams of coal underlie different por- tions of this district, but two of them have been worked to any extent. The upper of these two, No. 6 of the general section, is worked to a slight extent along the Illinois River, in the neighbor- hood of Pekin and Peoria, and is also the upper seam in the Bloomington shafts. Its thickness in these localities ranges from three to four feet. The coal in this bed is generally softer, and often more impure, than that of the next seam below, and its workings have frequently been forsaken for those of the lower bed. The sixteen-inch seam of coal which has been mentioned on a pre- ceding page as occurring on a ravine a short distance back of Wesley City, and which I have there considered as a still higher seam of coal, may possibly be this seam, in spite of its lesser thickness, as it is a characteristic of this bed in other parts of the State where it has been identified to vary considerably in its thick- ness, in some cases, indeed, thinning ont very rapidly within the distance of a few feet. The more reliable indications of the ac- companying limestone beds, with the characteristic fossils, cannot under all circumstances be well observed, nor, indeed, do they ap- pear to be invariably present.
"The lower coal, No. 5, is the seam which is now mined in nearly all the principal workings within the limits of this district, and will generally average here at least four feet in thickness. The coal is generally a harder and better heating material than that in the upper bed, besides being more reliable in its thickness. It, how- ever, contains, in some parts, its share of impurities, but often so
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SCIENTIFIC.
.disposed in the vein as to be more easily separable. In some of the shafts near the city of Pekin, the seam of coal, which I have re- ferred in the preceding pages to this horizon, contains in its lower portion, about sixteen or eighteen inches above the base, a thin seam of fire-clay separating it into two unequal portions, and some- times a vein of slate or slaty coal is reported to occur only five or six inches above the bottom. In the upper portion, also, there is frequently some thickness of what is called 'hickory,' or mixed coal and shale, or sand-rock. The thickness of good coal, however, is sufficient to render its working profitable.
"At Bloomington the shafts were first sunk only to the upper coal, which was worked for a short time, and then the shaft, having been deepened, the upper bed was abandoned, and only the lower seam was worked. The difference in quality was very marked at this place, the lower coal being very much superior to that of the upper seam.
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