USA > Kentucky > History of Kentucky, Volume II > Part 67
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Southern and Southwestern Lower Carboniferous Plateau .- This region, occupying a total area of 8,000 square miles, includes, with the exception of the Western Coal Field all that portion of the state lying south of the Knobs west of the Eastern Kentucky Mountains and east
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of the Tennessee River. It corresponds pretty well to the region pop- ularly known as the "Pennyville." It has an altitude of from 1,000 to 1,200 feet along its northern edge, where it presents in Muldrow's Hill a steep escarpment toward the Bluegrass. South and west from this escarpment the general level falls to 800 feet and in the extreme western portion to 600 feet above the sea. The geological formations exposed in this region belong to the Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous of earlier geological literature), the three main divisions of which-in ascending order Waverly, Cavernous ( Mammoth Cave) limestone, and Chester- present marked lithological contrasts.
The Waverly forms the surface rock over the middle portion of the plateau, where it covers the saddle of the Cincinnati Anticline between the Jessamine (Kentucky) and Rutherford (Tennessee) domes. It is included mainly in southern Boyle and Lincoln, and in Casey, Taylor, Green, Adair, Russell, Cumberland, Monroe, Barren, Allen and western Rockcastle, Pulaski, Wayne and Clinton counties. While progressively more calcareous toward the south, this formation as a whole having at the top in that region a limestone-the Warsaw, is always quite siliceous and gives rise to relatively poor soils low in phosphorus. In general the topography is quite hilly. No railroads cross it and only two penetrate it. These latter are branches of the Louisville and Nashville system, the one extending southwestward from Lebanon in Marion County to Greens- burg in Green, and the other northeastward from Gallatin, Tennessee, to Scottsville in Allen County. It is a region of poor country roads, until recently only two pikes, and these toll, penetrating it. Slow in appreciating the value of good roads, it has also been backward in its agriculture, despite the fact that this had been its chief industry. Tim- ber and petroleum are also important products. Much of the agricultural produce of the region is shipped out by way of the Cumberland River.
The Mammoth Cave Limestone consists of two members-in ascend- ing order the St. Louis and the Ste. Genevieve. The former is a com- pact and fine grained, the latter is mainly oolitic. Both are quite pure and readily soluble in ground water, so that they have become honey- combed by underground passages forming large caverns. The most extensive connected series of these yet discovered is estimated to total 150 miles and constitutes Mammoth Cave.3
3 Mammoth Cave, while reported to have been discovered by a Mr. Hutchins in 1809 as the result of his chasing a bear into it, was certainly known as early as 1799, for in that year a tract comprising 200 acres, where the cave is now located was patented to Valentine Simmons, and in this patent are mentioned "two salt- peter caves." We now know there were originally two entrances to Mammoth Cave, one of which has since fallen in. This explains the reference to two caves. The earliest reference to the cave as "Mammoth Cave" appears in a deed of this 200-acre tract from Flatt to McLain in 1812, the consideration of the transfer being forty dollars. At this time and as late as 1825 this region was a part of Warren County, and the record of this deed is therefore at Bowling Green (Deed Book Number 6, page 49).
In the early part of the last century and especially during the War of 1812, there was a big demand for saltpeter (potassium nitrate) for the manufacture of gun powder; and the caves of Kentucky were much exploited for the nitrous earth they contained. Chief among these was Mammoth Cave, leased for that purpose by Hyman Gratz of the Gratz firm of Philadelphia and Charles Wilkins, his partner from Lexington. It was this working of the cave for saltpeter which disclosed its great size and led to the featuring of it as a scenic wonder after its importance as the source of this natural economic product had declined.
The first account of the cave written of it solely as a natural wonder appears to have been in the form of a letter contributed from Louisville, July 5, 1814, to the Medical Repository, Volume 17, of the same year. The reputed author of this letter is Hyman Gratz.
The first use of the word "mammoth" (originally written "mammut" or "mai- mon," and applied in Siberia to an extinct species of elephant) in the adjective sense of "large," appears to have been in reference to this cave. That it had not as late as the early part of the 19th century come to have this meaning in
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Its entrance is on Green River in Edmonson County. Here, as else- were in this region where the caves are especially large, it has been noted that the cavernous limestone is covered with the Cypress sandstone of the Chester series. It is evident that this sandstone has protected from destruction by denudation the underlying ramifying cavernous passages. Further up the dip slope from the outcrop of the Cypress sandstone, where the cavernous limestone stripped of its protective covering has been subjected to the denuding agencies for a longer period, many of these cavernous spaces have been unroofed and exposed to the sky, con- stituing "sinks." This sink hole or "karst" topography is characteristic of the outcrop of the Mammoth Cave limestone. It is a region of under- ground drainage. Only the master streams, such as the Big Barren and the Green Rivers, and some of their larger tributaries which traverse it, are exposed today. It is a region where the uplands suffer especially from drought. It would appear that some time antedating settlement of this region by white men the timber on this tract on the western flank of the Cincinnati anticline had disappeared-possibly by forest fires during an exceptionally dry period-and had been converted into a prairie covered by tall grasses. This region was known to the pioneers as the "Barrens." + It was included, as is the outcrop of the Mammoth Cave Limestone now on the western flank of the Cincinnati Arch, in the counties of Breckin- ridge, Hardin, Hart, Barren, Warren, Simpson, Logan, Todd, Christian, Trigg, and Caldwell.
On the east flank of the Cincinnati anticline there is another belt of Mammoth Cave outcrop, widest in Clinton and Wayne counties and narrowing northeastward along the margin of the Eastern Kentucky ('oal field, as the formation becomes thinner. Before reaching the Ohio River it becomes inconstant in thickness and frequently disappears en- tirely. It is everywhere cavernous, even as far north as Carter County containing caves, which in the early day furnished saltpeter and later became celebrated as scenic resorts.
The Chester, where typically developed as a belt five to ten miles wide around the Western Coal Field, is composed of an alternating series of beds of sandstones, limestone and shales (some eight or ten in all), the limestones being quite fossiliferous and sometimes oolitic in texture. The most characteristic fossils of the formation are the bud crinoid, Pentremites, and the screw bryozoan Archimedes; hence the name "Pen- tremital limestone," or "Archimedes limestone," for these beds.
The predominance of sandstones and shales in this formation results in its outcrop being marked by a belt of poor soils.
England is evident from letters written by James Flint, an English traveler, in America, between 1818 and 1820 and published in England. In one of these let- ters we find Mr. Flint referring to "The great cave in Kentucky called Mammoth Cave," although why was not apparent to him because he says "none of the remains of that animal have been found in it." Evidently this figurative use of the term was then too much of an Americanism for an Englishman to understand.
4 The place of the Barrens was first indicated on a map of what is now the eastern United States and Canada, published in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1721, by John Sinex. It was there indicated as the "place where the Illinois hunt cows." This map is evidently a reproduction of an earlier map in which the legends are in French. On the French map the word rendered "Cows" appears as "beufs." The idea intended to be conveyed in the French original is that here was a prairie on which the Illinois Indians hunted buffalo.
The earliest description of this region under the name "Barrens" is probably that by the younger Michaux (F. A.), who traversed it about 1802 through what is now Barren and Allen counties. He estimated this treeless region then to be sixty or seventy miles in extent, north and south and east and west. At this time and for a number of years later the region was sparsely settled on account of the prejudice the early pioneers had against settling in a region which they thought would not grow trees. Special acts were passed by Kentucky legislatures at this time to encourage settlement of this region. At present it is well wooded, possessed of a soil the best in that portion of the State, and thickly populated.
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The line separating the outcrop of the Chester from that of the Mammoth Cave in the southern tier of counties in which both forma- tions occur is drawn by connecting the county seats of Warren, Logan, Todd, Christian and Caldwell. South of this line in these counties the land is reasonably level and fertile; north of it the land is rough and non-agricultural. Much of it has never been cleared. The most per- sistent sandstone of the Chester-the Cypress, which occurs near the base-forms a rather conspicuous escarpment surrounding the Western Coal Field, usually at some distances from the margin of the latter. The outliers of this escarpment form knobs, which are wooded and prominent features of the landscape throughout this region. The Chester is even thinner than the Mammoth Cave along the eastern flank of the Cincinnati anticline. In general it loses its sandstones here and before reaching the Ohio River, except for the fossils that it carries, becomes indistinguishable from the latter formation.
The Eastern Kentucky Coal Field or "Mountains."-The mountain region of Kentucky, which stands out in such sharp contrast to the rest of the state, includes all that portion lying each of a much indented border stretching from opposite Portsmouth on the Ohio River to the Tennessee boundary where touched by the Wayne-Clinton County line. Geolog- ically it is the Eastern Coal Field, the sandstones and shales of which with their included coals cover 10,450 square miles. Physiographically it is a maturely stream dissected plateau-the Cumberland Plateau-the re- stored even surface of which would rise from an altitude of 1,000 feet above sea level at the Ohio River to 2,000 feet above the same datum plane at the Tennessee line, and is surmounted in the southeast by two structural mountain ranges-the Pine and the Cumberland-with a non- structural group of elevations-the Black Mountains-between them. Some portions of the Pine Mountain Range, which is an overthrust fault scarp, reach an elevation of nearly 3,500 feet, and those of the Black Mountains about 4,000 feet. It is only to the Pine and Cumberland Mountains, the latter forming a part of the boundary between Kentucky and Virginia, that the term "range" can be properly applied. The other elevations in this region are merely winding ridges forming the narrow water sheds between streams.
Of the four divisions of the Pennsylvanian, or Coal Measures, in Pennsylvania the lower three are represented in Eastern Kentucky. These in ascending order are the Pottsville, Alleghany and Conemaugh. The division not represented in Kentucky is the Monongahela.
The lower portion of the Pottsville in Kentucky is characterized by massive quartz conglomerates or pudding stones. Because basal in position the synclinal character of the Eastern Coal Fields causes these conglomerates to outcrop along the western and the southeastern border, and they are also brought up into a prominent scarp along the summit and western face of the Pine Mountain Range. Wherever they come to the surface they have been carved by erosion into very rugged topog- raphy. They constitute regions of picturesque scenery abounding in bold headlands and isolated "pilot knobs"; in boulder filled stream gorges, rapids and water fallls ; in cirques with overhanging walls ("rockhouses") and in natural bridges.
These conglomerate outcrops carry a typical mountain flora. The ridges with scant soil are covered with a forest growth of pine and chestnut and an undergrowth of huckleberry. The trailing arbutus covers the brows of the cliffs, and the laurel ("ivy" of the mountaineer ) roots itself in the crevices of the bare faces of the cliffs themselves. In the deep, moist hollows below the rhododendron ("laurel" of the moun- taineer ) flourishes, and from these hollows the hemlocks ( spruce pines) send up close to the cliff walls their long, straight shafts. It is the home
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of numerous rattlesnakes and an occasional bear. It is a region of sparse settlement, where the one-room log cabin is a frequent type of dwelling, more so even than in the remoter sections of the mountains and where the inhabitant thereof lives in most primitive fashion. For moonshining the country is ideal, and to the poor mountaineer not to turn his scanty corn crop into more profitable potable form in this way would seem like a waste of golden opportunities.
The lower or conglomeritic portion of the Pottsville, where it comes across the river from Ohio, is only about sixty feet thick and contains no workable coal. In being traced southwestward along the outcrop this member thickens, consists of a number of alternating beds of sand- stone and shale, with at least two beds of conglomerate, and contains workable beds of coal. Midway across the state in Lee County the total thickness of this member is 400 feet, and it there contains one workable seam-the Beattyville. Near the Tennessee it has thickened to about 750 feet and contains three workable seams. The lower two of these are now mined at Sterns, McCreary County.
In the upper part of the Pottsville are two very persistent coal seams. The lower one of these, named by Owen, the first state geologist of Ken- tucky, the "Number One," lies only a short distance above the uppermost conglomerate bed. Another seam, usually identified as Number Four in the same system of numbering, carried a thin layer of a peculiar flint fire clay as a parting in it, and is therefore known as the "fire clay coal." Both of these seams extend in outcrop entirely across Eastern Kentucky from northeast to southwest. As the Pottsville thickens toward the Pine Mountain a number of seams of coal come in that are not found in the outcrop of this formation along the western border. The Alle- ghany series, which next succeeds to the Pottsville, carries, at least in Northeastern Kentucky, about the same seams of coal that it does in Ohio and Pennsylvania. These number about five. The next division of the Pennsylvanian-the Conemaugh-has a rather limited exposure in Eastern Kentucky, being found mainly along the lower Big Sandy in Lawrence and Boyd counties. It carries workable coal.
Relation of Rugged Topography to Human Progress .- A maturely dissected plateau is a region unfavorable for agriculture. Such a platean is Eastern Kentucky. The strata which compose this plateau are sand- stones and shales, material out of which naturally good soils cannot be made. The region is one of great mineral wealth in the form of coal, but the physiographic obstacles, especially those of the western border strip, offered to the building of railroads into it have retarded the devel- opment of this form of wealth. Contributory to this under development of the resources of the region in mineral and timber has been its wretched land grant and boundary system inherited from the mother state-Vir- ginia. Not having been covered by the Government range-township- section system of land survey-because this system was instituted after this region became the part of a state-boundaries of farms and mineral and timber tracts are indefinite, and land titles in general are in a chaotic condition.
Isolation, therefore, combined with hard conditions for gaining sus- tenance, has resulted in a backward condition of the inhabitants. The Eastern Kentucky Mountains have remained a backwoods, where linger primitive methods and customs. Here live, as has been said, "our con- temporaneous ancestors." In spite of some recent rapid progress made in the attempt to develop the natural resources of the region by extend- ing into it railroads, which have brought the people into contact with the outside world and its supposed ameliorating influences-one of which is the mail-order house catalog, serving as material in convenient form for papering the walls of houses-there are still considerable areas where
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no reaper, nor mower, nor cultivator other than a single "bull-tongue plow," has been seen; where the women still card wool and spin and weave, and in washing clothes still "battle" them with a stick at the spring or stream; and where "lawlessness," as the outside world regards it, is prevalent-law there being considered largely as "just a neighborly agreement." Hence, though the mountain counties had all voted "dry," even before the Volstead Act, the moonshiner and bootlegger continue to ply their trade there with little molestation by the local authorities, and the feud still lingers as a means of redressing private wrongs. The pistol duel and the shooting from ambush, with the potent causes-moonshine whiskey and the carrying of concealed weapons-which generally lead up to it, while publicly and by statute condemned, are still in effect con- doned; as is evidenced by the euphemistic title "killing" being applied to what in the majority of cases is downright murder; and by the visita- tion upon it of a less, or at least no greater, punishment than that for the crime of theft, which is usually summarily dealt with.
These people, however, have their compensating virtues. They are intensely loyal, having been strongly Union in sentiment during the Civil war, and in the recent war leading the rest of the state in voluntary enlistments. Hospitality is universal, the life and property and personal welfare of the "stranger within their gates" being considered sacred. Theft is almost unknown, and, as indicated above, is promptly and severely punished. The advance of civilization-for with the building of railroads into this region the old order is passing- has therefore some drawbacks, and we confess sympathy for the feelings of the noted feud- ist, who, while not opposing the movement for developing the resources of the country, expressed naively the fear that this would ultimately re- sult in bringing into his community a "bad class of people."
Political History .- The Eastern Kentucky Mountains have been strongly republican since the Civil war, in contrast with the Bluegrass counties, which in the same period have been just as strongly democratic. An explanation of this must be sought primarily in the physiographic differences between the two regions, which at the outbreak of the war determined that the one would be Northern and the other Southern in its sympathies.
It was Nathaniel S. Shaler who first commented upon these differ- ences and, finding an explanation of them ultimately in the geological history of the state, uttered his celebrated aphorism, "There is such a thing as the geological distribution of politics." The reasoning of Pro- fessor Shaler, by which in his "History of Kentucky" he traced these connections, is somewhat as follows: The dwellers on Bluegrass Ordo- vician limestone land, with its deep, rich soil suitable for cultivation in large plantations by slave labor, were naturally pro-slavery in their sentiments. The dwellers on the Carboniferous sandstone land of the mountains, with its thin soils, not suitable for cultivation on a large scale by slave labor, were generally anti-slavery, or at least had no par- ticular motive in fighting for the perpetuation of that institution. There- fore, during the Civil war, when it came to voting Kentucky in or out of the Union, "the dwellers on the limestone formation gave heavy pro- slavery majorities, while those living on the poorer sandstone soils were generally anti-slavery." The majority of the people of the state-its yeomanry-lived on poorer land, which thus became the deciding factor in preventing the withdrawal of the state from the Union. Professor Shaler also goes on to speculate upon some of the political "might-have- beens" had the geological history of the state been different. A higher arching up of the Cincinnati Anticline would by the greater ensuing erosion have exposed more Ordovician-Bluegrass-pro-slavery land, and correspondingly reduced in area the Coal-Measure-anti-slavery land.
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This might have given, when it came to the voting during the Civil war, a majority on the side of withdrawing Kentucky from the Union. One more state added to the Southern cause might have made the dif- ference between failure and success. The South might have won and we might now have two countries here instead of one; and for it all geology would be primarily responsible.
Miss Ellen Semple, in her "American History and Its Geographic Conditions," while recognizing the force of Professor Shaler's reasoning. does not make the result hang entirely on a conflict of sordid self- interest. Agreeing that "mountain economy found no place for the negro or plantation cultivation in these sterile hillside farms, pathless forests and roadless valleys," she states in addition that the region possessed "in contrast to the aristocratic social organization of the planter con- munity, the democratic spirit characteristic of all mountain peoples, and likewise their conservatism, which holds to the established order."
The Western Coal Field .- This district, with an area of 4,600 square miles, has a maximum upland elevation of about 700 feet above sea level. Most of it lies between the 500- and 600-foot contours, while there are considerable tracts in the vicinity of the Ohio along the northern border and along Green River, which traverses the field through its middle part, where the land lies between the 400- and 500-foot contours.
The higher levels present a mature topography. The lower are quite flat, being areas of alluviation. The uplands are covered with an indif- ferent soil. The lowlands, when drained, are fertile. Taking the district as a whole, it is much superior agriculturally to the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field. This is because, though the soil of the uplands is similar in quality, being formed from the decay of sandstones and shales, it does not wash so badly, the slopes on which it lies, in keeping with the lower altitude of the region, being more gentle.
The stratigraphy of this field exhibits a general equivalence with that of the Eastern Field, with the addition at the top of the Monongahela. not represented in this latter field. The conglomeritic portion of the Pottsville in the Western Field is not so thick nor so continuous around the border as it is in the Eastern Field. It is unimportant as a bearer of commercial coal seams, containing workable coals at only a few points. One of these is the Nolin River coal.
The most valuable seams are in the Alleghany series, and it was here that Owen commenced numbering them, considering that the "Conglom- erate Measures," even where they contained coal, were the "false coal measures." Of the seams numbered by Owen the numbers Nine and Eleven have proven themselves to be the most extensive and reliable, both as regards thickness and quality. They also possess the same char- acteristics in the adjacent states of Indiana and Illinois, where they are known from Illinois localities as the "Springfield" and "Herrin," respec- tively. In Kentucky they are mined most extensively in Hopkins, Web- ster and Muhlenberg counties, where they have been preserved from destruction by denudation as the result of down faulting in block faults.
Former Connection of the Eastern and Western Coal Fields .- Ref- erence has already been made to the knobs capped with Chester sand- stone (Cypress) which are scattered over the Lower Carboniferous plateau of Southern Kentucky. The loftiest of these-1,800 feet above sea level-is Green River Knob on the borders of Pulaski and Casey counties. It is capped by a basal sandstone of the Pennsylvanian, form- ing the highest detached elevation between the Eastern Kentucky Moun- tains and the Mississippi Embayment lowlands. From the summit of this knob on a clear day one may see plainly to the eastward the edge of the Cumberland Plateau and, dimly, about sixty-five miles distant along the horizon to the westward, the margin and outliers of the Western
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