Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 8

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006

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The second survey was ordered by the legis- lature in 1869, and there was fortunately placed at the head of it Professor J. S. Newberry, LL. D., widely recognized as the ablest geologist that Ohio has yet produced. Dr. Newberry brought to his task the results of many years of study of the structure of Ohio and also a wide experience in other fields. To his sagacity in interpreting both the stratigraphical and paleontological record of the State, science is under great obliga- tions. The assistant geologists appointed with Dr. Newberry were Prof. E. B. An- drews, Prof. Edward Orton and Mr. J. H. Klippart Prof. T. G. Wormley was ap- pointed chemist of the survey. Active work

on the survey was discontinued at the end of five years from the date of beginning, but the publication of results was kept up for a much longer time. In fact, some of the results of Dr. Newberry's work are yet unpublished. Two reports of progress, 1869 and 1870, and four volumes of Geology are the pub- lished results of this survey. Two of these volumes are double, the second parts being devoted to paleontology (Vols. I. and II.).

In 1881 the survey was again revived, under the direction of Prof. Edward Orton, with special reference to the completion of the work in economic geology. Two volumes, viz., vols. V. and VI., have been already issued in this series. Prof. N. W. Lord was appointed chemist to the survey under the reorganization, and has done all of the work in this important department.

I. GEOLOGICAL SCALE.

A brief review of the scale and structure of the State will here be given, but before it is entered upon, a few fundamental facts per- taining to the subject will be stated.

1. So far as its exposed rock series is con- cerned, Ohio is built throughout its whole extent of stratified deposits or, in other words, of beds of clay, sand and limestone, in all their various gradations, that were de- posited or that grew in water. There are in the Ohio series no igneous nor metamorphic rocks whatever ; that is, no rocks that have assumed their present form and condition from a molten state or that, subsequent to their original formation, have been trans- formed by heat. The only qualification which this statement needs pertains to the beds of drift by which a large portion of the State is covered. These drift beds contain bowlders in large amount, derived from the igneous and metamorphic rocks that are found around the shores of Lakes Superior and Huron, but these bowlders are recognized by all, even by the least observant, as foreign to the Ohio scale. They are familiarly known as "lost rocks " or "erratics."

If we should descend deep enough below the surface we should exhaust these stratified deposits and come to the granite foundations of the continent which constitute the surface rocks in parts of Canada, New England and the West, but the drill has never yet hewed its way down to these firm and massive beds within our boundaries.

The rocks that constitute the present sur- face of Ohio were all formed in water, and none of them have been modified and masked by the action of high temperatures. They remain in substantially the same condition in which they were formed.

2. With the exception of the coal seams and a few beds associated with them and of the drift deposits, all the formations of Ohio grew in the sea. There are no lake or river deposits among them, but by countless and infallible signs they testify to a marine origin. The remnants of life which they contain, often in the greatest abundance, are decisive as to this point.

THE GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF OHIO.

3. The sea in which or around which they grew was the former extension of the Gulf of Mexico. When the rocks of Ohio were in process of formation, the warm waters and genial climate of the Gulf extended without interruption to the borders of the great lakes. All of these rocks had their origin under such conditions.

4. The rocks of Ohio constitute an orderly series. They occur in widespread sheets, the lowermost of which are co-extensive with the limits of the State. As we ascend in the scale, the strata constantly occupy smaller areas, but the last series of deposits, viz., those of the Carboniferous period, are still found to cover at least one-fourth of the entire area of tbe State. Some of these formations can be followed into and across adjacent States, in apparently unbroken continuity.

The edges of the successive deposits in the Ohio series are exposed in innumerable natural sections, so that their true order can gener- ally be determined with certainty and ease.

5. For the accumulation and growth of this great series of deposits, vast periods of time are required. Many millions of years must be used in any rational explanation of their origin and history. All of the stages of this history have practically unlimited amounts of past time upon which to draw. They have all gone forward on so large a scale, so far as time is concerned, that the few thousand years of human history would not make an appreciable factor in any of them. In other words, five thousand years or ten thousand years make too small a period to be counted in the formation of coal, for example, or in the accumulation of petroleum, or in the shaping of the surface of the State through the agencies of erosion.

The geological scale of the State is repre- sented in the accompanying diagram (page 6). The order of the series is, of course, fixed and definite, but the thickness assigned to the several elements depends upon the location at which the section is taken. The aggregate thickness of the entire series will reach 5,000 feet, if the maximum of each stratum is taken into the account, but if the average measurements are used, the thickness does not exceed 3,500 feet. The principal ele- ments of the scale, which extends from the Lower Silurian to the upper Carboniferous or possibly the Permian, inclusive, are given below, and the geological map appended shows how the surface of the State is dis- tributed among the principal formations. A brief review of these leading elements will be given at this point.

1. THE TRENTON LIMESTONE.

The Trenton limestone is one of the most important of the older formations of the continent. It is the first widespread lime- stone of the general scale. It extends from New England to the Rocky mountains, and from the islands north of Hudson's bay to the southern extremity of the Allegheny mountains in Alabama and Tennessee.

Throughout this vast region it is found ex- posed in innumerable onterops. It gives rise as it decays to limestone soils which are some. times of remarkable fertility, as, for example, those of the famous Blue Grass region of Central Kentucky, which are derived from it. It is worked for building stone in hun- dred of quarries, and it is also burned into lime and broken into road metal on a large scale throughout the regions where it occurs. But widespread as are its exposures in out- crop, it has a still wider extension under! cover. It is known to make the floor of entire States in which it does not reach the surface at a single point.

It takes its name from a picturesque and well-known locality in Trenton township, Oneida county, New York. The West Canada creek makes a rapid descent in this township from the Adirondack uplands to the Mohawk valley, falling 300 feet in two miles by a series of cascades. These cascades have long been known as Trenton Falls, and the limestone which forms them was appro- priately named by the New York geologists the Trenton limestone. The formation, as seen at the original locality, is found to be a dark-blue, almost black limestone, lying in quite massive and even beds, which are often separated by layers of black shale. Both limestone and shale contain excellently pre- served fossils of Lower Silurian age. By means of these fossils, and also by its strati- graphical order, the limestone is followed with perfect distinctness from Trenton Falls to every point of the compass. It is changed to some extent, in color and composition, as it is traced in different directions, but there is seldom a question possible as to its identity. The Trenton limestone forms several of the largest islands in whole or in part in the northern portion of Lake Huron, as the Manitoulin islands and Drummond's island. It dips from this region to the southward, but it is found rising again in outcrop in the valley of the Kentucky river. Its presence underneath the entire States of Ohio and Michigan, and especially under Western Ohio, has always been inferred, since the geology of these States was first worked out. But it is only recently that it has come to be clearly recognized as one of the surface forma- tions of Ohio.

The lowest rocks in the State series have long been known to be exposed in the Point Pleasaut quarries of Clermont county. It is upon the outcrop of these rocks that the humble dwelling stands in which Ulysses S. Grant first saw the light. The claim that these beds in reality belong to and represent the Trenton limestone of Kentucky was first made by S. A. Miller, Esq., of Cincinnati, and the same view was afterward supported by the late Wm. M. Linney of the Kentucky Geological Survey, but the demonstration of the fact comes in an unexpected way. In the extensive underground explorations that have been going forward in Northern Ohio for the last few years, the Trenton limestone has been unmistakably identified as the firm

VERTICAL SECTION OF THE ROCKS OF OHIO.

FEET

SYSTEM

SERIES.

18 GLACIAL DRIFT 0-550

-200

17 UPPER BARREN COAL MEASURES

300

16 UPPER PRODUCTIVE COAL MEASURES

- 200

CARBONIFEROUS.

15 LOWER BARREN COAL MEASURES

500

14 LOWER PRODUCTIVE COAL MEASURES

. 250.

13 CONGLOMERATE SERIES

250

SUBCARBONIFEROUS LIMESTONE

HIE LOGAN GROUP

SHALE SANDSTONE CONGLOMERATE

150

WAVERLY 500-800

IIC CUYAHOGA SHALE

200

110 BEREA SHALE LIB BEREA GRIT

IIA BEDFORD SHALE

DEVONI-

AN.

OHIO SHALE 300-2600

IOB ERIE SHALE IOA HURON SHALE

8 DEVONIAN LIMESTONES 25-75

25 75

LOWER HELDERBERG LIMESTONE 50-600

300

UPPER SILURIAN.

60 HILLSBORO SANDSTONE 60 GUELPH LIMESTONE

200

6 NIAGARA SERIES

6B NIAGARA LIMESTONE

5 CLINTON SERIES 6A NIAGARA SHALE. DAYTON LIME. MEDINA SHALES

- 100

125-

LOWER SILURIAN.

3 HUDSON RIVER SERIES 600-1050

- 600

2 UTICA SHALES 0-300

- 300

TRENTON LIMESTONE

THE STROBRIDGE LITN.CO.CINCINNATL

(64)

100 CLEVELAND SHALE

300

10 9 HAMILTON SHALE

LAKE ERIE

Toledo

DEVONIAN SHALE

DEVONIAN LIMESTONE

LIMESTONE

ROUS

Canton

oLima

UPPER

CINCINNATI AXIS

SHALE

Mansfield

DEVONIAN

CARBONIFE

Moraine

Zanesville

Springfield Columbus

rminal

LOWER

Marie !!

SILURIAN

Ohio

ocincinnati

Scioto R

WEST

VIRGINIA

KENTUCKY

Geological Map of

Ohio

(65)

Dayton

DEVONTAN

SUB

CARB

INEROUS

SIL URIAN

Youngstown

THE GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF OHIO.

limestone that is found at a depth of 1,000 to 2,000 feet below the surface, invariably covered with about 300 feet of black shale, containing the most characteristic fossils of the Utica shale. As this limestone has been followed southward, it has been found steadily rising, coming gradually nearer to the surface, and the rate has been found to be such from the nearest determination that it would cor- respond very well with the formation that crops out in the Ohio valley at Point Pleasant.

As seen there the Trenton limestone is a light or grayish-blue limestone, quite crystal- line in structure, massive in its bedding and fossiliferous. Its general composition is as follows :

Carbonate of lime, 75 to 85 %

Carbonate of magnesia, 1 to 5 %

Alumina and oxide of iron, 2 to 8 %

Insoluble residue, 10 to 15 %

It is not, in this phase, a porous rock.

The most surprising discovery ever made in Ohio geology comes from this formation. In 1884 it was found to be at Findlay a source of high pressure gas and later a great reposi- tory of petroleum. These discoveries have made the name of the Trenton limestone a household word throughout Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. These discoveries will be briefly described on a subsequent page.

2. THE UTICA SHALE.

The immediate cover of the Trenton lime- stone is a well-known stratum of black shale 300 feet in thickness, which, from its abun- dant outcrops in the vicinity of Utica, re- ceived from the New York geologists the name of Utica shale.

This stratum has been proved to be very persistent and widespread. It is sparingly fossiliferous, but several of the forms that it contains are characteristic, that is, they have thus far been found in no other stratum. The first of the deep wells that was drilled in 1884 in Findlay revealed, at a depth of 800 feet, a stratum of black shale containing the most characteristic fossil of the Utica shale, viz., Leptobolus insignis, Hall, and it was thus positively identified with the last-named formation. This bed of shale has the normal thickness of the Utica shale in New York, viz., 300 feet, and with the other elements involved, it extended and continued the New York series into Northern Ohio in a most unexpected and, at the same time, in a most satisfactory way.

The Utica shale, thus discovered and de- fined, is a constant element in the deep wells of Northwestern Ohio. Its upper boundary is not always distinct, as the Hudson river shale that overlies it sometimes graduates into it in color and appearance ; but as a rule the driller, without any geological preposses- sions whatever, will divide the well section in his record so as to show about 300 feet of black shale at the bottom of the column or immediately overlying the Trenton lime-

stone. This stratum holds its own as far as the southern central counties. In the wells of Springfield, Urbana and Piqua it is found in undiminished thickness, but apparently somewhat more calcarcous in composition. From these points southward the black shale thins rapidly. It is apparently replaced by dark-colored limestone bands known as pep- per and salt rock by the driller.

From these and similar facts it appears that the Utica shale is much reduced and altered as it approaches the Ohio valley, and is finally lost by overlap of the Hudson river shale in this portion of the State and to the southward.

3. THE HUDSON RIVER GROUP.

The very important and interesting series now to be described appears in all the pre- vious reports of the geological survey under another name, viz., the Cincinnati group. It is unnecessary to review here the long dis- cussions pertaining to the age of this series, or the grounds on which the changes in the name by which it is known have been based. The return to the older name here proposed is necessitated by the discoveries recently made in our underground geology, to which reference has already been made.

The Hudson river group in Southwestern Ohio consists of alternating beds of limestone and shale, the latter of which is commonly known as blue clay. The proportion of lime and shale vary greatly in different parts of the series. The largest percentage of shale occurs in the 250 feet of the series that begin 50 or 75 feet above low water at Cincinnati. The entire thickness of the series in South- western Ohio is about 750 feet. The divi- sion of the series into lower and upper is natural and serviceable. The lower is known as the Cincinnati division and the upper as the Lebanon division. The Cincinnati divi- sion has a thickness of 425 to 450 feet, and the Lebanon division a thickness of about 300 feet. The divisions are separated on both paleontological and stratigraphical grounds. Both divisions abound in ex- quisitely preserved fossils of Lower Silurian time ; and in fact the hills of Cincinnati and its vicinity have become classical grounds to the geologists on this account.

As the series takes cover to the northward and eastward it retains for a time the same characteristics already described, but as it is followed farther it rapidly becomes less cal- careous. The limestone courses are thinner and fewer, and the entire series coincs to be counted shale.

The Hudson river group occupies in its outcrop about 4,000 square miles in South- western Ohio, but it is doubtless coextensive with the limits of the State. The shales of the series contain in outcrop large quantities of phosphates and alkalies, and the soils to which they give rise are proverbial for their fertility.

The presence of these fine-grained and im- pervious shales in so many separate beds forbids the descent of water through the

THE GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF OHIO.

formation. In its outcrop the formation has no water supply, and, as found by the driller, it is always dry. It gives rise to frequent " blowers" or short-lived accumulations of high-pressure gas when struck by the drill, as has been found in the experience in many towns of Western Ohio within the last two years, and it also yields considerable amounts of low-pressure shale gas which proves fairly durable.

4. THE MEDINA SHALE.

A stratum of non-fossiliferous shale, often red or yellow in color and having a thickness . it is turned out in a well-marked line of

of ten to forty feet, directly overlies the uppermost beds of the Hudson river group at many points in Southwestern Ohio. The occurrence of 50 to 150 feet of red shale in most of the recent deep borings in North- western Ohio at exactly the place in the gen- eral column where the Medina should be, and so much nearer to the known outcrops of the formation that its continuity with these was hardly to be questioned, this fact, taken in connection with the occurrence of like beds of red shale holding the same relative position in several deep borings in the central portions of the State, serves to give warrant for count- ing the Medina epoch duly represented in the outcropping strata of Southwestern Ohio. It occurs here only in included sections, its thin and easily eroded beds never being found as surface formations for extensive areas. There is good reason to believe that the Medina formation is coextensive with the limits of the State, except in the regioos from which it has already been removed.

5. THE CLINTON LIMESTONE.

The Clinton group of New York appears as a surface formation in Ohio only in the area already named. It forms a fringe or margin of the Cincinnati group through eight or ten counties, rising above the soft and easily eroded rocks of this series, and of the previously named Medina shale, in a conspicu- ous terrace. It is everywhere a well-charac- terized limestone stratum. It is highly crystalline in structure, and is susceptible of a good polish. In some localities it is known as a marble. A considerable part of it, and especially the upper beds, are almost wholly made up of crinoidal fragments. In thick- ness it ranges between ten and fifty feet. Its prevailing colors are white, pink, red, yellow, gray and blue. At a few points it is replaced by the hematite ore that is elsewhere so char- acteristic of the formation. The ore in Ohio is generally too lean and uncertain to possess economic value, but it was once worked for a short time and in a very small way in a furnace near Wilmington, Clinton county.

The limestone contains a notable quantity of indigenous petroleum throughout most of its outcrop, but no very valuable accumula- tions of oil or gas have been found in it thus far. It is the source of the low-pressure gas of Fremont (upper vein), and also of che gas at Lancaster from 1,962 feet below the surface, and at Newark from 2,100 feet

below the surface. In fact, a small but fairly persistent flow is maintained from this horizon in several of the gas-producing dis- tricts of Northern Ohio. In a single instance in Wood county it is proving itself an oil rock. A well near Trombley, drilled to this horizon, has been flowing twenty to thirty barrels of oil for a number of months, the oil being referable to this formation.

In outcrop the stratum is quite porous as a rule, and the water that falls upon its un covered portions sinks rapidly through them to the underlying shale (Medina), by which springs.

In composition, the limestone, in its out- crops in Southern Ohio, is fairly constant. All of its most characteristic portions con- tain eighty to eighty-five per cent. of car- bonate of lime, and ten to fifteen per cent. of carbonate of magnesia. At a few points, however, it is found as the purest carbonate of lime in the State. Under cover, to the northward, it is much more magnesian in composition, being indistinguishable from the Niagara. It also becomes shaly and change- able in character at many points. As it be- comes shaly the thickness is much increased.

It is everywhere uneven in its bedding, be- ing in striking contrast in this respect with the formations below it and also above it. The beds are all lenticular in shape, and they extend but a few feet in any direction. They seldom rise to one foot in thickness.

The uneven bedding, the crystalline and crinoidal characters, the high colors, and par- ticularly the red bands and the chemical composition, combine to make the Clinton limestone an exceedingly well-marked stratum throughout Southwestern Ohio, and from the hints yielded by the drill in Northwestern Ohio, it seems to have something of the same character there, especially so far as color is concerned. It becomes more shaly and much thicker to the eastward. It carries bands of red shale almost universally throughout the northern central and central parts of the State.

The limestone is directly followed at a number of points in the territory occupied by it by a stratum of very fine-grained, blu- ish-white clay, containing many fossils dis- tributed through it, the fossils being crystal- line and apparently pure carbonate of lime. A similar bed of white clay is reported at the same horizon, by the drillers in Northern Ohio, and the drillings show the presence of fossils of the same characters. This clay seam can be designated the Clinton clay, but it merges in and is indistinguishable from the lowest element in the next group. The Clinton, in its outcrops, is entirely confined to Southern Ohio.

6. THE NIAGARA GROUP.

The Clinton limestone is followed in as- cending order by the Niagara group, a series of shales and limestones that has consider- able thickness in its outcrops and that occu- pies about 3,000 square miles of territory

THE GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF OHIO.

in Ohio. The lowest member is the Niagara shale, a mass of light-colored clays, with many thin calcareous bands. It has a thick- ness of 100 feet in Adams county, but it is reduced rapidly as it is followed northward, and in Clarke and Montgomery counties it is not more than ten or fifteen feet thick. Still further to the northward, as appears from the records of recent drillings, the shale sometimes disappears entirely, but in the great majority of wells, especially in Hancock and Wood counties, it is a constant element, ranging from five to thirty fcet. Wells are often cascd in this shale, but a risk is always taken in doing so.

In Montgomery, Miami and Greene coun- ties the shale contains in places a very valu- able building-stone, which is widely known as the Dayton stone. It is a highly crystalline, compact and strong stone, lying in even beds of various thickness, and is in every way adapted to the highest architectural uses. It carries about ninety-two per cent. of carbon- ate of lime. The Niagara shale is, as a rule, quite poor in fossils. It is apparently desti- tute of them in many of its exposures.

The limestone that succeeds the shale is an even-bedded, blue or drab, magnesian stone, well adapted at many points to quar- rying purposes. It is known in Ohio by various local names, derived from the points where it is worked. There are several sub- divisions of it that are unequally developed in different portions of the State. Like the shale below it, this member is thickest in Southern Ohio. It cannot be recognized as a distinct element in the northern part of the State, either in outcrop or in drillings. It may be that its horizon is not reached in any natural exposures of the formation in this part of the State.

The uppermost division of the formation is the Guelph limestone, which differs very noticeably in several points from the Niagara limestone proper. It obtains its name from a locality in Canada, where it was first stud ied and described. It has a maximum thick- ness in Southern Ohio of 200 feet. It differs from the underlying limestone in structure, composition, and fossils. It is either massive or very thin-bedded, rarely furnishing a build- ing stone. It is porous to an unusual extent. It is generally very light in color, and is everywhere in the State nearly a typical dolomite in composition. It yields lime of great excellence for the mason's use.

Unlike the previously named divisions of the Niagara, the Guelph limestone is as well developed in Northern as in Southern Ohio in all respects. Not more than forty feet are found in its outcrops here, but the drill has shown several times this amount of Niagara limestone, without giving us all of the data needed for referring the beds traversed to their proper subdivisions. What facts there are scem to point to the Guelph as the main element in this underground development of the formation in this portion of the State.

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 8

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 1006

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006