USA > Ohio > Fairfield County > History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and representative citizens > Part 23
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93
Fouck, G. B. Ruffner, W. S. Ruffner, Mil- ton Jenkins, T. Duffel, John Huston, John Snider, W. H. Shaffer, W. W. Waddell, B. E. Shaffer, W. H. Keller, James Waddell, W. M. Boyer, W. M. Snyder, G. W. Heft, E. D. Snyder, Isaac Weedon, S. L. Pruden, W. M. Hiles, F. M. Murphy, C. M. Foulk, M. Grosh, G. R. Nighturne, L. L. Norris, Joel Tisman, and Harry Sandman. The present officers are Guy Hile, Sachem; J. E. Foust, Senior Sagamore; Elmer Hile, Junior Sagamore ; S. R. Hartman, Prophet ; J. R. Snyder, Chief of Records; L. L. Norris, Keeper of Wampum; John Miller, Guardian of Wigwam; N. Norris, Guardian of Forest. Total number of members, sixty-one.
The Degree of Pocahontas, Chickopee Council, No. 140 .- The present officers are : Prophetess, Maude Bope; Pocahontas, Agnes England; Wenona, Goldie Snyder ; Powatan, Ivan Miller; Keeper of Records, Flora Snyder; Keeper of Wampum, Caro- line Looker.
I. O. of R. M .- Chickasaw Tribe, No. 100, of Thurston, Ohio .- Prophiet, Stanley Hartman; Sachem, Guy Hite; Sr. Saga- more, J. E. Foust; Jr. Sagamore, Elmer Foust; Chief of Records, J. R. Snyder; Keeper of Wampum, L. L. Norris.
CHAPTER VII
ECONOMIC FORCES
Geological History of the County-The Three Geologic Periods- Geologic Formations-The Streams and Drainage-The Soil-Botany of Fairfield County-Oil and Gas Fields.
THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY
(By Jesse E. Hyde.)
An account of the geology of an area, suclı as Fairfield County, is expected to include a description of the rocks which are found within its boundaries and some account of how and when they were formed. But it should in- clude more than that. It is a matter of more or less common knowledge that the rocks, the "hard" rocks, of this county were formed on the floor of an old ocean; it should include an account of how these rocks became land by an uplift of the continent and the retreatal of the oceans to the present coasts, how the rocks were then attacked by streams flowing over the newly-emerged land surface and how the hills and valleys were carved from them. We know, also, that after the hills and valleys had been developed, almost as we find them at present, the ice cap which at present sur- rounds the north pole became tremendously ex- panded, covering most of the North American continent. This ice sheet reached as far south as Kentucky in one place and its margin lay across central Ohio. It altered in many places the landscape which had previously been formed by the streams, scraping off the tops
of some of the hills and partially filling many of the valleys.
The Three Periods in the Geological History of Fairfield County
Taking all these into consideration, the geological history of the county thus falls readily into three periods, (1) the period when the region lay below the waves of the ocean, during which the rocks were laid down as sands and muds on the ocean floor; (2) a period, beginning with the uplift of this sea bottom, during which the region was land, and during which the hills and valleys were carved; (3) the glacial period in which much of the country was covered by the margin of an ice sheet and during which much foreign material, rock, gravel, clay, etc., was brought into the county, filling many of the deeper valleys which had been formed in the preced- ing period to depths sometimes of 200 or 300 feet.
The changes which mark each of these periods were, to a greater or less degree, con- tinental in extent. That is, they were experi- enced over large areas extending far beyond the boundaries of Ohio or even of the United States. The events of any one period have been determined by studies carried on by many
203
.
204
HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY
men in all parts of North America, working Trace, later the Zanesville and Maysville pike, separately or in conjunction with each other. then the canal, then the railroads? Just so, the geology of the county can be understood only with the evolution of eastern North America and to understand the succession of events during any one of the three great periods just mentioned, the behavior of large land masses or ocean bodies must be traced. Certain facts may be readily determined at one point, and perhaps at only one, others may be gathered elsewhere; the contributions of all of these workers have been gradually brought together, item by item, until the geological history of North America is now quite well known.
Just as it is impossible to adequately de- scribe the history of the white man's occupa- tion of Fairfield County without treating it as a part of the conquest of the great north- west, just so it is impossible to narrate the geological development without considering it as merely a very small part of the vast areas which have been involved in the development of the continent.
It is true that one might give a list of the geological formations found in the county in the order of their occurrence, with a catalog of their characters and a list of places where they may be seen to advantage. In exactly the same way, one might write the history of the county, by giving a list of all the prominent men who have lived there and the names of the towns and when they were founded and who was elected to county offices and when. But what would such a history be without the name of Sherman, a name which has had lit- Cenozoic Mesozoic tle to do with the history of the county be- cause the men who bore it were too big to be interested in local affairs! Or how could the history of the county during the Civil War be adequately pictured without the great back- ground of nation-wide strife tentatively un- Paleozoic derstood? Or how could the development of Lancaster be written without the mention of those highways of commerce which extend far beyond the county boundaries, and have kept it in touch with the outside world, first Zane's Pre Cambrian
But just as there are episodes in the his- tory of the human occupation of the county which are of no interest outside of its con- fines, so there are occurrences in the geology of the county which, in themselves, may often be of 110 general interest, but of exceptional local interest. These local occurrences or in- cidents have been controlled and determined to some extent by local conditions, but in many instances, they have been the result of some much broader condition or change in condi- tions or force which was active over wide areas, sometimes over much of the northern hemisphere.
I. The Paleozoic Period of Rock Forma- tion in Eastern North America.
Four great eras are recognized in the his- tory of the earth as follows, the youngest be- ing at the top and including the present :
Permian Coal Measures, or Pennsyl- vanian Sub Carboniferous or Mis- sissippian Devonian Silurian Ordovician Cambrian
205
AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS
The oldest of these, the Pre Cambrian, is made up of very old, highly altered, non-fos- siliferous sediments and igneous rocks, which form the floor on which the fossiliferous rocks rest. They are very complexly folded and much remains to be learned about them. None are known in position on the surface within hundreds of miles of Fairfield County, but practically every boulder of the granitic type found in the county was carried from the vast areas of the Pre Cambrian rocks of Canada by the ice sheets of the glacial period, as we shall see presently. On general principles, these rocks must form the floor of Ohio, but the great thickness of limestone, shales and sandstones which are found at the surface in Ohio has never been penetrated by any of the deep wells in the state, with the possible ex- ception of one recently drilled at Waverly.
At the bottom of the Paleozoic system of rocks, when exposed, are found the earliest fossiliferous rocks known, the Cambrian. These contain practically the first trace of life remains which can be detected in the rocks. A number of other large sub-divisions of the Paleozoic are made on the grounds of vari- ation in fossils, as shown by the table just given. All of these except the Cambrian are found exposed at the surface at one point or another in Ohio, the oldest in the southwest- ern part, the youngest in the eastern part of the state.
During Paleozoic time, the most of the cen- tral and eastern parts of the United States was a great shallow sea, on the floor of which limestone and shales and sandstones accumu- lated to great thicknesses. Land lay to the eastward, a belt of mountainous country just east of the location of the present Appalachian belt and probably extending well out into the Atlantic. The eastern part of this great sea covered the present Appalachian region.
Those mountains had not yet been formed. Land also lay to the northward over much of what is now Canada, the northern shore of the sea falling, in general, somewhere just north of the present Great Lakes. The western shore was probably, on the whole, no great dis- tance west of the present Mississippi River, although it varied greatly in position from time to time.
From time to time, portions, or even the whole of this great basin, were drained, and became land, but only for short periods. Thus. it is apparent that the shores of one geological moment need not necessarily be the same as those of the next, but were continually shift- ing. However, it was a marine basin most of the time, and its bottom must have sunk very slowly in order to allow the accumulation of such thicknesses of sediments as were formed-30,000 feet are known in the Paleozoic of the Appalachian belt.
It was in this basin and during Paleozoic time, that the rocks of Fairfield County, to be described presently, were formed.
At the end of the Paleozoic occurred one of the most profound periods of mountain formation that the earth has witnessed. Of the several ranges formed at that time, the Appalachian System is the only one of inter- est to us. The Appalachians were formed by the lateral compression, folding, and upward squeezing of the very thick sediments which had been accumulating in the eastern part of the interior Paleozoic sea. In places the old ocean floor, which lay near sea level, was forced upward to an elevation of over five miles. The remainder of the basin was up- lifted, became land and has largely remained so since. So far as is known no part of Ohio has been below the ocean's waves at any sub- sequent time.
With this uplift the rocks of Ohio which
206
HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY
had accumulated in horizontal beds, were also These ten formations from the top downward tipped slightly toward the east and southeast are as follows :+
Pennsylvanian or Coal Measures.
Io Pottsville formation unconformity
Mississippian or Sub Carboniferous
9 Maxville limestone
8 Vinton member
Logan formation
3 7 Allensville member
6 Byer member
5 Cuyahoga formation
4 Sunbury shale
3 Berea grit
2 Bedford shale
Devonian
I Ohio Shale
so that the rock formations dip in that direc- tion, on the average, 20 or 30 feet to the mile. The present surface of the land bevels across these tipped beds in a much more nearly horizontal position (neglecting irregularities of topography) and thus exposes the older (formerly deeper) rocks in the western part of the state and the younger ones in the east- ern part.
The Rock Formations of the County .*
Ten geological formations are readily rec- ognized in the county and one of these, the Cuyahoga, is composed of four distinct mem- bers which are, however, obscure and com- plicated in their relationship to each other, hence no attempt is here made to subdivide it.
I. The Ohio shale lies at the top of the Devonian in Ohio. It is a black shale which weathers up into thin plates and slaty slabs
tThe naming of geological formations is a matter in which those only casually interested in the science are not in sympathy with the professional geologist. The number of distinct sedimentary formations now known in the United States is very great. There are over 50 in Ohio exclusive of coal seams which have been named. These are all distinct, yet they are almost wholly limestones, sandstones and shales. It is readily apparent that to call a formation a sandstone, as a yellow sandstone, or by any purely descriptive term does not distinguish it from many other sandstones which may exist. To obviate the confusion which would necessarily arise, each formation is designated by a geographical name, the name of a town or river or even a state where it is especially well shown, and once such a name is used it is never again used inten- tionally for any other formation, no matter where in North America it may be, or of what age. In accord- ance with this plan, some of the older, non-geographical names are being dropped, as for example "Coal meas- ures." This is a name which is generally familiar to people not especially interested in geology. But there are half a dozen coal-bearing formations in North America of different ages, each equally eligible to be called "Coal measures." Hence the name is being re- placed by the purely geographic name, Pennsylvanian. It is utterly impossible for the geologist to use the simple, non-geographical expressions which have fre- quently become ingrained into the common language of the people, hence, since the mountain will not come to Mahomet, the laiety must adapt themselves to the usage of the geologist.
*The following account of the rock formations is introduced by permission of the State Geologist of Ohio. The information used was largely gathered in connection with the work of the Geological Survey of Ohio and is to be published more elaborately in a bulletin of the Survey. The names Vinton, Allensville and Byer are here used as the names of geological formations for the first time. However, their formal proposal and definition must be reserved until the ap- pearance of this bulletin. While such practice is not usual, it is held to be desirable in this case although to be regretted.
207
AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS
on the outcrop. It owes its color to the pres- banks in the beds of streamlets. A very good ence of a large content of carbonaceous mate- exposure can be seen half a mile southeast of Waterloo and two miles southeast of Canal Winchester in the south banks of Little Wal- nut creek above the bridge. rial, in fact, it is so rich in this that elsewhere in the state outcrops have been known to take fire and burn slowly for weeks.
This formation is quite thick. It is usually about 700 feet in the gas wells in central Fair- field County but it thickens rapidly to the eastward and at Marietta is over 2,500 feet in a deep well, the bottom not having been reached. The outcrop of this formation ex- tends across the state in a belt from the Penn- sylvania line to the Ohio river in Adams County. If present on the surface in Fair- field County it will be found only in the north- western part. One-half mile south of Canal Winchester it is exposed under the bridge over Little Walnut Creek, and probably it is present in the angle of the county one and one-half miles northwest of Lithopolis.
The conditions which prevailed when the Ohio shale was formed are not very well un- derstood, but probably the water was of con- siderable depth with much floating plant life, mostly sea weeds, just as in the Sargasso Sea of the North Atlantic today. This floating sea weed by dropping to the bottom or shed- ding its spores, furnished the abundant organic material which characterizes the formation. The water must have been quiet, for there are no sands in the formation in central Ohio.
2. The Bedford formation. This overlies the Ohio shale and is also found outcropping entirely across the state, the Bedford belt lying just southeast of the Ohio shale belt. The formation is about 100 feet thick and usually consists of gray, chocolate or reddish shales, which are quite soft in outcrops. It is ex- posed at several points in the northwestern part of the county within a mile and a half west and southwest of Lithopolis and very near the county line. The outcrops are all low
The change from the conditions of the Ohio shale sea to those of the Bedford must have been marked. Whatever the source of the organic material in the former, it disappeared entirely, for only soft muds with no carbonace- ous matter were formed in the central Ohio Bedford sea.
3. The Berca grit marks the institution of a yet more profound change in the conditions of the sea. It is a sandstone which is found extending in outcrop across the state from the northeast corner to the Ohio river and varying from a few feet to 150 feet in thickness. Fur- thermore, its presence beneath all of eastern Ohio and into West Virginia has been proved by the drill of the oil mnan. The bottom of the old sea must have been uplifted so that the water was very shallow for the sandstones show abundant evidence of shallow water con- ditions, such as ripple marks. While this state- ment must suffice for the present needs, it is certain that the series of events was much more complex at this period than a simple shoaling of the water and probably much of the old basin became land temporarily ; certainly some of it did in northern Ohio. There is very good reason to believe that the northwestern part at least of Fairfield County was above the waters for a short time just before the Berea was formed.
This horizon is as well known to the oil and gas well drillers of Fairfield County as the Clinton gas sand itself, but it will probably be a surprise to many to know that it is found out-cropping in the county. Such is, however, the case. It is well shown at several points in the runs southwest of Lithopolis, notably on
208
HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY
the S. E. Hartman and Smith farms, having been quarried in a small way on the former. On the Smith farm it directly overlies the Bedford shale just described and both are well shown. It is also well shown in Quarry Run at Lithopolis, half a mile below the quar- ries and at the north end of the village.
The Berea in this vicinity is thinner than at any other point in the state, from two to six feet. As found here, it is a moderately fine grained sandstone of a pleasing, light bluish gray color, but wholly worthless for building stone because badly broken by bedding planes and because it discolors rapidly. Ugly red- dish brown stains frequently mask its natural color entirely in the outcrops. The bed gradu- ally sinks below the surface of the land in pass- ing southeastward and in central and eastern Fairfield County is found only at a depth of several hundred feet.
4. The Sunbury shale marks another great change. It is a black carbonaceous shale ex- actly like the Ohio shale but never over 25 or 30 feet thick. It is found everywhere over- lying the Berea grit, and it can be seen at sev- eral points near Lithopolis. The best one is in Quarry Run at the north end of the village where a bank of it 15 or 20 feet high rests on the Berea sandstone. Careful search in the lowermost beds of the shale at this point will reward one with several varieties of fossils be- longing to the general Lingula. (the elongate, rather oblong forms) and Lingulodiscina (the circular forms marked with concentric rings). These are quite sufficient proof that the bed was formed in the ocean, as the nearest liv- ing relatives of these forms cannot live any- where else.
This bed means that after the Berea was formed and long ages after the Ohio shale epoch had closed, exactly the same conditions were resumed which had prevailed then but
at no intervening stage. But they did not last long, and were quickly succeeded by the sand- stone and clayey shales of the Cuyahoga, which overlie the Sunbury.
The three formations just described, the Bedford, Berea and Sunbury, and the Ohio shales of which the top is probably barely rep- resented, are known only at the surface of this county in the vicinity of Lithopolis, south of Little Walnut Creek. They dip toward the eastward and pass below drainage within two and one-half, or at the most three miles, east of Canal Winchester. Northeast of Canal Winchester, over the whole northwest corner of Violet township, the streams cut low enough that all of these formations ought to be trav- ersed, but the writer has seen no outcrops in his very limited experience in that direction. All the streams appear to flow on drift, that is, over the clay and gravel brought down by the glaciers during the ice invasion, as will be ex- plained presently.
5. The Cuyahoga Formation. This, too, extends entirely across the state but is much more variable than the others. It varies in thickness from 300 to 600 feet and was laid down under conditions which differed widely from place to place. Typically it is a clay shale with occasional thin sandstones scattered through it, but under the influence of local conditions, such probably as sand-laden streams which flowed into the old ocean, it may be made up almost wholly of sandstones.
In the southwestern part of Fairfield County, between Wyandot Junction and Tarle- ton on Salt Creek, there are many banks, some of them 20 or 30 feet high, which show the shale phase of the formation very well, but over most of the county it is made up largely of sandstones. Mt. Pleasant at Lancaster is composed wholly of sandstones which are Cuy- ahoga in age, and it requires considerable elas-
209
AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS
ticity of imagination to believe that the mas- ward the northward, northeastward or to the northwestward, but never in a southerly direc- tion. This is most prominent in the massive ledges which are the source of the beautiful scenery of the county, altho it can be detected in the sandstones and shales which underlie them when such can be seen (as at the mouth of Clear Creek in Hocking County). In the 10º to 15° and even as high as 25°. sive, coarse, pebbly sandstones found here were deposited simultaneously with the shales on Salt Creek. Such is, however, the case. The coarse sandstones which form the ledges in all the hills of the southern and central part of the county, well shown for example at Jacob's Ladder, Christmas Rocks, Kettle Hills, and thru the ravines east and southeast of the Boys'. ledges, these dips are commonly at angles of Industrial School to the cliffs in the hills about Sugar Grove, all of the stone in these ledges belongs to the Cuyahoga formation. Or, to state it somewhat differently. Fairfield and Hocking counties owe their magnificent rock scenery to the massive sandstones and con- glomerates of the Cuyahoga formation.
The formation is 600 to 625 feet thick in Fairfield County, as shown by the gas wells, but only the upper 100 or 150 feet is commonly seen, that is, the ledge forming part. Below this, and usually covered by the lower hill slopes is a series of coarse sandstones and shales which form the middle part of the for- mation. The lowest part, 120 feet thick, is best shown in the Quarry Run at Lithopolis. It consists, that at least, of moderately fine grained sandstones and shales, some of the sandstones reaching a thickness of two or three feet. Several of them are of value and have been quarried and marketed quite extensively by Mr. Joseph Leyndecker. One of the beds in this quarry which is a soft light bluish gray in color, is highly valued as a building stone and, it is said, received a prize at the Colum- bian Exposition at Chicago in 1893.
The beds of the lower part of the Cuyahoga, as shown on Quarry Run, are very regular and lie flat. But in the middle and upper part of the formation they present some very inter- esting and remarkable structures. A little ob- servation will show to any one who cares to attempt it, that the beds are there inclined to-
An exception must be made to this state- ment. The beds at the top of the formation, that is, the uppermost 10 to 20 feet, commonly lie flat, as does the top of the formation. (The general regional dip of 20 to 40 feet per mile is, of course, an exception to this last state- ment, but it is inappreciable in comparison with the 10° to 20° dip lower down.) These flat beds can be seen near the top of Mt. Pleas- ant, for the highest beds there exposed are practically at the top of the Cuyahoga, while lower down and especially on the north side, the northward dips become prominent. The same relationship is even more clearly shown in the head of the ravine above the railroad station at the Boys' Industrial School.
This structure is the typical structure of a delta. Whenever a stream carrying large amounts of gravel and sand empties into a body of quiet water, a delta is formed. The material which it carries is dropped by the checking of the stream current and it slides down the slope of the bottom until it comes to rest. This material accumulates in an inclined position due to the method of "dumping" un- til it is built up to the water level, when the stream is forced to carry it forward over its first formed deposits to the new edge of the deposit in order to drop it. The delta is thus built forward, with a steep slope toward the open water, down which the material slides as it is dropped. The beds of the delta thus come
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.