History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and representative citizens, Part 24

Author: Miller, Charles Christian, 1856- [from old catalog] ed
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co
Number of Pages: 874

USA > Ohio > Fairfield County > History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and representative citizens > Part 24

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to be steeply inclined although the deposit as a tioned, the coarse sandstones of Chestnut whole is nearly horizontal.

This is just the way the Cuyahoga sand- stones of Fairfield County were formed .*

The general northerly dips indicate that the material came from the southward and there- fore that the shore line at this time lay in that direction and the open water lay to the north- ward.

Other features in the Scioto Valley indicate that the shore lay more to the southeastward. The coarseness of the material (pebbles one to two inches in diameter are abundant) indi- cates that it could have been at no great dis- tances. But unfortunately the Cuyahoga is covered by later rocks in that direction and it is impossible to find actual traces of the old shore line. Its position can only be inferred from the structure.

The Cuyahoga formation covers the west- ern half or more of the county (the area of the three lower formations alone excepted) and is found in the lower slopes of the hills for some distance east of the Hocking Valley. Its top gradually dips toward the eastward, as do all the formations, and a few miles east of the Hocking River, it is entirely below drainage and the Logan formation which overlies the Cuyahoga forms the hills. The top of the Cuy- ahoga is a very easy horizon to detect, the coarse, harsh conglomerates and sandstones contrasting strongly with the rather soft. fine grained, yellow sandstones of the Byer mem- ber of the Logan.

In addition to the localities already men-

Ridge in the northwestern part of the county, the more massive and resistent beds in the little gorge at Rock Mill west of Hooker and the conglomerates in the deep road cut at the top of Shimp's hill are all sandstones of the Cuyahoga formation, At the point last named, the northwardly dipping delta struct- ure is very favorably shown.

The principal quarries which have been opened in Fairfield County from time to time have been in the sandstones of this formation. In fact, no quarry has been opened in any other except to get out stone to build a chim- ney or for some other equally local purpose. A few years ago the quarry industry was prominent but it has declined. The Alleghany quarry, three miles east of Lancaster, once operated by F. C. Neeb who came from Pitts- burg, is now apparently wholly abandoned, but in its day it was a very important enterprise. The Crook quarry which borders the hills on the east wall of the Hocking Valley half way between Lancaster and Sugar Grove, has not been operated for many years, but a large amount of stone has been won there. The Sharp quarries at Sugar Grove and at several points between there and the Hocking County line have not now been active for several years. A quarry in the hills east of Hocking River and perhaps half a mile south of Craw- fis Collegiate Institute, which is operated by the Sharp company and ships considerable quantities of stone, is probably the most ex- tensive producer at present, while a few near Lancaster furnish the stone necessary for foundations and other local demands.

The stone which is yielded by the sand- stones is unexcelled in quality for some pur- poses, especially for massive work such as bridge abutments, and retaining walls. Its durability is unquestioned. Since the aban-

*Strictly speaking, certain considerable modifications must be introduced in order to agree with certain other structures observed, but it would introduce too great complexity to discuss them here. The whole is fully treated in the writer's forthcoming volume on the Waverly formations of central and southern Ohio, to be issued by the Geological Survey of Ohio. This state- ment will serve, however, for the purpose of any but the specialist.

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donment of the canal, the wooden gates of the locks have rotted and fallen away and their hinges are thickly coated with rust; the mortar in the lock walls is crumbling and the loosened blocks of stone are being pushed from their place by the young trees growing behind them, but the tool marks on their sides are almost as sharp as when they were taken from the quarries more than 70 years ago.

The stone to be used for building purposes needs careful selection but that it can be so adapted with success is attested by the City Hall and County Court House at Lancaster, the former of the rough dressed stone, the latter smooth dressed. It is apt to carry un- sightly blotches of iron which are disastrous to architectural effects, unless sucli selection is rigidly enforced.

The Logan Formation. The base of the Lo- gan formation marks another great change in the conditions of the old ocean basin. The Byer member is made up of very fine sand- stones and there must have been a deepening of the water and a retreatal of the shore line to a position farther south and east than was held during the Cuyahoga time.

This condition of deep, quiet water was maintained throughout Logan time, except during the Allensville stage, when there was shoaling, but either it was not such a deep water as that of the Bedford shale, or else the material dumped into it was of a different nature, for the sediments are mostly very fine sandstones.

The name Logan was given to this forma- tion from the town of Logan by Prof. E. B. Andrews, one of the earlier members of the State Geological survey and a one time resi- dent of Lancaster. The formation is now sub- divided into three distinct members.

6. The Byer Sandstone, the lowest of these, is a fine grained, rather soft, yellow sandstone,

wholly devoid of structure, such as is found in the Cuyahoga sandstones and therefore not nearly so interesting. It generally carries fos- sils but seldom in abundance. It is 40 to 50 feet thick. It can best be seen as the stripping in the tops of the cliffs at the quarries men- tioned in the closing paragraphs on the Cuya- hoga but the lower part only is shown there. One of the best outcrops of this, and of the entire Logan, is in the side of the road which goes over Pleasant Hill, five miles southeast of Lancaster, in Section 23, Berne Township. A good outcrop of the upper part of the mem- ber is shown one and a half miles north, north- west of West Rushville on the Basore farm. Others can be seen at various points on the ridge between Lancaster and the Boys' Indus- trial School where it just caps the hills. In fact this ridge is almost the westernmost oc- currence of the Logan in the county, the west- ward rise of the rocks carrying it rapidly above the tops of the present hills.

The Byer sandstone is known to occur as far north as Newark and extends southward to the Ohio river, reaching a thickness in places of over 150 feet.

7. The Allensville Bed which rests on the Byer member, marks a period of shoaling. It consists of very coarse, rather loose reddish sands, which are remarkably uniformly bedded. The sea floor was probably uplifted and the coastal conditions spread well out into what had been the centre of the basin. The coarse sands are interbedded with some fine grained sands and there is one shale bed pres- ent from four to eight feet thick which is commonly quite fossiliferous and is found in eastern Fairfield and southern Licking coun- ties. The Allensville member has also been traced from Newark to the Ohio river but it is never over 20 to 25 feet thick, its thickness in this county.

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The member is found thruout most of the eastern part of the county but is best shown at various points along Little Rush Creek for two miles above and below Rushville station ; it is found just above the level of the creek and can be readily distinguished by the pres- ence of the coarse sandstones. The fossil- iferous shale bed which is found in it is there excellently exposed and will prove an excel- lent collecting ground for any one interested in this side of geology. Another good outcrop of the fossiliferons shale bed can be found in the bed of a small creek one-half mile due north of Colfax and just west of the road.

East of Little Rush Creek, the dip of the strata carries the Allensville below drainage so that it is not exposed. Westward from Rush Creek it rises gradually until it is found at the hill tops, three or four miles east of Lancaster. It may be seen at the very top of the hill where the road goes over the crest on the east side of Pleasant Run a mile north of the Zanesville & Maysville pike, and, again, on the Berne Station road in the road cut on the top of the hill five and one-half miles east of Lancaster and a mile east of where it leaves the Zanesville & Maysville pike.

8. The V'inton Member. The topmost mem- ber of the Logan formation and of the Wa- verly series consists of fine grained yellowish sandstones and sandy shales. It marks the re- sumption of conditions very like those which held when the Byer sandstone was formed. It is found throughout all the hills of Rush Creek and Richland Townships, and in the higher hills just west of them. It is very well shown along Little Rush Creek below Rushville, but probably the rather inaccessible walls of this pretty little gorge are known to but few. A more familiar occurrence is in the roadside cuts where the pike winds up the east side of Little Rush Creek valley to Rushville. All of

the steep shale banks there exposed are in the Vinton member.

The Vinton member, like the other three is known from the central part of the state to the Ohio river, but it is occasionally wanting for a reason to be explained presently. Commonly it is 50 to 100 feet thick, but in Fairfield County it reaches 150 feet.

9. The Marville Limestone. The next for- mation which is represented in the county is the Maxville limestone. This formation is found only in scattered patches along the out- crops from Central Ohio to the river. A large and fossiliferous area is found along Jonathan creek in Perry and Muskingum counties, where it is perhaps 30 feet thick, but with this exception, they are all small. One of these areas is found in western Perry County just east of the Fairfield County line and a corner of this patch extends for less than a mile into Richland Township, just east of Rushville. No good outcrops are known at present, but it has been worked slightly for road material near the line and a short distance south of the Zanesville and Maysville pike.

The Maxville limestone is the record of an- other great change in conditions, for thruout the entire Waverly time, no limestone was formed. In the Mississippi Valley there is a great series of limestone lying above the rocks of Waverly Age and below those of Maxville Age which is entirely unrepresented in Ohio. There is no question but that Fairfield County was elevated above the ocean and became land after the Waverly was formed, and remained in that condition for more than half of the Mississippian or, Sub-Carboniferous period, not being submerged again until Maxville time. This is known, not only from the absence of these sediments, but from the irreg- ular surface of the Waverly on which the Maxville lies, which shows conclusive evi-

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dence of having been eroded while it was a land surface.

Following the formation of the Maxville, the whole of eastern North America was again reelevated, became land and was subjected to considerable erosion which removed the Max- ville, except in the few areas where it is found, and considerable of the Waverly. In places, in Jackson County especially, the old valleys in the surface of the Waverly are still preserved, although filled with rocks of the next succeeding coal period and difficult to trace. Some of these are 200 feet deep.

There is little evidence of this erosion sur- face in Fairfield County. It is clear that the eastern part of the county (the relationship in the western part cannot be determined since all the associated rocks have been removed) must have been an area of relatively high land, for the whole Logan formation is there about 225 feet thick and in Thoren Township of Perry County must be 300 feet thick. In places in southern Ohio where the erosion was strongest, this thickness was entirely removed, and nobody can tell how much more, before the Coal-measures were formed.

IO. The Coal-Measures. There is yet one more great change in the conditions of sedi- mentation to be recorded. After the old Waverly land surface had been deeply carved by the streams in many parts of Ohio, although not in Fairfield County, it seems probable that it commenced to sink gradually. The streams flowing in the valleys were checked by the quiet waters they encountered where they had been able to erode previously and dropped · their loads of sand and mud, generally filling the old valleys with the sediments which are formed on a valley floor. The sinking prob- ably continued very slowly and the streams were able to fill the valleys they had just cut with this material, until they covered up even

the very tops of the old hills of the Waverly land surface. This was the beginning of the Coal-measures period, and these conditions continued until many hundreds of feet of sedi- ments had been piled above the buried hills and valleys of this old surface.

Much of the eastern United States lay very near sea level, probably as an immense broad flat plain, which was slowly sinking and as gradually being built up by the streams. Sometimes broad areas would be converted into swamps and the vegetable matter accu- mulating there, as it is even now accumulating in the Dismal Swamp, became coal after being buried by more sediments. Again the ocean would come in for a short period and cover great tracts with a thin fossiliferous marine limestone. But for the most part the accumu- lation consists of sandstones and shales.

These deposits accumulated in eastern Ohio to a thickness of over a thousand feet, and probably the present hills of Fairfield County were buried to this or a greater depth. This thickness is preserved in the downwarped basin of eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But the prolonged pe- riods of erosion which succeeded the Appala- chian uplift have removed it all from Fair- field County except a few feet of coarse sand- stones and shales which were formed at the very bottom of the deposit and which are now found capping the highest hills in the eastern part. Occasionally beds of black shale or even a thin seam of coal can be seen, but there is none whatever of any importance.

West of Rush Creek and south of the C. & M. V. railroad, in the hills about Geneva, these rocks are found but only on the very tops of the hills. The same is true of the eastern half of Richland township, east and south of Rushville. East of Rush Creek in Rush Creek Township they may reach a thickness of 100

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feet or more. At least five great formations ern North America, but not nearly as much are recognized in the coal-measures of the as the Appalachians because Ohio did not eastern United States, all of them present in stand as high above sea level, and Fairfield County suffered with Ohio; it was then that all her precious coal seams were carried away. Ohio was probably nearly as flat as a floor with only the gentlest of hills to give relief to the monotony of the view. eastern Ohio, but only the base of the lowest and oldest one is preserved in Fairfield County. What an untold wealth of coal must have been removed from within the bounda- ries of the county by the ceaseless action of the streams which have removed all the rest!

II. Eastern North America, and Fairfield County, During the Period of Erosion, When the Valleys Were Carved Out.

Changes throughout eastern North Amer- ica. The deposition of the Coal-measures closes the first of the three great periods in the development of Fairfield County. The second was inaugurated by the formation of the Appalachians and the final retreatal of the sea from the entire Ohio valley region. This has all been outlined in a preceding paragraph.

After this tremendous uplift, which prob- ably was accomplished very slowly through a long period of time and without any demon- strations of violence, there was a prolonged period of quiet-extremely long. The streams attacked the land and gradually cut it away, even the mountains, until the whole of the Appalachian mountains in places five miles high, were reduced to a nearly flat level plain above which only groups of hills and low mountains occasionally raised their heads be- cause of the presence there of harder and more resistant rock. Such resistant groups were the Catskills, the White Mountains and the high Appalachians of western North Caro- lina. All the remainder was cut away to nearly a plain, or to a peneplain, as the geolo- gist calls it, which means the same thing. This plain was completed by the latter part of the Mesozoic.

After this had been accomplished-and the time necessary to do it must have been almost infinite so far as the duration of hu- man history is concerned-most of the great plain occupying the eastern part of the United States and lying near sea level was again up- lifted, northern New England to 2,000 feet above sea level, and the Appalachian region fully as much or more, eastern Ohio certainly to over 1,200 feet and western Ohio probably not so much. The streams which had be- come sluggish on the old plain then went to work and carved out their present valleys and it is the stream valleys of this period that gave us the rugged New England upland, that de- veloped the present Appalachians where for- merly a plain had stretched and that gave us our own pretty hills.

The View from Mt. Pleasant and what it Means. It is impossible to cite here the proof of these great changes; very little of it rests within the confines of Fairfield County, but one bit of evidence can be shown. The next time, reader, that you happen to be standing on Mt. Pleasant, notice some of the relations that exist between the hills of the surround- ing country, even to the greatest distance to which you can see. Starting in the valleys, you will note that there are hills of various elevations, some low, some high. In fact, there is almost every degree in elevation from the valley floor to the level of the sky line. But, why do not some of these hills project

Ohio suffered with the remainder of east- noticeably above that sky line? There is

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irregularity up to that point and then the tops of the hills abruptly become extremely regu- lar in their elevation. Why does not an occa- sional one project two or three hundred feet above the others? It is not because there were no more rocks above the present ones, for at least 1,000 feet have been removed. It is not because the hill slopes end at that elevation, for many of those hills, like Mt. Pleasant, are nearly flat topped. Looking off toward the southward to where the Boys' Industrial School can be seen on the horizon, try to for- get that there are any valleys present. Re- member that the same beds as are present in Mt. Pleasant are present in the hills on the opposite side of the Hocking Valley and there must, therefore, have been a time when the valley was not there, when it had not yet been cut and solid rock intervened. Does not the sky-line resolve itself into the monot- ony of a plain? As a matter of fact, that gently undulating sky-line is all that is left of the old flat plain which was once the sur- face of Fairfield County and extended over all of Ohio and much of eastern North Amer- ica. It is now entirely dissected by streams and it is certain that no spot, or small area can be found of which one can say. "this is certainly a part of the old plain." It has all been more or less modified, but the uniformity of elevation remains which was its most strik- ing feature.

Complexity of the Development. In order to be accurate, it is necessary to modify this very broad statement which implies simplicity of development. The history, as a matter of fact, has been much more complex. The old plain which was developed over most of east- ern North America, excepting the few areas of hard rocks noted above, was not uplifted from sea level to its present position at once. While the movements were doubtless very

gradual, it was accomplished by stages, first an elevation, then a very long pause, then an- other elevation, and probably there were three or four such elevations and pauses, two of which were very long and were felt over most of the area. During the first pause the streams cut broad, rather deep valleys in the old plain, and the time of quiet was long enough to al- low certain broad areas to become reduced to sea-level before the next uplift, and when this uplift came, these broad flat areas or wide valley floors were elevated high above sea level and the streams at once went to work on them also. The records of several of these stages have been traced over hundreds of miles es- pecially in the Appalachians.

Thus, it is possible and very probable that the old surface in Fairfield County, now rep- resented by the uniform hilltops, was not the first, original, broad plain (the Cretaceous or late Mesozoic peneplain), but was formed during one of the later pauses in the uplift, and was itself more recently uplifted. This is one of the problems which yet await solu- tion.

The Valleys of Fairfield County Originally Much Deeper Than Now. The broad flat floors of the larger valleys, the Hocking, Rush Creek, Clear Creek, etc., are today 150 to 300 feet below the bordering hill tops. The highest hills seldom rise more than 400 feet above these bottoms. But many gas wells have been drilled on these valley floors which penetrate from 200 to over 300 feet of sand, gravel and clay before the real bed rock is encountered. This is merely a filling, the re- sult of the glacial period to be described next. This means that all the larger stream valleys of Fairfield County were actually cut from 200 to 300 feet deeper than they are at present.

This may be more fully brought home if the reader recalls the view which he has doubt-

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less observed many times from Mt. Pleasant. ward past Zanesville as at present, but the The top of Mt. Pleasant is about 275 feet above the present Hocking river, and the view is one of the finest to be had anywhere in Ohio. In the well drilled at the house of the Lancas- ter Athletic Club, on the public square in Lan- caster, 316 feet of drift filling was encountered by the driller before penetrating bed rock. This means the valley was formerly that much deeper and has been filled to that extent. Think you now what must have been the view from Mt. Pleasant after the streams had cut their deepest and before the coming of the ice, when the Hocking flowed in a gorge whose bottom was sunk 575 feet or more below the top of Mt. Pleasant !

Original Directions of Stream Flowage. The stream valleys of that period did not differ alone in depth. The entire drainage system of Ohio and the adjacent states was radically different in direction and there have been many changes even in Fairfield County. For example, we know that the Ohio river, as such, did not exist. The upper part of the Ohio drained northward by the Allegheny river, since reversed in direction, to the Great Lakes region. That portion of it along the central- southern border of Ohio drained northward through the Scioto, since reversed in direction, past Circleville and then northwestward into Indiana. That portion of the Ohio near Cin- cinnati and for some distance above Cincin- nati drained northward into Indiana along lines since reversed and joined the old Scioto system there. With the advance of the ice sheet, these old outlets to the northward were all blocked and the waters found new outlets by flowing across low divides in the head- water regions of the three systems just men- tioned-and there the present Ohio river was formed.

entire headwaters drainage of that stream turned westward at Dresden and flowed through the abandoned, drift-filled valley which the main line of the Pennsylvania rail- road follows, as far as Newark. There it flowed southward down the present South Fork valley of the Licking and followed the broad deeply buried valley which is now occu- pied by the west end of Buckeye Lake. It flowed southwestward into Fairfield County by way of Buckeye Lake then westward past Basil, Baltimore and Canal Winchester, join- ing the northwestward flowing Scioto just west of the last mentioned point. The broad, flat, low country extending across the northern part of the county is but the track of this great valley, now filled with 300 feet or more of drift.

The Hocking river, also, has been reversed. It formerly headed somewhere south of the Hocking County line and flowed northward past Lancaster, then northwestward; joining the pre-glacial Muskingum above Carroll. This outlet is shown by the occurrence of 260 feet of drift in a well near Carroll. This well certainly is not over the deepest part of the old valley, but as it stands, it indicates a rock floor 100 feet lower at that point than at Su- gar Grove. This northward slope of the rock floor, alone, would prove the former north- ward course of the stream.

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History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and representative citizens, Part 24

Author: Miller, Charles Christian, 1856- [from old catalog] ed Publication date: 1912 Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co Number of Pages: 874

Author: Miller, Charles Christian, 1856- [from old catalog] ed
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co
Number of Pages: 874