History of Lorain County, Ohio, Part 6

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 626

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In nearly all these quarries the rock is very mas- sive but easily accessible; standing. as it does, in ledges, the stripping is comparatively light. None of them have as yet gone to the bottom of the rock. At Worthington's they have gone down some eighty feet and not touched bottom yet.

There are many small quarries scattered here and there throughout this whole sand-stone district, mainly used for home consumption and local trade.

We will now try to give a description of this vast deposit, its distribution, composition, economic value, ete. It is the most valuable element in all our geo- logical series, and reaches its greatest maximum of excellence in quantity, quality and accessibility in the quarries at Amherst and Brownhelm. These rocks underlie the whole eastern half of the State, and have their out-prop from Brownhehn on the north and west, through the entire central portion of the State to Portsmouth, on the Ohio river. Although deeply buried in many places by drift deposits or the Cuya- hoga shate, yet they are readily accessible in more than fifteen counties in the State: of which Lorain, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Trumbull. Medina, Fairfield and Pike are the most important.

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, O1110.

These rocks have a gradual thinning out as they go east and south, so that in Tennessee and Kentucky there is but very little if any sandstone in the series, and in eastern Ohio and Pennsylvania argillaceous material enters largely into the composition of its beds. Its greatest thickness is obtamed at its very northwestern out-crop. Here it attains a depth of eighty to one hundred feet or more. At Amherst and Brownhelm the topmost layers are removed as strip- pings, when a few feet of flagging is generally obtained, and then the solid homogeneous rock is reached. At Independence, in Cuyahoga county, nearly all the flagging material has been removed by glacial erosion leaving about twenty-five or thirty feet of massive sandstone. At Berea it is still different. lIere the flagging stone comprises nearly one half of its entire thickness, or about twenty feet of flagging to thirty feet of buikling stone; so that at Berea its entire thickness is only about half of that at Amherst. There are good quarries at Elyria, Ridgeville, Colum- bia and Avon. The stone at Ridgeville does not come above the surface, but is of very superior quality, fine in texture, very white, and free from iron and clay balls. The upper stratum of these ledges at Amherst and Brownhelm, stands about sixty or seventy feet above the natural drainage of the surrounding country, consequently there has been for ages, atmospheric moisture passing through these rocks, thoroughly oxydizing the iron they contain; thus leaving those cheerful mellow tints, so highly appreciated by the architect and builder. The prevailing color is a light warm buff or drab, changing as the rock deepens below drainage, to a light gray or dove color, and at its base to a bluish tint, known as " blue Amherst," and very highly prized in the New York market.

The texture of the stone is fine and homogeneous, usually without iron, and very few flaws or breaks, so that it is very readily worked into any desirable shape or size, working very easily under the pick or chisel, and yet retaining with faithfulness all its markings.

Its strength is equal to ten thousand pounds to the square inch, one thousand pounds more than the celebrated brown stone of Connecticut; four times that of the best brick, and much stronger than the best marble or granite.

Its durability is greater than any other known sedi- mentary rock; being nearly pure silex, it resists the erosive action of the atmosphere to a wonderful degree, and is not affected by weathering any more than the very best Scotch granite. Its durability is beautifully shown on the rocks north of the Ilakler- man quarry, where there are very fine glacial grooves and markings, which have remained intact for ages. and also in the hieroglyphie markings on the surface rocks on the farm of J. J. Rice, in Amherst township. Ilere these markings must have lain exposed to the denuding agencies of the frosts and storms of a thousand years or more, and still the sharp markings of the pick are plainly visible to this day.

It is also very refractory and will resist the action of fire where limestone, marble and granite are en- tirely destroyed. This was very clearly demonstrated in the great, Chicago fire. Its chemical analysis is as follows:

Siliele acid (the substance of pure quartz) 90.49

Alumnia 6,25

Peroxide and protoxide iron 2.37

Lime. 0,87

Magnesia 0.26

Alkalies. 0,03

100.00

Thus it will be seen that the great beauty, strength and durability of this rock will command for it the highest price in any market. Hence, as a buikling stone, it is shipped to nearly every city in the Union, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from HIer Majesty's Dominion in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. From the Amherst quarries some of the finest build- ings of Boston, New York, Chicago and St. Louis were constructed; as were also the Parliament build- ings of Canada.

We have only spoken of it as a material for build- ing purposes. Thousands of tons of grindstones and coarse whetstones are made and annually shipped to all parts of the civilized world, and in New England they come into competition with the best Nova Scotia stones; and for dry grinding they are not excelled anywhere.

The annual product of these quarries is quite large. We have the average figures before us, kindly fur- nished by the different companies, which show the annual shipment of block stone to be three hundred and eighty-five thousand cubic feet. Of grindstone, eleven thousand two hundred tons and of other stone large amounts. Total annual receipts over $500,000, and the business is increasing from year to year. This great deposit so widely distributed over our State belongs to the Waverly series, and is of carboniferous age.

The question is often asked, how and why are the different names given to the different geological for- mations, and how divided. The equivalent of our Devonian roeks were first described and classified at Devonshire in England, hence the name Devonian. The Silurian from Siluria, in Wales. The ITuron shale (which belongs to the Devonian) was deter- mined and located, as to its relative position to the other rocks, on the Huron river, hence its name.

The Waverly sandstone was brought into note by the large quarries at the town of Waverly, in Pike county, from which this stone was taken to build the massive locks of the Ohio canal. The first geological survey in 1837 gave these rocks the name of Waverly sandstone; but they have been called by so many local names since that we adopt the name "Ohio sandstone." Our present State geologist called them " Berea grit," from the fact that at Berea the first grindstones were manufactured from it and sent into market, which brought them into such a world-wide reputation. The name Waverly is retained and at- tached to the class of rocks to which this belongs.

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

The outerops of these rocks at Amherst and Brown- helm, of which we have been speaking, were once high blutfs against which a great inland sea dashed its ever-ceaseless waves for countless ages, wearing away the softer portions and leaving those ledges like little islands amid a boundless ocean.

BEDFORD SILALE.

The next rock below the sandstone is the Bedford shale, which is about seventy feet in thickness. Its upper portion is of a reddish color, caused by the oxidation of iron from the sandstone lying immedi- ately above. This is the only red shale in the conn- try, and is a good guide to those in search of the sandstone. This red shale is well exposed in nearly all the crecks and gorges the whole width of the county along the base of the sandstone. The best ex- posure of the Bedford, however, is shown on the Ver- million river in Brownhelm township, at and near the mouth of Chance creek. Here the banks are one hundred and thirty-two feet in height, and nearly the entire thickness of both the Bedford and Cleve- land are shown together. The upper strata of the Bedford are red. the middle and lower portions a dull bluish gray.

The Vermillion river was so named from the color this shale gives to its banks. The upper strata being red, as it erumbles and dissolves, the storms wash it down from above thus giving the banks at a little distance the appearance of having been painted red. On Black river the Bedford is also well exposed, and here is shown its uneven upper surface which was ent away by currents of water while it was soft clay.

These channels were filled with sand which was eventually hardened into stone. This will account for the uneven lower surface of the sandstone at Grafton and other places.

There are some very interesting fossils in the Bed- ford, although they are not mummerous, for which see chapter on " Fossils."

CLEVELAND SHALE.

I quote from Prof. Newberry, a description of this shale which is better than any I can give:

"This is a black bituminons shale from fifty to sixty feet in thickness, which is well exposed beneath the Bedford shale in the valleys of Black and Vermillion rivers. It contains over ten per cent. of carbonaceous matter, and this gives it a black color by which it may at once be recog. nized when freshly broken. Where long exposed, its carbon is burned out by oxidation and it becomes gray ; hence its ont-crops, taking the color of the other gray shales in the series, may not be identified with- out some excavation.

"The only fossils found in the Cleveland shale of Lorain county up to the present time, are rhomboidal enameled fish-scales. These belong to a ganold fish, probably a species of Paleconiscus but no entire individual has as yet been obtained. The Cleveland shale has no economic im- portance, except that it is clearly the source of the petroleum found at Grafton and Liverpool."

Sinee the above description of this shale was written by Prof. Newberry I have made this shale an especial study, and have finally discovered in it the remains of some of the most remarkable placoderm fishes the

world has ever known, nearly, if not quite equal to those of the Huron epoch for which see chapter on " Fossils."

This shale is literally filled with sea-wee ds and other carbonaceous matter. There are good exposures on nearly all the streams emptying. into Lake Erie, from the Vermillion, east; but the best are found on the Black and Vermillion rivers. Here may be seen its entire thickness at a glance, and the student in geology may use his piek, and chisel. with a fair prospeet of success. There are thin bands of cone-in-cone lime running through it. From its peculiar structure at first it was taken te be fossiliferous, but upon careful examination it was found to be mechanical, and not organic. Some of this cone-in-cone takes the form of half a clam-shell, and as they slip ont from the rock in this shape with their folds and serrated edges, it is diffienlt to persuade one's self that they are not fossils. We often find a group of these, very uniform in size, shape. and appearance; but mostly the cones are massed in together wedge-shape, and can only be taken out by breaking up the rock. At present the economic value of the Cleveland shale is but slight. There can be distilled from it about ten gallons of petroleum to every ton of shale, and the time may, and probably will come when, with improved ma- chinery and better knowledge, this will be made an additional source of wealth to our county. It is impossible for us to even remotely comprehend the vast resources of the earth. What wise provisions there have been made for the comfort and happiness of man! - " Treasures new and old" hid away in the great storehouse of nature, ready to be brought to light and use, as man needs them along down the course of time.

One of the most wonderful of all these productions of nature, is petroleum; and as the Cleveland shale is unquestionably the source from which the petroleum at Graffon is obtained, we will consider it in connec- tion with these rocks. We shall speak of it only in general terms, but for a detailed account of the oil wells at Grafton, we refer the reader to the history of that township in this volume.

The early settlers of Grafton found along the crecks in that township sinkholes or pits, in which oil col- lected. In many places the soil was saturated with asphaltie tar, produced by the evaporation of this oil. These pits bear every evidence of having been made for the purpose of collecting the oil, by the ancient people who inhabited the country long before the white man trod the soil. Whether it was the okl Mound-Builders, or the red man of a later period, we of course cannot tell; but probably the former, as the whites have no knowledge of the Indians coming to these oil pits, after they came into possession. What use this ancient people made of this oil is of course all conjecture; but the most rational theory is, that they used it for its medicinal qualities. This also seems to have been the first use made of it by the whites.

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

These oil springs, as they were called, extended from Grafton into Liverpool, five miles east. And here, as early as 1843, Harris Warner sunk a well in one of these springs down to the rock, from which he collected the oil and sold it as " rock oil," for the eure of burns, sprains, rheumatism, etc., for which it. acquired quite a reputation.

In 1861, the oil excitement ran high, and wells were drilled in Grafton. The Jones well, about a mile north of the center, was sunk to a depth of six hun- dred feet, but drew its oil from a depth of one hundred feet below the surface. The Rising well was sunk one hundred and fifty feet, but drew its oil from a point eighty-five feet below the surface. From these and other experiments, it was soon learned that it was useless to go below the base of the sand rock. The oil from these wells is a thick, heavy oil, of a specific gravity of 22° to 28° (Baum.): too heavy to profitably distill for illuminating purposes-the only use then made of petroleum. Since that time, it has been discovered that this heavy oil is an excellent lubricator, and consequently more valuable than the lighter oils.

The rock in which this oil is found is the " Ohio sandstone," which here varies very much in thickness, and consequently makes the production of oil more uncertain. In one place, it was found to be only one foot in thickness, and a few rods away one hundred feet thick. Now, we have before stated that this sand-rock is nearly pure silex, or quartz: it is there- fore very evident that it cannot produce the oil-no, not one drop in a thousand tons. Then it may be asked, if it is found here, where does it come from, and how does it get into these rocks? And why don't we find it everywhere in the sand-rocks, as well as here? We will try to answer these questions satis- factorily by investigating these rocks at Grafton.

Now then, commencing at the turf, we go through a few feet of drift-clay into the Cuyahoga shale, hard argillaceous, of a bluish-gray color, and fine in tex- ture. Its composition precludes the idea of its being an oil-producing rock. Then we go down some forty or fifty feet to the sand-rock; this we know does not produce it, although we find it here. And now, we remember that oil always works up, not down; and as we find it here, we must still go lower for its origin. So we go down again some eighty or one hundred feet to the next shale below the sand-rock; this is called " Bedford shale." A few feet of this is red, and then the color is light and dark gray. This is not what we are looking for; so down we go sixty or seventy feet more, and we strike a hard, black, bituminous shale called the "Cleveland shale." Ah! this, we think, must be it: bituminous it is, in every sense of the word. We will now take some of this shale to Prof. Wormely, at Columbus, and have him analyze it by distillation, and what is the report? Ten to fifteen gallons of oil to every ton of shale. We have now found where this oil comes from; and now we want to know what produces it. Prof. Wormely tells

us, and our eyes can plainly see that these rocks (we call all the members of the series rocks) are literally filled with sea-weeds, and other fatty vegetable mat- ter, so we conclude that it is a vegetable production, and not of animal origin.

The conditions under which oil is found are alike in all parts of the world: whether in Ohio, Pennsyl- vania, China, or elsewhere. It must be an open, porous sand-rock, which can absorb and retain the oil; or broken up into crevices, as reservoirs for its accumulation, and a hard impervious shale resting immediately upon the rock to prevent its escape. These are the only conditions under which oil is found in quantity.

At Grafton we find that internal disturbances from far below the surface have opened seams in the rocks, from below the Cleveland shale up to the sand-rock, which permitted the oil to escape above; and as the sand-rock was harder and more compact than the other rocks, the shock was correspondingly greater, thus rending them into fissures, into which the oil flowed for ages by the process of slow distillation. The impervious Cuyahoga shale resting directly upon this rock, acts like the cover to a pot to hokl the oil in these fissures and prevent its escape. Here it has remained for untold ages, until man's inventive genins has probed the carth and brought this wonderful treasure forth. The Cleveland shale is the lowest member in the Waverly group, which belongs to the carboniferous age.

ERIE SHALE.

We might almost pass the Erie rocks, without mention, so unimportant are they in our county. They have no fossils, and hold no minerals or other matter that can contribute materially to the wealth of the county. I only tind the Erie a few feet thick on the Vermillion near its month. A thin outerop appears about a mile or so east, on the lake shore, and from this we find Lo more of it until we reach Avon point, where it forms the rocky cliffs of the shore. Here it has an exposure of twenty-six feet; and four miles east, of sixty feet, and continues to form the shore-line to Dunkirk.

In New York and Pennsylvania the Erie shale reaches a thickness of more than two thousand feet, so that we here in Lorain county are on the extreme western edge of the basin of that old Erie sea, which in New York State was more than two thousand feet deep when this deposit was formed.

This shale may readily be distinguished by its color. which is a dull blue or greenish gray. There are thin bands of lenticular iron ore running through it, which were used in an early day for smelting both at Vermillion and Black river, but since the Lake Superior and other iron mines have been made acces- sible, this kind of ore has been abandoned for the reason that it could not be obtained in any quantity. as it could only be gathered along the shore as it washed out from the cliff by the action of the waves;

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

and also the expense and difficulty of smelting. 1 have been told by those who have worked this kind of iron-stone that it produced about forty per cent. of iron. The Erie belongs to the Devonian and is the uppermost member in this group.

HURON SHALE.

We now come to the last or lowest rock that is exposed on the surface in the county. Like the Cleve- land, it is a black bituminous shale tilled with car- bonaceous matter. The oil, of which it is the origin and of which it contains from ten to fifteen gallons to the ton of shale, is of a lighter grade than that. obtained from the Cleveland shale. It is supposed to he the source from which is obtained all the oil of Pennsylvania. This rock underlies all of Ohio, has its outerop in Kentucky, Tennessee and some of the western States. lis thickness here is about three Inindred feet, but in the eastern part of the State it is nearly twice as thick. Aside from the petroleum production the most interesting feature of the Huron is its gigantic fossil tishes, for which see chapter on " Fossils."

Not only is the Huron the source of petroleum, but it is the origin of the carburetted hydrogen gas which escapes from the ground at numerous points all

through the county. Almost every township has more or less of these " gas-springs." All along the lake shore, in still weather, this gas may be seen bubbling up, and in some places the flow is so copious that they never freeze over in winter. Often have l tonehed a lighted match to the escaping gas as I have been sailing along, to see it flash. In some parts of the county these gas-springs have been utilized for lighting and heating purposes, and it seems to me the time is not far distant when this gas will be used to a considerable extent.

I have now given as full a description of these rocks and their economic values as it is possible to give in one short chapter in a work like this. I have given their relative position to each other, as laid down in the books. That this will be changed and very much moditled hereafter I have do doubt, but at present we leave them here.

I hardly think it necessary, or that the reader will wish me to go on and tell about the Hamilton group, that fies next below the Huron, and the coniferous group, which is next, and the Oriskany which is the lowest member of the Devonian age. None of these rocks come to the surface in Lorain county, but are found as surface rocks in adjoining counties.

CHAPTER V. FOSSIL FISHES AND WHERE THEY ARE FOUND "

Front View (Diagram) one-tenth natural size, linear.

Dentition of Dinichthys Terrelli .- Newb.

Until a few years since it was supposed that the | rocks of Lorain county were barren of fossils, except small fragments of wood found in quarrying the sand- stone at Amherst. Elyria and some other places. These, of themselves, are quite unimportant, except it be to show that in the epoch of the deposition of these sand rocks there existed coniferous trees.

In the year 1866 I came to the lake shore and purchased the place now known as " Lake Breeze." In walking along the beach I found water-worn frag- ments of a new, and to me unknown fossil, of which Prof. Newberry, in the . Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio," says:

"About the time of Mr. Hertzer's discovery of fish remains at Dela- ware, Mr. Jay Terrell, of Elyria, found several large, water worn frag- ments of black, mineralized bone on the beach of the lake west of Avon Point. These had evidently fallen out of the cliff of Huron shale which her- forms the lake shore, On examining these bones when brought to

Cleveland by Mr. Terrell, I discovered that they were portions of the 'os medium dorsi' of Dinichthys. This is a plate which covers the arch of the back immediately behind the head; and was, in some cases, two feet in length and breadth, and more than two inches thick at its cen- tral anterior portion. Since his discovery of the first of these interesting relics, Mr. Terrell has pursued the search for them with much enthn- siasmı and success."

These water-worn specimens did not give me any chute as to where they might be found in place; still 1 made a careful, and thorough search for them when- over the lake was still and clear enough to admit of it, supposing them to be under the water, but near the shore, or they would not thus be broken up and thrown upon the beach.

I continued this search for more than a year, and had nearly given up the hope of ever finding them in place, and as we often found pieces upon the beach, I had began to think that possibly they might have been brought here in the ice period.

*By Jay Terrell.

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

About this time Park, one of my little boys, (who was then ten years old and who had been with me considerable in my researches, and had become much interested in hunting for "our fish-bed" as we had already begun to call it) went out alone one day and in hunting along the banks of shale found a specimen embedded in the solid shale. He immediately came to me to tell me of his success, and to show me where it was that I might get it out. This was the start- ing point,-"our leader." From this we certainly could find others. It was not then a bed of bones massed together as I had supposed, but in detached pieces, scattered here and there through the shale. Enough was now known to tell us where to look for them: and a vigorous search was at once com- menced. It was, however, three weeks before another single trace was found: and I had almost given up in despair, when one day. about a mile below our starting point, I found another specimen clearly defined in the rocky shale. My fiehl of labor was now fully located, and a systematized search commenced in earnest. From that time to the present I have exca- vated more than a thousand bones.

Sometimes I have had to work for days, and blast the rocks in order to reach them; others have been readily accessible by the pick and chisel. In one instance I worked five days, with several men, in blasting and clearing away the debris, before we reached the rocky floor in which these bones were embedded; but it was a grand find. Prof. Newberry. in speaking of it says:

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History of Lorain County, Ohio, Part 6

Author: Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia, Williams brothers Number of Pages: 626

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 626