History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers, Part 7

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company
Number of Pages: 726

USA > Ohio > Erie County > History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers > Part 7
USA > Ohio > Huron County > History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers > Part 7

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into the red shale which gives its name to the Ver- million river, and furnishes an inexhaustible supply of war paint to the native inhabitants of the region. The Cleveland shale rests upon the

ERIE SHALES.

The largest measurement of these shales in the county, thus far obtained, is thirty-two feet. They are composed of soft, argillaceous, bluish shades, with hard calcareo-silicions bands a few inches in thickness. The great changes in the thickness of this formation, and its position between the two beds of carbonaceous shales, are of interest, as showing the topography of the region, and the changes of level at the time of the introduction of the carboniferous vegetation of the coal measures. These two deposits of carbonaceous shales are as well defined and as easily distinguished from the including strata, as beds of coal. They may in one sense be called coal, containing from eighty- five to ninety per cent. of ash, and having an origin similar to that of true cannel coal. The fine homo- geneons material of which the shales are composed indicate their deposition from quiet water; and the wide range of the formation, as well as the remains of huge fishes which it contains, forbid the idea of its having accumulated in shallow swamps. Whatever may have been the condition under which the Huron shales were formed, these conditions were abruptly changed; and the epoch was followed by long con- tinned intervals, in which the growth and deposit of this carbonaceous matter were interrupted.

HURON SHALE.

These are highly bituminous black shales having somewhat the appearance of cannel coal, containing in places the remains of plants accompanied with films of true coal. They also frequently include thin strata of blue argillaceous shales, containing very little bituminous matter. Spheroid, and in the lower part of the Huron shales, elongated concretions are very abundant, varying in size from a half inch to fifteen feet in diameter. The smaller ones are composed almost entirely of pyrites, the larger ones of impure carbonate of lime. The shales are so highly charged with sulphur and potash, that in exposures protected from the rain an efflorescence of alum is sometimes seen three-fourths of an inch in thickness; and occa- sionally a nearly pure sulphur of equal thickness may be observed .:

From the reported boring for water in the machine shops, Mr. Read estimates the thickness of the Huron shales to be abont seven hundred feet above the top of the nearest exposure of the Cleveland shale. The Huron shale is the great oil-producing rock of Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. The slow distribu- tion of bituminous matter in it has resulted in the production of gas and petroleum, which along the outcrop of the strata, have steadily escaped. The petroleum flowing into the fissures in the rocks, where it was retained, has parted with its volatile matter,

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

leaving a residunm of asphaltum which by continued desiccation has become minutely cracked, and the fissures have been gradually filled with barite. Such deposits afford no proof that a valuable deposit of coal may be found outside the coal measures. True coal in very thin lamina is occasionally found in this shale, and in all the formations between it and the coal measures, land plants seem to have flourished under favorable conditions during the time of the deposit of all the upper Devonian, and the sub-carboniferons rocks. It has left its record in plant impressions, and in isolated thin films of coal which may be found on almost any horizon of these rocks; but if taken as indications of the presence of workable deposits of coal, they will unquestionably lead to disappointment.

HAMILTON GROUP.

This important group of limestones and shales of the New York geologists is here represented by a thin and unimportant deposit of bluish, yellow marly limestone. This is quite soluble, and therefore much honeycombed and eroded at its points of exposure. Were it not for the profusion of Hamilton fossils contained in it, this would be regarded as the upper part of the corniferous limestone upon which it rests. It is apparently only from ten to fifteen feet in thiek- ness.

CORNIFEROUS LIMESTONE.

This formation contributes the surface rock at Bellevue and a small territory adjacent in the north- west part of the county. Two and a half miles north of the village, and on the county line, it is covered with only from eighteen inches to two feet of soil, and has been exposed in a quarry to the depth of eight feet. The rock is in thin layers, hard, com- pact, highly fossiliferous, and presenting the ordi- nary characteristics of the upper layer of the cornif- erons at Sandusky. Its surface is thirty feet above the railway at Bellevue. South from this point, and three-fourths of a mile north of the south line of Lyme township, it is struck as the first rock in sink- ing wells at a depth of twelve feet from the surface. Still further south, and west of Weaver's Corners, a ridge of limestone soil, filled with its debris, crowns the west line of the county, at an elevation of fifty feet above Bellevue, making the thickness of the rock in the county approximately fifty feet.

CHAPTER VII.

GEOLOGY OF ERIE COUNTY-SURFACE, FEATURES AND DEPOSIT. *

THE most interesting features in the geology of Erie county are the splendid series of glacial mark- ings inscribed on the corniferous limestone in and about Sandusky City, the lake ridges which traverse the county from east to west, and the remarkable

petrifying fountains, known as the Castalia springs. In its topography, Erie county is without any strongly marked features. Tire surface, to the eye, seems nearly level; while, in fact, it forms a gentle slope from the south line of the county, where it has an eleva- tion of one hundred and fifty feet above the lake to the lake level. This monotony of surface has been produced by the planing action of the great glacier that excavated the basin of Lake Erie; not only that basin which now holds the water, but the greater one of which the southern bonndery is the water shed between the lake and the Ohio. Erie county, there- fore, lies near the bottom of this greater basin, and the great ice mass which filled it, moving from the northeast to the southwest, ground down the under- lying rocks to a nearly uniform surface. The outlines of the lake shore have been apparently determined by the same great cause. The general bearing of the south shore of Lake Erie is essentially the same from near Buffalo to the mouth of the Huron river. There the coast line forms a large angle with its former course, and stretches, with only local variations, directly from Huron to the month of the Manmee. By a glance at the map, however, it will be seen that the west end of Lake Erie is blocked up with islands, and that a series of these islands stretches north ward from Sandusky and forms a barrier which must have offered serions opposition to the westward movement of the glacier. The effect of this ridge thrown across the lake basin and struck obliquely by the moving ice mass, was to deflect that slightly to the south, and to cause it to cut the deep notch in the lake shore at the mouth of the Huron. The exeava- tion of this point was also facilitated by the compar- ative softness of the Huron shale which underlies this portion of the county.

The drift deposits which overlie the glaciated sur- face in most parts of the State have been removed from the greater part of Erie county. The bowlder clay is, however, found covering the rock surface in the southern part of the county. This is, as usual, a bine, or where exposed and its iron oxyd- ized, reddish-yellow, unstratified clay, thickly set with angular fragments of shale taken from the lake basin. With these are more or fewer, generally small, bowl- ders, usually ground and striated, derived from the crystalline rocks north of the lakes. In this part of the county are also found beds of sand and the lake ridges which rest upon the bowlder clay. These latter deposits are evidently the effect of shore waves, and are in fact old beaches formed when the lake stood much higher than it now does. A good illustration of the mode of deposition of such sand banks and ridges is seen on the lake shore between Cedar Point and Huron. Here the mouth of Sandusky bay is partially closed by a ridge thrown up by the waves which will ultimately dike out the lake from and reclaim a large area formerly covered by navigable water. Between the ridges and sand hills which stretch east and west, north of Prout's station, is a

*From the Geological Survey of Ohlo, vol. Il.

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

surface, level to the eye, formed by a fine black soil which covers the limestone here, presenting a remark- ably level surface and nowhere deeply buried. This district was originally prairie, with islands of timber, and has proved the most fertile and productive portion of the county. We have here a broad surface of lime. stone planed down nearly as level as a house floor. This was doubtless once covered with drift clay, but has been removed by the waves of the lake when they swept over it. Subsequently, when the water of the lake had been withdrawn, this tract was left in a condition similar to that of the upper end of Sandus- ky bay, or to that of the space behind the barrier east of the city, viz: covered with shallow, quiet water, which was gradually replaced by a fine sediment, mixed with the remains of the luxuriant vegetation that grew there. The result was a sheet of remark* ably fine, rich soil, having all the characteristics of the prairie soils of the west, and, like them, covered with a growth of grass rather than trees. In future ages, when Lake Erie shall be further drained, what is now Sandusky bay will undoubtedly present nearly the same appearance as the district under considera- tion.

CASTALIA SPRINGS.

The phenomena presented by Castalia springs have excited considerable curiosity and interest, both on the part of the residents of the county and of visitors from other States, and deserve a few words of descrip- tion and explanation. As is known to most persons' at Castalia a volume of water which forms quite a river, flows up from several deep orifices in the lime- stone rock, and supplies in its descent to the lake the motive power for several mills. The water maintains nearly the same temperature winter and summer, and its flow is more uniform than that of surface streams in the vicinity, though sensibly affected by periods of unusual and wide-spread drought. The water of the springs is highly charged with lime, rapidly incrusting any object covered by it, and it has deposited a sheet of travertine over an area of several square miles in the vicinity. The rock in which the subterranean channels are excavated, through which the waters of the springs flow, is the water lime, the uppermost members of the silurian system. This is a magnesian limestone, in fact, a typical dolomite, containing about forty-two per cent of magnesia and fifty-five of carbonate of lime. This rock forms on the surface an unbroken sheet, reaching from Castalia to Logan county, the highest land in the State. The true theory of the formation of these springs is simply this: the Helderberg limestone, like many others, is soluble in atmospheric water containing carbonic acid, It forms the slope of the water-shed, and the drainage of the country south from Castalia, passing over and through it, has dissolved out a connecting system of channels which are really subterranean rivers. Casta- lia springs are formed at the mouths of one of these. Similar springs and undergound streams are met with

in all limestone countries. The table land of central Kentucky affords innumerable examples of them. This plateau is underlain by a thick mass of unusually soluble limestone. The surface water dissolves it away so easily that it dissolves every crack it pene- trates, and has formed a connected system of under- ground channels by which all the drainage of the country is effected. The celebrated Mammoth Cave is only one of these channels. Along the margin of this plateau there are a great number of fountains like Castalia springs, which mark the mouths of the subterranean streams that have been described. Such fountains are also common in other countries, and the classical Clitumnus bursts out at the foot of a limestone mountain, forming a fountain precisely like that of Castalia.

GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE.

The section of the rocks underlying Erie county is, in descending order, as follows:

First, Berea grit. .60 feet.

Second, Bedford shale

.75 feet

Third, Cleveland shale 50 to 60 feet.

Fourth, Erie shale:

50 (?) feet.

Fifth, Huron shale 300 feet.

Sixth, Hamilton limestone. 20 feet.

Seventh, Corniferous limestone

100 (?) feet.

Eighth, Oriskany limestone . 0-5 feet.

Ninth, Water lime group 100 (?) feet.

Tenth, Onondaga salt group 30 to 40 feet.

In the oil well, bored at the mouth of the Vermillion river, the Niagara limestone, the Clinton group, and Medina sandstone were penetrated, but they nowhere come to the surface, within the limits of the county. Of the foregoing strata, the first, the sandstone quar- ried at Amherst and Brownhelm, of which the out- crop crosses the east line of the county, within less than a half mile of the lake shore; thence it sweeps round to the south and west, passing through Berlin- ville, and a little east of Norwalk, in Huron county. Within the area lying to the south and east of this line, the Berea grit underlies most of the surface, but it is very generally covered by the drift materials; and it is only where its more compact and massive portions have resisted the action of erosive agents, and these have been left in relief, that it projects above the sur- face. The hills in which the Amherst and Brown- helm quarries are located, and the elevation known as Berlin Heights, are all masses of this character. They were once bluffs upon the shore of the lake, and everywhere show marks of the action of water and ice. Along the ontcrop of the Berea grit, its softer portions have undoubtedly been most extensively eroded, and are now deeply covered by drift deposits, so that probably little of this portion of the area it occupies will furnish valuable quarries of building stone; but as the surface rises, and the rocks dip to- ward the south and east, it soon passes below the surface, and there is every probability that within the townships of Berlin, Florence, and Vermillion, the Berea grit will hereafter be quarried in many localities, precisely as it now is at Berea.

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

BEDFORD SHALE,

Below the Berea sandstone is a bed of shale, forty to sixty feet in thickness, which is sometimes blue, or banded in color, but more generally red. This red shale is conspicuously shown in the valley of the Ver- million, and is exposed at many places in this section of the State, immediately underlying the Berea sand- stone: it may, therefore, serve as an important guide to those who are seeking for the excellent quarry stone furnished by that formation.

Neither the Berea sandstone, nor the red shale, have, in Erie county, furnished any fossils; but at Elyria, Lorain county, and at Berea and Bedford, Cuyahoga county, a large number of remains of mol- lusks and fishes have been taken from these strata.

CLEVELAND SHALE.

Under the red shale in the banks of the Vermillion, occurs a black, bituminons shale, sixty or more feet in thickness. This is a constant member of the Wa- verly or lower carboniferous group, and forms the base of that series. It is is unusually well exposed in the vicinity of Cleveland, and I have therefore called it, for convenience sake, "the Cleveland shale." In its lithological character, this shale is hardly to be dis- tingnished from the great black shale (the Huron shale), which is a member of the Devonian system, and which here lies only a little below. Further east, however, they are separated by an interval of several hundred feet, and the fossils which they contain are widely different. In the Cleveland shale are bones, scales. and spines of fishes of small size, and of car- boniferons types. In the Huron shale, on the con- trary, we find the remains of fishes of enormous size, of most peculiar structure, and such as clearly belong to the old red sandstone fauna, so fully described by Hugh Miller.

ERIE SHALE.

The lake shore from the Pennsylvania line to Erie county is, for the most part, formed by a series of green and blne shales, which represent the Chemung and Portage rocks of New York, and belong to the Devonian formation. These shales thin out rapidly westward, and seem to be recognizable beyond the point under consideration. In the valley of the Cuya- hoga they are exposed to the depth of one hundred and forty feet, and have there yielded the most characteristic fossils of the Chemung.

The upper layers of the Huron shale are inter- stratified with the lower ones of the Erie in the northeastern portion of the State, as we learn by bor- ings made at Cleveland and further east. . Some traces of this interlocking may be seen at Monroe- ville, where the well sunk at the railroad station ents some blue as well as black shales. South of this point, however, the Erie shale has not been recog- nized, and it probably reaches but a little way back from the lake shore.

HURON SHALE.

This is the name we have given to the great mass of black shale designated by the first geological board as "the black slate," and of which the outerop forms a belt which extends entirely across the State, from Erie to Scioto county. This is the shale which forms the banks of the Huron river at Monroeville and below. It is not here a homogeneous black shale, as there are some gray, argillaceous layers interstratified with the more carbonaceous portions. The greater part of it is, however, black, and highly bituminous, con- taining ten per cent. or more of combustible matter. From this bitumen, by slow spontaneous distillation, petroleum is evolved, and flows out in oil springs at a great number of localities. The process of distilla- tion also gives rise to the gaseous hydro-carbons, and gas springs are even more abundant than oil springs over the outerop of this formation.

The Huron shale in some places contains many concretions of impure limestone, of which hundreds may be seen at Monroeville, where they have washed ont of the river banks. These concretions are some- times almost absolutely spherical; and because of their geometric regularity, they have been collected as objects of curiosity by the inhabitants of the vicinity, often serving as ornamental caps to gate posts, etc. Some of these concretions contain the bones or teeth of huge fishes, first discovered in the same formation at Delaware by Mr. Hertzer, and from its formidable character, called Dinichthys, (terrible fish).

Two species of this genus have been found in Ohio -one at Delaware, near the base of the Huron shale, and named after its discoverer, Dinichthys Hertzeri; the other from the summit of the formation in Shef- field, Lorain county, and this I have named Dinich- thys Terrilli, to commemorate the service rendered to science by Mr. Jay Terrell, to whose zeal and intelligence we owe all the best specimens yet ob- tained. Both these remarkable fishes will be found described in the palaeontological portion of this re- port. Numerous fragments of the great bones of Dinichthys have been broken out of the concretions which have fallen from the shale banks of Huron river, but the specimens yet obtained from these are too imperfect to show to which species they belong. Little effort has been made to collect at this point, and it is probable that careful search would be rewarded by the discovery of some specimens of great interest.

As nearly as we can determine, the thickness of the Hnron shale in this part of the State is about three hundred feet.

HAMILTON GROUP.

At Prout's station and Deep ent, on the Sandusky, Mansfield and Newark railroad, the base of the Huron shale is exposed, and beneath it are seen layers of light, cherty, and bluish, marly limestone, which are the representatives of the Hamilton group of New

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

York. Here the formation has become insignificant in dimensions, compared with what it is further east; where it is not more than twenty feet in thickness, while in Central New York the Hamilton group is twelve hundred feet thick. There is no mistaking the equivalence of these strata, however, for they are full of fossils. At Prout's station the following species are found, viz: Spirifera mucronata, Cyrtia, Ham- iltonensis, Straphodonta demissa, Athyrus spirife- roides, Heliophyllum Halli, Pharops, bufo, etc., etc., the most characteristic fossils of the Hamilton. From the softness of the Hamilton limestone in Erie connty, as well as from its inconsiderable dimen- sions, it forms no well marked line of onterop, but it will often be detected in sections which inelnde the base of the Huron shale and the top of the cornif- erous limestone. It may be said to underlie a very narrow belt of territory, extending southwesterly from the lake shore, at a point. half way between Sandusky and Huron, to the Lake Shore railroad, midway between Monroeville and Bellevue.

CORNIFEROUS LIMESTONE.

The most interesting, and perhaps the most impor- tant formation in Erie county is the corniferons lime- stone. This is the rock underlying Sandusky city, that which forms Marblehead, Kelly's Island, Middle Island, etc., the source from which the greater part of the lime used in northern Ohio is derived, and a rock scarcely less extensively employed as a building stone than the Berea grit. The upper portion of the corniferons limestone is blue in color, and lies in thin strata. It is this subdivision of the formation that is opened in the quarries at Sandusky, and which furnishes the blue limestone known as the "San- dusky stone," and largely used for building, paving, and flagging at Sandusky and elsewhere. The lower portion is light colored, and much more massive, and is that quarried at Kelly's Island and Marblehead. The fossils of the corniferons limestone are exceedingly numerous and of great interest. Like most other limestones this has been derived from the decomposi- tion of organic structures, and in many places it is almost altogether made up of corals and shells. In chemical composition it is a magnesian limestone, containing twenty per cent. or more of magnesia. This peculiarity has been quoted as objectionable in its adaptation to the manufacture of lime; but, on the contrary, it is benefited by this ingredient, the magnesia making it slower in setting, " less hot," as masons say, and therefore much more manageable.

The fossil fishes of the corniferous limestone have attracted more or less attention from geologists for many years. They are now chiefly obtained from the quarries on Kelly's Island and Marblehead, in the lower corniferous limestone; and those of Sandusky and Delaware, from the upper member, or Sandusky limestone.

Of Macropetalichthys, the only portion yet found is the cranium. This is composed of a number of geo-

metrical plates of which the external surface is beau- tifully tubereled. It is known to most of the quarry- men, and by them it is generally regarded as the car- apace of turtle. It is, however, in fact, the cranium of a large fish, as any one will plainly see who will take the trouble to compare with it the eraniuni of our common sturgeon.

Onychodus was an equally large fish, of which the cranial bones were much more numerous and easily separated, so that they are generally found detached and scattered through the rock. The jaws of this fish are not unfrequently met with. They are a foot or more in length, and are studded with teeth along the upper margin. The most singular feature in the structure of this fish is formed by a crest of seven large, enrved, pointed teeth, which, attached to an arch of bone, were inserted between the extremities of the under jaw, apparently acting like the prow of a ram.

ORISKANY SANDSTONE.

Beneath the corniferous limestone, on the penin- sula, and near Castalia, a thin band of limestone is visible. This holds the position of the Oriskany sandstone in New York, and though it has here yielded no Oriskany fossils, they are said to have been obtained from it in Indiana; and there is little doubt, therefore, that it should be regarded as the equivalent of the Oriskany sandstone.

WATER LIVE.

The upper portion of the silurian system is, in Ohio, represented by the water lime and Salina form- ations. Of these, the water lime is the uppermost and by far the most conspicuous. It underlies a larger portion of Ohio than any other formation ex- cept the coal measures. It composes all of Catawba island, Put-in-Bay, and the other islands of that group. Erie county just reaches the edge of the water lime area, and, as has been mentioned, it is in this rock that the subterranean channel has been excavated through which flows the stream of water that forms Castalia springs.

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History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers, Part 7

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.) Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company Number of Pages: 726

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company
Number of Pages: 726