History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 13

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 13

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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

dening and fruit-raising so desirable in the vicinity of a large city. The southeast part of the county becomes more broken as it nears the knobs along the Salt river, but it is also productive and like- wise healthful, with varied and beautiful scenery, making it a favorite region for the better sort of private residences.

RESOURCES.

There is no coal in the county, but the cement and limestone turned out at Louisville are among the finest in the world. The water-power at the Falls is the best in the country. The tobacco market at Louisville is the largest in the land, the actual sales aggregating $10,000,000 a year, with twenty-five firms engaged in the business. Other elements of wealth in the city and county will appear as we proceed with this narrative.

We now give some special description of the most remarkable region in the county, topo- graphically regarded.

"THE KNOBS."

In the northwest of this county, a belt of knobby country, of several miles' width, stretches from the foot of the Falls of the Ohio to the mouth of Salt river, and thence up that river val- ley in a nearly southern direction, with a slight curve towards the east as far as Muldrough's Hill, and so on southeastwardly. These knobs are in ranges of conical hills two to three hun- dred feet in height, and are so conspicuous a feature in the geology of the State that they have given the name of Knob Formation to a division of the sub-carboniferous rocks in Jefferson, Bul- litt, and Larue counties. These consist mainly of a fine-grained sandstone, which runs out into the limestone shales of Russell, Cumberland, and other counties. When sufficiently weathered, it produces a silico-argillaceous soil, which washes easily, and is therefore thin and shallow. It is not, generally, a characteristic soil, or soil by itself, but is commonly mixed largely with a white soil derived more closely from the underlying shales, which are of ashy color, and crop out on the slopes and in the narrow valleys between the knobs, and is sometimes intermingled with the debris from a thin cap of the sub-carboniferous limestone. The summits of the knobs, however, have a much richer soil, fertilized as it has been, probably, by the roosting and alighting of birds upon the hill-tops through many long ages. Not

much agriculture is yet practicable on the sum- mits or slopes of the knobs ; but a great deal of timber has been taken from them and their vi- cinity, particularly in the shape of railway ties, mainly cut from the black locust. The other forest products of the knobs are the white, red, black, and chestnut oaks, a small kind of hickory (Fuglans tomentosa), the black gum-tree, in flat and wet positions the sweet gum and the elm, and in some specially favorable situations the poplar. The argillaceous shales at the base of the formation contain a limited percentage of ironstones.

THE WATERS OF JEFFERSON.

It is a very well-watered county, though it shares the general characteristic of the State in the comparative absence of lakes. Ponds, how- ever, abounded upon the Louisville plateau in the early day, and induced much malarial sick- ness ; but they have now mostly disappeared. The historic Salt river no longer intersects the county, as in the early day of its greatness of territory; but enters the Ohio a little below the southwestern corner, receiving one or two small affluents from the soil of Jefferson. The Ohio river and the Falls, so prominent in making the county and its city what they are, receive par- ticular notice in another chapter. Harrod's creek and the Beargrass are the best known of the other streams here and hereabout, and are very serviceable waters in the county. We copy the following descriptions from Dr. McMurtrie's Sketches of Louisville, which, although wtitten more than sixty years ago, answers well enough for the present day, due allowance being made for the removal of the mouth of the Beargrass about two miles north of its old site :

BEARGRASS CREEK.

Beargrass, which gives its name to the fertile and wealthy settlement through which it passes, is a considerable mill- stream, affording a plentiful supply of water eight or ten months in the year. It rises by eight different springs ten miles east of Louisville, that unite and form the main body of the creek within two miles of that place. This, like the preceding one, sometimes disappears, pursuing a secret course for a quarter of a mile together, subsequently emerg- ing with a considerable force. On its banks are several grist- mills, and one for paper. It enters the Ohio (to which for the last half-mile it runs nearly parallel) opposite Louisville, leaving between it and the river an elevated strip of land, covered with large trees, that afford a delightful and shady promenade to the citizens during the heats of summer.

At the mouth of this creek is one of the best harbors on the Ohio, perfectly safe and commodious for all vessels un-

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

der five hundred tons' burthen, there being twelve feet water constantly found here during the greatest depresion of the river. It is from this harbor or basin that the contemplated canal will be supplied with its destined element, which may perhaos produce a beneficial effect, by quickening its motion and that of Beargrass, whose sluggishness during the sum- mer is, 1 have no doubt, productive of consequences injur- ious to the health of the inhabitants of the town.

HARROD'S CREEK.

Harrod's creek is a valuable stream emptying into the Ohio nine or ten miles above Louisville, where it is forty yards wide. About a fourth of a mile from its mouth is a natural fall of six or seven feet, occasioned by the oblique direction of the rock forming its bed, which dips at an angle of seven de- grees. It has been reported that, like many others in the State, it has found a subterraneous passage, through which a great part of the water flows, without crossing the Falls.

DR. DRAKE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY.

Dr. Daniel Drake, in the last and greatest work of his life, the treatise on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, pub- lished in 1850, makes the following note of the topography of the country below the Falls, on the Kentucky side:

In ascending the Ohio river from the mouth of Salt river to the Falls, the course is but a few degrees east of north, the distance about twenty miles. In traveling from one point to the other by land, the journey is over a plain, the elevation of which is above high-water mark, and its breadth from three to five or six miles. From every part of this plain, which ex- tends to the river on the west, the blue range of Silver Creek hills may be seen, running parallel with the river on its west- ern or right side, while a lower range, called the "knobs," is seen to terminate the plain on the opposite or eastern side.

Thus, between Salt river and the Falls, there is an ample terrace, elevated nearly as high as the second bottoms of the river, already described in section two of this chapter. lt cannot, however, in strictness be classed with those deposits which, generally sloping back toward the hills, and composed largely of gravel, pebbles, and bowlders, retain but little water on their surface; while this, although it presents many beds and ridges of sand or sandy loam, so abounds in clay that the rains are but slowly absorbed, and at the same time it is so level as to prevent their readily flowing off. Thus, in times long gone by, they accumulated in the depressions on its surface and overspread it with ponds and limited elm and maple swamps, which dry up in summer and autumn, but at other seasons send out small streams that make their way into Salt river and into the Ohio, both above and below the Falls. The middle and southern portions of this plain, where the natural cisterns were, and still are, of greatest ex- tent, is called by the ominous name of the " Pond Settle- ment." The area of the entire plateau cannot be less than sixty square miles, the whole of which lies to the summer- windward of the city of Louisville, which is built on its north- ern extremity, opposite to and above the Falls.

THE BUFFALO ROADS.

One of the most remarkable physical features of Kentucky, as found by the pioneers in the early day, were the great roads through the

forest, traversed by the buffaloes in their journeys to and from the salt licks, and the extensive "clearings"-for such they were-made by these remarkable animals. Their pathways, in many cases, were sufficient, in width and comparative smoothness, for wagon-ways, and of course fol- lowed the most eligible routes, for man as well as beast. These roads were much used by the early explorers, surveyors, and settlers, and great- ly facilitated their movements through the dense woods. John Filson, the schoolmaster, one of the intending founders of Cincinnati, in his little work on the Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky, first published in 1784, after some description of the licks-in which he men- tions "Bullet's Lick " as "improved, and this af- fords salt sufficient for all Kentucky, and exports some to the Illinois "-writes the following of the roads and other traces of the buffalo herds. He wrote, it should be observed, before the bison had been driven beyond the Mississippi:

To these [the licks] the cattle repair, and reduce high hills rather to valleys than plains. The amazing herds of buffalo which resort thither, by their size and number, fill the traveler with amazement and terror, especially when he beholds the prodigious roads they have made from all quarters, as if lead- ing to some populous city ; the vast space of land around these springs desolated as if by a ravaging enemy, and hills reduced to plains-for the land near those springs are chiefly hilly. These are truly curiosities, and the eye can scarcely be satisfied with admiring them.

LARGE GAME GENERALLY.

The early settlers found all varieties of large game known to this country and latitude here in great abundance, as the buffalo, bear, elk, deer, beaver, and otter, as well as the smaller animals that remain in diminishing numbers to this day. The first-named, it is said, was sometimes seen in droves at the salt licks, of seven to eight thou- sand. Dr. McMurtrie also notices the great buffalo trails. He says :

The roads opened by these animals, in their progress through the woods, may be reckoned among the natural curi- osities of the State, being generally wide enough for a car- riage or wagon way, in which the trees, shrubs, etc., are all trampled down, and destroyed by the irresistible impetus of the mighty phalanx.

Not one of these animals was left in Kentucky when the Doctor wrote in 1819. He says that the beaver had abounded within a few miles of Louisville, "and were we permitted to judge from the remains of their fortifications, we should pronounce them to have been the innumerable

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

possessors of the soil from time immemorial." He writes further

Every pond, creek, and river exhibits some traces of them, but their metropolis appears to have been situated about four miles east of Louisville, where, among a variety of extensive dams, I measured one whose length is 1, 500 feet, height 8, thickness at the base 14, with a talus equal to 45° extending to the top. At the end of this bank, which runs perfectly straight and which is thrown up and sloped in a most work- manlike style, is a second one stretching out nearly at right angles from it, in form of a crescent. Back of the latter may be seen their dens, which are disposed with great regu- larity, about twenty feet from the bank. Their covered ways, by which in times of low water they manage to secure a sufficiency of it, so as to conceal themselves in their passage to and from them, are also very visible. I have been in- formed by a respectable old gentleman who was among the earlier settlers, that when he first arrived here the beaver was somtimes seen in the neighborhood, and that at that time the great dam spoken of was at least fourteen feet high, a prodigious monument of the industry and skill of this social little animal.

The otter, formerly abundant in the Ohio and its tributary waters, had wholly disappeared from this region in 1819, though still caught in the Mississippi. Serpents were not numerous or dangerous, though sometimes huge rattlesnakes were encountered. The snapping-turtle was found in the river, sometimes of nfty to seventy pounds weight, also the lesser soft-shelled turtle, which was much esteemed by epicures. Deer still frequented the barrens, and were seen at times but a few miles from the town; while bears kept at a greater distance in the woods. "Foxes occasionally disturb the farmer's hen-roosts, and wolves now and then pick up a stray sheep; they are, however, neither very numerous nor fierce."

THE CLIMATE.

Dr. McMurtrie's observations upon the meteor- ology of this region are also valuable. He re- marks:

It appears from a variety of thermometrical observations and comparisons, that the climate of this country is uniform- ly milder than that of the Atlantic States In the same parallel of latitude. This has been contested, but, until facts and the evidence of our senses are considered as inferior to the- ory, the position must be considered as correct. Among the most remarkable of the former, noticed by preceding and able writers, are the presence of the parakeet, thousands of which enlighten our woods winter and summer, the existence of many plants that cannot support the cold of the Atlantic States in the same latitude, the short duration of ice and snow, and finally by the prevalence of the southwesterly winds. The remark applied by Dr. Rush to the climate of Pennsylvania is equally true with respect to that of Ken- tucky (which is, in fact, the more disagreeable of the two), Its most steady trait being its irregularity. Heat and cold succeed each other so rapidly and so often in the twenty-four

hours, that it is impossible to vary your dress so as to be . comfortable under their changes.

A sketch of the weather during the last winter will convey as much information upon the subject as a volume. Early in the fall the Indian summer, as it is called, succeeded the autumn, and lasted four weeks, with occasional days of ex- tremely cold weather; this was succeeded by a week of changes the most sudden and extraordinary I ever witnessed, the ponds in the town being frozen and thawed alternately during the same day, which was closed by a night equally as variable. The cold now appeared as though it had com- menced in good earnest; during the space of three weeks it was very intense, quantities of drifting ice were seen on the Ohio, the ponds were incrusted by it three inches deep, when the wind, which had hitherto blown from the northwest, sud- denly veering to the south and south-southwest, a warm rain fell, which dissolved the icy fetters of winter and again re- stored the Indian summer. Such was the mildness of the weather till the latter end of January, that the buds of the peach-tree were swelled, and had not a few frosty nights supervened they would have blossomed. On the 7th day of February the weeping willows were in leaf. From which time to the ist of March the weather continued variable, but generally warm, at which period the cold of winter again as- sailed our ears and rendered welcome a blazing hearth.

Spring is unknown, the transition from winter to summer being almost instantaneous, the former concluding with heavy rains that I have known to last for three weeks nearly without intermission, at the expiration of which time summer is nt hand.

The quantity of rain that falls here is quite considerable, which, together with the number of stagnant waters that are in the vicinity, occasion a humidity universally complained of; books, polished steel instruments, paper, and in fact everything that is not in daily use, proclaim its prevalence.

Thunder storms during the months of July and August are very severe, attended with great discharges of the electric fluid, sometimes as violent as any ever witnessed under the tropics, the thunder being of that pealing, rattling kind which would startle even a Franklin. The winds at such periods are all in wild confusion, blowing in various directions at various elevations from the earth's surface, as indicated by the courses of the 'scuds," which I have remarked traveling to three different points of the compass at one and the same moment, with a degree of velocity far superior to any I have ever noticed, with the exception of those of the hurricanes of the East and West Indies. Awful is the scene presented in the forests at such periods. Naught is to be heard but the crackling of fallen timber, mixed with the roar of Heaven's artillery, and nothing to be seen but great branches wrenched and torn from the parent stem, which is the next moment leveled with the ground. Sometimes a single tree here or there in exposed situations is destroyed, then again whole acres are laid waste by its resistless fury. Happily for this country those of the first degree of violence are rare, while those of the second and third rates are not at all dangerous.

The quantity of snow and ice is very inconsiderable, the cold seldom being sufficiently intense to close the river, and the latter has not at any time since I have been a resident of the place exceeded two inches in depth at any one time. Sleighs are consequently strangers.

1 am well assured from very unexceptionable authority that the climate of Kentucky has undergone a considerable change for the worse during the last twenty years. The sea- sons were formerly more distinct, the weather milder and more uniform, and thunder-storms very uncommon. The

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

.only traces left of this happy state of things are now to be seen in the fall of the year, which is generally, though not always, remarkable for pleasantness. Combustion is much more rapid here than in the Atlantic States, a remark made by several others beside myself. Whether this be owing to spongy and porous nature of the wood, arising from its rapid growth, or a greater quantity of oxygen existing in the atmos- phere, I am at a loss to determine. The fact, however, may be relied on.

THE SOIL AND ITS CULTURE.

The Doctor's remarks upon the agricultural capabilities of this region, as they existed in his day, also have interest. He says:

Perhaps no city in the Union is supported by a more fertile and productive soil than Louisville, The lands throughout the county generally are well timbered, the first-rate being covered with walnut, mulberry, locust, beech, sugar-tree, cherry, pawpaw, buckeye, elm, poplar, and graperies, the two latter of which attain a most enormous size. I have fre- quently met with graperies in the Beargrass settlement meas- uring thirty-six inches in circumference, and as to the poplar it is proverbially gigantic. From six to ten feet is the usual diameter of these trees, and of the sycamore, one individual of which is said to be still standing in the interior, into whose hollow a gentlemen assured me he had stepped with a measured rod twenty feet long, which grasping by its middle, he could turn in every direction. If in addition to this we consider the thickness of sound wood on each side of the tree necessary to sustain its tremendous and superincumbent weight, we may have some idea of this great monarch of the Western forest.

The second-rate lands produce dogwood, oak, hickory, and some sugar-trees; the third-rate nothing but blackjack oak and fir. Red cedar is found on the banks of the rivers and creeks, and white pine only in the mountains.

The first-rate lands were too strong for wheat, but were excellently adapted to corn, and in favorable seasons would yield one hundred bush- els to the acre. When weakened by a few crops of corn, such ground would yield thirty bushels of wheat to the acre, or three hundred of pota- toes, thirty-five to forty of oats, six to eight hun- dred pounds of hemp, or fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds of tobacco. The second and third rates of land will give yields in propor- tion. The Doctor adds :

An attempt to cultivate cotton has been made, but although on a small scale under the superintendence of a few good housewives it ripens extremely well, yet on a large one it has always failed.

The prices of lands at this time were $10 to $200 an acre, and in most cases the titles were doubtful. But, says the Doctor:

There are, however, seventy thousand acres of military surveys in the Beargrass settlement, which hold out the pros- pect of a golden fleece to the agricultural emigrant, not only from the great fertility of the soil and the undisputed validity of the title, but from the great price he can immediately ob- tain for every article he can raise, without any trouble or difficulty.

GEOLOGY OF THE COUNTY.

The following extracts are made from the report of the Geological Survey made in 1854 and subsequent years by David Dale Owen, first State Geologist, to whom Professor Robert Peter, of Lexington, was Chemical Assistant, and Mr. Sidney S. Lyon, of Louisville, Topographical Assistant.

JEFFERSON COUNTY.

The knob formation, very similar in its compo- nent members to that described at Button Mould Knob, extends into the southern part of Jefferson county, forming the range of knobs on the waters of Pond and Mill creek, their sum- mits being capped with soft freestone, while the ash-colored shales, with the intercalations of encrinital limestones, form their principal mass, resting on black Devonian shale.

[The " Button Mould Knob," in Bullitt county, had been previously described as a cele- brated locality for encrinites, having three or more encrinital beds, interstratified with the ash- colored shale, which form a remarkable steep glade on the southern side of the knob, the glade commencing one hundred and twenty-five feet below the summit of the knob. The follow- ing table is given of the composition of this emi- nence, which helps the reader to an understand- ing of the knobs in Jefferson county:

Feet.

250. Summit of knob.

235. Top of second bench of sandstone, in quarry.

225. Top of ledge of first bench sandstone.

200. Slope with sandstone.

162. Lowest exposure of sandstone.

IIO. Top of bare glade.

105. Orthis michellina bed.

100. Orthus Miscellina bed not abundant. Ash-colored shale.

97. Weathered-out carbonate of iron.

95. Weathered-out carbonate of iron. Ash-colored shales.

80. Branching corallines.

75. Weathered carbonate of iron.

65. Encrinital limestone.

60. Weathered carbonate of iron. Ash-colored shale.

49. Encrinital limestone. Ash-colored shale.

35. Encrinital limestone. Ash-colored shale at base of bare glade.

25. Black sheety Devonian shale extending to bed of creek.

Here, says the Report, we have nearly 100 feet of ash-colored shales exposed, in a bare glade, with repeated alternations of thin bands

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

of carbonate of iron, encrinital, argillaceous, and shell limestones, forming a remarkable feature of the landscape in the northern part of Bullitt county, adjoining Jefferson county.

The iron ore from this knob is described in the Chemical Report of the Survey as a fine- grained, compact carbonate of iron, interior gray, shading into rust-brown on the exterior, powder dull cinnamon color. An analysis exhibited 31.3 per cent. of iron-"an ore sufficiently rich for profitable smelting, which could be worked with- out much additional fluxing materials." ]

Jefferson county affords the best exposures of the calcareous rocks, under the black slate be- longing to the Devonian period, yet seen. The projecting ledges on the bank of the Ohio river, that appear in connected succession between the head and foot of the Falls, afford, probably, the best sections of these rocks in the Western States. We observe there the following succes- sion and superposition :

I. Black bituminous slate or shale.

2. Upper crinoidal, shell, and coraline limestones above.

3. Hydraulic limestone.

4. Lower crinoidal, shell, and coraline limestones.

5. Olivanites bed.

6. Spirifer Gregaria and shell coraline beds.

7. Main beds of coral limestones.

These beds rest upon a limestone containing chain coral, which is seen just above the lowest stage of water, at the principal axis of the Falls, where the waters are most turbulent. Only a portion of the lower part of the black slate is seen immediately adjacent to the Falls. Its junc- tion with the upper crinoidal bed, No. 2, of the above section, can be well seen below the mouth of Silver creek, on the Indiana side, where there is a thin, hard, pyritiferous band between the black slate and limestone, containing a few en- trochites.

Three subdivisions may be observed in the upper coralline bed, No. 2, of this Falls section :

(A). White or yellowish white earthy frac- tured layers, containing, beside Crinoidea, a Farosite, a large Leptæna and Atrypa prisca, with a fringe.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 13

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 814

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814