History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 87

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 87

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The lower series is, by reason of the service which it has been made to answer, much the better known of the two divisions. It is this division which is recognized as Columbus limestone and which has been turned to so large account in the building of the city. The Statehouse is the most conspicuous example of its use in architecture. The quarries have been of great advantage to Columbus from the beginning. They have furnished not only excellent founda- tions for all its wellbuilt structures, but also caps, sills, threshholds and steps as well ; and all the lime used in the city has been derived from the same source at least until the last eight or ten years. They have also supplied in large amount curbings, crossings, flaggings and road metal for the streets and walks of the city. The advantages of such a supply at moderate cost to a rapidly growing city are very great.

For a part of these uses the stone is well adapted. As far as architectural effects are concerned ; in its employment as a building stone it is fairly satisfactory. The stone is gray in color. It takes a certain amount of ornamentation to fair advantage and in the matter of strength also it meets all demands. But when we come to the question of durability, which is the most important one that can be

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

raised as to a building stone, it does not fare quite as well. While much of the stone, and most of it when properly set, is moderately durable, a part of it gives way when exposed to the atmosphere, as is abundantly illustrated in the State Capitol and many other structures in the city. It does not avail us to say that the beds are not all equally liable to disintegration. While this is strictly true, the products of the entire quarries lose standing to some extent when it is known that any of the courses are untrustworthy. The trouble originates in the fossili- ferous character of the beds, combined with the fact that the rock easily gives away along the lines of fossil deposit. The evil practice that was followed in the construction of the Statehouse of setting a good deal of the stone on edge in what are called ashlar courses is responsible for the worst defacement and decay that have taken place.

The quarries yield building stone of all desirable sizes, the courses ranging between four and sixty inches in thickness. Platforms and columns eight to ten feet in length and of any required breadth can be supplied without limit. The columns at the west front of the Statehouse show the stone in its most imposing form. The bed composing the columns was originally sixty inches thick, but for convenience the blocks were split in the middle before being laid. Under this mode of treatment the stone will stand forever. Some of the main staircases of the capitol building also illustrate the strength and excellence of the stone in a striking way. The steps are thrown out six feet or more from the adjacent wall without support of any kind except that which they command in the blocks of which they form a part. These are anchored securely in the wall, while their free or unsupported ends form the stairway.

For curbing and flagging the stone cannot for a moment compete with the products of the great sandstone quarries of Northern Ohio which have been thrown open to us for the last few years, but in the early setting in order of the city it rendered an invaluable service. While the city is not obliged to rely on these great quarries as exclusively as it did in its early days, the time will never come when they can be counted of small importance to its growth. The lime manufactured from the Columbus stone is of high quality and has also rendered practical service of great value to the building interests of the city. The same courses of the quarries that are best suited to lime production are also turned to account on a large scale as a source of flux for the blast furnaces of the Hocking Valley.

Geological History .- Passing from consideration of the practical service that the column is able to render, let us briefly inquire as to its geological history. If the story of its origin which it carries within its own beds is intelligently followed it is found full of interest and instruction. The sheet of limestone that is now under discussion is part of a widespread stratum that takes an important place in the geology of the country. It can be traced northward from Columbus through the Delaware, Marion and Sandusky quarries to those of Lake Erie, and through Kelly's Island and Pelee Island into Ontario and Michigan. Westward from Ohio t is followed into Indiana, thence southward to Kentucky and again westward to Illinois and Iowa. Followed to the eastward it is found to attain a fine develop-

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GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY.

ment in the State of New York, and still further eastward it has been identified in some of the metamorphosed strata of the New England mountains. The stratum is everywhere characterized through this wide extent by an abundant and highly interesting assemblage of fossils, the representatives of the life of the Devonian seas. The fossils are in many cases excellently preserved, and we can learn almost as much of their structure as if we had recent specimens to examine.

One of the most striking groups of these Devonian fossils is the corals, which are found in great numbers and variety. They belong to genera and families that have no near representative in the present world, but still their structure and relationship are not at all obscure. These eoral polyps built reefs in the old seas, and their work is often shown in our quarries of Devonian limestone, as distinct and as well characterized as any that can be found in the Gulf of Mexico or in the South Pacific at the present day. One reef building form in particular may be named that apparently covered the floor of the Devonian sea for a time through its whole extent in what we call Ohio. This fossil has a distinct place in our quarries and can be always recognized when looked for with due knowledge. It attains a still finer development in Northern Ohio. The type speeimen was taken from our own locality by a famous French geologist Verneuil, who visited the quarries under the pilotage of Mr. Joseph Sullivant. He carried the specimen to Paris for description. Milne Edwards published the description, commemorating the discoverer by the specific designation, Eridophyllum Verneuilianum. Another interesting section of these ancient forms of life is that of the nautiloid chambered shells, a group now and for many ages past wellnigh extinct. Its development in the Devonian limestone was remarkable, and the shells of the various genera and species are among the most striking of the limestone fossils. They are often iden- tified by the quarrymen as petrified ram's horns. This is one of the determina- tions that the quarryman is least willing to have called in question. There are some things that he knows.

But the crowning life of the period which we are describing was that of fishes. For many years it was held that the first appearence of vertebrated animals in the entire geological scale of the country was to be found in rocks of this age. While this claim is no longer tenable by reason of the discovery of undoubted fish - remains in lower levels in the geological column, it is still true that the first abundant and varied life of fishes that we know must be referred, at least for this continent, to the age of this limestone. The Columbus quarries furnish strik- ing testimony to the abundant representation of this branch at this time in the world's history.

Immediately below the line separating the upper and lower sections of the Devonian limestone, as already described, a veritable bonebed occurs. It is one to six inches in thickness and is often composed in main part of the plates, teeth and bones of these ancient fishes. Chemical analysis shows in selected portions of the roek not less than eighteen per cent. of phosphate of lime. If there were more of it, it would become available as a fertilizer. The bonebed was originally dis- covered by the late Hon. J. H. Klippart, Secretary of the State Board of Agricul- ture. This thin stratum takes rank with the most interesting deposit of the whole

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

geological scale of Ohio. A like formation in the Lndlow beds of England has been made famous in the geological literature of the entire world. The Columbus stratum deserves to be much better known than it is.

Without doubt the particular fossil that would arrest the attention of the untrained observer more readily than any other to be found in these quarries is the head or rather the surface of the head of one of these old fishes .. The quarry- men never fail, however little observation they expend on such matters, to notice and save this one fossil. They identify it promptly and with full assurance as a turtle. A good head they long ago learned to recognize as having a distinct money value. The market has its fluctuations, as it has for the game of the fields or the fish of the rivers, but the old fish keeps well and a purchaser is sure to find his way to it at last.

The place in the series in which this fossil is found is ten to twenty feet below the bonebed. It occurs in various stages of preservation and it has also considera- ble range in size. An average speciman can be described in general terms as fol- lows: The skull is about eight inches long and its breadth is rather more than twothirds of the length. It is covered by a continnous plate of enamel, the surface of which is thickly set with stellate tubercles. When the enamel is wanting in the specimen, as it generally is, the upper surface of the skull is seen to be composed of polygonal plates of symmetrical pattern. The occipital bone has appended to it a prolongation not elswhere known, according to Cope, which is difficult of interpretation and which has led many paleontologists into error. The eyesoekets are of large size and are very conspicuous. No teeth have been found in connec- tion with the cranium above described and it is conjectured that the fish was des- titute of teeth. It undoubtedly belongs to the division of Ganoids, the group which includes most of the earlier fishes of the world. The group is now wellnigh extinct, but the lakes and rivers of North America still harbor more surviving representatives of it than any other quarter of the globe. Among them are the sturgeon, the garpike and the dog-fish. The ancient fish that we are now describing is thought to be allied to the sturgeon more nearly than to any other living form. It is known to science by a name of learned length, Macropetalicthys Sullivanti. In the specific designation, the geological work of the earliest and most successful cultivator of the science, in Columbus, viz., the late Joseph Sullivant, Esq., was commemorated. It was by his sagacity and painstaking that a part of the admirable material brought to light in the extensive workings of the State quarries for the stone used in the building of the Statehouse, was saved to science.

The quarries of Columbus have already become classical ground to the geol- ogist by reason of such fossils and groups of fossils as have been already named and there are scores of others that possess a similar interest. While much study has already been devoted to them, they will continue to furnish attractive fields for geological investigation for many generations to come. Some of the condi- tions under which this sheet of limestone took its origin can be inferred with all confidence from the contents and composition of the formation. In the first place, the character of the fossils contained in it demonstrates conclusively that it grew beneath the open sea. Some of the formations of the Ohio column give evidence

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GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY.

that they originated in isolated and contracting seas that were on the whole unfriendly to life. The Lower Helderberg limestone, which directly precedes the Columbus limestone in time, or in other words which underlies it, is a formation of this character. It contains fossils but sparingly and what there are, are of peculiar type. Moreover, beds of gypsum and occasionally of salt are inter- bedded with the dolomitic layers that constitute the bulk of the formation. The Upper Helderberg or Columbus limestone, on the other hand, when examined in its upper or more characteristic portion, is crowded with those forms of ancient life that are most distinctive of the sea, such as crinoids, corals, brachiopods and molluscan shells. Wherever these are found no question in regard to the condi- tions in which they originated can be raised. The composition of the limestone affords testimony also, as to the general conditions under which it originated. The Lower Helderberg, the underlying formation, as has just been stated, is a true dolomite or double carbonate of lime and magnesia; and the lowest beds of the Upper Helderberg are highly magnesian in character, but they are found to change rapidly in this respect as we rise in the scale, the percentage of lime increasing at the expense of the magnesia until in the uppermost twelve to fifteen feet of the formation the rock reaches an average of ninety to ninetysix per cent. of carbonate of lime. The facts as to the composition of the series can be shown in tabular form as follows :

Carbonate of Lime.

Carbonate of Magnesia.

Upper Helderberg 1. Highest, 96 per cent.

2 per cent.

Limestone. 2. Middle, 81 per cent.

16 per cent.

Limestone. 3. Middle, 64 per cent.

34 per cent.

Limestone.

4. Lowest, 55 per cent.

41 per cent.

Lower Helderberg Limestone.

53 per cent. 43 per cent.

Figures like these seem to mark the progressive change from an isolated basin of salt water to the open sea.

These facts lead us back to a recognition of some of the physical conditions which prevailed in this part of the world at the time when this rock was in pro- cess of formation ; in other words, they lead us back to a recognition of the physical geography of this part of Ohio at this early time. This, it may be remarked, is the end and aim of geological science. When it has restored the physical geography of any part of the earth's surface for the time of which it treats with all that this description properly involves, its work can be counted accomplished. A few points under this head we are able to deduce from the facts already given. 1. The sea floor of this general region was undergoing a slow sub- sidence at the time, allowing free access of the open sea to what had been a shal- low and isolated basin before. The rate is attested by the gradual change in the percentage of lime and magnesia, and also by the want of fractures or faults in the strata. 2. While free connection was established between this region and the open sea, the Upper Helderberg limestone was deposited in very shallow water. This is proved by the occurrence of the impressions of seaweeds in many

670

ILISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

of its courses and by occasional ripple marks upon their surface. The latter are, however, rare and exceptional. 3. The conditions of this sea were most favorable to life. Its waters were of tropical warmth, as we know from the fact that corals and crinoids grow only in such temperatures. The waters were clear, as we know from the same sort of testimony, and also from the remarkable purity of the lime- stone. No sand or sediments are found in them. No more genial conditions in fact, can be shown in any portion of our entire column than those which prevailed at that time. On the floor of this clear and tropical sea all the life of the age was wonderfully developed. Coral reef alternated with crinoid bed, and the interven- ing spaces were crowded with chambered shells, a group abundant then but now verging to extinction, and also with univalves and bivalves of familiar types. One living genus, at least, in each division is represented in our lists of fossils. There was a time in which fishes swarmed in such numbers in this shallow sea that they almost monopolized its waters. The teeth, plates, and bones of successive genera- tions as they grew and finally perished there paved the floor of the sea over wide areas. The six inches of the bonebed already described stand for a long period of accumulation.

After this highly fossiliferous portion of the series, which terminated in the bonebed, was completed, a change came in the conditions prevailing here which it is easy to follow. There was a wholesale destruction of the abundant life that has been already pointed ont, brought about by a reelevation of the seafloor immedi- ately to the southward. Sediments were now brought in which destroyed the varied fauna previously existing and they also forbade the introduction of any new forms of life. Two or three of the hardier species survived and are occasionally preserved in the shaly and flinty beds which make a part of this series. The sur- faces of the latter show the abundant presence of seaweeds. The flinty bands were doubtless organic in origin and they stand for a considerable development of life of which we have few distinct traces. The shaly beds show the characteristics here described only in this portion of the territory. To the northward, beds occupying the same place in the series become the bluestone of Delaware, Marion, and Sandusky, a series of some economic importance as a source of building stone.

With this series the great limestone formations of Ohio come to an abrupt ter- mination. They had been growing for vast periods of time on the floor of an interior sea, a sea which continues in a dwarfed representative even to our own day and which we know as the Gulf of Mexico. The world was moving through long and peaceful cycles, with far more uniformity of condition and far less indication of change than belong to our own day. And yet through all these tranquil ages change was always coming. Species were being modified ; some that were once abundant in the sea grew rare and finally disappeared and new forms came in from time to time, from distant stations, perhaps, that multiplied rapidly and filled the sea in their turn. Occasionally certain structural changes intervened, as the lowering or elevation of portions of the seafloor; and these physi- cal changes are always correlated with changes in the life of the district affected. The dividing lines between our formations are due to such causes.

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GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY.

The Ohio Black Shale. - The black shale which directly underlies the series already described is in reality a more characteristic and important element in the geology of Columbus than is the better known limestone. It occurs in extensive onterops in the northern portions of the city, and is but thinly covered by driftbeds in other considerable areas, as for example, from Fifth Avenue north- ward and eastward. It therefore directly influences the topography, drainage and water supply of the city to a small extent, whereas the limestone is without influence in these respects except in its westernmost boundaries.

From several points of view, the Ohio shale is an important formation. On first inspection, as shown in Central Ohio, it would be pronounced as indeed it has been, an undivided and simple formation, but when properly understood, it is found to be quite complex. From its lowest beds to its highest it proves the equivalent in age of the whole or a part of four or five strata that are distinct and important members of the geological column in other parts of the country. The formations referred to are the Hamilton, Genesee, Portage, Chemung and Catskill. In its outerops in Ohio it has a thickness of 250 to 350 feet, but as it is followed under cover to the eastward, by records of deep wells, it is found to be not less than ten times as thick. In distribution it has a very wide range. From Ohio it stretches northward into Canada and Michigan, westward into Indiana and Illinois, southward into Kentucky, Tennessee and the Virginias, and eastward into Penn- sylvania and New York. Doctor Newberry ,made a threefold division of the shale in Ohio, basing the divisions on color and naming them respectively the Huron, Erie and Cleveland shales. The first and last divisions were described as black shales and the middle division as a greenish-blue shale. But it is impossible to hold to these divisions in the State at large, for there are no markings by which they can be sharply or definitely separated from one another. Neither physical tests nor fossils suffice for this end as yet, but a division will some day be effected, after all, in this interesting series. In composition the formation consists exclu- sively of finegrained material, silicious clay making the great bulk of the stratum everywhere. But, as its color indicates, it also contains a notable percentage of organic matter. This makes eight to fifteen per cent. of the substance of the blackest portions of the shale. The outcrops of the shale occasionally take fire by accidental means in dry seasons and the burning goes on in the beds, sometimes for weeks and months at a time. The shale contains a considerable quantity of iron pyrites, or fool's gold, distributed through it, for the most part in nuggets or concretions of various size, but sometimes in thin sheets. Part of the sulphide of iron is in a form that decays easily when exposed to the air. As it weathers it forms copperas. The weathering shale also contains sulphate of lime, or gypsum, in small quantity, which is formed through the agency of the decomposing sulphide.

Fossils. - Two years ago a very short chapter would have sufficed for an account of the fossils of the Ohio shale. The substance of such a chapter would have been " There are no fossils in the Ohio shale." Today the case stands in an altogether different light. The fossils of the Ohio shale are now recognized as not only the most striking and interesting of the geological scale of the State by all odds, but as among the most important representatives of Devonian life that have

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

yet been discovered anywhere in the world. The leading forms are the remains of gigantic fishes of strange type and pattern. Their massive skeletons occur spread ont in the shale, and since we have learned where and how to look for them they are found in considerable numbers. Single bones are also met with at the hearts of the great concretions that are so characteristic of the shale. Some of these fishes must have been fifteen to twenty feet in length. The names by which they have been designated in science, as for example Titanicthys, Dinicthys (Titan fisb, terrible fish), suggest the astonishment they have called forth in the minds of their discoverers. From the valley of the Big Walnut near Central College some of the largest bones yet discovered in the State have been taken.

It is to Doctor Newberry that we owe most of our knowledge of these remarkable fossils, so far as their structure is concerned. The work that he has done in describing them will remain a lasting monument to his learning and sagacity. The collectors of these fossils also deserve to be remembered in this connection. First in the list in order of time is Rev. Herman Herzer, a clergyman of the German Methodist Church, to whom we owe the original discovery of Dinicthys. The first specimen was found at Delaware, in the centre of one of the great concretions of the shale, and the thousand fragments into which it was broken were brought together again in their natural positions by Mr. Herzer, but only by the exercise of considerable skill united with incredible patience. . Jay Terrell, Esq., of Oberlin, comes next in the list of successful collectors. He has made some invaluable additions to our knowledge, his finds coming mainly from the shales of Avon Point and vicinity on the shore of Lake Erie. Following Mr. Terrell in his order of entrance upon this work, Doctor William Clark of Berea is next to be mentioned. The additions which he has made to our materials for study in this most interesting division perhaps outrank all other collections combined in intrinsic value. Part of the material above referred to was described by Doctor Newberry in the volumes of Ohio Paleontology; but a later and more complete account has been published by the same author in the Monograph Series of the United States Geological Reports, Volume XII.

These gigantic fishes excepted, there are very few conspicuous animal fossils to be found in the shale series. In some portions of it the brachiopod shells of Lingula and Discina occur, strown thickly over the surface of the beds. But there are parts of the formation, a hundred feet thick in a single section, in which the closest inspection fails to reveal any animal remains except those of micros- copic. Among the latter we must not omit to mention the hexactinellid, or six- rayed sponges. Their spines have been known for several years, but during the last summer a massive cast of one of the sponge colonies was found in Fish's quarries on Fifth Avenue. It is somewhat different with regard to vegetable fossils. Blocks of silicified wood are more widely distributed through the shale than the great fishbones; while it is not uncommon to find strapshaped forms of vegetable origin a foot or two in length on the surface of the beds. These forms suggest their reference to the family of the scowing rushes or calamities, but the reference is not unquestioned. Sometimes, though rarely, the impression of tree trunks of lepidodendroid type, a score or more feet in length, are met with. The

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 87

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202