History of Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Wyoming counties, Pa.; with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers, Part 48

Author: Munsell, W.W., & Co., New York
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: New York, W.W. Munsell & co.
Number of Pages: 900

USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > History of Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Wyoming counties, Pa.; with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 48
USA > Pennsylvania > Lackawanna County > History of Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Wyoming counties, Pa.; with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 48
USA > Pennsylvania > Wyoming County > History of Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Wyoming counties, Pa.; with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 48

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

AN OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF THE WYOMING COAL FIELD

F the three anthracite coal fields of the State of Pennsylvania the Wyoming basin is the largest and the most northwardly. Its length is nearly fifty-six miles, and its average width about three and a half miles, the area closely approximating 200 square miles or more than 128,000 acres. The topography of

this valley differs widely from that of any other coal area. The symmetry of the circumscribing mountains; the open expanse of the central level and fertile plain, adorned as it is by the graceful curves and stretches of the Susque- hanna river, with its islands and grove-fringed shores; the more extended features of round swelling and of sharp crested hills, with their picturesque intervals of woodlands and silvery streams, form a scene of beauty and attraction unsurpassed in any land, and at complete variance with the general very rugged and uninviting conditions of other coal fields. And yet this pleasing variety of form obtains here almost without any sacrifice of either quantity or quality of the vast underlying mineral treasure, or of the economics of obtaining it; and this by reason of the very general stratigraphic con- formity of the coal and its accompanying rocks to these surface contours.

The term basin is here applicable only in the wider import given it by the geologist; for the outline of this valley resembles more that of a crescent shaped trough : the course of a line or chord connecting the points of the cusps is about northeast and southwest, and would lie in its whole length outside and west of the valley; and a middle point on this chord would be outside, about two and a half miles distant from the northwesterly or nearest boundary. The southwestern extremity of the_ basin is in Salem township, and at a distance of about a mile from the Susquehanna river, which by its sharp deflection above, at Shickshinny, has made its course athwart the field, isolating this triangular tract of coal, the base of which triangle at the river is less than half a mile in width. The mountains forming the rim of the basin in this lower section (the Wyoming and the Nanticoke) diverge with much regularity, and the coal field expands evenly, until at the distance of about thirteen and a half miles from its southwestern extremity, in the section near the town of Plymouth, it attains a width of four and a half miles. Near the city of Wilkes-Barre, which is at a distance of about seventeen miles, the width is near five miles. At the town of Pittston, distant twenty-four miles, the maximum width of five and a half miles is reached. Above this the general lines of outcropping converge so that near the city of Scranton, thirty-four miles distant, the section will not measure over four miles. Thence to the city of Carbondale the convergence con- tinues until the breadth of the coal field is there not much more than two miles. Carbondale is distant from the southwest end of the basin about forty-eight and a . half miles, and from the northeast terminus over seven miles; at which distance the lateral lines of boundary of this upper tract of the coal formation make a terminal intersection.

The principal and most direct channels of drainage of the valley are the Susquehanna and the Lackawanna rivers, with the Nanticoke creek. The Lackawanna river has its sources at the eastwardly end of the valley, where, in consequence of the more rapid rising out of the central measures of this terminal section, the trough or basin form

183

CARBONDALE Cacher OFOOK

Fally

Ock Tun

ARCHBALD

MOUNTAIN

Ipoints

Roaring Fr

Lackawvan,, River

SCRANTON

MOOSIC

Spring

PITTSTON

SCALE of MILES

Alta Ramy NEGroep

PENOBSCOT MOUNTAIN

"SHAWNEE

PLYMOUTH

Solomans creek

CHEE DUNDEE SHAFT

MOUNTAIN

Nanticoke crees

MOUNTAIN

SHICKSHINNY

Blackcreekn

WYOMING

Skickskinny creek

¿has nearly vanished. The general course of the stream is about central through the valley, and nearly over the axis as respects the great and deepest synclinal lines of the coal deposits; and this continues down to a point near the mouth of Spring brook, where the river inclines some- what more to the westward, while the axis leads directly forward to the Susquehanna river at the town of Pitts- ton, more than a mile below the mouth of the Lackawanna. From the entrance of the Susquehanna river into the valley-so well marked by the rugged flanks of the Dial Knob, or Campbell's ledge-throughout its flexuous courses onward it does not at any point cross a central line of the valley expanse; and except at the city of Wilkes- Barre it does not reach such a line, its trends being alto- gether on the northwest side, and, it would seem, through the ancient domain of its greatest denuding ravages.

The sources of the Nanticoke creek are in the valley on an elevated plateau, about three miles above or to the northeast of the Susquehanna river, where it passes athwart the basin. This plateau, which is nearly at the height of the marginal mountains, the Wyoming and the Nanticoke, has its elevated position not in consequence either of additional strata, or of an increased thickness of strata; but, as above stated in reference to the similar conditions of the northeast end of the basin, a more rapid outrise of the interior bottom measures of the basin. The waters of this plateau divide; a portion flows by Black creek to the southwest, through this rapidly descending and rugged remnant of the valley, to the Susquehanna river; the remainder to the northeast by Nanticoke creek, which has here two branches that flow through pretty vales, formed by a central dividing ridge of the valley, called the Hog-back. At a distance of about two miles and a half a depression in the ridge admits of the union of these branches, and in a further distance of about three and a half miles these waters are discharged into the Sus- quehanna river opposite the town of Nanticoke, near the former residence of Colonel Washington Lee. this point being the southerly end of the line of rupture made by the river in the removal of its rocky mountain barrier for its exit from the valley.

The other principal streams of the valley are such as have their sources outside, and enter laterally through mountain gaps of greater or less extent and depth. Those of the southeast side commencing below are Lee, Leu- der's, Sugar Notch and Solomon's creeks, Laurel Run, Mill creek, Spring brook, Stafford Meadow brook, Roar- ing brook, White Oak run, and at Carbondale Racket brook. Those of the northwest side-commencing also below-are Toby's, Abraham's and Legitt's creeks, and Fall brook, near Carbondale. Harvey's creek, which flows into the Susquehanna on this northwest side near and above the Nanticoke dam, should be considered as out- side of the valley, as it is more than half a mile below the line of upper ancient rock barrier above alluded to, which stretches from the Colonel Lee house, at the mouth of Nanticoke creek, obliquely across the river to the rocks of the entrance to the Harvey mines.

The summits of the marginal mountains of the valley

OUTLINE OF THE WYOMING COAL FIELD.

OUS

Tun

RANGE

Tobys

QUEHANNA RIVER

IF WILKESBARRE

Laura

NANTICOKE

Hunlocks /MES

creeks

THE WYOMING COAL BASIN.

creek

184

HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

vary but little in elevation throughout, being from eight to ten hundred feet above the river; the lessening in depth of the valley is not in consequence of the depres- sion of the mountain crests, as herein above explained. The greatest depression or depth of the coal measures exists in Hanover township, near the Dundee shaft, from which the bottom of the basin rises in both directions. To the southwest the rate of rise is rapid until a near approach to the section of Nanticoke, where the upward curvature increases more gradually and is greater the nearer it approaches the southwest end of the basin. Towards the northwest the rise continues to the locality of Spring brook; beyond this, to some section above but near the city of Scranton, the change from a level would seem to be but slight; there, however, commences a much more rapid outrise of the measures, with a decided in- crease of deundation, so that from Carbondale on the

evidences of this rapidly increase until the lowest mem- bers of the series are in view. A cross section of the basin made in general approximate outline would vary materially from that which seems to be due if the dips of the seams on the opposite mountain slopes, and the hori- zontal distance between them, should alone be the data considered. These mountain slopes vary much, being greater the nearer they are to the southwest end of the basin, and lessening irregularly throughout to the north- east. Assuming the average slope of the coals on the opposite mountains in the middle section, as at Wilkes- Barre, to be thirty degrees (the Ross mines in Solomon's gap and the T. Brown slope of the Wilkes-Barre Coal Company, as generally at the mines near the outcroppings along the mountain slopes, exceed thirty degrees), and that the distance between these mountain faces on a level of the flat land is four miles, the segment of a cir- cular curve, tangent to these slopes, would at the centre of the basin have a depression of two thousand three hundred feet; whereas sufficient is now known of the united thickness of the coal strata to warrant the belief that at no point of the basin will coal be found much below half that depth. Hence it would follow that a con- siderable general flattening of the measures as they stretch across the basin must take place; that this occurs mainly at or near the mountain on each side is ascertained con- clusively in the progress of mining in these localities. The position of the deepest point on a great synclinal curve of any given cross section of the valley may not be assignable with accuracy; but, as herein above stated in reference to the axial line along the Lackawanna valley passing through the Susque- hanna river at Pittston, it can without material error be further assumed as existing nearly under a direct line from the last mentioned locality to a point in the river near the city of Wilkes-Barre, thence passing the town of Nanticoke in the low grounds about one-third of a mile to the southeast, from which its course to the south- west end of the basin does not vary much from the centre of the lower section of the valley. The lesser orographic features of the valley which lend such beautiful diversity to the scene are to the miner more than to the artist

themes of highest import; for to these flexed lines of surface the hidden work below must in the main con- form.

These undulations, co-existent with and arising from the same seismic forces that formed the valley, while they have been to some extent changed superficially by torrent and by time, still notably preserve the anticlinal and synclinal forms of the underlying minerals. Prof. H. D. Rogers, who made these conditions a connected study, describes them thus (Vol. 2nd, pt. 1, page 324): "The feature of widest generality connecting these anticlinal and synclinal waves, or saddles and troughs of the strata, is their remarkable approximation to parallelism through- out the entire range of the basin, irrespective of the bending course of the main valley and its including mountains. This constancy in the direction of the waves, though singularly close, is not absolute when those of distant sections of the valley are compared; there being a difference between the anticlinals of the vicinity of Wilkes-Barre and those of the Lackawanna valley of some 6°, the former ranging about north 67º east, while the latter observe an average course of north 72° or 73º east. It is, however, with few exceptions, strictly main- tained among the flexures of the same district. As a natural consequence of this approximate permanency of direction of the undulatians, and the curving outline of the general basin, it is only in the lower or west end of the valley that these rolls of the strata are parallel or even nearly so, within the main course of the valley. There the chief groups among the anticlinals approach to a coincidence in direction with the mountain forming the south side of the basin. Advancing northeast to the Wilkes-Barre and Pittston districts, this parallelism with the mountain border is more and more departed from, and with its progressive deflection to the northeast along the . southeast side of the Lackawanna valley the obliquity of the undula- tions to the line of the basin and its barriers grows conspicuously greater. From the vicinity of Wilkes- Barre, and probably from further west, the whole way to Carbondale these anticlinals come forth in succession from the mountain sides of the valley at larger and larger angles as we advance toward the northeast; the anticlinal waves, broad and flat on the slope of the mount- ains, pointing down obliquely west in the valley, and con- tracting and growing steeper; while the synclinal troughs between them rise out of the central bed of the basin, flattening and shoaling up to the east, to disappear at higher levels on the same mountain sides. This arrange- ment is discernible in the undulations of both sides of the basin, but those of the southeast side being more numerous, of steeper flexure, and less obscured by diluvial drift, the feature is there more conspicuous. Each of the two mountain barriers of the valley, with its set of anti- clinal spurs passing off from it at successively increasing angles, may be likened to a curved fish-back, one con- cave and the other convex, sending out its spines or rays at increasing obliquities, but in mutual parallelism with one another.

185

UNDULATIONS OF THE COAL MEASURES.

" A further general fact connected with these undula- tions of the coal measures, interesting for its geological bearings and not less so for its practical consequences, is the curious declining graduation observable in the sharpness of the successive undulations as we proceed from southwest to northeast along the basin. Not only does each anticlinal of the southeast side of the valley grow gentler or flatter in its dips as it slowly rises to the east, but the successive ones are fainter and fainter at the same proportionate sections of their length as we cross them obliquely in going toward the northeast. Those of all the lower or west end of the valley, from Beech Grove to Nanticoke, show inclinations as high as 45°, those be- tween Nanticoke and Wilkes-Barre display dips exceed- ing 30°, and those between Wilkes-Barre and Pittston dips averaging 20° or 25°; while following the Lacka- wanna division of the basin we have no longer anything approaching this last steepness of flexure, except just near the ends of the saddles, but rather a low broad waving of the rocks, growing feebler and feebler as we advance, until, passing Scranton into the district between it and Archbald, regular undulations become almost impercepti- ble, and are lost in the very gradual dips into the middle of the general troughs from the two borders of the valley. Accompanying this progressive smoothing-out of the waves or corrugations of the strata from the southwest toward the northeast end of the whole basin, there is a like gradual transition of declension in its external fea- tures, from sharp and narrow-crested ridges and deep hollows to rounder and gentler spurs and valleys, and along the Lackawanna to wide-topped summits, bluffs and open denuded plains.

"Other points of general structure, appertaining to the interior undulations of the main basin, have reference to the prevailing form of the anticlinals and their troughs. A main feature of the individual waves is a progressive increase of flexure, or a steepening of the dips on both sides of the anticlinals as they advance from the moun- tain sides, where they originated, out into the central tracts of the valley, to near their terminations, which are therefore comparatively abrupt. Remarkably clear ex- emplifications of this structure present themselves to any close observer of the anticlinals between Wilkes-Barre and the Lackawanna. If these be carefully traced from the east down to this district they will be seen to grow steadily sharper and sharper in their dips until they ap- proach in their oblique course to the banks of the Sus- quehanna, in the neighborhood of which they nearly all subside by bluntly rounding off. In proof of this abrupt cessation, we have only to remark the contrast between the general steepness of these undulations where they are crossed slantingly by the old stage-road, or even by the plank-road, and the extreme gentleness and absolute disappearance of many at the canal, and especially at the shore of the river. The very position in the valley which the river has taken between the mouth of the Lackawanna and Wilkes-Barre is an evidence of the sud- den dying-out of this southern system of anticlinals. It would seem as if the waters, in scooping the lower valley

or plain within which the Susquehanna flows, had been unable to pass the succession of barriers presented to them by these ridges in the strata, and were forced to recoil by the north flanks and bold ends which the sad- dles protruded against them, swinging off in their re- bound to follow the deflecting course of the waves of the strata towards the outlet of the drainage of the valley, the wide notch in the northern mountain-barrier at Nan- ticoke.

"The north or northwest side of the valley appears to have its own set of anticlinals or saddles, as already in- timated; but whether these observe the same law in their oblique descent into the valley from the west, of a pro- gressive increase of dip on both their flanks, I am not prepared at present to maintain, as the structure of this portion of the valley is largely disguised by surface drift, and as the points of many of the spurs or saddles are hid by the deep diluvium of the Wyoming and Lackawanna flats. All analogy and every theoretical consideration of the origin of this curious feature in the anticlinals would indicate, however, that the same steep- ening towards their terminations belongs to these waves which characterizes those coming from the opposite mountain lying east. Whether any of the flexures of the upper strata cross the basin entirely, passing west from the southern mountain to coincide with undulations pro- ceeding east from the northern, cannot be at present known; but the general cessation of both sets towards the middle of the basin is a strong intimation of the improba- bility of such a condition."

The rocks beneath the coal, the upturned and rup- tured edges of which form not only the near but also the outer or second surrounding eminences or mountains, do not extend in the geologic scale lower than to the base of the carboniferous epoch; and in the nomencla- ture of Prof. Rogers in his geology of the strata it com- prises his Umbral and Vespertine series, which are the equivalents of the upper and the lower subcarboniferous groups in the geology of Europe.

The outcropping of the base of the lower group, the Vespertine, which rests upon the red sandstone of the Ponent series (the equivalent of the old red sandstone of Europe) is generally near and in some places upon the summit of the outer mountain; while the outcroppings of the several higher members of the group form the slopes of the outer mountain down to their junction with the overlying Umbral series in or towards the depression or valley between these two mountain ridges, and consist of gray sandstones, olive colored argillaceous sandstones, with occasional thin seams of carbonaceous slates and films of anthracite coal; and generally the upper member, which is found farthest down the slope, is a white sili- cious sandstone at base, graduating upwards into a con- glomerate of white quartz pebbles where it meets the overlying Umbral red shale. The thickness of this group varies from 300 to 600 feet, decreasing from the south- west towards the northeast.

The orographic position of this series as above de- scribed applies more especially to the middle and south-

186

HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

west sections of the basin, where these secondary sur- rounding vales, by greater depth of denudation, form more distinctly an inner and an outer mountain vein. In the upper section of the valley, from Pittston north- eastward, the inclinations of the mountain slopes decrease, while there is a corresponding decrease in the thickness of the measures, both of the Vespertine and the Umbral series, especially that of the red shale of the Umbral group; and solely in consequence of this decrease of the shale is the change referred to in the orographic fea- tures of this upper section; the separation into two ridges becomes less distinct, and at points does not ex- ist. This mountain profile as described is throughout the result of denudation, and at no points is it the result of plication or undulation.

The Umbral series, or upper subcarboniferous forma- tion, consists mainly of red shales which, from the under- lying Vespertine or lower subcarboniferous group to the seral conglomerate, form generally more than three- fourths of the entire mass of this formation, occupying the lower place in the series; in the upper section it meets and is overlaid by harder measures, fine grained sandstones of buff, gray and reddish tints, the upper measures under the conglomerate being a fine and sharp grained sandstone somewhat calcareous, of buff and of greenish gray colors-the hone-belt of Prof. Rogers. This last named deposit is of variable thickness, from five to thirty feet.

The Umbral group, like the underlying Vespertine, is variable in its thickness; at Nanticoke, in the river gap, it has a thickness of about 500 feet; at Mill Hollow, in King- ston township, about 350 feet; at Solomon's gap about 450 feet; at Cobb's gap, on the Roaring brook, its thick- ness is less than 450 feet. To the northeastward of this section the formation lessens rapidly in thickness, and at some points does not exist. From this group is obtained the principal amount of the flagstones so much used in the valley-a very hard, almost vitreous sandstone, of a reddish tint, very durable, and in this respect in strong contrast with others more recently introduced from a distant region.

The iron mine on a branch of the Stafford Meadow brook, for several years mined by the D. L. & W. Iron Company, the ore being smelted in Scranton. is a deposit or segregation at the base of the red shale, immediately over the Vespertine group. This ore is a concretionary carbonate of iron, of nodular form and imbedded in an ochraceous fine clay. the bed or deposit being on the average about five feet thick. It would appear to be a local formation, as it is not found in the mountain gaps either to the northeast or to the southwest. Yet in Mill Hollow, on the northwest side of the coal field in Kingston township, Doctor W. H. Brisbane opened to a deposit of ore of the same character, and in the same strategraphic position; the ore at this point has not been mined to any extent. The above mentioned hone-belt is probably a continuous deposit underlying the entire coal basin. Many tons of this stone were sent annually to Philadelphia from a quarry in the Wyoming mountain in Newport township, to be made into hones.

While the principal material of the red shale is alumi- na, its proportions as a constituent are quite variable, causing a gradation from a friable, soft, true shale to a very hard brittle rock, mainly in consequence of the greater or less amount of silex it may contain. It has, diffused throughout, more or less calcareous matter, and also strata or layers containing scattered nodules of cal- careous matter, from a very small size to that of a pea, being of a cream color internally while the surface is stained red by the enveloping shale. The removal of these nodules by the weather where they have been in the harder rock-like strata produces a pitted or eroded appearance of the rock. At a few points, as in Solomon's gap, this calcareous deposit assumes the form of a regu- lar limestone seam of about two feet thickness, but of sandy, lean quality.

To the prevalence of this calcareous matter is to be attributed the stable productiveness of those farms lo- cated on the outspread of this formation, as in the val- leys of the Wapwallopen and the Nescopeck creeks, and in many other surrounding localities. Throughout vast areas, both on the eastern continent and also in America, the equivalents of these two formations, the Umbral and the Vespertine, particularly the former, are made up mainly of carbonate of lime. Many of the fossil vegeta. ble forms of the overlying true carboniferous or coal period are to be found in these groups, which circum- stance is the basis for including them in the scope of the carboniferous epoch.

While in our locality, as well as throughout the anthra- cite area generally, the lithologic characteristics of these two groups bear no apparent indication of equivalency, yet there does exist very positive evidence of complete synchronism with the upper and lower subcarboniferous series of other regions. Westward in the bituminous coal fields calcareous marls and true limestones prevail largely in the group immediately underlying the seral conglomerate, occupying the position and there represent- ing the Umbral series. This condition prevails generally to the westward and in Virginia, extending southwestward to Alabama; a similar predominance of calcareous mat- ter in the Umbral group is observed. It is assumed that if the calcareous matter diffused through the great mass of red shale of the anthracite coal field was concentrated, it would be found closely approximating the average amount existing in the Umbral group under the western bituminous regions, where the lime is less mixed with the accompanying shaly matter. The several members of the Vespertine and Umbral series are conspicuously presented in the gaps around the valley; especially in Solomon's gap, in the Wilkes- Barre mountain, and in Mill or Hert- zoge hollow, in the Kingston mountains.

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History of Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Wyoming counties, Pa.; with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers, Part 48

Author: Munsell, W.W., & Co., New York Publication date: 1880 Publisher: New York, W.W. Munsell & co. Number of Pages: 900

Author: Munsell, W.W., & Co., New York
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: New York, W.W. Munsell & co.
Number of Pages: 900