USA > Pennsylvania > Mifflin County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 4
USA > Pennsylvania > Perry County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 4
USA > Pennsylvania > Union County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 4
USA > Pennsylvania > Juniata County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 4
USA > Pennsylvania > Snyder County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 4
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"The coal-beds which were formed just at thesea-level were elevated in some parts of Middle Pennsylvania to a height equal to nearly the whole thickness of the Paleozoic system-that is, nearly thirty-five thousand feet, higher than the highest summits of the Himalaya Mountains. Frost above, and the undermining rains below, began their rapid work of destruction, which has lasted ever since. Nearly the whole area of the State east of the Allegheny Mountains lost not only its coal measures, but a vast majority of all the min- eral strata underneath them. All that escaped de- struction was what lay in the deep synclinal basins of the anthracite country, the little patch of Broad Top and the tip of the Cumberland or Frostburg Basin. For scores of miles the entire Palæozoic sys- tem was excavated and planed down to the limestone at the base of the system. Along the central lines of Kishacoquillas, Nittany, Cance and other valleys the old Laurentian system cannot be more than one thousand feet below the present surface. All the rest has been carried off. The destruction was the greatest where the elevation was the greatest,-along the middle belt of the Appalachian Mountains. Out of this destruction were created, on the eastern side, New Jersey, Delaware, and the tide-water country of Maryland and Virginia ; and on the western side, the lower half of Alabama and nearly the whole of Mis- sissippi and Louisiana. In other words, the Proto- zoic mountains were wasted to form the Paleozoic rocks of the interior; and the Paleozoic mountains, in their turn, have been wasted to form the Triassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks of the seaboard."
Many persons seem to find it difficult to be- lieve that this great destruction has occurred outside the brains of imaginative geologists. Probably it will be proper to dwell on the sub- ject a little further. Careful estimates made on the sediments carried by the Mississippi River to the Gulf show that this, if spread over the whole basin of that river, would elevate it about 50'66 of a foot. In other words, the basin of
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JUNIATA AND SUSQUEHANNA VALLEYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.
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the Mississippi is denuded about 3dow of a foot each year. In the case of the Ganges, it seems to be more rapid, the basin of that river falling one foot in two thousand years. Sir Charles Lyell says that two thousand boats, each car- rying one hundred and forty tons of mud, would have to be employed daily to carry all the sediment borne daily by the Ganges. Now, it is to be remembered that the total elevation of the American continent is probably not more than seven hundred to nine hundred feet. To present the matter in another way, we quote from Report F 2, Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, by Professor E. W. Claypole,-
" In ordinary weather the Juniata water carries about eight grains of earthy sediment, or about one pound for every one hundred cubic feet of water.
" At Millerstown the river is about six hundred feet wide and four feet deep, with a current flowing about two miles an hour ; that is, twenty-four million cubic feet of water pass Millerstown every hour, car- rying two hundred and forty thousand pounds (120 tons) of rock sediment. In other words, one million cubic yards of the rock waste of Juniata, Mifflin, Huntingdon and Blair Counties pass through Perry County down the Juniata River to the sea every year. The water basin from which this river sediment comes measures about ten billion square yards. Its average loss per year is, therefore, about the ten thousandth of a yard. If we take into account the
erode more rapidly, there being no winter frosts to hold it in place, and there it is very common to hear intelligent persons speak of the " county washing into the Gulf as rapidly as possible," and this is there evident to the most careless ob- server.
It is to erosion, then, that we probably imme- diately owe every present feature of relief in our country. Isolated peaks, all cross-valleys, all ridges have been produced by erosion, and even sometimes where originally valleys existed now are mountains, and the bottoms of valleys have become mountains.
Some rocks are harder and more enduring than others, and after ages of erosion it is the position and inclination of these hard rocks which mark the presence of the peaks and ridges, while the valleys are located where the rocks are softer or are more broken. If the strata are horizontal, then table mountains are produced ; if gently undulating, then generally the anticlines will become converted into val- leys, and the synclines into ridges or mountains. Thus the valley of East Tennessee, Kishacoquil- las Valley, in Mifflin County, and most of the valleys in the anthracite coal regions are anti- clinal. The mountains between Lewistown and Bald Eagle Mountain are synelinal.
ANTICLINAL VALLEY
SYNCL INAL
VALLEY
gravel and stones rolled down the river in flood times, and carried down by ice, it will be safe to call it the five-thousandth of a yard.
"The whole surface of the Juniata country has, therefore, been lowered, say one foot in fifteen hun- dred years, or three thousand yards in thirteen million five hundred thousand years; that is, supposing the climate was always the same, and the Juniata River never did more work than it does now. But there is good reason for believing in carlier ages the erosion was more violent; this time may be reduced to ten, or even to five million years."
In the southern part of our country, in the mountains of North Carolina, South Caro- lina, Georgia and Alabama, the land seems to
3. THE STRUCTURE OF MOUNTAINS .- It has already been mentioned that mountain ranges are formed of great thicknesses of sedi- mentary strata folded into a ridge. In the sim- plest form of a mountain there is but a single such ridge, as in the Uintah Mountains. . In the next form there may be several ranges more or less compressed, as in the Jura Mountains of Eu- rope, or in the Coast Range of California, or the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania. Most mountain ranges, however, have stratified sedimentary rocks on their flanks, while the central part of the mountain consists of a gran-
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PHYSICAL FEATURES.
itie mass of rock. In others, nothing is seen but granite, as in parts of the Rocky Mountains. The granite axis, or core, is believed to be pro- duced from sedimentary rocks, highly altered.
VI. THE FOSSILS FOUND IN OUR ROCKS.
A fossil is any remains or evidence of an or- ganic being found in the soil or rocks. The very lowest and oldest rocks are destitute of fossils, while the most recent contain the remains of the animals and plants now living on the earth. All the rocks found in these counties are fossilifer- ous, though some of them very sparingly so, and all, in some places, to a greater extent than in others. It is by means of the fossils in a rock that geologists determine its age and place in a system. All rocks containing the same fossils are judged to be of the same age. In our district all the rocks have been seen to be- long to the Paleozoic era; hence the fossils rep- resent forms of life very different from anything on the earth at present. We can only in a very general way refer to the fossils which have been detected in this district.
In the Trenton limestone are found the re- mains of marine plants, called "fucoids." These are indistinct tracings of the plant stems. Three kinds of corals are abundantly found in this same age, and forming a great bulk of the rock, viz .: "cup corals," " chain corals " and "honey- romb corals." Each is distinguished by a feat- ure indicated in the common name. Some lime- stone rocks are formed of crinoid stems, as near Lewisburgh, in Union County. Crinoids were animals nearly related to corals, and which se- creted from the sea-water the calcareous matter of which they formed their skeletons. In some places the limestones and shales are formed mainly of small bivalve shells called " brachio- pods." The animals which inhabited these shells were not true mollusks, but were worms. " Trilobites," three-lobed crustaceans, were com- mon in the carlier periods. Their fossils are three-lobed longitudinally, and striated or grooved transversely. Shells of true mollusks abound. Many of them are curved or spirally arranged, as in mollusks of to-day ; others are straight. One, called the orthoceras, has been found fourteen feet in length. It was an animal 2
of the cuttle-fish kind. Its fossil, which is a straight, ringed rod, represents the internal skel- eton of the monster, which in its day was king of the animal creation. The uppermost rocks of our series contain the fossils of the coal age, among which are ferns much like those of to- day,-calamites, or "horse-tails," like those now living, only much larger; lepidodendrids and sigillarids, plants resembling the ground-pines still found in our forests, and used for decora- tive purposes in the winter months. The other forms of ancient life are all passed over except two. These are the fossil fish of Perry County and the mastodon remains of Union County.
The earliest fish and the earliest vertebrates found in any part of the world were discovered less than two years ago (1884) by Professor E. W. Claypole, then of the State Geological Survey, in the Catskill rocks of Perry County. The fol- lowing is Professor Claypole's account of these remains, as published in the Perry County Free- man of September 3, 1884:
"For fifty years or more the Uppermost Silurian rocks of England have been famous as the home of the earliest known fossils that can with confidence be called fish. Near the old town of Ludlow, the scene of Milton's ' Comus,' are certain beds from which these fossils have been obtained. Nowhere else have they been discovered in beds of equal age. These Ludlow fish-beds lie almost at the top of the Silurian system, and their fish belong, as I have said, to types so old- fashioned that no living member of the fishy tribes would recognize them or own relationship. Their bones, if such they can be called, consisted altogether of soft cartilaginous material, and they carried their hard parts outside. Armed like a tortoise, with a shield which covered the fore part of the body, they had no defence for their tails and hind portions. Probably, like some modern fish, they hid their soft parts in holes or in the mud, exposing only their armor-clad head to the perils of the seas. This struct- ure was common among the fishes of the olden time. They resembled the iron-sheathed ships of modern navies. They were proof against all attack from above. Their vulnerable point was below.
"The fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, immortalized by Hugh Miller, were built on this fashion, and were probably the gigantic descendants of the compara- tively small and puny Silurian forms to which our little Perry County fishes were closely related.
"Some of the Devonian or Old Red Sandstone spe- cies were thirty feet long, and carried huge plates of bony armor as much as two or three inches thick. But no such giants were known in Silurian days. The
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JUNIATA AND SUSQUEHANNA VALLEYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.
little fish of Perry County were not more than six inches in length, and the only traces which they have left are the thin shields that protected their vital organs. These shields measure from two to three inches in length, and resemble in form the skin of a quarter of an orange, having its sharp ends rounded off. Their microscopic structure, on which depended their iden- tification as fish, closely resembles that of the English Ludlow fishes, but could not be made intelligible here without figures. Suffice it to say that in every link the chain of argument is complete, and that Perry County now has the honor of contributing to geology the oldest indisputable vertebrate animals which the world has yet seen.
" It is a long, long vista through which we look back, by the help of geology's telescope, to see these tiny ancestors of our fishes sporting in the Silurian seas. The Tertiary and Secondary rocks abound with fish. Even in our Coal Measures we find numerous species. The Devonian seas, as I have already mentioned, swarmed with great armor-clad monsters, some of which I have found in Perry County. These lived millions of years ago, and few can realize what a mil- lion means. But earlier than all these swam the little hard-shelled Pennsylvania Palcaspis, as I have called it, in the seas of long ago, before Tuscarora and the Blue Mountains had raised their heads above the waters. To these queer, antiquated forms we must look as the ancestors of some at least of our existing fish, developed by the slow process of nature, by change of environment, by competition in the struggle for existence, and by the inexorable law of the sur- vival of the fittest. The condition of life must then have varied rapidly, for these and every nearly allied form became extinct in Mid-Devonian days; and when our Coal Measures were laid down they were already as much out of date and as nearly forgotten as are the armor-clad knights of the Middle Ages at the present time. But the mud of the sea-bottom received their carcasses, buried them carefully, and has ever since faithfully preserved them, if not perfect, yet in a con- dition capable of being recognized. And to the geol- ogist that same sea-bottom, long since dried and turned to stone, now returns these precious remains. The day of their resurrection has come, and the ham- mer has brought to light from the rocks of Perry County the identical bones entombed, perhaps, twenty million years ago, when its wearer turned on its back, gave up the ghost and sank to the bottom."
Later, Professor Claypole announced the dis- covery of four species of fish in these rocks, which he has named Onchus Clintoni, Onchus Pennsylvanicus, Palaspis bifurcata, Palas- pis Americanus.
In 1852 the tusk of a mastodon was dis- covered in digging a cellar in Buffalo Valley, near Lewisburgh, Union County. The tusk
was ten feet long and in diameter ten inches. A fragment about sixteen inches long and ten inches in diameter is now preserved in the museum of the University at Lewisburgh. I did not learn that any other portions of the animal were discovered. Professor A. Winchell thinks it possible that the mastodon may have been exterminated by the ancestors of the present Indians.
There have been found, within the county, the remains of the elk (Cervus Canadensis) and the beaver (Castor fiber), now extinct in this re- gion. The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), red deer (Cariacus Virginianes), wild cat (Lynx rufus) and black bear ( Ursus Americanus) are sometimes seen in the mountains; but unless protected by law, will also soon become extinct within our borders. The bones of Indians, stone axes, hatchets, arrow and lance-heads, beads, etc., are found to represent a disappear- ing race, who once possessed the land.
THE PROGRESS OF LIFE .-- In reference to the changes in life and its progress through the different geological ages, we cannot do better than quote a few passages from Professor J. D. Dana, a veteran American geologist,-
" Life commenced, among plants, in sea-weeds, and ended in palms, oaks, elms, the orange, rose, etc. It commenced among animals in mollusks stand- ing on stems like plants, crinoids, worms and trilobites, and probably earlier in the simple systemless pro- tozoans ; it ended in man. Sea-weeds were followed by lycopods, ferus and other flowerless plants, and by gymnosperms, the lowest of flowering plants; these finally by the higher flowering species above men- tioned, the palms and angiosperms. Radiates, mol- lusks and articulates, which appeared in the early Silurian, afterwards had fishes associated with them; later, reptiles; later birds and inferior mammals; later, higher mammals, as beasts of prey and cattle ; lastly, man."
This progress was from marine to terrestrial life. In the Archaan, Silurian and Devonian ages the great bulk of the life was probably marine ; in the Carboniferous it was both marine and terrestrial, and since the Carboniferous both marine and terrestrial have existed, the terres- trial predominating.
There has been a constant change of species, new species appearing as others disappeared. Not a single one of the early species survives
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until to-day. Few species lived through their own age. At the close of some of the ages, there was widespread extermination of species, as at the close of the Devonion, Carboniferous and Cretaceous. As we pass from rock-bed to rock-bed, the life changes in each. Over forty thousand species of animals have been found fossilized in the rocks, not one of which is now living.
The lowest species of a group have not always been first introduced. The earliest fishes were among the highest. Trilobites were not the lowest crustaceans. Oxen appeared long after tigers, dogs, monkeys, etc. The earliest species were intermediate or Comprehensive types. Thus the first fishes were, in some respects, inter- mediate between fish and reptiles. The earliest birds were between reptiles and birds. The earliest mammals were between birds and mammals, etc. The same is true of the earliest plants.
There was, however, always harmony be- tween the different species living on the earth at any time and with the physical conditions of the earth at that time. The reptiles, the birds, the fish of the Reptilian age all harmonize with themselves and with the earth of that age. So with the life of the Carboniferous and the Quaternary, etc.
Progress always the unfolding of a system ; man the culmination of that system. "There were higher and lower species appearing through all the ages, but the successive popula- tions were still, in their general range, of higher and higher grade, and thus the progress was ever upward. With every new fauna and flora in the passing periods there was a fuller and higher exhibition of the kingdoms of life. Had progress ceased with the Reptilian age, the system might have been pronounced the scheme of an evil demon. But as time moved on, higher races were introduced, and finally man came forth, not in strength of body, but in the majesty of his spirit ; and then living nature was full of beneficence. The system of life about to disappear as a thing of the past had its final purpose fulfilled in the creation of a spiritual being,-one having powers to search into the depths of nature and use the wealth of|
the world for his physical, intellectual and moral advancement, that he might thereby prepare, under divine aid, for the new life in the coming future." It is interesting to note that all through the progress in the development of life there has been development in the line of increased brain capacity. The earliest verte- brates had very small brains. This increase culminates in man, whose brain is the most perfect in all the animal creation.
VIII .- GEOLOGICAL SKETCH OF EACH COUNTY.
JUNIATA .- " Arca, four hundred square miles. This county, ten miles wide and about fifty miles long, stretches in a gentle curve between the Tuscarora and Shade Mountains, from the Susquehanna River to the bend of the Juniata, below Newton Hamilton, on the Hun- tingdon County line. It is a single trough, or basin, on the two sides of which outcrop Clinton and Onondaga shales (V.)', Lower Held- erberg limestone (VI.). Oriskany sandstone (VII.), and the central part of which still pre- serves the Marcellus, Hamilton, and Chemung divisions of VIII., but nothing higher in the series, and, therefore, no coal, although a few thin streaks of carbonaceous slate (VIII.) have led to that belief. The sides of the basin are steep, and its belly is crimpled into several close folds, which produce the zigzags which appear on the colored geological map, so that the northern out- crop of VI. and VII., if stretched out, would measure at least seventy miles, and the south- ern outerop forty miles. The fossil ore-beds have been mined along the Juniata River (which cuts through Clinton rocks for about fifteen miles) and in the low ridges in front of East and West Shade Mountains, back from the river. East Shade Mountain is a sharp anti- clinal fold of Medina (IV.) split lengthwise, so that the Lorraine shales (III.) appear on the crown of the arch in a secluded vale between the two crests of the mountain. Blue Ridge is a similar rock wave of No. IV., dying out cast at the river. Between the two mountains are the ' Long Narrows,' a basin of No. V.,
I Refer to the geological map for location of each kind of rock.
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JUNIATA AND SUSQUEHANNA VALLEYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.
in which the river Juniata flows. West Shade the west, the valley tapers to a point southward, and is split at its northern end into three, long, narrow, straight, anticlinal vales, separated by two picturesque synelinal spurs of the Buffalo Mountains coming from Snyder County. The Mountain is a similar arch rock of No. IV., but so much higher than the other two that when it splits into two erests going south, not only the slates of No. IIT,, but the limestones of No. II., appear at the surface, and this | limestone floor of this valley contains deposits of becomes Black Log Valley, in Huntingdon County. At the eastern part of the county ! the basin has a sharp wave in its bottom, which brings up to the surface, on both sides of the Susquehanna River, at the bottom of the Mahantango Creeks, both the Oriskany sand- stone (VII.) and the underlying limestone (VI.)."
The Juniata trough is crossed near its mid- dle by the Juniata River, and with the excep- tion of a small area in the northeast, which drains into the West Mahantango Creek, the whole county has but two slopes, a northern and a southern, both falling towards the Juniata River. The streams carrying off the drainage are Tuscarora, Licking, Lost and Cocolamus Creeks, falling into the Juniata, and in the northwest, the West Mahantango Creek, which falls into the Susquehanna. Black Log Creek, which drains the upper part of Black Log Valley, runs south, falls into the Great Aughwick, and thus reaches the Juniata.
The valleys bear different local names. Those best known are Tuscarora Valley, the great central trough ; Black Log and Liberty Valleys in the south, and Turkey Valley, in the extreme eastern part of the county. " The Narrows " lie along the Juniata River.
The soil is various. There is little limestone soil, comparatively speaking. The mountains and the steep mountain-sides are necessarily unsuited to agriculture. The shales, which form the greater portion of the soil of the county, vary in quality, sometimes fertile, at others barren. In the valleys there is, how- ever, much productive land. There is much iron-ore in the county.
MIFFLIN COUNTY .- " Area, three hundred and eighty square miles. The western half of this long, narrow county is a secluded Lower Silurian limestone valley, drained by Kishacoquillas Creek, through Logan's Gap, in Jack's Moun- tain, between which and Stone Mountain, on
brown hematite iron-ore, once extensively mined in open quarries. Its sides consist of Lorraine and Utica slate, No. III., rising to a very remarka- ble terrace of Oneida conglomerate (IV. a), broken at short, regular intervals by little ra- vines, heading in the upper slope of Medina slates (IV. b), crowned by the mountain crest of white Medina sandstone (IV. c). The scen- ery is not only romantic in an artistic, but in a geological sense, and an end view of the north- ern spurs affords the finest illustration of syn- clinal and anticlinal wave-structure to be found in Pennsylvania. The eastern county line, forty miles long, follows the crest of East Shade Mountain (IV.), crosses the synclinal vale of the Juniata, ' Long Narrows,' to Blue Ridge (IV.), the crest of which it follows to the great bend of the Juniata River. Between this eastern mountain line and Jack's Mountain runs the Lewistown Valley, thirty-eight miles long, and with great regularity six miles wide,-a trough deeper at its two ends and. shallower midway, of Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian measures, crumpled into numerous sharp, parallel folds, producing at the present surface many zigzag outerops of the Lewistown limestone (Lower Helderberg, No. VI.) and Oriskany sandstone, No. VII., with the overlying pyritous ferrif- erous black clay, turned, near the surface, into a valuable brown hematite iron-ore, extensively mined west of Lewistown in the numerous low ridges bordering the north bank of the Juniata River. The fossil ore-beds of the Clinton, No. V., are opened at many points along the slope of Jack's Mountain, and outerop also along the slopes of Shade Mountain and Blue Ridge." Instrumental measurements of the formations in this county, carefully made at Lewistown by the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, show the following thicknesses of the different rocks:
FERT.
Marcellus black slate.
... 290
Marcellus limestone .. 40
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