Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 10

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

USA > Pennsylvania > Venango County > Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1) > Part 10

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VENANGO COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

are mineral springs, chalybeate and white-sul- phur, cold and sparkling. Undoubtedly all the various rock waters found near Monarch Park have outlets in the glens of the county near the river. The flora of the glen is extensive and interesting, some of it rare.

The birdlife is probably as abundant here as in any other locality of the country. The river valley is an old route of the birds coming up with the spring from the South. Even those going westward come up pretty well to the north before turning toward the West. No pen can do justice to these glens. They are probably known to few. The botanist, bird lover, trout fisher or student of nature may know some of them. Not many of them are named. In Venango county there are a dozen or more of these gorges that are easily the equals in quiet loveliness of the famous glens of Watkins and Havana in New York, and superior to .them in stately beauty and in the abundance and multiplicity of wild life. In the waters here is still living an ugly little crocodilian called commonly the "water dog," the pest of bait fishermen. In living forms and fossil remains, his ancestors extend back to a former geologic period. His presence here is a good indication of the great age of this river, that it once discharged into the vast interior sea before some of the present strata emerged. He is named for the Allegheny and is peculiar to it. Agassiz calls him the oldest example of one type of life upon the earth. He may be found at the bottom of any of the gorges, mak- ing all other animal life beautiful by contrast. He lives upon dead fish and still animals, or parts, which he swallows whole and backs out, not minding fish hooks. Among animals his shape is like a bad short dream among cheerful thoughts. But his message is from afar.

Some fine examples of scenery typical of the glens of Venango county may be found near the mouth of Upper Two-Mile run and up this run for four or more miles, till the road leaves the glen near the top, at the small solitary church known as Forest Chapel. The rocks are stratified in varying colors, played upon by lights and shades, rising in perpendicular walls perhaps four hundred feet. They are not monotonous ; they change often. They can not be described, but they will be felt. They are adorned by large pictures, hundreds of feet in extent. made up of myriads of living and moving tints, millions of greens with spots of all colors up to white, in May and June. It is a mass of life becoming many different pictures as the days go by, changing lights with every cloud. Perhaps the number of these gorges 3

reduces the power to rightly see them. If there were in the county only one or two of them, which could be shut in by gateways bear- ing the Dantesque legend, "Abandon, all ye, a half dollar, who hope to enter here"; while to the interior walls were hung rickety stair- ways leading to a high side-gorge where Light- ning Chief and Star Heels lived concealed from their parent-enemy-chieftains; or to the top of "lovers' leap" named "Caw"-"Coo" from the first lovers ; or to natural rock shelves affording views of the falls, while waiting for rainbows; or to the spring basins with glasses under their drips, crested white, black, or brown, with the sulphur, iron or iodine in the waters ; and, finally, if photo-postal cards and printed legends were as the forest leaves. in number, would all these things add to the lure of the glens? No. Stronger is the low direct appeal of the beauty and the mystery of the gorges, whose voices of the dim past whisper in their aisles to the one who goes out of doors for a while.

ELEVATIONS

Approaching Venango county by the ordi- nary lines of travel, at Brocton, N. Y., the track of the Pennsylvania Railroad is 687 feet above sea level. The figures which will be quoted as track elevations are in all cases those determined by the civil engineers of the railways. They are obtained by running levels from a point at sea level, Sandy Hook in some cases. From this point lines are run in differ- ent directions through the spots where eleva- tions are recorded, to a meeting place, whence each line returns to the place of beginning along the other line. Errors are thus detected and eliminated. Rising rapidly by the steep terraces of Lake Erie's old basin, at Prospect a few miles out the track is 1.365 feet above sea level, a rise of 678 feet. This is near the top of the basin ; the lake is in full view. There is now a descent for a few miles to Mayville, 1,314 feet. This is only a few feet above the surface of Chautauqua Lake. Geologists say that the basin of Chautauqua Lake was scooped out by a glacier which also formed a part of the valley by which the Conewango reaches the river. It moved for a little along the river's brim, bringing material for the meadows below Warren. From the leavings of this same small glacier. probably a fair- sized bed of fine sandy gravel was washed down the river and dropped into a wide deep depres- sion across its bed, about two miles above Oil City. The gravel is a perfect filter, self clean-

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VENANGO COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

ing by the action of the water it purifies. Into this bed, at some distance from the river, are sunk the artesian wells that give to Oil City its unfailing abundance of pure water. It is said there is no other bed like it from Warren to the Ohio. The depression in the bed of the river has not yet been accounted for; it may have been produced by the elevation preceding the ice cap. This glacier was a small one-only an arm or a finger of the large ice body at work farther northwest, which reached out and did some good. From Mayville the track rises to 1,628 feet at Summerdale; this is on the western rim of the coal basin of Pennsyl- vania. At Corry the level is 1,375 feet; low hills appear. The road soon enters the valley of Oil creek, and still descending, the track reaches the level of 1,193 feet at Titusville. The hills here appear to be and are three hun- dred to three hundred and fifty feet high. This is in the Allegheny valley; the hills above are at the level of the valley plateau. At Miller Farm, five miles farther down Oil creek, the track has dropped fifty-nine feet to 1,134; at Petroleum Center, the track elevation is 1,085 feet ; Rynd Farm, 1,039 feet ; Rouseville, 1,035 feet. At Oil City the elevation is 1,004 feet ; 189 feet below Titusville, an average drop of eleven feet to the mile. As the river is ap- proached the hills seem to increase in height.

Up the Allegheny fifteen miles, at President, where river and track enter the county, the elevation is 1,036 feet, showing an up-grade of two and one-eighth feet to the mile. At Warren the elevation is 1,195 feet, almost identical with that at Titusville, and the hills at the two places appear equally high. Down the Allegheny from Oil City, at Franklin, eight miles distant, the track level is 985 feet, at Emlenton, forty miles, and southern extremity of the county, 900 feet, making the drop from Oil City to Emlenton two and one-third feet per mile. At Pittsburgh the level is 737 feet, 267 feet below Oil City, an average of two feet per mile for the whole distance. The river shows throughout the same features. The high banks have corresponding strata on each side. There are many turns. The river flows during its course toward every point of the compass. Back from the banks, the high land is quite level along the top. A like description applies to the Ohio. Its course is crooked ; its flood plain is wider, its rocky banks have been cut into deeper gorges by the strong streams that have dug in. There is the high plateau back from the banks, though at its mouth the land is worn away for miles on either side. The grade varies; but the average fall is only

nine inches for each of the 967 miles of its length. The Indians and the French were right in giving the two rivers one name.

The Miche Sepe, Mississippi, or "Father of Waters," as the red men felt it, is similar. Its flood plain is from twenty to eighty miles wide, covered with a floor of alluvia one hun- dred feet thick. Through this the river cuts its way in curves from the Ohio to the gulf, a distance of five hundred miles straight, but as the water travels, it is 1,097 miles. The old banks along this stretch are from two hundred to four hundred feet high and consist of strata some geologic ages younger than those of the Allegheny.' The mighty stream, 3,000 to 4,500 feet wide, runs close to the bluffs on the east side frequently, and once it crosses to the opposite shore, in its course below the Ohio. Back from the precipitous shores, to the east and to the west extends the plateau of the valley. The banks and high land .stop at the gulf. But the flood plain of the river extends many miles out into the water, and its greatest width is 150 miles. This is the Delta. It has an area of 12,400 square miles. Near its be- ginning, a number of arms or branches strike out from the main current on both sides, and as independent rivers find their way through the lowlands to the gulf. The Mississippi con- tinues centrally among its offshoots to the end of the Delta, where it mingles its muddy stream with the clearer water. It has four mouths or "passes" which are named and marked to guide the navigators. Above the gulf, the flood plains or bottom lands of the river extend for five hundred miles with an average width of forty miles. They are subject, also, to over- flow, and consequent annual enrichment. Be- low the Ohio the river has doubtless formed forty thousand square miles of wonderfully fertile land. This is the gift of the Mississippi, as Egypt is of the Nile. It is the summary of a vast system of drainage. The finis is in the Gulf of Mexico, where the river, besides the larger amount left along thousands of miles of water courses, rolls in at the end enough sediment every year to cover two hundred and forty-seven square miles one foot deep. This alluvium is collected and carried by the busy waters from all the territory between the Alle- ghenies and the Rocky mountains, one and a quarter million square miles of surface. .

The topography of Venango county is not strange, or unrelated to other things. It is part of a comprehensive plan of building a conti- nent. and of furnishing it with working rivers by which dead organisms and the pulverized rocks from all of earth's strata, even from the

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oldest mountain tops, shall be assembled as if by an "increasing purpose," for the growth of higher forms of life.

GEOLOGY

Passing along the valley of the Allegheny, or any of the valleys entering it in Venango county, it becomes evident that the rock forma- tions are stratified and that the streams, espe- cially the larger ones, are very crooked. They pass often from one side of their valleys to the other. The arrangement into strata and the frequent change of the stream from bank to bank are closely related and have important re- sults. About four miles up one of the runs which enter the river, the water is beginning to wear into the bed rock. Just above this point the stream turns to the right toward a higher stony bank, which it wears away for a short distance, and bores into it, leaving a curve at the lower end of the cut which from the start turns some of the water, and finally all of it, toward the left. This is known as surely as if the process had been watched, though part of the bank has been cut away. It is seen in the gradually deepening water toward the left, by the bar of pebbles and dirt formed against the right bank and by the curve toward the left at the end of this bar. The stream now runs quite rapidly pressing against the left bank, which is a nearly upright low wall of rocks lying in beautiful horizontal strata, a hard sandstone on top with blue, red- dish yellow, brown or black layers beneath. If the inclination of the strata are measured, the dip will not exceed five degrees. The wall grows in height noticeably as the stream de- scends ; while the opposite bank follows, as it were, pari passu, in a gentle descending slope from the top of the opposite side. The valley is deeper and wider. The sloping side is cov- ered with vegetation, trees near the top, and smaller forest growth toward the water. Far- ther down stream there has been a debacle. The shales at the bottom crumbled and a long section of the left bank fell into the valley, and continued to fall till the left side is piled up half way to the top, with a backward slope above. The spectator feels the shock of it. The arrangement of the rocks account for it, the weak, soft ones gave out at the bottom.

The stream turns now to the right, and is soon found pressing against a wall on that side, in strata, like the first ; and stranger yet, there is a sloping shore on the opposite bank with similar vegetation upon it. Farther down, the slanting shore has become steeper. Or has the

stream found its old bed of ages ago? It now runs with perpendicular walls on each side, with the rock strata on each side matching the other. At the bottom of this glen another gorge comes in from the right and both streams seek the left bank, while on the right the shore extends by a long incline toward the top, the inclination becoming less down stream, to an almost level wide space containing a fair-sized farm of fertile sandy loam, with air drain- age for fruit, and the many-colored wall of rock, three hundred feet high, to protect it from north and east winds. A number of oil "rigs" appear, pumped by water power from the stream; more might be worked by the same force or an electric lighting plant could be in- stalled. Spring water of the best abounds; ir- rigation of many acres would be easy. It is a happy valley. Back in the gorge, where the two rock walls of the stream come near to- gether, what would have been the result if both walls had fallen inward so as to com- pletely close the chasm? This may occur there some time. The wall near the stream falling in, the rocks back of it, deprived of support, would follow, and continue to topple over upon or against those already down, till the strain of the loose slanting top of stones and dirt was relieved. This loose top will begin to come down when the first shelf or stratum just under it swings over into the stream. It carries a part of the top with it, leaving the adjacent portion above ready to slide and roll down. When the slanting top was formed by the crumbling away of the rocks above, each particle stopped where the friction was just sufficient to check it; it was not fastened, but has remained in almost equilibrium. The first shelf of rock that rotates on its column of stone over into the water, may be a number of feet wide and rods long for this reason. The bottom of the stream is hard rock generally, for it wears long ; while it was wearing through the shales above, it was also softening them back under the wall; when the hard bottom is reached the water is still running against the edges of the soft rocks at the side, carry- ing some of their material away, thus under- mining the wall. The soft rocks are porous and take up the water, and its oxydizing air, for quite a distance under the wall, so that the wall may be unstable and cracked along the cleavage lines, while it is still standing. Quarries near the river here show tall walls of rocks, with thick layers of limestone, just ready to fall over in long thick walls from the crumbling and water soaking and disintegra- tion of the frail shales underneath. This was

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the case two hundred feet back from the water and one hundred and fifty feet above it. The first shelf may be therefore wide and very long, and start the whole slanting top coming, gathering momentum as it moves, so that parts of the wall, following one another, tumble over like a row of books. The opposite wall will be ready to fall at about the same time, if the chasm is straight, and the rock strata the same. The rocks appear to be the same on each side; and they must be nearly the same, or they would have worn unevenly and made a bend in the stream. Suppose both sides to have fallen soon after the glen was formed; then our "happy valley" would not have been fash- ioned. The water in the hills would have sought and found other outlet, and made a valley elsewhere, "happy" or otherwise.

There is a ravine about midway between Oil City and Franklin known as "dry hollow" or "deep hollow." Its opening on the river bank has an appearance usual to the mouth of a good-sized stream. A meadow of several acres is formed there. From this the road , leads along a fair-sized stream bed in which

flows a little rill, mostly from a roadside water- ing trough. From the trough the road ascends sharply for a short distance and then continues level for about a mile, and descends by a steep grade to Monarch Park, where there is a good- sized stream known as Lower Two-mile run. The level of this run is considerably higher than the river at the other end of the hollow. Deep Hollow is high in the middle and low at both ends. Back from the level stretch in the middle, are walls of rocks like river banks, facing each other, perhaps one thousand feet apart. A number of years ago oil wells were drilled in Deep Hollow along the level middle part, on both sides of the street car track and public road which run through it. The drill en- countered rocks lying at all angles, widely dif- fering in hardness and material and the bodies of trees such as are now growing near by, making the drilling very difficult. After about sixty-five feet of this, the ordinary drilling of the vicinity was found. The conclusion is forced that Lower Two-Mile used to run through Deep Hollow. It would then have entered the river about a mile above the stream now called Upper Two-Mile, but on the op- posite side. Lower Two-Mile now flows from Monarch Park to the river, through a pictur- esque valley, for three miles, forming level meadows for gardens across the stream from each of the stone walls worn into the rock, crossing from side to side, making wider and deeper its path to the river. This change was

effected in prehistoric times. There is no doubt that the change did take place; the evidence furnished by the drill is overwhelming. Upper and Lower "Two-Mile" runs have been so called since the earliest records here; the for- mer enters the river about two miles above Franklin, and the latter the same distance below. The changing of one small brook, so that it makes its valley in one place, rather than in another, with its level spot in the angle of every bend, seems a trifling result of piling rocks sixty feet high in a chasm a mile long and a thousand feet wide. A less effort at another point might have changed the river system of several States.

VICINITY OF OIL CITY

Ascending from the valley to some of the high points near Oil City, a wide outlook is obtained over the surrounding territory. On the highest land of Hasson Height the city engineer has placed two water tanks to supply parts needing high pressure. The elevation here, as determined by survey, is 532 feet above the Pennsylvania railway track, or 1,536 feet above sea level. Two other points, namely, Rich Hill, and Clark's Summit, are, respective- ly, twelve and fifteen feet higher. From these high places, the view along the principal streams shows a succession of irregular bluffs, abrupt, precipitous, pyramidal, or in ridges. Looking in the opposite direction the land ap- pears level, or as a gently undulating surface, extending back from the streams along both banks. Here are no high hills or "mounts," as writers in former times called them when looking up from the valleys. The rocks are all in place, in horizontal layers. In a mountain region the strata are tilted up at all angles, even under the foothills. Our surface rocks belong to the "Vespertine" Series of the geolo- gists, so named, perhaps, because they belong to the late or ensuing period of the Devonian Age. "They surround the entire coal basin of the State as with a girdle." They are fifty feet thick in this county, though much thicker farther east. The top layer is a hard gray sand rock, or a coarser grit, or in some sections a limestone, underlaid by shales. Next below is the "Vergent" series, reaching to the river's bottom and below, made up of sand rock, shales and some limestone. In this second series are the local quarries; the sand rocks cleave readily into building blocks, some of them into flags. From the high points the general level appears to be forty to fifty feet lower. This is the level which is seen most

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frequently along the tops of the river walls, and seems to be the same distance above the river at Oil City, Franklin, Emlenton or at Pittsburgh. From this view, the truth appears to be, that from slight depressions among the hills along this descending plateau, the river bed and those of all its tributaries and the bot- toms of ravines have, in the course of ages, been scooped out by the action of the water. This has dug through the rocks these vast channels and is still making them wider and deeper.

OIL CREEK

The ancient river, finding its way among the low places of the rolling hills, was at first broad, shallow and sluggish. Very early in the life of the river it was joined by Oil creek. The two streams are the same age; and the history of their confluence is written in tracer- ies which join along their banks and match each other, so that one can not be understood without the other. As shown by marks and benches in the hills, the river extended from the topmost bank on the south side northward to Clark's Summit, and to the high south escarpment of the Cemetery, covering its slant- ing top where it slants southward, for about fifty feet along the slope; and over the top of Hogback as far as the high shoulder of that ridge. Oil creek met the river at the same level. Its left bank was the west slope of Hasson Height, and the west side of the ceme- tery's top. The level whereon Oil City stands was covered with undisturbed rock formations, probably three hundred feet thick. The old course where the creek turned to the left against Hasson Height, can be easily traced to- day. The river was nearly a mile wide, and the creek was nearly half as wide, judging by the shore limits. In time the waters below wore an outlet. The bed of the river was gradually lowered to the bench below the Cemetery, withdrawing the water in part from the south side. The creek retreated slowly to a bed east of Pearl avenue; here it met the river 1,000 feet at least north of the present junction, where a bed of river gravel was left. There is no gravel from the creek, only chips of shale. There are stratified sand banks north of St. Joseph's Church, deposited by the up- ward swirl of the creek waters where they turned into the river one hundred fifty feet above its present bed, the finest sand being far- thest up stream. Water is a perfect separator of what it carries ; it drops the coarser particles first, the finer later, and always in layers. On

the south side there are sand beds at about the same height, where the water turned around the end of a bar forming opposite to a bend dug into the other bank. Finally, the river and creek descended nearly to their present beds, some thousands of years ago. Oil creek now had for its left bank the slope crossing Grove avenue, for its right bank the wall against which it had run from far back, still extending in thickness farther toward the east than now-probably farther, to the middle of the present river bed. The river was running along the wall just above the railroad track to Siverly, that extends back of East Bissell Ave. A continuation of this wall also shows where the river wore off the face of Hogback and of the wall below in the same place. It con- tinued along this right bank, boring into it till it completed almost a round turn, where it threw the stream against the left bank at Reno. This left bank is a very old one, and appar- ently reaches from its present bed to the ancient top. It received all the pounding through the ages of the waters above and of the rocks brought down with them, and took it nearly square in the face till it wore up stream and increased the angle of the bank to the stream above. The erosive power of water is not usually appreciated. This power increases if the velocity of water is increased. But the increase of carrying and erosive power is enormously greater than the increase of ve- locity. It is proved by mathematics that if the velocity of a stream is doubled the carrying power is increased sixty-four times, and there- fore its erosive and its striking power against a bank or bed of a stream is increased also that number of times. This may be briefly stated : If a given rate, I, sufficient to move a cubic foot, by pressing against one of its square foot faces, current 2 will hit the face one foot square with twice as many particles in a given time, and each particle, having twice the velocity, makes the momentum four times as great, which pressing against the square-foot face of a cube would move that cube and three others back of it. Draw a cube four feet on each edge. It will have sixteen square feet in each face; one foot back of any face parallel to it will contain sixteen cubic feet. Two feet back and parallel thirty-two cubic feet, four feet back will contain sixty-four cubic feet. Or, the sixteen square feet of surface of any side of the cube will each have one cubic foot and three other cubic feet back of it, and can be moved by current 2. This has also been shown by experiment. The velocity of river currents is frequently in-

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Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 10

Author: Babcock, Charles A. Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: