CHAPTER II. * GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY There has never been but one geological survey of Adams County, and that was made by Prof. John Locke, Assistant State Geologist. in 1838. There is a more recent report but it does not at all cover the county. Prof. Locke's report is so comprehensive and withal so plain that anyone by reading it may acquire much valuable knowledge of the geological formations of Adams County. It is however necessary to note some changes in classification and nomenclature in accordance with present usage. Reference to the map of the County in this volume will greatly assist the reader in fixing the relative position of places and localities. The rocks of Adams County are so well defined and so various as to render it a model of stratification. It embraces a varied series, including different strata, extending from the blue limestone [Cincinnati group] to the fine-grained [Waverly] sandstone. The strata are of nearly a uniform thickness, and nearly uniformly inclined east nine and one-half degrees south, at the rate of about 37.4 feet per mile, or a little more than too feet in three miles. In the direction of north, nine and one-half degrees east, a line on the strata or layers of rocks is level just as the sloping roof of a house is level in a line parallel to the ridge or eaves. This is called the line of bearing, while the line at right angles to it is called the line of dip. If the rocks of Adams County were continued onward as they now lie, until they filled up the surface of the county to the height of 500 feet above the level of low water of the Ohio River at Cincinnati, the several layers of rocks running up a slope from the east, and cut off by this level surface, would present at that surface, several belts of various widths, running in the direction of the line of bearing. If the county were sliced .down by cutting off level horizontal layers so as to reduce it in height successively to 400, 300, 200, and 100 feet, it would still present the same belts of surface having the same width, but removed each time a little more that three miles to the east of the place which they formerly occupied. [Place seven pennies one upon another on a level surface; then push them over to the southeastward until their edges rest upon the plane, with each penny covering about one-half the surface of the one next beneath. Then the position of these pennies will fairly correspond to the position of the seven layers c f rocks in the county, beginning with the blue limestone and ending with the fine-grained sandstone.-ED.] The several layers of rocks of Adams County are, beginning at the bottom : * From Locke's Report. with notes and comments by the Editor. (10) GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY - 11 First. Blue limestone of indefinite thickness. Second. Blue marl................................................25 feet. Third. Flinty limestone ........................................51 feet. Fourth. Blue marl ..............................................100 feet. Fifth. Cliff limestone ...........................................89 feet. Sixth. Slate .........................................................251 feet. Seventh. Fine-grained sandstone ........................343 feet. [The more recent classification is, beginning at the bottom : Cincinnati or Trenton, Clinton, Niagara, Water Lime, Corniferous, Erie Shale, and Waverly.—ED.] These sections lie over each other like shingles on the roof of a house. We will now proceed to describe the belts or "out-cropping" edges of the several strata, supposing the surface of the county to be a plane 500 feet higher than low water of the Ohio. First. The blue limestone would extend from the west into the southwest corner of the county, only about one mile ; into the northwest corner about four and a half miles, where it would disappear under the marl and continue onward to the eastward, sloping deeper and deeper, no one knows how far. Second. The blue limestone would be succeeded eastwardly by a belt of an outcropping of marl two-thirds of a mile wide. Third. The belt of flinty limestone, one and one-third miles wide. Fourth. The belt of the great marl layers three miles wide. Fifth. The belt of the cliff limestone two and one-half miles wide. Sixth. The belt of slate six and two-thirds miles wide. Seventh. The belt of sandstone occupying rest of county and about miles wide. Now as the surface of the county is not level, it does not actually exhibit such belts but only such an approximation to them as the surface is to a level. The western part of the county consists of blue limestone about 500 feet high, as at Fairview. West Union and some hills to the west of it shows the cliff limestone rising to 600 and 700 feet. The bed of Ohio Brush Creek again is in the blue limestone, because it is excavated to near the level of the base line, being only twenty or thirty feet above it. Cherry Fork and nearly all of the branches about Winchester in the northwest part of the county are also in the blue limestone, and seem to descend on the regular slope of the stratification. Above the Marble Furnace, the bed of East Fork is in the flinty limestone [Clinton] and finally in Highland County rises in the cliff [Niagara] limestone. It will be seen that most of the tributaries of Ohio Brush Creek are on the west side of it; those from the east being short and few in number. This results from the dip of the strata and the natural surface conforming to it. The slopes to the east, on the inclined surface of the stratification, are broad and gradual, but those to the west are abrupt and narrow, being over the escarpments or upturned ends of the several layers. The cliff limestone, the marl and the flint limestone at West Union, are what are called "outliers," a kind of geological island, as they are cut off on every side from the main body of the same layer and stand out above. They are cut off on the west by outcropping ; on the north by Cherry Fork ; on the east by Ohio Brush Creek, and on the south by the Ohio River, all of which have their beds in the blue limestone. 12 - HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY West Union is over 600 feet above low water at Cincinnati, overlooking the whole surrounding country except some outliers, Bald Hill and Cave Hill, to the northwest, and the very elevated knobs of slate and sandstone east of Ohio Brush Creek. As the great marl stratum underlies the cliff limestone, the descents from West Union over the cliff and marl are very abrupt. The marl being soft, and, during wet weather, treading into a bottomless mortar, requires the roads over it to be stoned. From West Union to Treber's on Lick Fork, the following section with thickness of strata is observed : Cliff limestone...............................89 feet. Marl ............................................106 feet. Flinty limestone ............................51 feet. Marl ..............................................25 feet. Blue limestone...............................25 feet: THE CLIP LIMESTONE (86 feet thick) at West Union consists of three layers partially blended into each other. The first or upper part is a rough, porous, soft limestone, filled with cavities which have been occupied by fossil animals, and which have decayed out. These cavities are lined with a dark colored bitumen. It produces good lime. The second or middle portion of this cliff limestone, is aluminous and arenaceous, of a slaty structure, dark gray color, and comparatively hard. The third and bottom portion is more sandy. It is massive, light colored, rather free to work and is quarried as a building stone. It has been opened in Darlinton's Quarry at the head of Beasly's Fork in a stratum twenty feet thick. Both this and the second or slaty layers effervesce but slightly with acids, and on solution in acid, leave a fine sediment or mud consisting of clay and fine sand and there rises on the surface of the solution a film of bitumen. They contain about 6o per cent. of carbonate of lime, but do not slake perfectly after burning. If pulverized after calcination, and mixed with sand, they harden under water, and might be used for hydraulic cement. THE GREAT MARL STRATUM (106 feet thick) forms the immediate sharp descent of the various hills around West Union. When lying undisturbed it has the blue color common to clay, and is evidently stratified. When decomposed by the frost and weather, it becomes lighter in color and, dried, becomes almost white. It is earthy, highly effervescent, contains a few fossils, and has thin layers of slaty limestone two or three inches thick, traversing it at remote distances. The great marl deposit forms, according to circumstances, three different sorts of soil. First. When it forms a slope under the cliffs, as it does at West Union and numerous other places, the water from above flows over it, and it produces the sugar tree and becomes covered with a rich mold suitable for wheat or corn. If it lies in a steep declivity, it is liable, after the trees are removed, to slip in large avalanches, blasting entirely the hopes of the husbandman. Second. When the natural level surface coincides with the great marl stratum, as it does for some distance north of West Union, the soil is rather inferior, and produces a forest of white oak. Such plains are called white oak flats. GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY - 18 Third. When it is left in conical mound-like "outliers," the marl is often barren of trees, and produces some peculiar prairie like plants, as the prairie docks, wild sunflowers, etc. These places are called "bald hills" and "buffalo beats." Several occur within a mile of West Union in a northerly direction, and would be quite a paradise for the botanist. THE FLINTY LIMESTONE (51 feet thick), like the blue limestone, lies in thin layers interstratified with marl, but it differs from the blue lime-stone in color, in fossils, and especially in having certain layers which abound in silicious matter, or are flinty. In the layers of stone the flinty matter is intimately combined in a crystalline rock, and not in any degree sedimentary or sand-like, as it is in the lower layers of the cliff stratum. The upper layer of the flinty limestone is peculiarly marked. It is about one foot thick, and contains so much silex that it has the sharp conchoidal or flinty fracture, and gives fire, with steel. In some places it is “crackeled," or broken into small triangular and diamond-shaped blocks, by vertical fractures or seams. In other places it occurs in large slabs and would be useful as a building stone. It is hard, but breaks or "spalls" easily. Nothing could be better for macadamizing than this rock. It is harder than the blue limestone and contains lime enough to form a final cement after packing. It is feebly effervescent, contains iron, is of a reddish or brown color outside, but has a pale or opal-like blue when freely fractured. No rock in our part of the country is more durable. In the cliffs where it has been exposed for ages it is not in the least weathered, but retains perfectly its sharp edges and angles. I have met with it at every point where the channels have been deep enough to reach it. [On the right bank of Lick Fork at the "old deer lick" nearly the whole of this stratum is exposed. The salt at "the lick" is not table salt but an epsom salt, sulphate of magnesia.--ED.] GREEN BURRH STONE is a "calcareo-silicious rock," occurring in detached semi-nodular masses, immediately on top of the flinty stratum, not general, but only locally presented. It is compact and flinty, of an agreeable apple-green color, rough and cellular, often containing liquid bitumen, white crystals of carbonate of lime and some fossils. It is to be seen in the greatest perfection on the descent into Soldier's Run, just above the site of Groom's old mill. It is said to equal the Raccoon burrh stone. INFERIOR MARL STRATUM (25 feet thick) is the common blue clay marl, and has nothing peculiar, except at "the lick" it includes a thin slaty layer of bluish limestone, similar to that in the great marl deposit, except the stem-like bodies are on the under side of it, and two or three inches in diameter. THE BLUE LIMESTONE, of indefinite thickness, with its characteristic fossils, commences in the bed of Lick Fork, within a mile below "the lick." Two peculiar subjects which occur in it below Treber's, and about fifty feet below the top of its stratification, claim our attention. These are a peculiar waved stratum, and a large species of trilobite. The waved strata occur in the cliff, the flinty and in the blue limestone; the under side is flat and smooth; the upper is fluted in long troughs two to three feet wide, called "ripple marks." The trilobite found was the isotelus maximus and measured twenty-one inches in length. 14 - HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY Bald Hill and Cave Hill. These are "outliers" of the cliff limestone similar to that of West Union, and lie to the north and west of it. In altitude, as they are in "a direction from West Union directly opposite to the "dip," they are higher than West Union; Bald Hill about fifty feet and Cave Hill one hundred feet. Bald Hill is quite an insulated elevation and would be an excellent observatory in a trigonometrical survey of the country. [Cave Hill was the location of one of the stations in the late geodetic survey by the general government—ED.] Split Rook Hill. This elevation is on Ohio Brush Greek near "Old Forge Dam," The ascent was made in company with Mr. John Fisher, and the section was found to be almost identical with that at West Union except that the little marl deposit seemed to be encroached upon by stone, and slate caps the top of. the hill as an outlier. The following are the heights of the several points indicated by the barometer : Mr. Fisher's house [in bottom at the old forge] above      low water mark at Cincinnati.................................82 feet. Top of the blue limestone ........................................100 feet. Top of the flinty limestone .......................................189 feet. Bottom of the cliff limestone ...................................327 feet. Top of cliff ...............................................................465 feet. Top of the hill ..........................................................524 feet. The great marl deposit here which seems to be thickened to 136 feet, presents a broad slope of "coveland" on the hillside covered with a fine growth of sugar trees. A narrow spur of the cliff about three-fourths of a mile southeast of the forge forms an insulated and almost inaccessible rock, which is quite a curiosity. It is fifty-three feet high, presenting a level terrace on the top ninety-two feet by thirty-six feet. The upper part of it is a tolerably pure limestone, the lower part is a loose arenaceous limestone filled with large corallines, and disintegrating by atmospheric agency, has been reduced ten to twenty feet in width, leaving the upper portion standing like a head on a small neck. Three sides of this are overhanging and inaccessible. At the fourth side it has been split from the contiguous hill, and the cliff has opened about two feet, from which circumstance I gave it the name "Split Rock." It is remarkable that though thus insulated and scarcely covered with soil, the flat top bears a great number of herbs and small trees. I made a catalogue of what I saw there : Red oak, black oak, chestnut oak, cedar, pine, ash, sycamore, water maple, box-elder, red bud, butternut, hazel, hornbean, hydrangea, sumac, three-leaved sumac, Juneberry, mullein, balm, sandwort, yellow flax, sassafras, grass—four species, soxifrage, white plantain, columbine, eupatonium, ferns—four species, houndstounge, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, huckleberry, cinquefoil, thistle, garlic. It is evident that Split Rock is concave and contains a reservoir of water to which the roots of the plants descend. Immediately above GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY - 15 Split Rock and beyond the cliff, commences a gradual swell of soil formed by the disintegration of slate, and produces cedar, pine, and chestnut oak, which last tree, in this vicinity, furnishes the tanner's bark. Furnace Hill Near Brush Creek Furnace. In company with Mr. John Fisher and Mr. James K. Stewart, proprietors of the furnace, we ascended to the southeast, and presently came to the slate or shale formations. The rock does not crop out but exfoliated masses of slate appear in the soil in scales one to two inches in diameter, and perhaps an eighth of an inch in thickness. Undershrubs became abundant. I was forcibly reminded of the origin of the name of the contiguous stream [Brush Creek]. The huckleberry bushes with ripe fruit abounded in the open places. Among other trees, the chestnut begins to show itself, which is, I believe, scarcely seen to grow in the limestone regions. After ascending several sharp acclivities, one of thirty degrees and another of thirty-five, we came to the fine-grained [Waverly] sandstone, where it had been quarried for furnace hearthstones, in a stratum three feet thick. This point is 707 feet above low water at Cincinnati. Ascending still further, we came to the top of the hill, where the barometer stood 28.596 inches and the thermometer registered 61 degrees F., a cool place for to A. M., July 12. This would give a height of 797 feet. The top of this hill is a level terrace of several acres having a deep rich soil, and producing a heavy growth of timber. It divides the water between Cedar Run and Scioto Brush Creek. On descending we saw abundance of game, squirrels, rabbits, and wild turkeys, and I was told that deer were not uncommon. Observations, Northwestern Part of the County. From Sample's Tavern at the "crossing" of Brush Creek, nine miles from West Union, the ascent to Jacksonville presents a section almost identical with that at West Union : From the water to the bottom of the flint limestone is... 58 feet. Flint limestone, 51 feet thick ........................................109 feet. Top of marl, 96 feet thick .............................................205 feet. Jacksonville ...................................................................281 feet. The bed of Brush Creek is then twenty-five to thirty feet in the blue limestone, and Jacksonville near the top of the cliff limestone. The surface of the country from Brush Creek Furnace to the Steam Furnace, and from Jacksonville to Locust Grove, lies on the cliff limestone, is nearly level, with a thin soil, often ash-colored or almost white, producing naturally white oaks. With good management it produces wheat, but some of it needs more nursing than it is likely to receive. The cliff stone in these places is more porous and arenaceous than elsewhere, and at Locust Grove it has disintegrated into a kind of sand and gravel through which a plow may sometimes be driven. From Jacksonville to Locust Grove, the stone, in its out-croppings, exhibits numerous nodules of sparry 16 - HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY crystals which treasure hunters have christened "silver blossom," and have wasted valuable time in useless and absurd explorations. These sparry nodules sometimes graduate or blend into a black substance, which gives opacity, and the spar adds luster till there is an appearance quite like Galena or lead ore. This has served still further to excite the imagination of dreamers. Examination at the Steam Furnace. The stream on which the furnace 'stands is small, but yet has cut .a deep channel in the rocks ; and falling rapidly below the furnace, presents within one-fourth of a mile vertical-cliffs, seventy feet to one hundred feet high. At the point where it has cut quite through the cliff and makes its bed in the great marl stratum, the channel opens on the left into a slope of thirty degrees, while the cliff is vertical or even overhanging on the opposite side. The slope on the left is formed by the surface of the marl, which having no other solid materials than the thin slaty limestone which traverses it remotely, will not lie steeper than thirty degrees or five feet of an elevation in ten. The continued rains of a wet season had so softened the soil on the slope, which does not permit the water to sink away, that with all its load of trees, rocks and springs, it had slidden into the stream below, leaving the grooved blue clay marl bald for 100 feet in length up and down the slope and 200 or 300 feet wide. The Turk's Head. As this marl stratum extends over the whole of the eastern and middle parts of the county, it presents in the valleys of the streams peculiar slopes commencing immediately under the cliffs, where they abound with copious cool springs, Having a - large portion of lime in its composition, it communicates great fertility to the soil. It has already been noticed that such lands are called "coves lands." If this marl were dug out and applied to the poor soil on the terrace of the cliff rocks, it would undoubtedly fertilize it. The bluff opposite to this avalanche, is a picturesque object, and its outline near the top resembles the profile of a Turk, and is called the "Turk's Head." The rocks through this ravine are all feebly effervescent. The lower portion, about twenty feet thick, is a tolerably quarry stone,. and works like a sandstone. The middle portion, fifteen or twenty feet thick, is slaty in structure, but still contains lime. The remainder, sixty or seventy feet, is a ragged nodular rock, including the ore beds. Grassy Hill. We made our approach to the hill one and one-half miles east of the furnace over an old road, and first passed over the common oak terrace of the cliff limestone. Gradually ascending we came to the huckleberry bushes and the chestnut trees, sure signs of the slate region, and finally, leaving the beaten path, we entered the "tangled thicket," to ascend the sides of the terminal cone of the knob, where we learned practically the origin of the name Brush Creek; for the brush was not merely close set, GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY - 17 but numerous grapevines passing from one young chestnut to another, horizontally, disputed every rod of our pass. On the slope sides was abundance of a broad-leaved, cutting grass (andropogon) and a fern (osmunda) both indicative of a wet soil. We finally arrived at the top which is a terrace 200 feet wide and 1,000 feet long, nearly destitute of trees but covered with grass and copsewood. The height obtained, barometrically, was 735 feet above low water at Cincinnati. The top is within the fine sandstone region, but that rock does not appear in place, or in regular layers. Fragments of it are abundant, some of them bright red and so much rolled down the slopes that I was unable to determine where the slate commences. Valley of Scioto Brush Creek.  Ascending from the waters of Crooked Creek at Locust Grove, we reached the summit between it and the waters of Scioto Brush Creek within a half mile. From this point the knobs or slate hills, capped with fine sandstone, are seen eastwardly ranging north and south to an in definite distance. Our first view of Scioto Brush. Creek showed it in a deep channel in the cliff rock surmounted with cedars. So firm and thick is that stone in this plate that it sustains itself in overhanging cliffs, projecting over the water in places twenty feet. On the slopes of the hills the stones have the form of stairs, with an occasional rise of twenty inches. At Smalley's, about six miles from Locust Grove, the cliff limestone is covered by a slate hill, and sinking still deeper and deeper as it proceeds on its line of the dip, disappears altogether beneath the surface a short distance to the eastward. Even above or west of Smalley's, on the north side of the creek, the slate shows itself in a bald or perpendicular side or mural escarpment of a knob. Sulphur and Chalybeate Springs.  It is at the junction of the slate and limestone that the sulphurous and chalybeate springs make their appearance. At Smalley's and just above the level of the contiguous stream, and a few feet below the top of the lime-stone, is a spring discharging about fifty gallons of water per minute, at the temperature of fifty-four degrees, and known in the vicinity as the "Big Spring." About ten feet above the spring commences the slate and rises into a mountain capped with sandstone, fragments of which have rolled to the base. There is about ten feet of clay between the limestone and the slate. Along the base of this hill and at the margin of the fork, the sulphur springs appear for a quarter of a mile. They are highly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, having the foeted smell, the nauseous taste, the black mud and the milky precipitate on the waters. The Slate on South Fork. It stands often in cliffs 100 feet in height. It is separable into very fine plates and would seem to be fit for roofing but unfortunately on exposure it crumbles. It is very bituminous, and when heated will burn 2a, 18 - HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY with a bright flame. Sometimes the slate banks ignite and burn for several days, but in general it will not support its own combustion. There is no workable coal in the slate stratum. It contains sulphuret of iron both in brassy and silver nodules, and imperceptibly blended with the slate itself. This decomposing, forms copperas and alum which effloresce in the clefts of the rocks, and by solution, form chalybeate water. The slate also includes septaria ludus helmontii, or large rounded masses of impure blue limestone, often a little flattened and cleft, the interior being filled with sparry crystals of carbonate of lime, or sulphate of baryta. About one-fourth of a mile below John Williams', the nodules or septaria of limestone assume the form of globes either perfect or a little flattened, and are singularly marked with parallels and meridians, like the lines of latitude and longitude on an artificial globe. One, three feet in diameter, lies at the water's edge broken into two hemispheres ; another, nine feet in circumference, lies in situs half raised above the water in the middle of the stream, with its axis nearly perpendicular. The equatorial part of this globe is raised like .the rings of Saturn. Two others are in the vertical bank twenty feet above the water, one of which is not a perfect globe, but a double conoid. The Pine-Grained Sandstone at Rockville. This is a fine building stone. It is procured from Waverly, Rockville, and several localities. As a building stone it is not surpassed in the world. The grain is so exceedingly fine that it appears when smoothed almost compact. Its color is a drab and very uniform, varied occasionally by iron stains Its fracture is dull and earthy, but so fine and soft as to have a peculiarly velvety appearance. It works freely and generally endures atmospheric agencies with little change, except it blackens somewhat from a decomposition of sulphuret of iron intimately blended with it. It endures the fire and answers well for the hearthstones of furnaces. Its sub-stance is chiefly an aluminous and silicious deposit almost wholly destitute of any calcareous matter. It lies in layers or strata nearly horizontal and varying in thickness from a few inches to three or four feet, separated mostly by simple joints or seams, having a little clay in them; sometimes by a stratum of clay, and in two places traversed by a shale or soft slate fifteen feet thick. Heights Above Low Water at Cincinnati. Top of the slate ...................................261 feet. White ledge ........................................344 feet. City ledge ...........................................410 feet. Beautiful quarry ..................................465 feet. Iron stratum .........................................517 feet. Top of the hill ......................................542 feet. Vicinity of Locust Grove. Locust Grove occupies the cliff limestone at a lower level than its top. The region to the north and east of it seems to have sunk from 200 to 400 feet, thus making the slate and sandstone occupy the level of the marl and GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY - 19 cliff limestone in the outlying region. The channel of Crooked Creek in the vicinity of Massie's Spring is not in the great marl stratum. Its place seems to be occupied by thin layers of limestone. Near the spring the level of the cliff limestone is occupied by sandstone in large upturned and broken masses, from which it is evident that a region of no small extent had sunk down several hundred feet, producing faults, dislocations, and up turnings of the layers of rocks. The spring is an excellent sulphureted water; on the west side of it is a gray limestone, the cliff rising about fifteen feet,while on the opposite side of it is slate dipping thirty degrees to the east. Sunken Mountain. To the east of Massie's Spring lies a sandstone hill beyond and at the foot of which is Mershon's sulphur spring. Here the slate again is exposed but dips in a direction opposite to that at Massie's Spring. As the top of the slate is found here more than 300 feet lower than in the strata in situs in the surrounding knobs, and as these strata are broken and upturned, is evident that this mountain, at some remote period of time, sank down from its original place. At Mershon's Spring are found the ludus helmontii or septaria of the slate. Pine Hill. lies to the east of Locust Grove about two miles. Its top is capped with sandstone, and its height above low water mark at Cincinnati is 679 feet. Rocks and Earths. Blue limestone ; clay marl; flinty limestone ; sandy limestone ; calcareous spar or clear, glass-like crystals of limestone ; hydraulic limestone, being a compound lime, clay, fine sand and iron; quartz crystals which will scratch glass ; chert or flinty nodules, often broken into sharp fragments ; sulphate of lime. gypsum ; sulphate of baryta ; slate or shale ; clay ; sandstone; red ochre ; bright yellow ochre. Ores. Iron ore, limited. Iron pyrites (fool's gold), abundant. Soluble Salts. Epsom salts. Alum. Copperas. Common salt, very sparing. Combustibles. Petroleum, or rock oil. Bitumen, in the rocks. Sulphur in the sulphur springs. Sulphuretted hydrogen. * This spring was formerly the property of General Massie and he erected a bath house and other buildings there in order to make it a convenient "watering place." It was known as the "Red Sulphur Spring."