Clinton County, Ohio - Chapter 2: Geography, Topography and Geology, 1915

Chapter 2: Geography, Topography and Geology

Clinton county is located in the southwestern portion of the state of Ohio. It is bounded on the north by Greene and a part of Fayette county, east by Fayette, south and southeast by Brown and Highland counties, and west by Warren county. Its-county seat, Wilmington, is only fifty-six miles, by rail, northeast of Cincinnati. Brown county only intervenes on the south between Clinton county and the Ohio river, while on the west it is separated by two counties, Warren and Butler, from the boundary line between Ohio and Indiana. It lies on the dividing ridge between the Little Miami and Scioto rivers, waters draining from it into both of these streams. Clinton county includes an area of four hundred square miles.

Clinton county, in its natural features, is greatly diversified. In, the northern and southern portions of the county are large areas which are included in level and fertile plains, while along the numerous streams the topography is more broken. It becomes more or less hilly in some sections, and in many places even abrupt and bluffy. The greater portion of the drainage of the county is into the tributaries of the Little Miami river, which are also the principal waterways. Todd's fork, the greatest of these tributaries, flows west and southwest and was named previous to 1787, probably from some of the Todds who settled early in Ohio and were among its prominent pioneers and Indian fighters. It has for its branches, East fork of Todd's fork, named for its location; Cowan's, named for John Cowan, who owned R. Campbell's survey No. 2249, on that stream; Lytle's creek (named for Gen. William Lytle, also a surveyor of these lands), draining the central portion of the county; Caesar's creek, flowing across the extreme northwest corner, named for a favorite servant of some of the early surveyors, who died and was buried on its banks; Anderson's fork, rising in the northeast part of the county, flowing west and northwest and draining the northern portion of the county, deriving its name from Col. Richard C. Anderson, the principal surveyor; East fork of the Little Miami, flowing southerly from the Snow Hill locality and forming a portion of the boundary line between Clinton and Highland counties; Little Hast fork of the Little Miami, Silver creek, Stone lick and numerous smaller streams also assist in the drainage. Wilson's branch of Rattlesnake creek (named for Amos and Isaac Wilson, early settlers), drains into the Scioto from the northeast part of the county - Ricbhland and Wilson townships - while Lee's creek, also a tributary of the Scioto and named in honor of Peter Lee, a surveyor of Virginia military lands, drains a portion of Wayne township. The derivation of the names, Dutch creek, Buck run and Turkey run, can easily be understood.

Todd's fork of the Little Miami is the largest stream in the county, and, in the days of the early settlements, furnished fair water power, which was available most of the year. At present, owing to the lowering of the water line and the lack of steady feed from the head. streams, there is little power except at seasons when the stream is swollen by rain or melting snow. Todd's fork was widely known at the beginning of the nineteenth century, for on its banks some of the most prominent among the early settlements in the county were made. All the streams in this region are subject to sudden, and sometimes disastrous, freshets, which subside quite as rapidly as they rise. The nature of the country is such that no great natural reservoirs exist, and the streams are, therefore, without a reserve supply to keep them steady, for, with the clearing away of the timber, the swamps have been drained and this source cut off.

Anderson's fork runs in places upon strata of the Niagara limestone, and is generally not much above bedded stone. This stream cuts through a portion of the pentamerous beds of the Niagara formation to a depth of from five to ten feet at Port William, in Liberty township. Above Port William and along this stream is a tract known as the "prairie," extending a number of miles and possessing a deep, rich, black soil. It was doubtless once the location of a swamp or shallow lake. Northeast of this prairie is supposed to be the highest point of land in the county, it being between seven hundred and eight hundred feet above low water mark of the Ohio river at Cincinnati. In the southern part of the county, at a place a short distance east of New Vienna, on the line of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, the elevation is seven hundred and thirty-seven and one-half feet above the same comparative location. Anderson's fork receives but few tributaries in all its course, the tract which it drains being comparatively long and narrow. The bedded stone in its channel is of the Niagara formation as far down as the Lumberton quarries, where it strikes and cuts very nearly through the formation known to geologists as Clinton, and, at a point farther down stream, at Ingalls' dam, just outside of Clinton county, it cuts about four feet of purple red shale underlying the Clinton, and, strikes the higher of the Cincinnati group, or blue limestone. The East fork of Todd's fork also penetrates the blue limestone, cutting into it to a depth of nearly one hundred feet within three or four miles of Clarksville.

Volume three of the state geological report contains an article of merit on the geology of Clinton county prepared by John Hussey, as follows:

"Tf we trace the line of outcrops of the various formations from the point in the western part of Clinton county, where Todd's fork leaves the county, we shall'find that the strata of stone seen under those we meet proceed to the east, and if a well were dug deep enough at Wilmington or Washington, it would cut through all the strata found to the west as far as Cincinnati. The great Niagara system lies immediately beneath Wilmington; next, the Clinton iron ore and stratified stone of this formation, about thirty feet in thickness; then, underlying this and underlaid by the blue limestone of the Cincinnati group, there is a thickness of some three or four feet of ferruginous clay.

Denuding Agencies

"After the deposition of the rocks now found in Clinton county, the surface was not long, at an early geological period, beneath the surface of the sea. While the deposit of sandstone which extends almost from the very border of Fayette county to the south indefinitely, and to the east, underlying the coal, was being made, the land to the north was above water, as well as when the deposits above the sandstone were made; at least, whatever material, organic or inorganic, was ever deposited here, has long since disappeared. We haye some evidence, however, that the slate which immediately underlies the sandstone extended somewhat farther north than the sandstone itself has been found. * * * Where formations in Clinton county, which were formerly continuous, have been partially removed, as on Cliff run, the Clinton formation is seen in its full thickness, while excavations show that its continuity is broken to the east of this locality, so that the exposure of white limestone on Cliff run is a mere island of that kind of stone. Besides the wearing away of the general surface and the removal of particular parts of formations, there were causes at work which have excavated channels far below the general surface. Ice, in the form of glaciers, is generally regarded as the means by which the denudation above alluded to has been effected. At this point it may be well to take up the ice age and its effects on this region: in a more detailed form.

"Dr. G. M. Austin prepared an article in 1911 from which we have the privilege of taking extracts. 'As early as the middle of the Devonian age a long narrow strip of the ancient sea bottom, extending from central Kentucky to Lake Erie, near Sandusky, and including the territory of Clinton county, was lifted above the surface and has since then formed a part of the dry land of the earth.

_ 'On this new island, for such it then was, the rains soon gave rise to streams, and these, acting upon the surface through the countless ages that followed, cut deep channels into the strata and in time widened these, in many places, into broad valleys. Indeed, so extensive was this erosion that long before the beginning of the Ice age the land in these parts had been changed from the comparatively level plain it was at first, into a region of rough hills and deep, intersecting valleys such as we may now see in Pike county and other such eastern counties of our state which lie outside the area of glacial action.'

"Wilmington is built over one of these ancient filled-up valleys, while the college stands on the high ground that then formed its eastern limit. Could one have stood at the latter point at the close of the Pliocene age and looked toward the west, his eyes would have beheld an immense depression two-thirds as deep as the valley of the Miami at Ft. Ancient, stretching away toward the south and east beyond the limits of vision. The area of this ancient valley must have been fully seventy square miles. The erosion caused by our modern streams and the use of the drill in sinking wells have shown that its boundaries were about as follow: On the north beginning at Hawe's chapel, it follows an irregular course toward the southwest, passing a mile north of Starbucktown, near the Children's Home and parallel to Todd's fork to below Sligo; on the west, by way of Ogden and Villars' chapel to Midland City; on the south from Midland City, not far from the line of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, to the neighborhood of Farmers' Station; on the east from Farmers' Station, by way of Snow Hill and New Antioch. to Wilmington, including within its limits all of Washington township, and large portions of Union, Adams, Vernon, Marion, Clark, Jefferson and Greene. A considerable stream, probably as large as the Little Miami, must have flowed through this valley, coming from the south and passing out of the county toward the northeast by way of Starbucktown and Bloomington. Many lesser valleys and ravines, each furnishing an outlet for some rivulet or stream, must have opened into this great central valley, but most of these are now deeply buried under the drift and their location and extent will not be known until the drill has been sunk in every part of the county and the records of its findings brought together and compared.

"Such, in brief, was the topography of our county in these ancient times, and yet, though it differed so greatly from the present that the two possess scarcely a single feature in common, the difference is no more extreme than exists between the climates and life forms of the two periods.

"Authorities are agreed that even so late as the closing epoch of the Tertiary period a sub-tropical, or warm temperate, climate prevailed as far north as the latitude of the Great Bakes; a climate as now exists in Mexico and southern Florida. These conclusions are based largely on the character of the flora and fauna that flourished in those early days.

"The land. appears to have been as heavily forested then as in recent times, but, while we recognize among the fossil wreckage of those old forests such familiar forms as the poplar, maple, hickory, beech and the sycamore, with them are the live oak, magnolia, cinnamon, wild fig and several species of palms, plant forms that are now restricted to the warm regions of the south.

"Yet varied and magnificent as was the flora that then clothed the land, it sinks into insignificance when compared with the marvelous fauna of that day. For huge ness of bulk and number of species, its mammals have not been equalled in any other age. Had we before us a list of all the animals from the different parts of the world that have been assigned to this age, it would present a lengthy and magnificent array.

When a list of those whose remains have been found so near our home that we may be reasonably sure that they once inhabited this locality, cannot fail to impress us by the number and character of its forms. Such a list would include a lion as large as that now found in Africa; two saber-toothed tigers, one of these as large as the modern Bengal tiger; a great wolf; a weasel the size of the otter, and a bear which equalled if not exceeded in size the largest grizzly; also a huge ox, a gigantic animal, one-third larger than the largest buffalo of the plains, with widely-spreading horns that measured fully ten feet from tip to tip; two extinct species related to the musk ox of the -north; | an elk as large as the Irish elk; an extinct peccary, and two other species related to that genus; two species of tapir; two of the horse; a gigantic beaver as large as the American black bear; a porcupine as large as a small deer; three genera, each represented by a number of species of the giant sloth, one at least of which was as large as the rhinoceros; and, finally, two elephants, the mammoth and the mastodon. But ' these are only the larger animals that then lived; to make the catalog complete, there

"These were the conditions of topography, climate and life that prevailed in this state and locality in the early days of the post-pliocene era - an era that seems but little farther removed from the present day than yesterday when measured by the countless ages that reach back from it to the beginning of geological changes on our planet. For splendid as was that time, with its warmth of climate and wealth of life, its end was close at hand, and the changes were already under way which were to reach their climax in that remarkable age of ice at the close of which the present dates its beginning.

"As early as the middle of the pliocene, a slowly-falling temperature began to develop in the northern hemisphere, and gradually, as these thermic changes went on through many centuries, the warm and equable temperature that had prevailed so long ago gave place to one of decided chill. Hach winter became colder than the previous and the summers more chilly and damp. The more tender animals gradually died out and the less hardy plants began to be winter killed or failed to mature their fruits.

"As the forests were thus decimated, other and hardier species replaced those which had disappeared. The animals also which had perished from cold were replaced by others migrating from colder regions, which, in the course of generations, seem to have become dwarfed and covered with a more shaggy coat of fur.

"The winter snows at length failed to melt upon the hill tops and in time gave rise to glaciers which crept slowly downward into the valleys. The cold grew more intense and at length the ice and snow were everywhere. The last of the hardy plants and animals were overwhelmed and all the northern lands lay dead and frozen under the pall of the glacial winter.

"How long this period of bitter cold continued cannot be ascertained. Its dreary reign was undoubtedly a very long one. In the White mountains it has been shown that the ice had time to attain a thickness of 6,000 feet; in! northern New England 5,000 feet; in southwestern Massachusetts, 2,800 feet; in southern Connecticut 1,000 feet, and in the Catskills, 3,000 feet. This mighty sheet of ice moved slowly towards the south at a rate, judging from the movements of the modern glaciers, of not more than two or three feet a day. Yet so long did the age continue that ample time was given for the transportation of boulders, wrenched from the cliffs of the Canadian highlands, quite down to the Ohio river. Under the heavy heel of this enormous moving mass the land was stripped bare of its ancient soil, the hills were ground down, the valleys filled with wreckage to their brims and the surface changed into a level plain.

Once, at least, in the midst of this remarkable age there was a break in the rigor of the climate, the heavy ice sheet retreated back toward the north and, on the uncovered land, peat bogs formed in the depressions and forests of birch, hemlock and cedar sprang up from the soil. A peat bed of this period, containing fossil insects and grasses, haye been met with in many places. But this intermission was of comparatively short duration; the bitter chill of the Arctics again settled over the land, the ice for a second time came slowly down to the Ohio river and the glacial winter continued its rule for many centuries longer.

"At last, however, its long, gloomy reign was ended. Its unhospitable climate gave place to the mild temperature of the present day and out of the chaos it had wrought, slowly emerged a new era, the noblest of all that have yet been, the Age of Man.

"As a result of the amelioration of the glacial climate, the surface of the land within the area of glacial action was again subject to a series of changes only second in importance to those already described. We have seen how the advance of the ice totally effaced the physical landmarks of the old era and reduced its hills and valleys to a level plain. Now, during its period of dissolution, the order is reversed and we see the plain changed into the gentle, rolling country of upland and valley as it now exists. Practically all our modern streams within the drift area date their beginning from this period of glacial decadence. Commencing at the southern limit of the ice sheet, they slowly lengthened their channels to the northward as the ice retreated until they reached their present limits, sometimes making their way along the course of some ancient stream, sometimes across the filled-up valleys, but more frequently along new routes where no stream had flowed before. In this county, Lytle's creek, Wilson's branch and Silver creek flow their entire length across an ancient valley, while the lower reaches of Cowan's creek and Hast fork, all of Sewall's run and much of. Todd's fork are along recent channels cut in the bedded rock.

"The melting of so vast a mass of ice made this a period of annual floods, greater in volume than any the world has since known. With each return of the summer, the whole land was deluged with water and the streams were changed for a time into veritable rivers which cut deeply and widely into the glacial clays and hollowed out deep gorges in the underlying rocks.

"Along the flanks of these new valleys were then deposited those extensive beds of glacial gravel which have proved so valuable in the building of our modern roads, while on the uplands, recessional moraines, kames and drumlins marked the line of glacial retreat.. Many of these last-named deposits may now be seen in our county; one of the moraines, the largest, which crosses the county by way of Bloomington and Reesville, forms the divide between the Miami and Scioto rivers.

"Innumerable depressions were left in the glacial clays, which became the sights of ponds and lakelets that at first must have covered most of the level parts of the county.

"In the meantime, the ice very slowly retreated beyond our borders, the floods ceased, the, streams dwindled to their present volume and the naked land differed little from the' present time as far as its physical contour of upland and valley is concerned. It wa merely waiting the return of life. On the stiff, barren clays of this new land vegetation gradually extended until its surface was again clothed in verdure, forests of modern trees took the place of groves of ancient cinnamon and figs, and the ponds and lakes began to fill with decayed vegetation, thus storing up material for the fertile black soils whose wide distribution has contributed so largely to the wealth and prosperity of our, county. With the return of vegetation, a new race of animals also appeared, and man, and thus at last the great cycle of changes wrought by the Age of

The Drift

"Judging from the present evidences which we can find in the sinking of wells, this land was once covered with water. This was probably accomplished by the land sinking down beneath the surface of the water. Every indication points to water as the medium by which the deposits were made. Upon the stone everywhere are found traces of more or less loose material. 'The study of this material will prove that it is a sort of drift, composed of clay with varying proportions of sand and gravel, with occasional rounded blocks of granite rock, and with the remains of trees and, sometimes, other vegetation. The greatest thickness of the drift in our district is in Clinton county, east of the "prairie," where a deposit of over one hundred feet is found. Whether the whole surface of the country was once covered as deeply as this limited area, may admit of doubt; but there are reasons for believing that the surface was once covered with a heavy drift deposit. In some places the soft material has been washed away, leaving large accumulations of sand and gravel; in other places, as the level region between the East fork of Todd's fork and Blanchester, the material of the drift was a finer sediment than is found in other places, and has not been removed or disturbed to such a degree as in other portions of the county, and, consequently, even if sand and gravel exist in it, there are no such beds of these substances as are found where the sediment had a fine character or was subsequently washed in currents of water. The clays of the drift are both blue and yellow, the former apparently prevailing in both counties, as shown in the excavations for wells. There was considerable variation in reports of the strata penetrated in sfnking wells, but blue clay - or, as it is freqnently called, blue mud - from its appearance, was uniformly found, though there was no uniformity on the thickness of it. Sometimes it is but a few feet in thickness, and in other places, not a mile distant, it is no less than forty feet thick. It is generally interstratified with sand and fine grayel, but sometimes no such stratification is seen. Water is found very nearly everywhere within a few feet of the surface of the earth, so that it is seldom that excavations are farther than from ten to twenty feet below the surface, and our knowledge is limited of the material underlying to this slight extent. * * * In some parts of this district, particularly those which are flat, there does not occur, within the usual range of the wells, much, if any, yellow clay. If it found, it is just below the soil for from three to ten feet, where fine, grained blue clay invariably occurs interstratified with sand.

"These are found scattered over the surface and belong above the blue clay deposit, rather than in it. The largest boulder, perhaps, which is found so far south in this state, is found in Clinton county on the county infirmary farm, near Wilmington, and this lies on the fine-grained blue clay, upon which it would seem to have fallen by the washing away of the clay in which it was formerly imbedded, and which, at a higher level, lies near it on all sides. This boulder contains about one thousand two hundred cubic feet, and weighs upward of ninety tons. * * * Smaller ones are found more or less abundanly, especially in the northern half of the county. They are found lying on or near the surface, where they have been left by the removal of the water which carried away the material deposited with them.

Gravel And Sand

"Mingled with the drift is always found a considerable proportion of these substances, being scattered through the whole mass, or, at most, showing only a slight tendency to be distinct in strata, more or less mixed with soft material. Where the original drift is in quantity and undisturbed, the sand and gravel in it are not available for economic purposes. A few years ago, these counties were thought to be lacking in these important adjuncts to civilization. Previous to 1878, a short time, the demand for gravel road material became so exceedingly urgent that thorough and exhaustive, and, as the result proved successful, search was made for it. It is now known that no real deficiency exists. People know where to look for it. When the currents of water carried away the lighter materials of the drift deposit, those constituents which were heaviest were left behind. We may regard the highest land as the former level .of the region we are speaking of. There was then a deposit of loose material, sometimes a hundred feet in thickness, above the bedded stone. This material" was manifestly deposited from water, and, to account for the character of the markings - upon the rock surface and the promiscuous intermixture of clays, sand and gravel, and sometimes a certain limited measure of stratification, or assorting materials according to their weight, and for the evidently remote origin of the stony constituents, requiring that they should -have been brought hither, and especially for the numerous boulders, conspicuous both for their size and clear marks of foreign origin, the conclusion is reached, wnhesitatingly, that ice in some form contributed to the same end. Water in a liquid state alone could not carry such material so far without having an enormous - velocity, sufficient to move before it not, only the loose material, but the very stone beneath it. When the water subsided, new lines of drainage appeared, corresponding, more or less, depending upon the physical features of the country, with preexisting ones. The emergence of the land was gradual, and the subdividing water stood for greater or less periods of time at different levels, which may be pointed out today with more or less distinctness. During the emergence of the solid earth, the currents of water carried away some of the material constituting the drift sediment of the former period. The channels of drainage mark the direction of the current. ;

"Within these channels, the drift deposits were removed sometimes to the bedded rock. The varying force of the current distributed the material as we see it now. Strong currents carried all before them; weaker currents only the more refined sediment. <Any current bearing substance will deposit the heavier material first when the current becomes checked. It is thus that matters carried in currents of water became more assorted and distributed. When a current bearing sediment finds a wider channel and expands, the current is checked at the side upon which it finds room to spread out. Here will be a deposit of the heavier part of its freight. If two currents meet at the point of intersection, they will be retarded, especially if one be more swollen than the other, and the heavier material will be carried out and deposited first. Where now xre mere brooks, the zxmple extent of the washing, | the broad valleys, show that rivers once flowed. Whenever the drift clays were not washed, the gravels were interspersed through them; but where the clays are broken, where valleys have been cut in them, on the sides of these cuts, on the escarpment of the broken clay and gravel drifts, the clay has been removed and the gravel is left in beds. Following the principles referred to before in regard to the laws of sedimentary deposits, the road-maker of today may find the deposits of gravel he needs. Along the declivity, where two former currents met, far back from the meeting point of the diminutive streams of the present time, on a point and looking from the higher land, he who seeks this useful material meed not look in vain. As there were various levels of the water at that fardistant period, so are there several elevations at which gravel is actually found. In addition to these beds on the escarpment of the hills, there are found hillocks or natural mounds of gravel which represent eddies, or places in which, for some cause, the water was more quiet, and hence unable to carry its load of sediment forward. Besides these, the soil of the present bottoms is, in many places, underlaid with ample deposits of gravel.

"Drifted wood is found in the blue clay in all our districts. The instances in which wood has been found in the clay beds, penetrated in well digging, are by no means few, nearly every neighborhood furnishing one or more. A kind ef jointed grass, or rush, was obtained from a well, near Reesville, in Clinton county.

"The gravel which lay so long hidden from the knowledge of the present inhabitants was almost uniformly made use of as places of interment by some former race of people. Scarcely a gravel bed has been extensively worked in which abundance of human bones have not been found. The skeletons are usually discovered within two or three feet of the surface. We are left to conjecture, in giving any reason why this material was used in which to make interments of the dead. Trinkets of any description are extremely rare in such graves, although not entirely unknown. In none of which I heard were there any indications of unusual care or elaborateness in the interments. Possibly, the ease in excavating a grave in such material may have determined the choice. But it is not a little singular that the inhabitants of a long ago should have known the position of these beds of gravel, covered as they were with a dense forest, while two generations of the intelligent people of this age have not thought of their existence until within half a dozen years.

Stone Implements

"Flint arrow and lance points, stone hammers, bark peelers, hematite fishing bobs or sinkers, and other articles of this class are found, especially along the water courses. As no value and but a passing interest have been attached to them, they have not been preserved, but most of them have been broken up or lost. Many are still found by persons working the soil. No one locality has furnished more than the borders of Deer creek, but they are common on all the streams, and, indeed, over the whole surface of the county are they found. As the soil in Fayette and parts of Clinton has not been subject to the plow as much as in other places, and, of course, some of it not plowed at all, there perhaps remain more still to be gathered than have ever been found. Some persons, seeing in these articles the story of a former race of human beings, who have left but little else to tell of their manners of civilization, are gathering them up, to preserve from destruction. Nothing more amazes one in contemplating these relics of a people of a long past age than the immense number of them scattered over the surface of the earth. Perhaps no single acre of ground in central or southern Ohio but has furnished at least one flint arrow point; but the average would be greater than one to the acre, and it is not too much to say that every farm, at least, has at some time given up a stone hatchet or bark peeler.

Hematite Boulder

In Clinton county a hematite boulder was found. It weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. This was extremely hard, and seemed to be of the same material from which the sinkers referred to in the last paragraph were made. This is the only boulder of this kind found in the county.

Boundary Line Of The Cincinnati Group

"The line separating the blue limestone and the Clinton white limestone is easily distinguished. It may be distinguished in all the streams in the western part of Clinton county, which all cut abruptly through the Clinton and into the blue limestone. The line where this runs can be easily indicated, beginning just outside the county, on Anderson's fork, near Ingall's dam, where the upper beds of the Cincinnati group and the Clinton formation are seen at one glance. To the west a mile or two, on Cliff run, a8 well as on Buck run, the Clinton stone may be seen forming low cliffs, cut off from the main body of the formation; but the true line is on Anderson's fork, as mentioned before. On Todd's fork, just above the crossing of the Lebanon road, near the line which divides the surveys 1554 and 1556, the same formations are seen in juxta- ' position. Farther south, on Lytle's creek, it was not seen, but on the next stream, Cowan's creek, the line of the Clinton sweeps around to the east and appears above the village of Antioch, but it does not here rise above the surface of the earth. The next point in the line is back to the west, about one mile northeast of Martinsville, where it is quarried, and then its next appearance is at a point about one mile south of east fork of the Little Miami. The last point at which the blue limestone is seen on the east fork of the Little Miami is on the edge of White's survey, not far from where the Pitzer meeting house stood.

The Clinton Formation

"This is seen on Anderson's fork, at Oglesby's quarry and in Todd's fork, from the point of its first appearance near the Lebanon road to Babb's quarry in, the base of the Niagara. At either of these localities the whole of the formation may be studied. The lower strata have the distinctly sand constitution characteristic of this formatioti, from which the stone is frequently called sandstone. These strata are good fire-stones, and resist the action of fire as a back wall in fireplaces for generations without softening or crumbling. But the strata a few feet higher are burned into lime, and make a medium quality for building purposes, and no doubt a very good quality of caustic lime for softening straw in the manufacture of paper. Some part of the ten feet of massive stone furnishes good building material. This stone has been obtained in Todd's fork, but is expensive, on account of the superincumbent stone of a poor quality, which must be removed before a good quality of stone can be reached. On Anderson's fork, at Oglesby's quarry, the same stone is more accessible, and is the best building stone obtained from this formation. The quality of this stone at Oglesby's has led some to prefer it to the Niagara; but it has the hardness and gritty character of the Clinton, and on surfaces which have been exposed in the quarry to the action of the atmospheric conditions and agencies for several years, it is seen to be composed almost wholly of a solid mass of broken encrinitic stems. Aside from lithological characters, this stone at Oglesby's is in the Clinton horizon, about midway from top to bottom, exclusive of the iron ore in the upper part. In this part the imbedded fossils are deeply covered by the iron. The twelve feet from the top of the Clinton is well seen from the under strata at Babb's quarry, on Todd's fork, down stream to the locality of the iron furnace, formerly erected to work the ore. This twelve feet is highly fossiliferous throughout, but it is only in a few feet at the bottom that the portion of iron is large enough to entitle it to the name of iron ore. For some reason the furnace erected here (about 1850) did not prove a success and was abandoned, although the quality of iron was regarded as very smooth. The rich ore is a brittle stone, mostly composed of small, exteriorly smooth and shiny lenticular grains, reminding one of flax seed. The ore is easily crumbled in the hand, and contains numerous disjointed crinoidal disks, partially eroded. The species of fossils become more numerous as we approach the higher strata. Sometimes the stone is highly granular or crystaline, while still crumbling easily in the fingers, and is less ferruginous and the imbedded fossils become light colored. The iron ore occurs in considerable quantities, being exposed in an outcrop along the slopes for several miles, and large quantities could be obtained by stripping. If it were more convenient, or nearer furnaces in operation, it might become valuable to mix with other ores in making certain qualities of iron, particularly if it should be found to serve likewise as a flux. The fossils in the upper beds are better preserved than in the lower, but good cabinet specimens are difficult to obtain, That locality alluded to as Grubb's quarry, in the southern part of the county, abounds in fossils, and is a promising field for palaeontological research. It was but little opened at that time, but as the stone obtained seemed to answer well for building purposes, it will probably furnish many fossils.

Niagara Formation

"The Niagara formation is not exposed very extensively in Clinton county and dips far under the surface in Fayette. It lies immediately on the iron stone, or ore, just referred to at Babb's quarry, on Todd's fork. Here, proceeding from the upper strata of Clinton, thence upward: Blue clay, with purple tint, four inches; blue clay, four inches; stone stratum, one inch; purple or red clay, unctuous feeling, four inches; blue clay, four inches. Here is the best Niagara building stone in the county - smooth, fine grained, even bedded limestone - approaching in quality some kinds of marble.

"The supply of this building stone, however, is limited and much below the demand. In the inferior strata, no trace of organic remains was found, their fine, even texture suggesting that they may have been deposited as calcareous mud in quiet water. In no part of the twelve or fifteen feet here exposed were organic remains found, except in the most meager quantity. Here and there occurs a small mass of coral which is completely incorporated in the substance of the stone, being broken and standing upright as it was formed, having been silted up by fine sedimentary deposits. Above this building stone, the system assumes that loose and porous character so often observed in this formation, full of casts of large Pentamerous oblongus and other fossils, with numerous small cavities stained with carbonaceous matter. At Port William, the exposure on Anderson's fork was perfectly characteristic of this formation, the jagged and cavernous masses being worn and corroded by the elements into fantastic shapes. But the most interesting exposure of this formation in the county is that known as Black's quarry, near Snow Hill, where the strata belong to the upper portion of the Niagara. This is a highly fossiliferous stone, but unsuitable for building purposes, as it is soft and porous and can be crumbled in the hand. The stone used in constructing the New Vienna and Wilmington turnpike was obtained here. The fossils are difficult to obtain without being broken, but many of them are very good specimens, the most delicate markings being preserved. The stone is so fragile that the specimens are greatly injured by handling, and can not be packed in the usual manner without detriment. The paleontologists can surely find some valuable material in this district."