Erie County, Ohio - Chapter 2: Geology of Erie County, 1916

Chapter 2: Geology of Erie County

The most interesting features in the geology of Erie County are the splendid series of glacial markings inscribed on the corniferous limestone in and about Sandusky City, the lake ridges which traverse the county from east to west, and the remarkable petrifying fountains, known as the Castalia Springs. In its topography, Erie County is without any strongly marked features. The surface, to the eye, seems nearly level; while, in fact, it forms a gentle slope from the south line of the county, where it has an elevation of 150 feet above the lake to the lake level. This monotony of surface has been produced by the planing action of the great glacier that excavated the basin of Lake Erie; not only that basin which now holds the water, but the greater one of which the southern boundary is the water shed between the lake and the Ohio. Erie County, therefore, lies near the bottom of this greater basin, and the great ice mass filled it, moving from the northeast to the southwest, ground down the underlying rocks to a nearly uniform surface. The outines of the lake shore have been apparently determined by the same great cause. The general bearing of the south shore of Lake Erie is essentially the same from near Buffalo to the mouth of the Huron River. There the coast line forms a large angle with its former course, and stretches, with only local variations, directly from Huron to the mouth of the Maumee. By a glance at the map, however, it will be seen that the west end of Lake Erie is blocked up with islands, and that a series of these islands stretches northward from Sandusky and forms a barrier which must have offered serious opposition to the westward movement of the glacier. The effect of this ridge thrown across the lake basin and struck obliquely by the moving mass of ice, was to deflect that slightly to the south, and to cause it to cut the deep notch in the lake shore at the mouth of the Huron. The excavation of this point was also facilitated by the comparative softness of the Huron shale which underlies this portion of the county.

The drift deposits which overlie the glaciated surface in most parts of the state have been removed from the greater part of the county. The bowlder clay is, however, found covering the rock surface in the southern part of the county. This is, as usual, a blue, or where exposed and its iron oxidized, reddish-yellow, unstratified clay, thickly set with angular fragments of shale taken from the lake basin. With these are more or fewer, generally small, bowlders, usually ground and striated, derived from the crystalline rocks north of the lakes. In this part of the county are also found beds of sand and the lake ridges which rest upon the bowlder clay. These latter deposits are evidently the effect of shore waves, and are in fact old beaches formed when the lake stood much higher than it now does. <A good illustration of the mode ef deposition of such sand -banks and ridges is seen on the lake shore between Cedar Point and Huron. Here the mouth of Sandusky bay is partially closed by a ridge thrown up by the waves which will ultimately dike out the lake from and reclaim a large area formerly covered by navigable water. Between the ridges and sand hills which stretch east and west, north of Prout's Station, is a surface, level to the eye, formed by a fine black soil which covers the limestone here, presenting a remarkably level surface and nowhere deeply buried. This district was originally prairie, with islands of timber, and has proved the most fertile and productive portion of the county. We have here a broad surface of lime stone planed down nearly as level as a house floor. This was doubtless once covered with drift clay, but has been removed by the waves of the lake when they swept over it. Subsequently, when the water of the lake had been withdrawn, this tract was left in a condition similar to that of the upper end of Sandusky Bay, or to that of the space behind the barrier east of the city, viz.: covered with shallow, quiet water, which was gradually replaced by a fine sediment, mixed with the remains of the luxuriant vegetation that grew there. The result was a sheet of remarkably fine, rich soil, having all the characteristics of the prairie soils of the west, and, like them, covered with a growth of grass rather than trees. In future ages, when Lake Erie shall be further drained, what is now Sandusky Bay will undoubtedly present nearly the same appearance as the district under consideration. CASTALIA SPRINGS

The phenomena presented by Castalia Springs have excited considerable curiosity and interest, both on the part of the residents of the county and of visitors from other states, and deserve a few words of description and explanation. As is known to most persons of Castalia a volume of water which forms quite a river, flows up from several deep orifices in the lime-stone rock, and supplies in its descent to the lake the motive power for several mills. The water maintains nearly the same temperature winter and summer, and its flow is more uniform than that of surface streams in the vicinity, though sensibly affected by periods of unusual and wide-spread drought. The water of the springs is highly charged with lime, rapidly incrusting any object covered by it, and it has deposited a sheet of travertine over an area of several square miles in the vicinity. The rock in which the subterranean channels are exeavated, through which the waters of the springs flow, is the water lime, the uppermost members of the Silurian system. This is magnesian limestone, in fact, a typical dolomite, containing about 42 per cent magnesia and 55 of carbonate of lime. This rock forms on the surface an unbroken sheet, reaching from Castalia to Logan County, the highest land in the state. The true theory of the formation of these springs is simply this: The Helderberg limestone, like many others, is soluble in atmospheric water containing carbonic acid. It forms the slope of the watershed, and the drainage through it has dissolved out a connecting system of channels which are really subterranean rivers. Castalia Springs are formed at the mouths of one of these. Similar springs and underground streams are met with in all limestone countries. The table land of Central Kentucky affords innumerable examples of them. This plateau is underlain by a thick mass of unusually soluble limestone. The surface water dissolves it away so easily that it dissolves every crack it penetrates, and has formed a connected system of underground channels by which all the drainage of the country is effected.

The celebrated Mammoth Cave is only one of these channels. Along the margin of this plateau there are a great number of fountains like Castalia Springs, which mark the mouths of the subterranean streams that have been described. Such fountains are also common in other countries, and the classical Clitumnus bursts out at the foot of a limestone mountain, forming a fountain precisely like that of Castalia.

Geological Structure

In the oil well, bored at the mouth of the Vermillion River, the Niagara limestone, the Clinton group, and Medina sandstone were penetrated, but they nowhere come to the surface, within the limits of the county. Of the foregoing strata, the first, the sandstone quarried at Amherst and Brownhelm, the outcrop crosses the east line of the county, within less than a half mile of lake shore; thence it sweeps round to the south and west, passing through Berlinville, and a little east of Norwalk, in Huron County. Within the area lying south and east of this line, the Berea grit underlies most of the surface, but it is very generally covered by the drift materials; and it is only where its more compact and massive portions have resisted the action of erosive agents, and these have been left in relief, that it projects above the surface. The hills in which the Amherst and Brownhelm quarries are located, and the elevation known as Berlin Heights, are all masses of this character. They were once bluffs upon the shore of the lake, and everywhere show marks of the action of water and ice. Along the outcrop of the Berea grit, its softer portions have undoubtedly been most extensively eroded, and are now deeply covered by drift deposits, so that probably little of this portion of the area it occupies will furnish valuable quarries of building stone; but as the surface rises, and the rocks dip toward the south and east, it soon passes below the surface, and there is every probability that within the townships of Berlin, Florence, and Vermillion, the Berea grit will hereafter be quarried in many localities, precisely as it now is at Berea.

Bedford Shale

Below the Berea sandstone is a bed of shale, forty to sixty feet in thickness, which is sometimes blue, or banded in color, but more generally red. This red shale is conspicuously shown in the Valley of the Vermillion, and is exposed at many places in this section of the state, immediately underlying the Berea sandstone. It may, therefore, serve as an important guide to those who are seeking for the excellent quarry stone furnished by that formation. :

Neither the Berea sandstone, nor the red shale, have, in Erie County, furnished any fossils; but at Elyria, Lorain County, a large number of remains of mollusks and fishes have been taken from these strata.

Cleveland Shale

Under the red shale in the banks of the Vermillion, occurs a black, bituminous shale, sixty or more feet in thickness. This is a constant member of the Waverly or lower carboniferous group, and forms the base . of that series. It is unusually well exposed in the vicinity of Cleveland, and I have therefore called it, for convenience sake, ''Cleveland shale.'' In its lithological character, this shale is hardly to be distinguished from the great black shale (the Huron shale), which is a member of the Devonian system, and which here lies only a little below. Further east, however, they are separated by an interval of several hundred feet, and the fossils which they contain are widely different. In the Cleveland shale are bones, scales, and spines of fishes of small size, and of earboniferous types. In the Huron shale, on the contrary, we find the remains of fishes of enormous size, of most peculiar structure, and such as clearly belong to the old red sandstone fauna, so fully described by Hugh Miller.

The lake from the Pennsylvania line to Erie County is, for the most part, formed by a series of green and blue_shales, which represent the Chemung and Portage rocks of New York, and belong to the Devonian formation. These shales thin out rapidly westward, and seem to be recognizable beyond the point under consideration. In the Valley of the Cuyahoga they are exposed to the depth of 140 feet, and have there yielded the most characteristic fossils of the Chemung.

The upper layers of the Huron shale are interstratified with the lower ones of the Erie in the northeastern portion of the state, as we learn by borings made at Cleveland and further east. Some traces of this interlocking may be seen at Monroeville, where the well sunk at the railroad station cuts some blue as well as back shales. South of this point, however, the Erie shale has not been recognized, and it probably reaches but a little way back from the lake shore.

This is the name we have given to the great mass of black shale designated by the first geological board as ''the black slate,'' and of which the outcrop forms a belt which extends entirely across the state, from Erie to Scioto County. This is the shale which forms the banks of the Huron River at Monroeville and below. It is not here a homogeneous black shale, as there are some gray, argillaceous layers interstratified with the more carbonaceous portions. The greater part of it is, however, black, and highly bituminous, containing 10 per cent or more of combustible matter. From this bitumen, by slow spontaneous distillation, petroleum is evolved, and flows out in oil springs at a great number of localities. The process of distillation also gives rise to the gaseous hydrocarbons, and gas springs are even more abundant than oil springs over the outcrop of this formation.

The Huron shale in some places contains many concretions of impure limestone, of which hundreds may be seen at Monroeville, where they have been washed out of the river banks. These concretions are sometimes almost absolutely spherical; and because of their geometric regularity, they have been collected as objects of curiosity by the inhabitants of the vicinity, often serving as ornamental caps to gates, posts, ete. Some of these concretions contain the bones or teeth of huge fishes, first discovered in the same formation at Delaware by Hertzer, and from its formidable character, called Dinichthys (terrible fish).

Two species of this 'fish have been found in Ohio - one at Delaware, near the base of the Huron shale, and named after its discoverer, Dinichthys "Hertzeri; the other from the summit of the formation in Sheffield, Lorain County, and this I have :.1amed Dinichthys Terrill, to commemorate the service rendered to science by Mr. Jay Terrell, to whose zeal and intelligence we owe all the best specimens yet obtained. Both these remarkable fishes will be found described in the paleontological portion of this report. Numerous fragments of the great bones of Dinichthys have been broken out of the concretions which have fallen from the shale banks of Huron River, but the specimens yet obtained from these are too imperfect to show to which species they belong. Little effort has been made to collect at this point, and it is probable that careful search would be rewarded by the discovery of some specimens of great interest.

Hamilton Group

At Prout's Station and Deep Cut, on the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad, the base of the Huron shale is exposed, and beneath it are seen layers of light, cherty, and bluish, marly limestone, which are the representatives of the Hamilton group of New York. Here the formation has become significant in dimensions, compared with what it is further east ; where it is not more than twenty feet in thickness, while in Central New York the Hamilton group is 1,200 feet thick. There is no mistaking the equivalence of these strata, however, for they are full of fossils. At Prout's Station the following species are found, viz.: Spirifera mucronata, Cyrtia Hamiltonensis, Straphodonta Halli, Phacops bufo, etc., the most characteristic fossils of the Hamilton. From the softness of the Hamilton limestone in Erie County, as well as from its inconsiderable dimensions, it forms no well marked line of outcrop, but it will often be detected in sections which include the base of the Huron shale and the top of the corniferous limestone. It may be said to underlie a very narrow belt of territory, extending southwesterly from the lake shore, at a point half way between Sandusky and Huron, to the Lake Shore Railroad, midway between Monroeville and Bellevue.

The most interesting and perhaps the most important formation in Erie County is the corniferous limestone. This is the rock underlying Sandusky City, that which forms Marblehead, Kelley's Island, Middle Island, ete., the source from which the greater part of the lime used in Northern Ohio is derived, and a rock scarcely less extensively employed as building stone than the Berea grit. The upper portion of the corniferous limestone is blue in color, and lies in thin strata. It is this subdivision of the formation that is opened in the quarries at Sandusky, and which furnished the blue lhmestone known as the ''Sandusky stone,"' and largely used for building, paving, and flagging at Sandusky and elsewhere. The lower portion is light colored, and much more massive, and is that quarried at Kelley's Island and Marblehead. The fossils of the corniferous limestone are exceedingly numerous and of great interest. Like most other limestones, this has been derived from the decomposition of organic structures, and in many places it is almost altogether made up of corals and shells. In chemical composition it is a magnesian limestone, containing 20 per cent or more of magnesia. This peculiarity has been quoted as objectionable in its adaptation to the manufacture of lime; but, on the contrary, it is benefited by this ingredient, the magnesia making it slower in setting, ''less hot,"" as masons say, and therefore much more manageable.

The fossil fishes of the corniferous limestone have attracted more or less attention from geologists for many years. They are now chiefly obtained from the quarries on Kelley's Island and Marblehead, in the

Of Macropetalichthys, the only portion yet found is the cranium. This is composed of a number of geometrical plates of which the external surface is beautifully tubercled. It is known to most of the quarrymen, and by them it is generally regarded as the carapace of turtle. It is, however, in fact, the cranium of a large fish, as anyone will plainly see who will take the trouble to compare with it the cranium of our common sturgeon.

Onychodus was an equally large fish, of which the cranial bones were much more numerous and easily separated, so that they are generally found detached and scattered through the rock. The jaws of this fish are not unfrequently met with. They are a foot or more in length, and are studded with teeth along the upper margin. The most singular feature in the structure of this fish is formed by a crest of seven large, curved, pointed teeth, which, attached to an arch bone, were inserted between the extremities of the under jaw, apparently acting like the prow of a ram.

Oriskany Sandstone

Beneath the corniferous limestone on the peninsula, and near Castalia, a thin band of limestone is visible. This holds the position of the Oriskany sandstone in New York, and though it has here yielded no Oriskany fossils, they are said to have been obtained from it in Indiana; and there is little doubt, therefore, that it should be regarded as the equivalent of the Oriskany sandstone.

The upper portion of the Silurian system is, in Ohio, represented by the water lime and Salina formations. Of these, the water lime is the uppermost and by far the most conspicuous. It underlies a larger portion of Ohio than any other formation except the coal measures. It composes all of Catawba Island, Put-in-Bay, and the other islands of that group. Erie County just reaches the edge of the water lime area, and, as has been mentioned, it is in this rock that the subterranean channel has been excavated through which flows the stream of water that forms Castalia Springs. .

Salina Group

The water lime is immediately underlain in a series of caleareous shales and beds of gypsum, which apparently represent the Onondaga salt group of New York. The gypsum quarries worked by Mr. George A. Marsh, on Sandusky Bay, lie within the limits of Ottawa County, and the same formation extends under Sandusky, where it has been reached in poring wells for oil - at too great a depth, however, to be profitably worked. These beds of gypsum also form the bottom of the lake off the point of Put-in-Bay Island, so that they apparently underlie a large area in this vicinity. They deserve to be carefuly sought for, as they may be found in localities where they will be readily accessible. From the continuity of the surface clays, 'this exploration, however, can only be effected by boring. The gypsum of Sandusky is of excellent quality, and the quantity is apparently inexhaustible. About 10,000 tons per annum are produced at the quarries of Mr. Marsh.

No portion of the state is more abundantly supplied with excellent building materials than that immediately about Sandusky. The Amherst sandstone, which is known, and I can almost say used, all over the United States, reaches into Erie County, and, though not quarried there to any considerable extent, may, perhaps, become hereafter an important contributor to the wealth of the inhabitants.

The Sandusky limestone is also highly prized as a building material, and its capability of supplying suitable stone for large and handsome structures is illustrated in the splendid high school building and various other edifices at Sandusky, as well as churches, stores and residences at Toledo, Cleveland, ete.

The quarries of the corniferous at Marblehead and Kelley's Island are in Ottawa County, but the strata worked there underlie all of Erie County, and may be reached at various points with little trouble. The same beds of the corniferous furnish quick lime not inferior to any manufactured in the state, so that lime may be specified as one of the important mineral staples of the county.

The carbonaceous matter contained in the Huron shale is equivalent in heating power to that of a thick seam of coal, but up to the present time we have not discovered any mode of making that source of power available, except by distilling oil or gas from it. Both these useful substances are constantly being evolved from this great carbonaceous mass by spontaneous distillation, and it is possible that they may be hereafter, when the supply of petroleum from wells has failed, artificially generated from this source so cheaply as to pay a profit to the manufacturers. It is also worth remembering that further east along the lake shore, as at Erie, Pennsylvania, and Fredonia, New York, the spontaneous flow of carbureted hydrogen gas from the Huron shale has been extensively utilized. Fredonia was, for many years exclusively, and still is partially lighted by natural gas, and at Erie wells sunk for the purpose are supplying combustible gas, which is being successfully applied to the heating and lighting of residences and manufacturing establishments.

should, perhaps, be enumerated among the material mineral resources of Erie County, as, though not found upon the surface, they lie not far below. The quantity and accessibility of these materials are, however, yet so much-in doubt that no one would be justified in anticipating a great increase in the wealth of the county from this source.

'"'From the backwood log birthplace of Perkins Township came D. L. C. Ransom to the Sandusky High School with his mind fiercely afire with the torch of learning to be had, and so ingenously ignorant of town ways and language that being called 'Country Jake' was not understood as applying to him in 1857. In the school room came the superintendent, M. F. Cowdry, bearing a piece of silurious limestone enclosing fossils which was being shown to the principal, S. S. Cotton. Cowdry said: "These are the shells of once living bivalves which once lived in a salt sea extending from the Gulf of Mexico far to the north of its present bounds, and as they died sank to the bottom and eventually were cemented together at a very slow rate of deposition requiring millions of years.' 'No such thing,' flatly asserted the principal, Cotton. 'These,' pointing at the Bible lying on his desk, 'is the word of God that this world was made in six days. Take your stone away to macadamize the streets. That BOOK settles that for me.' Then the superintendent took up the cudgel for science. 'The dredge in front of London on the Thames brought to the surface shells cemented together just as these were.' 'Oh, well,' retorts the principal, 'God had the right and power to make them just in that shape if he wished. JI would not limit his power.'. 'But,' answers the superintendent, 'these English fossils contained a silver coin from the Roman occupation. NOW when did God begin to lie?' Both separated, satisfied each with his contentment in his position. With ears alert, this lad drank in this conversation, and the one following. The superintendent again brought in a surface silurious limestone finely polished on its upper side, and attacking the principal with an assertion that some awful power must have shoved boulder sand and pebbles across it and that the power must have been ice many thousand feet deep to have made the marks so straight that there was no deviation. Again the principal remonstrated with 'Just big heaps of ice along Lake Erie shore in winter storms would account for it.' They little noticed the learner, who, following their acrid contentions, sought evidences from Maine to California, and from the crests of Mount Washington to Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, and from Cincinnati to Sitka, Alaska, confirming the assertions of science.

"The beginnings of a glacier is one of the lightest operations of nature - the falling of a snow flake. Then from the very first one that ever fell, a long time elapses until the climate changes colder and colder, until the snow lies all summer on the ground but partially thawed; then numberless ages it accumulates until it covers the mountain tops and valleys between with consolidated snow as ice, as even now it covers Greenland and the South Pole land to miles in depth. Now when this slowly heaped to great depths it has the quality of becoming viscid and travels slowly down hill or from the center of the greatest thickness, with the awful power of the 'mills of the gods which grind very slowly but grind exceeding fine.'

'"The continent-wide mass of ice slid from poleward and dug out the basin in which Lake Erie, and all our lakes are now held. A low mountain that once ranged from Canada through the islands of Lake Erie southwards quite to Cincinnati, Ohio, was literally uncapped by several hundred feet and so leveled that only remnants of its existence show where it stood, namely, Marblehead, Kelley's Island, the three Bass Islands, Point au Pellee and minor islands, show where once it stood, and scarcely a foot of rock over the whole region but shows the irresistible force it used when the boulders of the Canadian granite and sand in the bottom of the glacier were held to the surface of the underlying rocks as it flowed from the northeast. Its power can faintly be estimated when it is said that it plucked an acre section of rock and a hundred feet deep, pushing it ahead of it. There is a groove near Lakeside | forty feet across and twenty feet deep which was literally cut through the hard massive corniferous limestone by its thousands of years of grinding action in passing over Marblehead. An acre belonging to the Archaelogical Society of Ohio has been preserved on Kelley's Island to show, as it superbly does, the powerful work a glacier can accomplish. The Devil's Bath Tub on Marblehead shows how the viscidity of ice under great pressure can fit itself to all the least inequalities of surface, in this case having a whirling, turning over action as if a giant auger guided the ice of the glacier, the ice in this case never once showing a fracture but moulded itself to the rock as molten iron would. A large 20-ton granite boulder but a short distance away - one of the tools the glacier used to excavate Lake Erie - coming from the east was thrust against a shoulder of the limestone near Myron Clemons' place, and was made, and is called 'The Prisoner,' and the glacier being not able to remove it, went right on over it, the grooves cut in it being parallel to those on the lime rock west of it. The grinder in this case had to take some of his own medicine, and was ground himself. The ice was thick enough to fill the Connecticut Valley, cover Mount Washington, and all minor mountains of the Appalachian chain, the Adirondacks; it cut the gorge of the Hudson River, hundreds of feet below its present water surface; cut deep the Champlain and George lakes, and changed the whole aspect of the region which it had before it came.

''The most celebrated boulder (pictured in many books, archaelogical and state histories) is 'Picture Rock' on the south shore of Kelley's Island. It is about 10 feet by 15, of limestone, glaciated on the upper side, engraved with scenes perpetuating episodes in their history by the Indians before the advent of the white man. A similar one lies on the southeast coast of Johnson's Island, but not engraved.

''This ice accumulation shut off the exit of Lake Erie from the east, and caused Lake Michigan to flow southward over the site of the Hennepin Canal into the Mississippi, via the Illinois; Lake Erie to the Ohio, via the Maumee and Wabash, and later via the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson, and when it was all melted away it resumed its ancient course down the St. Lawrence.

''The sand and pebbles on the beach of Lake Erie are but the groundup boulders borne from Canadian sources, and it is a fine pastime to sit down on its shores and classify the many kinds and try to place their home source. Students have taken samples to Canada and found the very ledges from which they were plucked by ice miles deep sliding over these plutonic rocks. One of the noted boulders was found in Sandusky, polished on two sides, found to have an injection of lava trap, and is placed beside the entrance to the Geological Museum of Ann Arbor College, Michigan, by one of Ohio's graduates, class of 1909, W. H. Ransom. The other side of the entrance is a large conglomerate glacial stone, containing pebbles of pure copper glacier-brought from Lake Superior.

''Another was found south of Castalia, was sawed in two, polished, showing in a black granite three separate intrusions of trap rock of different colors and ages; one half is in the High School Museum, the other in the museum of the Ohio State University, and are both wonders. The most regularly formed granite rock known is over the grave of General Leggett, just outside of the mausoleum of President Garfield, in Lakeview Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio.

''In Erie County there are literally tens of thousands of these Canadian wanderers, brought here at no greater average speed than twenty-five feet a year, enclosed in the grandly moving ice sheet, which in many places pushed up moraine hills, as in Lewanee County, Michigan, of the height of two or three hundred feet, made up wholly of rocks from as large as a hay stack down to the finest sand. Some push, some business, when it once got at its work of a hundred thousand years, as I believe. It had time to cut the 'Cincinnati Arch' limestone and distribute it evenly over Western Ohio and make the most fruitful soil in the world, celebrated for its perfect crops of wheat - the motive power of the world - its bread. Time and space fails me to tell of the celebrated boulders I have met and shaken hands with in Erie County, Ohio.''