Sandusky County, Ohio - Chapter 1: Geology: the Glacial Period, 1909

Chapter 1: Geology: the Glacial Period

Early Glacial Ages - Chronology of this Period - Cincinnatt Anticline - The Trenton Limestone - Oil and Gas Rock - How Glaciers are Formed - Their Movements - Transportation of Boulders - Limuit of Glacier in Ohio - Sandusky County Boulders - Harrison Rock - Dr. Zimmerman's Residence - Boulders Found at Top of Mt. Waskington - Glacial Effect on the Drainage System - Outlets and Temporary Lakes Formed - Sandusky Valley Once a Lake - Sand Ridges are Former Lake Shores - Rich Soil of the Valley Result of Glacial Action - Time of Ice Disappearance Ascertained from Erosion - The Niagara Gorge - Observations of Dr. Wright at Plum Creek, Oberlin, Ohio - Glacial Man in Ohio - No Implements or Relics of Him Found in Sandusky County - Found South of Water Shed Separating Lake Erie Basin and Ohio River - Stone Implements Found by Dr. M. C. Metz at Madisonville Near Cincinnati and at Loveland in Clermont County - By Prof. W. C. Miuls at Newcomerstown, Tuscarawas County - By Mr. Sam Houston at Brilliant

This chapter, except that relating to Glacial Man, which was added later by Dr. Wright, at request of the Editor, is taken from the able and instructive address delivered at the Sandusky County Pioneer and Historical Association, September 8, 1908, by G. Frederick Wright, D. D., LL. D., of Oberlin, Ohio, president of the Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society. It is constituted a chapter of this volume with his permission.

In coming to Fremont we sat with a gentleman, who told us a story of early days. He said that his grandfather in the early part of the last century moved from Lower Sandusky to Perrysburg, and that he started out with his ox team and went as far as he could, the road being bad, and then walked back to stay in Lower Sandusky over night; after which he went to his team and wagon to resume his journey. It seems to have been a custom of the early immigrants to do so, and that stage coaches would stop at night some miles out and tell the passengers to walk the rest of the way to town to lodge for the night, and then return to ride to town in the stage the next day if they chose to do so. What was the reason or cause of these muddy roads? It was because they were built without stone. From Monroeville to the Maumee River the country is covered with the sediment of a former lake. Ji Lake Erie should dry up it would leave a vailey covered with a sediment like this.

In early geological ages, the Gulf of Mexico extended to this region. We are here on what is called the Cincinnati Anticline of rocks, that run from the islands down to Cincinnati. If we go down about 1300 feet we strike the Trenton Limestone where we get the oil and gas. Then we reach the Huronian and Laurentian rocks at an unknown depth below. The rocks of this region are much younger and are called the Water Lime like those on Put-in-Bay Island, deposited when this was the bottom of the sea, which became filled with sea shells and shell fish and a vast accumulation of marine deposits. The superficial deposits here belong to the glacial age. The chronology of . the period is indicated by the boulders found here. There is a large one, called the Harrison Boulder a few miles southwest of Fremont,

This boulder is a species of granite from the oldest land in the world. The highlands of Canada north of Lake Erie is the place from which the glacial boulders in this basin are derived. That rock is about from twenty-five to one hundred and fifty millions of years old. But it was transported here only 10,000 or 12,000 years ago. In size it is 13 feet long, 10 feet wide and 3% feet out of the ground, probably about seven feet thick. That would make about one thousand cubic feet of rock, and it would weight about one hundred and eighty thousand pounds or 80 tons, and could be moved to Fremont as there is no bridge between there and here to break down. But it would take the pluck and patience of the I:gyptians to get it to Fremont. It should be preserved as a heritage to preach geology in all the ages tocome. It has already withstood the influence of climate in this region for many thousands of years, and will not decay. It came from the north of Lake Huron 300 miles distant in the Canadian Highlands, which extend from Hudson's Bay to Labrador and as before said are the oldest land in the world. They are composed of crystaline rocks and consist of granite, syenite, gneiss and a variety of ertiptive rocks as well as a variety of metamorphic rocks. The Harrison Boulder is pretty largely made up of hornblende, which takes the place of mica and belongs to what they call in Canada the Laurentian System. There are a great number of boulders around it of that nature, as well as others of the Huronian System. These, as we have said, are sedimentary rocks formed of sand and clay that have been subjected to heat and pressure and transformed into crystaline rocks. Dr. Zimmerman's house in Fremont is better than a museum; freely exhibiting a great variety of specimens. You will find 100 different kinds of rocks in that house that had been deposited when the continental glacier put the finishing touches' to this region and gave the fruitful soi] before mentioned. That was of course when the climate of this region was colder than it is now and is called the glacial period, the last of the geological eras.

water, but of snow of vast depth, which under great pressure becomes ice and moves slowly like a semifluid. The snow by its own pressure becomes ice. Some fields of ice are ten thousand feet thick, notably those of Greenland. This is the accumulation of ages, and covers 500,000 square miles of surface, an area twelve times.as great as the State of Ohio and which is now enveloped in ice nearly two miles thick.

Now on the lower strata of that ice there is immence pressure and being a semifluid it has . the property of moving toward the point of least resistance, like cold tar or cold molasses ; and if it freezes onto a rock it carries it along in its movement. Thus the boulders found here were transported from the Canadian highlands. Boulders like these are to be found in Kentucky from the ledges of rocks north of Lake Huron. These boulders indicate the direction from which they came. We can tell the place by tracing them to the ledges where similar formations are found north of Lake Huron. Dr. Wright has zigzagged from the Atlantic Ocean westward the course of these boulders or "nigger-heads," as they are popularly called. Before the Civil War there were from the south to Canada. Canada had sent these boulders or "nigger-heads" to us ages ago and we were only returning the compliment by sending ours to Canada.

The limit of these glacial boulders is reached in the southeastern part of Stark County, on the old McKinley farm. . It crosses the Ohio River near New Richmond, where Grant was born and goes out at Madison, Indiana. Its most southern point is reached at Carbondale, Illinois. Down to this line we find these boulders brought down from the north, but none south of it. Then we find scratches on the rocks indicating an ice movement over them. Some of the most remarkable of these are on Kelley Island. The speaker has seen the work

Alps in front of the ice and the lines of boulders deposited by them. We know as clearly as you can know from the tracks of an elephant where he has come from, the direction of the movement. Very surprising things are re-

G. Frederick Wright Harrison Rock

According to tradition Gen. Harrison with his military staff, on one occasion, in 1813, messed upon this rock, which is located on the then road from Fort Stephenson to Fort Meigs.

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vealed. We have in Mt. Washington in New England a glaciometer 6,000 feet high, and even there we found these boulders from Canada on the top of the mountain where they could not get in any other way. The total area in America covered by these boulders is 4,000,000 miles. Some boulders must have come 700 or 800 miles and the ice has been one mile, and some say three miles, deep.

This glacial movement has transformed all the northern part of the United States. Before the glacial period there was a long time in which the action of frost and heat had disintegrated the rocks of Canada and covered them with soil. The movement of the glacier scraped this off from Canada and deposited the most of it on this side of the line. Go outside of the glacial region and you will find it now as it was in Canada before the glacial period. Now when this moving mass of ice came on, it ground down the hills and filled up the hollows, leveling the whole country and leaving a deposit over this region 100 feet deep or more, covering all as with a mantle. The glacial period had also an immense influence upon the drainage system of North America. When the advancing ice closed up, as it did, the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, what could the water do but swell up into a flood over the lakes and pour over to the south. At first there was a movement of water through the valley of Lake Champlain. That, however, was soon filled up, and the water came around the Adirondacks, and flowed at first through the Mohawk and finally through the Susquehanna. Then at Fort Wayne, Indiana, there was a great body of water that poured down into the Ohio, through the Wabash River.

Then came the reverse action. As the ice retreated and began to melt, it withdrew from the head of the Maumee River; and thus was formed a temporary lake, with its outlet at Fort Wayne flooding all this part of the state. In the middle of Fort Wayne, there is to be seen a channel about a mile wide, twenty-five feet or thirty feet deep, leading from the head waters of the Maumee to the Wabash. That was the line of drainage for the waters of this temporary lake. What then was the condition of the region that was to become Sandusky

County? Why, it was then covered with water one hundred feet deep. Oberlin, Lorain County, is 817 feet above the ocean and 250 feet above Lake Erie. At Norwalk, Huron County, there is a sand ridge on which the principal street was built. Here is struck the 200 foot line above Lake Erie. That was the former shore of Lake Erie during the continuance of this temporary lake, whose outlet was Fort Wayne as we have seen.

It is also found similarly at Fostoria, Tiffin, Van Wert and on to Fort Wayne. There is a sand ridge that runs through Clyde, Sandusky County, 50 feet lower than that at Norwalk. The south ridge, middle ridge and north ridge are of elevations above Lake Erie of 200 feet, 150 feet and 100 feet, respectively. At Saginaw Bay there was an outlet that ran over into the Grand River Valley and so into Lake Michigan, from which it had an outlet to the Illinois River through the Chicago Drainage Canal. As the ice melted back the Fort Wayne outlet was abandoned and lower passes occupied across Michigan. The height of these determined that of our lake ridges. When you come to the middle ridge it does not go to Fort Wayne, and you have a swampy region on the right and on the left continuing into Michigan. When this ice had melted back through Saginaw Bay, there was a channel 100 feet lower than the upper one. Then the third. ridge nearest to the lake was formed. Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, is built on that ridge. The water at this time poured into the south end of Lake Michigan, and thence as already said, through the Chicago Drainagé Canal. If you

- should raise the water of Lake Erie twentyfive feet it would run out into the Illinois River. The Drainage Canal of Chicago has cut down into that a 20-foot channel, restoring the old direction.

So it is as:a result of an episode of the glacial period that we have in this country a deep and fine soil, in fact one of the richest in existence. In the early days it was difficult to drain it, but it was finally done and now it is one of the gardens of the world.

at work in Greenland; it was at work thousands of years ago here, and is still at work in the polar regions. The glacial ice did not melt off from central New York and the region about Quebec until about seven thousand years ago. This is proved by the gorge of Niagara; the Niagara River began to run where it is now when the ice melted from the Mohawk Valley. When it fell down to that level, the Niagara cut its gorge in the rocks, which extends from Lewiston a distance of 35,000 feet. ' .

So now we know how fast it works; we can solve the problem. If we observed a man sawing a board and got his rate of speed, we could easily tell how long it,would take to saw it off. Now we have been watching the wearing of rock by water at Niagara for many years, and have noted the yearly progress, and we find to our surprise that the falls are receding 5 feet a year. Now if we divide 35,000 feet by 5 feet, we will get 7,000 years, which gives the date of the retreat of the ice from the Mohawk Valley in New York.

But we have not oniy Niagara Falls, but many other data, which confirm this calculation. Little Plum Creek in Oberlin, Ohio, is as good for the purpose of investigating such problem as is Niagara Falls. Oberlin is about 60 feet above the Norwalk Sand ridge. which makes the first glacial lake emptying through the pass at Fort Wayne. Plum Creek has been enlarging its channel ever since the glacial period, and we have measured the amount of this enlargement. Twelve years ago we built a reservoir and cut a new channel for the creek I2 or 13 feet across. Hence we know how much it has enlarged in twelve years and how much it would enlarge under similar conditions in 7,000 years. The calculations amply sustain those from Niagara. We will find all over this region similar opportunities for independent calculations.

Glacial Man In Ohio

From the nature of the case we would not look for the remains of Glacial Man in Sandusky County. For, during the retreat of the ice from Ohio where man followed up the retreating ice front here, as he does in Greenland and Alaska at the present time, there was no chance for him to live north of the upper lake ridge which passes through Norwalk, Bellevue, Tiffin, Fostoria, and Van Wert. For, at that time the whole region between that ridge and the lake was covered with a body of water 50 or 100 feet deep, having its outlet at Fort Wayne. When at a later period a lower outlet was opened by the retreating ice so that the water level fell so low as to expose Sandusky County, there was no chance for any subsequent deposition. If any relics were left here, there would be nothing to fix their date; as they might be indistinguishable from those of modern Indians.

The relics of man in Ohio, which can be definitely assigned to the glacial period occur south of the watershed which separates the basin of Lake Erie and that of the Ohio River. In that area there were large streams of water flowing away from the melting ice through all the present river valleys, and depositing in them a vast amount of gravel which had beer brought over in the ice from Canada. These gravel deposits now border all the south-flowing streams in Ohio, rising to a height of from 50 to 100 feet above the present flood plains. They are conspicuous objects in the valleys of the Miami, the Scioto and the Muskingum Rivers, and of all their northern tributaries. Stone implements found in undisturbed strata of these gravel deposits can be definitely assigned to the glacial age.

The definite evidence of the occurrence of implements in these glacial terraces in Ohio are only four in number. Dr. M. C. Metz, of Madisonville, in the valley of the Little Miami, near Cincinnati, found one twenty years ago at the bottom of a cistern which he dug upon his place, where the soil could not have been disturbed since its original deposition. This was 8 or 10 feet. below the surface. Soon afterwards the same high authority reported another implement found at Loveland, also in the valley of the same river, and in gravel of the same age. Dr. Metz has a high reputation as a careful observer, so that his testimony would be final upon such a question.

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present accomplished curator of the Ohio Archelogical and Historical Society, at Columbus, and whose reputation as a careful investigator is of the very highest, discovered a similar stone implement in the freshly exposed face of the glacial terrace, and seventeen feet below the surface, at New Comerstown in the valley of the Tuscarawas.

The fourth instance is that of a stone implement discovered by Mr. Sam Houston in the high glacial terrace at Brilliant, a few miles below Steubenville in Jefferson County, in the main valley of the Ohio River.

Another implement, not so well attested, is that which was brought to light in 1908 by Mr. Licey, of Wadsworth, Ohio. This was found by a workman on the floor of an extensive gravel pit, on the west side of the valley of the river Styx, two miles from Wadsworth. The gravel is no doubt of glacial age, having been deposited while there was an overflow from the great glacial floods which poured through the pass, east of Medina, which connects Rocky River, flowing into Lake Erie with the river Styx, which flows into the Tuscarawas. But in this case there is not direct evidence that the implement occurred in undisturbed gravel. Probably it did. But it may have fallen down from the surface. Still the type of the implement is entirely unlike those which are generally found in that region upon the surface, and is similar to those found elsewhere in glacial deposits.

If we are to reproduce in our imagination the conditions under which the men lived who made and used and lost these implements, it would be found closely to resemble those of the Eskimo in Greenland and of the Tlinkit

Indians in Alaska. The implements are of the rudest sort, manufactured from nodules of the flint deposits that occur in various places in the state. It is easy to see how they became incorporated in the gravel; for the glacial floods that deposited the gravel could occur only in the latter part of each recurring summer, when the melting of the ice was proceeding most rapidlv. During the late fall, the winter, the spring, and early summer, the streams would be low and the gravel deposits laid down the preceding season would be bare. Implements lost upon this surface of gravel would be covered up by the floods of the fol- . lowing seasons and so be preserved for our inspection and instruction.

But, as already said, the glacial deposits where these implements have been found in Ohio were considerably earlier than those of the period when the glacial waters receded from the temporary glacial lake which covered northwestern Ohio. Probably, however, they were not more than a few hundred, or in the case of the most southerly, not more than 1,000 or 2,000 years earlier. While those implements were being imbeded in gravel the whole portion of Ohio north of the watershed was deeply surrounded in glacial ices as Greenland is today. But it is a matter of extreme interest to know that Ohio falls into line with New Jersey and with southern England and northern France in yielding evidence of a racé of men living on both continents which very likely antedated the Noachian Deluge and in the opinion of many high authorities became extinct amid the rapid physical changes on the surface of the earth which preceded that event. The date was probably 10,000 or 12,000 B. C.