Summit County, Ohio - Chapter 1: Topography and Geology, 1908

The surface of Summit County presents a remarkable vai'iety. The AVesterner, standing in the midst of "The Plains." as the territory lying north of the city of Akron used to be called, sees much to remind him of Nebraska and Kansas. Parts of other townships are also as level, or as gently rolling, as the prairies of the West. Stand on the summit of some of the Northampton Hills, and the view reminds you of the fine scenery of New England. Ponds abound in all parts of the count}'. Silver Lake and Wyoga Lake are the principal ones in the northern part; Turkey-foot Lake and Long Lake lie ensconced among the green hills in the southern townships; Springfield Lake is a beauty spot in the eastern part, and Shocolog Pond and White and Black Ponds diver.-ify the western portion, while Summit Lake occupies the central part of the county and gives to the citizen of Akron the advantages of a watering place within the very limits of his city.

Brooks and rivers flow in nearly every direction. Their economic ui3es are many. The Cuyahoga River bisects the northern half of the county and furnishes extensive >.vater power for manufacturing purposes. In many places its watei-s are diverted for irrigating purposes, and the fortunate farmei-s who till the land along its course fear no season of drought. In the southern part of the county the same advantages are furnished by the Tuscarawas River. These are Summit County's principal streams. They have many branches or tributaries which ramify even to the remotest corners of the county. Among others should be named Wolf Creek, Pigeon Creek, Yellow Creek, Tinker's Creek, Brandywine Creek, Mud Brook and Sand Run. This enumeration will give the reader some idea of the wonderful way in which this favored county is watered bj- running streams. In earlier times the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers were navigable by boats of considerable size. New Portage, at the southern terminus of the Portage Path, was the head of na\agation on the Tuscarawas, while boats from Lake Erie ascended the Cuyahoga as far ;is Old Portage, at the northern end of the Path.

Perhaps all will agree that the most strikingly beautiful section of Summit County is the Cuyahoga Valley, which begins at Akron and gradually grows in depth and increases in width as it approaches the northern limits of the county. In Cuyalioga County it parts with much of its beauty. Finally the hills and great bluffs cease altogether and the river, murky, nuiddy and ill-smelling from the contamination of several hundred thousand citizens of Cleveland, flows lazily into Lake Erie. There is an interesting geological story connected with this river which will be told later on in this chapter. Another striking feature of the topography of this county is the Gorge of the Cuyahoga, which extends from Cuyahoga Falls, a distance of about three miles west, or almost to the meeting-place of the waters of the Big and Little Cuyahoga. It has many of the elements of beauty which characterize Watkins Glen and other famous resorts for travelers. The Gorge was caused by the erosion of the river, which now flows at the foot of precipitous cliffs, two hundred feet or more below the surface of the surrounding country. On both sides the land stretches away in level fashion, and the traveler approaches without any warning from Nature that a great chasm yawns in front of him. Suddenly he stands on the edge of the precipice, and through the interwoven branches of the hemlocks sees the foaming, tossing water far below him, in the cool depths of the Glens. About half way down the Gorge the river tumbles over a ledge of harder sandstone and makes a very pretty cascade known by the prosaic name of "Big Falls." It is a pity that so charming a spot sliould be called by so commonplace, if not ugly, name. At Cuyahoga Falls there are more cascades, but their beauty is largely destroyed by the factories and buildings, which line the banks of the river there. There is a remarkable variety in the flora of these glens. The procession of the flowers is uninterrupted from the first skunk-cabbage of early April to the last aster and witch-hazel blossom of October. The oaks, the maples, the elm, the ash, many of the nut trees and several of the evergreens flourish here most luxuriantly. Only the great, dripping walls that rise sheer to the top are bare of vegetation, and even these are covered in places with mosses and

A close second in the popular choice for beauty is the famous "Lake Region," stretching from the southern limits of Akron to the extreme south part of the county. The hills rise here to a considerable elevation - the highest being more than eleven hundred feet above sea level. A chain of lakes fed by springs and subterranean streams stretches north and south between them. These lakes are a legacy from the great glacier, or glaciers, which in the ice age flowed down from the north and covered all this region. Th&se hills of sand, gravel and boulders had their birth at that period, too. In fact, the face of Summit County, as we know it at the present time, is largely the result of the titanic forces of Nature, which operated during the so-called Ice Age, in North America. This is not the place to refer to the proofs that a great ice sheet did at one time cover all the northern and western portions of Ohio; it is perhaps sufficient to say that the investigations of geologists have demon.strated beyond reasonable doubt the glacial hypothesis first advanced by Louis Agassiz. The terminal moraine which marks the .southern boundary of the ice has been traced across Ohio by Prof. George Frederick Wright, of Oberlin, with great accuracy. This terminal moraine is the deposit of boulders, gravel and drift which was left upon the original surface by the melting of the ice. Akron lies a few seconds north of the 41st parallel, north latitude. Beginning in Western New York at the 42nd parallel, the southern ice limit crosses into Pennsylvania and takes a course almost directly south to Homewood, which is on the 41st parallel. It then turns almost due west and passes through Massillon, and when it reaches Mansfield it turns at an angle of ninety degrees and proceeds due south to Logan. Its course is then southwest, through Chillicothe and across the 39th parallel into Kentucky. It passes a few miles south of Cincinnati, and near Louisville it turns abi'uptly north and proceeds into Indiana to near the 40th parallel. All the land lying north of this line was covered for centuries with a river of solid ice, which was not less than 200 feet in thickness or depth, and which may have been as great as 500 or 600 feet. It is spoken of as a "river" of ice. That means it was flowing. It advanced very slowly - about a quarter of a mile each year. It required nearly a thousand years for it to cross the State of Ohio. The gi-eat Canadian boulders, which were brought by the ice from their original home in the Laurentian Hills and deposited about Cincinnati, were, perhaps, more than 2,000 years in making the journey. Is it any wonder that their sharp edges and angles were worn off and that we find them today smooth and rounded? Countless boulders of this kind are distributed over the whole surface of Summit County. No metamorphic or granite rocks occur here naturally. Our "hard-heads," as the farmers call them, were all transported, then. When detached from the parent, cliffs or ledges they were all of sharp edges and possessed of many sharp angles. The grinding and rolling and abrasion to which they were subjected as the great ice river rolled them on made them smooth and rounded as we find them today. The citizen who keeps house nowadays will understand that ice is hea\nt-. Perhaps it is possible to a.scertain mathematically the power exerted by a moving mass of ice several hundred miles wide and 500 or 600 feet in thickness. Whether that be true or not, we can see about us the results of such tremendous forces. On Keeley's Island in Lake Erie, for instance, there ai'e places where the pre-glacial limestone surface was planed off as smooth as a floor. In other places axe grooves six to twenty-four inches in depth, and as wide, where a granite boulder was pushed bodily through the hard limestone, with as much ease, apparently, as though the resisting surface had been so much butter. So, the great ice sheet ploughed and planed its way south, scooping out depressions, scraping off the hills, and widening the old canyons and valleys. When it reached the Ohio River it made a dam 500 or 600 feet high acros.s the

Ohio valley. The dammed up waters spread out on all sides and as far back as the headwatei"3 of the Allegheny and Monongaliela rivers. This made a deep lake more than 400 miles long and 200 miles wide. The geologists have named it Lake Ohio. The present .site of Pittsburgh was then 300 feet under water. The present site of Summit County was under as many feet of solid ice. The northern shore of this lake did not extend beyond Massillon. The Cincinnati ice-dam may have held these waters impounded for centuries, but, like all other laies, there came a time when its existence miLst end. When the climate ameliorated, the cold of winter was no longer able to repair the ravages made on the ice by the increasing heat of the summer sun. The ice-barrier weakened and at length gave way. The imprisoned waters rushed in tremendous fury down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys to the sea. What a flood there must have been then !

When the recession of the ice sheet began these floods became an annual affair. Taking as a basis Professor Agassiz's figures as determined by his observations in Switzerland, it is easy to estimate that from the natural melting of the glacier during each summer enough water was formed to cover the ice-free portion of the State to a depth of 40 feet. These floods, occurring annuall\' for many years, washed gi-eat quantities of gravel and sand toward the south. Thus the gi"eat gravel hills in the southern part.s of Summit Count}' were formed. The glacier, as it ploughed its way south, uncovered subterranean water-courses and made many depressions in the surface of the land. Thus our lakes were formed. For many centuries thej' were supplied with water from the melting ice, slowly retreating northward. Since then the loss by evaporation has been replenished by rainfall and the water from bottom springs.

Finally, in the retreat of the ice-sheet before the victorious forces of the Sun, the great watershed of Ohio was reached. Summit County occupies a position on this watershed. Until Akron was reached all the water from the melting glacier had flowed toward the southeast, as the slope of the land in the State south of this locality was in that direction. But as you go north from Akron, the slope of the land is northerly. Hence, when the icesheet- had passed over the crest of the land here, the water from its melting was unable to find an outlet until it had risen high enough to flow over the height of land at Summit Lake and then pursue the usual and natural com-se toward the southeast. Although the slope of the land was toward the north, yet the water could not flow in that direction as a great barrier of ice 200 or 300 feet high effectually blocked the way. This barrier filled not only the old valley of the Cuyahoga, but covered the whole northern portion of the State. Thus the floods from the great ice-mass filled the whole valley between the high land at Akron and the face of the glacier slowly retreating northward. By the time Cleveland was reached the whole valley, as we know it now, was one great lake extending from Cleveland to Akron. This lake had its outlet through a short river which flowed from North Akron, in the bed of the present Ohio Canal, to a point south of Summit Lake, where the Tuscarawas meets the canal. Professor Claypole gave to this river the name "Akron River." The great lake, which in its deepest part must have been almost 300 feet deep, he called "Cuyahoga Lake." It is difficult to estimate the length of time this lake and the Akron River were in existence. It was probably many centuries. They existed until the ice-sheet was well beyond Lake Erie, and the Niagara River and the St. Lawrence were open to the sea. AVIien this happened, then the Cuyahoga Lake was drained rapidly into Lake Erie and the Akron River started to flow north and finally ceased to flow at all, except as a very small outlet for the lake on the summit now called Summit Lake. While Cuyahoga Lake existed it was a very muddy lake. The grinding of the surface by the movement of the glacier produced an immense amount of fine mud which was carried by the water from the melting ice into the lake. Here, aftcT a. time, it was deposited a.s a fine sediment n]wn the bottom of the lake. The occasional deposits of boulders or gravel are accounted for by the fact that icebergs or floes, becoming detached from the face of the glacier, and beaiing on their surfaces a burden of gravel or boulders, floated out into the lake, and there melting, made the deposits referred to. In the "Geology of Ohio," volume 1, page 552, occurs the first mention of the existence of this ide-dam, which stopped the northward flow of all the rivers emptying into Lake Erie. The credit for the discovery must be given to Dr. NewbeiTy.

A former Akron citizen who was professor of geology, Dr. E. W. Claypole, has written very entertainingly of this episode in the geological history of Summit, and we will do well to listen to his own words as he describes it.

"As the conditions of existence of all these lakes were essentially identical, a description of all of them would be tedious and involve much useless repetition. My purpose here is not to present all the details of the retreat of the ice, but to show its general course and its inevitable results. I will therefore select one of these as an illustration, and merely name the rest. For this purpose I choose the Cuyahoga River, which I have carefully studied. This river rises in Geauga County, and, after flowing for almost 50 miles in a southwesterly direction, turns sharply to the north near Akron, and thence follows this course until it falls into the lake at Cleveland.

"The caiLse of this sudden change of direction in the channel of the Cuyahoga River, is the following: Along the earlier part of its course, it is flowing in a post-glacial channel on the top of the plateau of Northern Ohio. As it approaches Akron it passes through a deep gorge in the lower carboniferous rocks cut by itself since the ice retreated. This gorge is, in it? lower part, not less than 300 feet below the level of the adjoining country and its length is between two and three miles. At the lower end of the gorge the river escapes from its imprisoning walls of rock into a wide-open valley - -its own pre-glacial channel - which retains it for the rest of its course. This channel extendi backward in a southeasterly direction above the point where the Cuj-ahoga now enters it for several miles, passing between Akron and the present river. It is occupied by a small branch stream - the Little Cuyahoga. It gradually ri^es and becomes less distinct, being heavily clogged with drift, which has most likely been the cause of diverting the water that pre-glacially flowed along it into the present channel.

"Let us take our stand on one of the socalled hills overlooking the vale of the Cuyahoga, between Akron and Cleveland, nea.r Peninsula, for example. The broad valley lies about 200 feet beneath our feet. Through it the lazy stream slowly meanders in a channel cut in one place through deep, soft deposits of drift, and in another through solid rocks of the Cuyalioga shale. But the valley is a pigmy besides that deeper and older one in which the Cuyahoga used to flow before the Great Ice Age came on. The hill on which we now stand did not then exi?t. The plateau, or terrace, out of which it has been carved, is a deposit of drift, left here during the retreat of the ice. Over on the western side of the vaJley is another terrace on the same level and of the same age, ©.Iso cut and scarred by water-courses. Deep' under both, and in mo.st places below the present level of the river, is the solid rock floor of the valley, not yet cleared of its cumbering load of glacial drift. The .stream is now crowding the left or western bank of its pre-glacial valley. The ground there rises abniptly, and less than a quarter of a mile from the river the solid sandstone (Berea Grit) is quarried above the water level. Turn now and look eastward, and there, at a distance of about two miles, we see the massive carboniferous conglomerate in almost vertical cliffs rising at least 100 feet above the plateau on which we are standing, and forming the well-known 'Boston Ledges.' These are the old banks of the Cuyahoga, and mark the pre-glacial channel of the river. Between these on the east and a similar outcrop on the west was a valley deeper than the present, and nearh^ three miles wide, scooped out by the river itself during post-carboniferous ages, and along this valley flowed the old Cuyahoga, not necessarily a lai'ger stream than its successor, but one of vastly greater antiquitJ^

"Go back now in imagination to that period of the Ice Age when the edge of the retreating glacier had crossed the waterehed of Ohio on its backward march, and, extending across the country from east to west, was lying a little north of our present position ; that is to say, between Peninsula and Cleveland. Our former point of view is now untenable; it is under water. But we can stand on the top of Boston Ledges and look across the vallej' to the westward. The whole is one lake of icecold water. If it is summer, the shores are clad with a hardy vegetation suited to an arctic climate and the neighborhood of the glacier. If winter, the landscape is covered with snow, and the glittering ice-fr'ont is plainly in sight. Soundings show us that the water in the lake is more than 200 feet deep. If we trace its margin we find it cut by deep fiords reaching back into the country, and, of course, full of water up to the lake level. Its main course is due south until a point is reached about a mile north of Akron, where the bank turns slightly to the eastward and curves sharplj^ around the head of an inlet which forms the real end of the lake. This point was neai' the 'Old Forge.' Returning to the west along its south shore we reach another deep bay stretching southward, in which the water rapidly shallows, and here we find the outlet of our lake through the valley in which now lies the city of Akron. A small stream is flowing southward along a channel where formerly was a tributary to the Cuyahoga, and pas.sing over the edge of the watershed, which forms in reality the southern border of the lake, it reaches the Tuscarawas, by which its water passes into the Muskingiim, and then to the Ohio, thus making the Lake Region tributary to the Gulf of Mexico.

runs westward for a short distance. It then -turns northwai'd and, tracing it, we reach, after making several circuits around deep inlets, a point opposite to our previous station at Peninsula.

"To this body of water, never seen by man, other than the early paleolithic savage, the distinct ancestor of our present Esquimaux, clinging to the margin of the retreating icesheet, I propose to give the name 'Lake Cuyahoga' in order to associate it with the existing river, and to connect the present with that which has passed away.

''Lake Cuyahoga, then, was a body of water pounded back against the watershed by the retreating ice-front, and rising higher and higher, until it at last it found an outlet at the lowest point - the Akron Water Gap. Its dimensions varied from time to time. Now the glacier advanced under accumulating snow and ice in the cold winter, and pressed the water over the outlet. Now again it retreated under warm skies and diminution of snow, and the water from its melting filled the space from which the ice had disappeared. Alternately receding and advancing, the icefront determined the size of the lake. In summer a furious torrent, white with glaciermilk, swept down the Akron Valley and through Summit Lake to the Tuscarawas River; the whole length of this stream was about four miles. In winter it flowed in silence, its sources frost-locked and its w'aters ice-bound.

"To this temporary stream, a product of the retreating ice-sheet, whose very existence would now be unknown save for the researches of geologists, I propose to give the name 'The Akron River.' *****

"In all probability, a hardy vegetation of pines, firs, hemlock-spruce, and red-cedar followed close upon the retreating ice, and soon clothed the shores of the lake and the adjoining country with a dark forest, under which various northern plants and animals found a congenial home. Man himself hugged the retreating ice, withdrawing with it to the north.

organic confirmation of the probability suggested. Here linger many plants whose home is far north in Canada - survivors from a time when the climate conditions were such as suited a northern flora. The secular rise of temperature has exterminated them from the high lands, but in these shady moist glens they still find a congenial habitat, and maintain a somewhat precarious existence. Among those plants may be mentioned the following:

"All these, with other plants of northern affinity, may be found in or near the deep gorges of the Cuyahoga Valley, and give to them a character unlike that of other places in the vicinity. It is scarcely possible to explain their presence on any other theory than that above adopted - that they are relics of a similar flora that once covered the whole country, but which has been exterminated by change of conditions."

AVhen the great cosmic forces which formed the continents had subsided and the last great upheaval had taken place, other natural forces began to operate toward the preparation of the land lift by the receding oceans for the coming of man. We call it land in contradistinction to the water of the oceans; but the surface of the dry portions of the world disclosed no vegetation or soil and presented no aspect save that of bare rock. Here it stretched away in the long billows of the plains; there it was heaved up in lofty, ragged mountain ranges. The atmosphere, the rains, the frost, and the sun then began the work of soil-making. Under their influence the rocks began to disintegrate, and gradual]}' the soil M'as formed. When the natural conditions became such as to favor vegetation, the forests and the grass took their places in the mundane sj'stem. In the preglacial era it is probable that the general surface appearance was much as it is today. Great rivers had eroded deep valleys and canyons; the hills were forest-clad; luxuriant grasses abounded in the intervales; swamps like ours were common, and lakes diversified the topography.

Then the great ice-sheet pushed down from the frozen North. AVe may well believe that it was a destroyer. Of course, no vegetation could survive. The damage, if such it may be called, was more fundamental, however, than the destruction of the things growing in and upon the soil. The soil itself was destroyed. The great mass of ice, steadily moving forward, pushed up the soil from the underlying rocks and washed it away in the great glacial floods which attended the melting of the ice. Its melting also left the great moraines of gravel and stones upon the bare surface of the mother rocks. It did more than these things; it even planed and furrowed these constituent rocks themselves. Thus the hills were reduced in elevation and the valleys raised. The canyon eroded by the pre^glacial Cuyahoga was widened into the valley as we know it today. The river of that time flowed in a bed two hundred feet below its present bed. It is flowing now upon the top of two hundred feet of glacial drift. We must look to the glacier for the reason why the northern portion of our county is covered with heavy clay, difficult to till, but very rich in desirable soil qualities; while the southern portion is sandy and gravelly. It must not be inferred from the foregoing that Nature had her work of soil-making all to do over again after the final departure of the ice. The glacial deposits and the sediment of glacial lakes, left upon the surface of the earth, were a long step forward in the work of restoring the soil. As pointed out

Fortunately for us, the erosion of the Cuyahoga and the various deep borings made in this vicinity in the search for water and oil and coal make the determination of the geological structure of Summit County an easy matter. There are various out-croppings of the different strata, also, which greatly assist the geologist in this work.

The lowest formation in the county is the Erie Shale, which occurs in the upper part of the Devonian. It is almost homogeneous in its nature and is a soft shale of a bluishgray color. It is sometimes varied with bands of calcareous sandstone and is occasionally found carrying fossils. It is exposed at Peninsula and -in some of the gorges opening into the Cuyahoga Valley. When the quarrying for the improvement of the Arcturus Springs in the Sand Run Gorge was done, some beautiful specimens of the blue iron stone with bands of a rich brown color were broken off the Erie shale out-crop there.

Above the Erie shale is the Cleveland shale, which is black and highly bituminous. It is probably a lower member of the Waverly or subcarboniferous . It is rich in carbon and, upon distillation, gas and oil may be obtained from it. This shale may also be seen to good advantage in the steep cliffs along the Cuyahoga. The next formation is the Bedford shale, which takes its name from Bedfordjin Cuyahoga County. It is exposed in Bedford Glens. One peculiarity of this stratum is the thin bands of sandstone, from which flagging for side-walks, etc., can be easily made. Above the Bedford shale is found the Berea sandstone, which comes to the surface in the southern part, of Boston township. It also outcrops on the high land in Northfield township. The large quarries at Peninsula are constituted of Berea sandstone. It 1= of a uniform white or .gray color and its close texture and resisting qualities make it a splendid stone for building. It is capable of being quarried in large blocks. In the lower parts of the Peninsula quarries the saiul,~tone is extremely Iiai'd and posst^sses a sharp grit which makes it especially valuable for the manufacture of niill-stoues. Much of it is used for this purpose and also for making grind-stones. It is topped by a thin layer of black, bituminous shale. Below Cuyahoga Falls this sandstone may be seen exposed and the cascade in Brandywine Creek is over this formation also. Next above the Berea sandstone comes Cuyahoga shale, so called because of its fine exposure in the bluffs below Cuyahoga Falls. In the main,: it is composed of a soft argillaceous shale, but also contains a bed of hard, fine-grained sandstone. The Big Falls at the Old Maid's Kitchen are due to this hard sandstone resisting the eroding powers of the river. It is foTmed on the surface in parts of Northfield township. A bed of limestone occurs near the top of this shale just below Cuyahoga Falls, from which quicklime was made at the time of the construction of the Ohio canal, as alluded to elsewhere in this history. A very good cement could doubtless be made from it. In Richfield township a bed of fossiliferous limestone occurs, in which some very remarkable fossil plants and animals have been found.

Next above the Cuyalioga shale comes the most common rock formation to be found in the county. It is Carboniferous Conglomerate. It is well to remember the name, for it is the surface rock of the townships of Northampton, Copley, Portage, Tallmadge, Springfield, Coventry, Norton, Twinsbui'g, Hudson, Stow, Boston, Richfield and Bath. It is an extremely coaree sandstone and generally contains, thickly imbedded in it, small, round, white quartz pebbles. The stone is of a yellowish color, except where it has been stained red or brown by oxide of iron. This sandstone is extensively quarried just above Old Portage at the plant of the Akron White Sand Company. After grinding and washing, the product is shipped to various centers to be used in the process of glass-making. At Boston Ledges and on the top of the bluffs about Old Maid's Kitchen it may also be studied to good advantage. This stratum averages about 100 feet in thickness. On account of its strength and durability it is much used for rougher construction purposes, such as foundations, bridges and culverts.

It is not po.?sible to find coal north of the place of outcrop of the Carboniferous Conglomerate, for the coal measures all lie above it. Sometimes it is missing and the coal beds lie directly above the Cuyalioga shale. The rocks containing the coal measures all lie in the southern part of the county. In them are found four different seams of coal. The top and bottom seams are about 200 feet apart. The lowest, of course, is the best coal. In the Ohio Geological Reports it is called Coal No. 1. It is of the same grade as the best Ohio bituminous coal. It is found in basins or ])ockets which were the swamps of the coalforming period. It occurs about twenty-five feet above the Carboniferous Conglomerate, or, when the latter is wanting, the Cuyahoga Shale. The next seam gives us coal No. 2, which is of little value. Coal No. 3 comes to the surface near Mogadore. It is a thin stratum and is of value only because of the under-clay, which is used in making sewerpipe and coarse pottery. In the southeastern part of the county coal No. 4 is found. It is of little value, except for local consumption. A bed of lime-stone is sometimes found above both No. 3 and No. 4. This lime-stone carries a low-grade iron ore, of which use was made in the early days of Summit County. The last blast-furnace has long since drawn its fires, and the only use which can be made of this lime-stone bed at the present time would be the manufacture of lime, cement, or material for road-making.