Butler Institute Of American Art

Viewed as a whole, the surface of Mahoning county mny be regarded as an undulating plain, sloping gentlv to the north, its southern litie running on or rear the divide lief ween the waters of the Mahoning- on the north and the Little Heaver on the south, and having an altitude of from three to five 1 utidred feet above the valleys of the n< rth border. Topographically, the county forms a portion of the highlands of the southern rim of the lake basin, but since the rim is cut through by the deep gorge oi the Mahoning, the drainage, though locally northward, is all earned through that channel into the Ohio. Hut little of the surface is even locally level, but consists of an alternation of broad valleys of excavation, separated by rounded bills and table j lands, with gentle slopes. It is all varied and I picturesque, while at the same time it is well f adapted for agricultural purposes, and is now very generally in a high state of cultivation. The soil is in some places derived from the decomposition of the underlying rocks; but it, for the most part, rests ujjon a sheet of drift material, for the county lies within the drift area, though reaching its margin on the south. The general slope of the surface, ami part of the local erosion, seem to have Ix'cn produced by the southern extension of a tongue or lolxr of the great glacier, which, moving from the north, excavated the low country that lies between the highlands of Geauga and Portage on the west and those of Pennsylvania on the east. By this agent the northern out-crop of rocks which underlies the county have !>een ground away, and a large amount of material transported southward from its place of origin. As the eroded rocks were largely sandstone and conglomerate, much of the transported material is sand and gravel. Glacial marks are seen on the exposed surfaces of the harder rocks in nearly all parts of the county, and they are especially noticeable on the sandstone ledges on the northeast side of the Mahoning in Youngstown and Poland and on the higher strata of the same character in the southern part of Canfield and Ellsworth. The direction of the glacial scratches is nearly north and south; but they are sometimes reflected by local impediments a few degrees either east or west.

Passage source: Twentieth Century History of Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio and Representative Citizens, published 1907.

Coa! N'ii One, "I'll is is the scam which furnishes the famous Brier Hill, or Mahoning coal, so extensively used for irmi smelting and widely distributed through the markets of the northwest. It is the sanie seam that is sn largely worked in western Pennsylvania. The true position of this coal scam ts from twenty In fifty feet above tin- conglomerate. The quality of the Mahoning \ alley coal is so excellent and the coal field lies so near the (ireat Lakes market that it has become the lusis of an extensive commerce, and the mainsjiring of the most iiii]>oi t.uit iron industry of the West. The first development of coal mining in the valley of the Mahoning took place at the old Brier Hill and ("rah Creek mines near the north line of Youngstown. The search for coal has radiated from this center m every direction, and as a consequence the country about Youngstown has been more thoroughly explored than any other part of the county. A number of extensive basins have been discovered here, and several of them have U-en extensively worked

Passage source: Twentieth Century History of Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio and Representative Citizens, published 1907.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Youngstown City - 521,977 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.