510 Pomeroy, Ohio. [November, 



:^^ n m B r n i| , d) Ij i n , 



The recent conflagration at Pomeroy, Meigs County, in which 

 nearly the whole of the business part of the city was consumed, has 

 called the attention of the trading community in that direction, and 

 renders information, concerning that place, appropriate at the present 

 time. In a recent visit there we devoted several days to the exami- 

 nation of the extensive mining operations for coal and salt, for which 

 Pomeroy has become justly celebrated. In company with Dr. Charles 

 Thomas and other citizens of the town, we entered and thoroughly 

 surveyed several of the coal excavations in that region and examined 

 the Salt- Works. 



LOCATION. 



The city of Pomeroy (for it rejoices in a corporation) occupies a 

 narrow strip of interval on the banks of the Ohio, some two miles in 

 length, but no where more than forty or fifty rods in width. The 

 craggy bluffs of the outcropping carboniferous strata occupy the rear, 

 and seem threatening everywhere to crowd the narrow town into the 

 river. In many places these rocks present their naked and precipi- 

 tous front some one hundred to' two hundred feet in hight, composed 

 of a soft, coarse-grained sand-stone of a reddish white color, of shales 

 abounding in fossil plants, of the coal measures and of the underlie- 

 ino- fire-clay. These rocks are crowned with verdure, and the dwel- 

 lings are built at their very base, almost in contact with the coal-vein 

 itself. The country beyond these bluffs continues exceedingly broken 

 and hilly. 



THE COAL-HILL TUNNEL. 



The coal stratum which everywhere in this region underlies the 

 sand-rock, is found generally above high -water mark and about 4jfeet 

 in thickness. Our first entrance into a mine was facilitated by a train 

 of cars drawn by a French pony. We entered the shaft above the 

 level of the streets, and stooping as we rode, were wheeled rapidly 

 forward into more than midnight darkness, guided by the feeble glare 

 of the miner's lamp through the bowels of i\\e hill. After traveling 

 thus about half a mile, we again saw far ahead the light of day, and 

 ere long emerged upon the opposite side of the hill, into a narrow 

 ravine which here cleft the hills to a depth beneath the coal-stratum. 



