GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 201 
Gold and silver, like the prophets of old, we have none; but we do possess 
mineral in abundance, which is readily exchanged for these precious metals 
which the world so zealously strives to obtain. 
Geologists and explorers have talked and written about Kansas from early 
days. Fossils and rock strata have been described by them in learned terms, 
often unintelligible to the masses, but yet holding a dignified position in the annals 
of science. 
Lewis and Clarke, those intrepid explorers, early in our century made their 
perilous way to our country’s western border. As they passed across the plains 
of Kansas they noted the occurrence of limestone, clay, and coal; but it was not 
until the dark and stormy days of the war of emancipation had closed that an 
organized survey of our mineral resources was made. 
In 1864 Prof. B. F. Mudge began his labors as director of the geological sur- 
vey of Kansas, and published a report on the coal and salt deposits. The survey 
was maintained only two years, and it was not resurrected until 1895, when the 
present University Geological Survey was organized. 
In the long interval between the surveys individual geologists and prospectors 
advanced the knowledge and development of the state’s mineral deposits. It 
was during this period that the Kansas Academy of Science was of special value 
to our state in fostering the scientific spirit and furnishing a medium of publica- 
tion. These reports and those of the state survey furnish accurate and valuable 
descriptions of our mines and minerals. 
It is fitting that, on the dawn of this coming century, we pause in our routine 
of work and look back over the past history of our mineral development and 
take an invoice of our present resources. Only a score of years ago three min- 
erals were mined in Kansas: coal, building stone, and some zinc, with a value 
of about one million dollars. To-day, in addition, we have salt, gypsum, oil, 
gas, mineral water, clay, natural cement rock, Portland cement materials, with a 
value of nearly twenty million dollars a year, or, with the Argentine smelter, of 
thirty-nine million dollars. Many of these products are in the infancy of their 
development, and none is worked to its fullest capacity. New industries have 
started this year, and a number have been planned for the coming year. Kansas 
is on the up grade in mineral development. 
COAL. 
Coal and iron are the foundation stones upon which the greatest industrial 
progress of the nineteenth century rests. Not until the seventeenth century did 
England and Europe realize the value of this rock fuel, and about a century 
later coal was mined near Pittsburg, Pa. 
In Kansas coal was about the first deposit to attract attention, and it is now 
our most important mineral. Thirty-five years ago the settlers of Cherokee 
county warded off the chilly blasts of winter by fires of coal taken from the 
neighboring creek banks. The largest hoisting shaft in the state, and probably 
in this country, is found at the present time at Chicopee, in Crawford county, 
which is the banner coal county of the state, sending out, with Cherokee, over 
eighty per cent. of the total coal supply which comes from twenty-nine counties. 
Ninety-eight per cent. comes from six counties: Cherokee, Crawford, Bourbon, 
Leavenworth, Osage, and Labette. In southeastern Kansas there are about thirty 
separate coal-veins, ranging from eight inches to nearly four feet in thickness. 
There are 250 coal-mines in the state, with a depth of a few feet to 720 feet, at 
Leavenworth. Two thousand two hundred feet above the base of the lower 
coals comes the Osage coal, accidentally discovered in 1869 in digging a well 
near Carbondale, and mined at various places along the Santa Fe railroad. 
