50 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 
creek, extending north for several miles, then northeast and 
again north, seems altogether too wide for the insignificant 
stream now flowing through it; from the valley of the Little 
Miami, between Red Bank and Plainville, a’ broad belt of 
depressed land extends northwestwardly until it enters the 
Millcreek valley, near St. Bernard or Ludlow Grove. 
The second geological survey of Ohio, 1869-1875, began 
the work of accumulating the data to explain this topography. 
Attention was called to the broad valley of the Millcreek 
extending from Hamilton to Clifton, there dividing, the 
westerly branch still occupied by the Millcreek, the other 
extending east and southeast to the Little Miami valley, and 
it was thought that the Big Miami may have taken this course 
to reach the Ohio.* The depth to the solid rock in the Mill- 
creek valley as shown bya well in Cumminsville,f 151 feet 
below the surface, or 60 feet below low-water mark of the 
Ohio River is noted, and its bearing upon elevational move- 
ments commented upon. 
The first connected attempt to explain the peculiarities of 
Cincinnati’s topography was a paper by Prof. Joseph F. 
James.{ He considered that a barrier extended across the 
Ohio from the Kentucky shore to the south end of the range 
of hills west of the Millcreek, evidence of the barrier being 
found in the beds exposed in the bank of the Ohio near Lud- 
low and in McCullum’s Riffle, a conspicuous bar in low water 
a few miles below the city; that. the Ohio divided into two 
branches, one flowing northwest from the Little Miami valley 
between Red Bank and Plainville, the other south of and 
around the “Cincinnati Island,” the higher land now occu- 
pied by the suburbs, Walnut Hills, Avondale, and Clifton, the 
two branches uniting near Ludlow Grove, thence together 
flowing to Hamilton, thence southwest through the valley of 
the Big Miami; the blocking of this northward channel in 
glacial times compelled the Ohio to cut across the barrier at 
Sedamsville. 
*Orton, Edward. Geol. Ohio, I, p. 420. 
fIbid., p. 433. 
{The Geology of Cincinnati. Jour. Cincinnati Soc. Nat. Hist., IX, 1886, pp. 20-31, 
136-141. 
