wi, Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science. 
THE OCCURRENCE OF COAL IN MONROE COUNTY. 
W. N. Locan, Indiana University. 
(A Preliminary Report.) 
The occurrence of coal in small outcrops has been known for three 
quarters of a century among a few inhabitants of the southwest part 
of the county. No reference to the occurrence of coal is mentioned in 
any of the geological reports, except that T. F. Jackson, in discussing 
the Pennsylvanian of the Bloomington quadrangle, says: “Carbonaceous 
layers varying in thickness from a thin streak to a few inches in thick- 
ness are found here and there in the sandstone shale part of the for- 
mation. None of these layers appear to have a very wide horizontal 
distribution.”"* In this report Jackson does not definitely locate any of 
these occurrences within Monroe County, though he may have intended 
to include such area. About twenty-five years ago Mr. Frank Coleman, 
living in Indian Creek Township, opened a coal prospect in the south- 
east quarter of Section 4. He first opened a drift and took out several 
tons of coal, which he sold to local blacksmiths. When the roof of the 
drift caved in during a rainy season, he went back about thirty feet 
from the mouth of the entry and put down a shaft, entered the coal 
vein and took out twenty-six bushels of coal from a hole about four feet 
square. Before he could get the shaft lined the upper part of it caved 
in and he abandoned the mining project. Coal was also found in the 
bottom of a well in the southeast quarter of Section 3 on the David 
Koontz farm. 
In the late fall of 1917 Hall and Timberlake of Bloomington leased 
the Coleman farm and began prospecting for coal. They first opened 
up near the old drift and exposed a layer of coal about fourteen inches 
thick, a clay parting of the thickness of one foot, and a lower layer of 
coal sixteen inches thick. 
As the entry was driven back under the hill the clay diminished in 
thickness and the coal increased in thickness to that extent. They also 
opened up the old shaft and found a thickness of twenty-six inches of 
good hard coal. They then drilled a well with a core drill midway 
between the occurrence on the Coleman place and the one on the Koontz 
place, and the well ‘record which they kept shows six feet of coal at 
this point. On the David Koontz place they then sank a shaft to a 
‘See Thirty-ninth Annual Report, Geological Survey of Indiana, 1914, p. 227. 
