A Century of Geology in Indiana. 



W. S. Blatchley. 



A wise man oiiee said that the Good Lord made the Geology of Indiana 

 simple so that it could be easily understood by the State Geologists elected 

 by the people. Whether the Almighty had that idea in mind, when the 

 geological formations now constituting the area comprising the State were 

 laid down, is and always will be a matter of conjecture. Suffice it to say, 

 that according to the best knowledge obtainable, those formations were de- 

 posited in the order and manner set forth by the writer in another paper 

 presented to this Academy in 1903.* 



Prior to 1837 there is but little record of work done toward utilizing the 

 mineral resources or determining the geology of Indiana. It is known that as 

 early as 1804 the location of outcrops of coal was noted and marked on the 

 land survey maps of the State, and in 1811 a small mine had been opened 

 at Fulton, Perry County, from which it is said Robert Fulton obtained a 

 supply of fuel for the first steamboat descending the Ohio River. 



In 1817, William McClure, who afterward came to New Harmony with 

 Robert Dale Owen, published a work "Observations on the Geology of the 

 United States of America, etc." in which was a colored geological map of the 

 Eastern United States. This shows Indiana in one color, the entire area 

 of the State being included under what he called the "secondary" or area of 

 stratified rocks. Indiana is not mentioned in the text of this work. 



First Accounts of Wyandotte Cave. 



In 1819, appeared the first i)ublished account of any cave in the United 

 States, that of Wyandotte Cave, of Crawford County. It appeared in Wm. 

 McMurtrie's "Sketches of Louisville and its Environs", under the heading, 

 "The Mammoth Cave of Indiana." The cave at that time was owned by 

 one Dr. Benjamin Adams who had preempted the land on which it is situated 

 for the purpose of making saltpetre. McMurtrie says: "At what precise 

 period it was first discovered must be left to tradition and wild conjecture to 

 determine, but it is evident, from circumstances hereafter to be mentioned, 

 that many ages must have elapsed, since that terrible convulsion of the earth, 

 which has, in some places, rent asunder the solid rock for a hundred feet to- 

 gether. Although its existence was generally ascertained in 1798, it is only 

 since the year 1814 that we have any account of it that can he relied on." 

 He states on the next page, however, that Gen. Wm. H. Harrison visited the 



*"The Indiana of Nature; Its Evolution," Presidential address by W. S. Blatchley, 

 delivered December 28, 1903. 



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