RECENT OIL DEVELOPMENTS IN SCOTT CO. 185 



large boulders. These gorges are several hundred feet in depth and are 

 serious obstacles to any travel across them. The few roads in the region 

 keep as much as possible up on the plateau surface and usually follow the 

 divides between the main streams. 



To the south and east of Oneida, the plateau-like character is largely 

 lost and the country becomes hilly to mountainous, often with steep slopes 

 and narrow stream valleys, but usually without the rugged character of 

 the cliff-bound stream gorges of the more westerly plateau portion. 



The Queen and Crescent Railway may almost be taken as the dividing 

 line between the two types of surface, since the hilly region to the east 

 and southeast of this road extends west of it in but a few places and for 

 short distances only. Most of the region is wooded. Farms, especially 

 on the plateau part, are few and small. 



GEOLOGY. 



The rocks of the region consist of sandstones, shales and limestones 

 that are grouped into a number of formations, the three youngest of 

 which are exposed at the surface either in the vicinity of the wells or a 

 few miles west of them in the bottom of the lower courses of the larger 

 stream gorges and along the Big South Fork River. Several of the older 

 formations reached by the drill do not appear at the surface in this imme- 

 diate region, but are well known as surface formations both east and west 

 of here. 



SURFACE FORMATIONS. 



Briceville shale. The youngest rocks of the region that have been pene- 

 trated by the drill so far are a series of soft shales with subordinate sand- 

 stones, known as the Briceville shale. These rocks form the surface of 

 the hilly or southeastern portion of the region as above described. About 

 30 or 40 feet above their base they contain a coal that has been mined at 

 Helenwood, Almy, Bear Creek and elsewhere. West of Oneida these 

 shales remain mostly in more or less isolated patches that disappear en- 

 tirely in a few miles to the west of town and leave the surface composed 

 of the rocks of the next underlying formation, which is known as the Lee. 

 To the east of Oneida, the Briceville shales are overlaid on the higher 

 peaks and ridges by later formations that, like the Briceville, are also of 

 Pennsylvania!! age. 



Lcc formation. Immediately under the Briceville shale there come a 

 series of sandstones and shales some 700 to 900 feet thick known as the 

 Lee formation. The sandstones are usually massive and in places are con- 

 glomeratic. The shales are subordinate in amount and generally dark 

 gray to almost black in color. At several places the drillings show parti- 



