FOWKE] ABORIGINAL FLINT QUARRIES 515 
For rugged and picturesque scenery, and remarkable geological 
and erosional features, it is not equaled by any other county in the 
State. 
From a point on the Ohio near the mouth of Tygart River a high 
ridge winds its way southward and westward into Rowan County, 
forming a divide between streams which flow into Licking, Little 
Sandy, Tygart, and Kinniconick Rivers. One peak in this range 
has an elevation of 900 feet above its base. A branch of the Chesa- 
peake & Ohio Railway from Garrison 12 miles west of Portsmouth, 
passing through a depression in this hill, finds it necessary to use a 
grade of 212 feet to the mile. The railroad extends a distance of 20 
miles to Carter City—customarily shortened to Carter—where the 
Oligonunk caverns are located. 
Four miles to the south and southeast of Carter, within a radius 
of about a mile, are three natural bridges, each one of them larger 
in some of its dimensions than the famous “ Natural Bridge of 
Virginia”; four caverns, from one of which the explorer, after 
scrambling and clambering through mud and over huge rock masses 
for a distance of 4 miles, is glad to find himself, weary and famished, 
emerging into daylight through a large opening in the side of a 
cliff, not more than 200 yards from the place where he started in; a 
rock arch, narrow and symmetrical, separated by a chasm from the 
hill behind it, with its highest inside point corresponding to the 
keystone having an elevation of 115 feet above the débris which has 
accumulated at the bottom, and 150 feet above the stream which 
flows a few yards away; a large creek disappearing in a crevice at 
the foot of a high hill and coming out on the other side nearly a 
mile from the place where it entered; the gorge of Tygart, where 
the river flows between vertical walls 350 feet high and at places 
not much more than that distance apart at the top; slopes rising 
steeply from the river to the summits of peaks and ridges 600 to 
700 feet above the stream, to drop off into deep valleys on the other 
side; the “ falls,” really a cascade 19 feet high, but of unusual sym- 
metry; the “loop,” where the river after a circuit of 7 miles doubles 
back to such an extent that a man can throw a stone across the 
isthmus; the Tygart itself, one of the crookedest rivers in the world. 
The word “ Tygarts” would be more appropriate than “ meanders ” 
to express the extreme of divagation or indirection. 
The north end of Carter County projects as a broad wedge or 
triangle between Lewis and Greenup Counties. In this area, within 
5 or 6 miles to the west, southwest, and southeast of Carter, are exten- 
sive flint deposits. None of the stone is found to the north or east 
of the railway; at least the residents claim they do not know of 
any. Inasmuch as many of them possess an almost uncanny knowl- 
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