MIDDLE OHIO DRAINAGE SYSTEM. 107 



How mucli of the present Ohio above the point whei-e Teays Valley 

 connects with it follows its old course may now be considered. Between 

 the present mouth of the Kanawha, at Point Pleasant, W. Va., and the 

 west end of Teays Valley, the Ohio is in a valley which for a few miles 

 becomes so constricted as to suggest the crossing of an old divide. The 

 width at Point Pleasant is about 2 miles, but it becomes reduced to 1 J miles 

 in the first 8 miles below that town, and to scarcely 1 mile at Crown City, 

 10 miles farther down. For 10 miles below Crown City the breadth is a 

 mile or less. The valley then gradually expands to a width of nearly 2 

 miles at Huntington, 15 miles farther down the river. In this narrow por- 

 tion the bluffs rise abruptly to a height of 200 feet, or to about 700 feet 

 above tide, and the uplands reach an altitude 200 feet higher within a mile 

 or two of the river. A thick-bedded, very resistant sandstone outcrops at 

 about 700 feet throughout much of the narrow portion, and in several places 

 presents mural escarpments and often breaks in blocks 10 to 16 feet thick. 

 This sandstone, no doubt, has had great influence in making the bluffs 

 abrupt up to this altitude and in preventing a widening of the valley. 

 Whether it fully accounts for the narrowness, or whether the narrow portion 

 once contained a divide, the writer was unable to decide. 



In passing up the Ohio from the mouth of the Kanawha to the mouth 

 of the Little Kanawha River, at Parkersburg, W. Va., the valley of the Ohio 

 is found to be very winding and also exceptionally broad, its width rang- 

 ing- from 1^ to nearly 3 miles. Throughout this interval its passage is 

 through a region similar to that in the vicinity of Teays Valley, in which the 

 divides have been greatl}^ broken down, so th^t there are numerous cols at 

 only 700 to 750 feet above tide. This portion of the Ohio Valley preserves 

 but few rock shelves or remnants of a gradation plain that can be correlated 

 with the gradation plain on the old Kanawha noted above. The tribu- 

 taries, however, present remnants of a gradation plain which serve to show 

 the height of the old valley floor above the present Ohio. They stand 

 nearly as high as the lowest cols, being nowhere less than 660 feet above 

 tide, and usually about 680 feet, while at the mouth of the Little Kanawha 

 they are not far from 700 feet. The lowest observed altitude — 660 feet — 

 is found about midway between the mouths of the two Kanawhas, opposite 

 the mouth of Big Mill Creek, above Letart Falls, West Virginia. The 

 terraces there, by barometi'ic measurements, stand only 120 feet above the 



