1875.] Oil [Stevenson. 



most part, it is thinly settled. Such of the inhabitants as have means, 

 devote themselves to raising stock or vpool, vphile the poorer classes are 

 wasting their substance by cutting the fine timber into staves or shin- 

 gles. 



Throughout this whole region, evidences of drift are entirely wanting. 

 The superficial deposits are thin except at the east, where the debris on 

 the hills is so thick as to render satisfactory tracing of the strata almost 

 impossible. Along the northwest Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio 

 Railway, one finds frequent proof of the deepening of waterways, for on 

 top of many hills, seventy-five to one hundred feet above the present 

 sti-eams, there occur fresh-water shells similar to those now living in the 

 creeks. 



Rich Mountain is the western slope of a great anticlinal ridge, whose 

 eastern slope is known as Cheat Mountain, Between the two mountains 

 is the anticlinal valley of Tygarts' River, whose scenery can hardly be 

 excelled. Along the central line of this valley the dip of the strata is 

 nearly 65° northwest and somewhat less southeast. Taking the Staun- 

 ton pike westwardly, we find the dip diminishing, so that on top of Rich 

 Mountain it is only 18°. Thence the decrease is very rapid, and at Roar- 

 ing Creek the strata are almost horizontal. This condition continues for 

 nearly twelve miles along the pike ; after which the northwest dip is 

 resumed, now 120 feet to the mile, and is retained ^^ntil about two miles 

 west from Buckhannon. There it is reversed, and we meet the anticlinal 

 fold of Laurel Hill. The plane of this axis crosses the pike about three 

 miles west from Weston, and there the dip is again toward the north- 

 west at the rate of nearly 150 feet per mile. This rate continues for about 

 twenty miles, beyond which the strata become almost horizontal. The 

 Laurel Hill anticlinal crosses the railroad not far fi'om Flemington, and 

 the flattening of the strata begins near Long Run Station^ thirty miles 

 fartlier west. 



About one-eighth of a mile east from Ellenboro' and forty-five miles 

 west from Clarksburg, a sharp fault occurs, on whose eastern side the 

 rocks dip almost due east at an angle of 26°, while on the western side 

 the strata are horizontal. The exact line of fault is not exposed, and 

 there is an interval of seventy feet concealed between the points of ob- 

 servation. The approximate horizontality continues westward to within 

 a mile of Petroleum, where the dip becomes eastward and rapidly in- 

 creases, followed west, until just west from that station it becomes 36°. 

 From this point almost to Laurel Junction somewhat more than one mile, 

 the dip is very confused, but a shattered anticlinal can be traced, the 

 rocks meanwhile dipping east or west, as the case may be, at from one 

 to five degrees. Near Laurel Junction the dip becomes five, ten, twenty, 

 lorty or even seventy-five degrees westward. In the cut immediately 

 west from that station the rate decreases to five degrees within a space 

 of six feet horizontally, and soon afterwards falls to only ten feet per 

 mile. Beyond this to the Ohio the rocks remain almost horizontal. 



