STRATIGRAPHY OF OHIO WAVERLY FORMATIONS 761 



The name Buena Vista has been adopted for the second member 

 in the Vanceburg fades/ For many years the village of Buena 

 Vista was the center of extensive quarrying. The basis of the 

 industry was a relatively thin sandstone member a few feet above 

 the base of the Cuyahoga. Since the product was largely marketed 

 in Cincinnati, the member came to be known as the "City ledge." 

 It is to this member and its continuation over Scioto, Adams, Pike, 

 and Ross counties that the name Buena Vista is here restricted. 



The Buena Vista consists of sandstones of the type just described 

 as characteristic of the facies. It is not, however, of the same 

 quaUty, structure, and thickness in all parts of its area. Along the 

 western margin of Scioto County it is usually from 3 to 6 feet 

 thick and consists of from one to four distinct sandstone beds. 

 Eastward from this and over the ever- thickening Henley shale, 



^ This name was first proposed by Edward Orton in his "Report on Pike County" 

 (Geol. Surv. Ohio, II, Part I [1874], 626), where the lower 50 feet of the Cuyahoga 

 formation was separated as the Buena Vista member. "As the most valuable of the 

 building rock, however, that is furnished by this part of the series in southern Ohio 

 occurs within 50 feet of the slate [Sunbury], these 50 feet next above the slate may be 

 somewhat arbitrarily taken as a subdivision." Prosser has fully recounted the history 

 of this usage and variation in usage of the term by Orton and has himself adopted it in 

 the same sense as originally used (Am. Geol., XXXIV [1904], 341, 342). It can 

 readily be shown, however, that any member arbitrarily established on the lower 50 

 feet of the Cuyahoga over central and southern Ohio is wholly without foundation in 

 fact. Stratigraphically there is no such member. The lowermost 50 feet will not 

 include all of the valuable building stones, if this were an acceptable criterion for the 

 establishment of such a member, since it does not include the stone at the only locality 

 where such stone is now being worked, McDermott. The sediments forming the 

 lower 50 feet from point to point are not even always similar; in some places it is 

 sandstone, in others it is shale. It becomes necessary to redefine the term Buena 

 Vista if it is to be used at all, and in the present statement it is applied to the " City 

 ledge" of the quarrymen at Buena Vista, and its continuation throughout western 

 Scioto and Pike counties. Orton has on one occasion (Geol. Surv. Ohio, V [1884], 

 602) used the term Buena Vista in this sense. Elsewhere he has used it apparently 

 to denote the particular bed which he erroneously supposed to be the equivalent of 

 the City ledge ("Report on Pike County," Geol. Sttrv. Ohio, II, Part I [1874], diagrams 

 between pp. 618 and 619). Prosser, too, in an earlier publication used the term 

 similarly (Jour. Geol., X [1902], 289-91). The term thus redefined is not, then, 

 used with a wholly new meaning. 



The adoption of the term in Ohio with either of the meanings outlined antedates 

 its application by H. D. Campbell to a formation in Virginia (Am. Jour. Sci., 4th ser., 

 XX [1905], 445-46), as pointed out by Prosser (Am. Jour. Sci., 4th ser., XXI [1906], 

 181-82). 



