GYPSUM DEPOSITS OF NEW YORK 53 



At 1305 feet the drill was stopped. Permanent water was struck 

 at 43 feet; gas of fair quality as well as quantity, at 452 feet; salt 

 water, leaving on evaporation about 12 per cent of salt, was found 

 at 555 feet. A shaft 20 feet square, was sunk on the premises 

 later, for tlie purpose of determining the feasibility of mining the 

 gy^psum, but the rush of water through the g^^psum layer at 43-47 

 feet, was so strong that a pump with a capacity of 2000 gallons 

 per minute failed to make any impression upon it, and the attempt 

 was abandoned. 



Since then no further effort to exploit the gypsum has been 

 made, though by reason of its quality and situation it seems to 

 offer an attractive field which would warrant more thorough inves- 

 tigation than has been given to it. 



The Akron gypsum " basin," as it is locally termed, is situated 

 northeast of the village of Akron or 20 miles west of Buffalo. The 

 productive area lies south of the West Shore Railroad, with which 

 connections are made by long switches. 



The boundaries of the workable bed or beds of g}'p'sum have 

 been rather well defined by the sinking of various sliafts and the 

 putting down of a number of core drill holes. On the northern 

 side the boundary seems to follow rather closely along the Bloom- 

 ingdale road running northeast from Akron, beginning at a point a 

 little Avest of the Akron Gypsum Go's shaft and running north- 

 easterly about 2 miles. The drill holes put down by the various in- 

 terested parties in the vicinity and an unsuccessful shaft north of 

 the road on the Akron Gypsum Go's property indicate an abrupt 

 termination of the gypsum deposit north of the road and a large 

 amount of unconsolidated material. There is a possibility that this 

 low lying area rep'resents a channel formed during the glacial 

 period and subsequently buried or filled up with glacial till, and 

 that the scouring out of such a channel has robbed that area of 

 large amounts of gypsum. 



In width the basin ranges up to over a mile. The whole area 

 could be represented as pear-s-haped with the small end lying just 

 west of tlie Akron Gypsum Go's shaft and the large end cast of 

 the American Gypsum Go's plant. 



The southern boundary is the least well defined, since the beds 

 extend on toward the south under the escari)mcnt of Ileldcrbcrg 

 and Onondaga limestones, which rises to a higlit of 100 feet alxive 

 the low lying flat on which th.c plants and mines arc situated. Tt 

 is said that a test boring drilled through the limestones on the 

 "ledge" directly south of the Akron Go's shaft gave but a ioot 

 of good gypsum, while two recent drillings made on the Newman 



