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 quantit}", at 452 feet; salt 

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

 ^^ 555 f^^'t- A shaft 20 feet -square, was sunk on the premises 

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

 gypsum, but the rush of water throug^h the gypsum 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- 

 tigatioin 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 soiuth of the West Shore Railroad, with which 

 connection's are made by long switches. 



The boundaries of the workable bed or beds of gypsum have 

 been rather well defined by the sinking O'f various shafts and the 

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

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

 ingdale road running northeast from y\kron, beginning at a point a 

 little west of the Akron Gypsum Go's 'shaft and running noirth- 

 easterly about 2 miles. The drill hoies 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 depO'sit north of the road and a large 

 amount of unconsolidated material. There is a possibility that this 

 low lying area repa'esents a channel f ormeid during the glacial 

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

 that the scou,ring 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-shaped with the small end lying just 

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

 the American Gypsum Go's plant. 



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

 extend on toward the south under the escarpment of Helderberg 

 and Onondaga limestones, which rises to a hight of 100 feet above 

 the low lying fiat on which tlie plants and mines are situated. It 

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

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

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



