790 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



bored for oil many years since, on Indian Creek, nearly east of the center 

 of Canfield, is said to have passed through a workable coal seam, one 

 hundred and sixty feet below the surface. It is also reported that on 

 the Kirkpatrick farm, in the northern part of Ellsworth, a boring was 

 made through the Blue Limestone and Coal No. 3 one hundred and fifty 

 feet to the block coal, there three feet two inches in thickness. Two 

 borings have recently been made in the northwestern corner of Beaver 

 township, expressly for the Lower Coal, in one of which it was found 

 eighteen inches thick, and in the other, some two hundred yards dis- 

 tant, it was wanting. Some other holes have been drilled in the south- 

 ern part of the county, but it has not been possible to obtain any reliable 

 information in regard to them. Considering the number of unsuccessful 

 efforts made to find the coal in the townships where the most important 

 basins are now known to exist, it cannot be said that any considerable 

 portion of the southern half of the county has been tested for the Lower 

 Coal ; indeed, for anything yet known to the contrary, there may be as 

 many and as valuable coal basins in the southern as in the northern 

 portion of the county. 



BLACKBAND IRON ORE. 



Over a considerable area in the southern part of Weathersfield, in 

 Trumbull county, and the north-western part of Austintown, in 

 Mahoning — the Mineral Ridge belt — Coal No. 1 is accompanied with a 

 stratum of blackband iron ore of good quality, which has been worked 

 for many years, and has proved an important element in the economic 

 resources of the Mahoning Valley. This iron ore is the upper part of a 

 stratum of bituminous ehale, highly charged with iron, and is clearly the 

 carbonaceous mud that was deposited in a lake or body of open water 

 which occupied a considerable portion of the area of one of the most im- 

 portant coal basins of this region. Usually the iron ore forms a contin- 

 uous sheet from six to ten inches in thickness, capping a band of blaek 

 shale two feet thick, both of which divide the coal seam into two benches. 

 The lower bonch, usually from, one to two feet thick, is typical block 

 coal of excellent quality; the uppet bench, from two and a half to three 

 feet thick, is considerably unlike most of the Mahoning Valley coal, 

 breakiug with more irregular fracture, having a pitchy luster and con- 

 taining considerable more bitumen. These differences led to the im- 

 l>ression that the Mineral Ridge coal was a different seam from that 

 mined in the Mahoning Valley ; and it was for a long time known as the 

 "Blackband coal." Abundant evidence has, however, been gained that 

 they are essentially the same, though it is quite possible that the lower 



