804 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



and fifty feet will be necessary to reacli its place in nearly all portions 

 of the township back from the valley of the Mahoning. This fact has 

 limited the amount of exploration, and has, in some instances, led to the 

 discouragement of operators before the projier depth was reached. So 

 far as I can learn no really valuable deposits of the Lower Coal are known 

 to exist in the township. The Mt. Nebo mine, worked in the bottom of 

 the valley on the south side, was formerly quite productive; but it is now 

 abandoned, and the basia which it tapped is supposed to be nearly ex- 

 hausted. Coal No. 3 has been opened in the gorge south of Lowell, and 

 on the opposite side of the river Coal No. 3a, both of workable thickness 

 and of fairly good quality. The section in Grindstone Run on the 

 south side of the river is given in the engraved sheet which accompanies 

 this report. A few notes upon it are here given. 



The bed of the Mahoning at Lowell is cut in flaggy sandstone, 

 which is well .exposed to a depth of about fifteen feet. At the height of 

 fifty to sixty feet above the river is generally supposed to be the place of 

 the Block Coal, but it is no where visible in this vicinity, and it seems 

 probable that there was here a ridge of Waverly shales which bounded 

 its deposition. About sixty feet above the railroad a band of iron ore is 

 found which was formerly worked by stripping. The outcrop is now 

 covered, but the ore bed is said to have been double, with a band of shale 

 two to four feet thick between the two benches. The upper deposit of 

 ore is said to have consisted of an irregular sheet of nodules four or five 

 inches in diameter ; the lower stratum to have been regularly bedded 

 from eight to twelve inches in thickness. This band of ore has been 

 mined at numerous places between Lowell and Youngstown. 



About one hundred and thirty-five feet above the railroad, the first of 

 the limestone coals is exposed. It has here a thickness of thirty inches, 

 and has been considerably mined for local consumption. The coal is 

 " dry, or open-burning, with considerable bone coal," or impure cannel. 

 The limestone is about twenty feet from the coal, and two feet in thick- 

 ness. Above this is a bed of shale, and then a stratum of bluish white 

 micaceous sandstone which has been largely used for furnace hearths in 

 the Mahoning Valley. Above the sandstone is a bed of shale, and over 

 this a stratum of fire clay eight feet thick on which rest, first, a coal 

 seam one and one-half feet thick, then limestone three feet in thickness, 

 and above this two thin seams of coal and two la3rers of fire-clay. This 

 mixed group of coal, limestone, and fire-clay probably represents Coal No. 

 3a and its limestone, but the thin coals above the latter are features not 

 elsewhere noticed in Mahoning county. Thirty-two feet higher in the 

 section is another seam of coal eight inches in thickness, with two feet 



