826 GEOLOSY OF OHIO. 



From fifty to sixty feet above the horizon of the Putnam Hill lime- 

 stone there is a seam of coal, called in the early report the Lower New 

 Lexington coal, as it is found in the vicinity of New Lexington, and 

 may be traced readily from that place to Zanesville. It is the lower 

 seam at the Del Carbo mines, where the coal is good. In the high 

 lands north west of New Lexi'ngton this seam appears. In the opposite 

 direction — toward the village of Moxahala — it may also be readily traced. 

 On the Sunday Creek waters it is below the surface of the valleys, but 

 it has often been met with in borings. It is occasionally seen in the 

 Monday Creels Valley, and also in the Hocking Valley, in the neighbor- 

 hood of Nelsonville. On the land of John L. Gill, Esq., on Meeker Run, 

 it is found in the bed of the stream; also on the land of the Lick Run 

 Coal Company. The seam is one of wide range, but there are many lo- 

 calities where it is entirely wanting. This seam is probably Coal No. 5 

 of the First District. 



Nelsonville Seam — We have now reached in our upward progress the 

 most famous coal seam of the district, one which already plays an impor- 

 tant part in the mining industry of Ohio. This seam of coal was no- 

 ticed by the early geologists— Doctor S. P. Hildreth and Doctor C. Briggs 

 — ^in the first Geological Reports. It was then appropriately named the 

 Nelsonville seam, it being mined at that time at Nelsonville, where it is 

 still largely mined. This is the best name the seam could have. It is 

 the historical name, and it distinguishes the seam by a well known lo- 

 cality, where it is mined and where no other seam is worked. It is now 

 called by a great variety of names, as the " Great seam," the " Great 

 vein" (the word vein is entirely inapplicable to a seam of coal), the 

 " Straitsville seam," the "Shawnee seam," the "Upper Sunday Creek 

 seam," the " Upper New Lexington seam," "Coal No. 6," etc., etc. It is 

 thicker at some points than at Nelsonville, but it is there a fine, large 

 seana and worthy of honor. The famous Pittsburgh seam of coal is 

 thicker at some other places than at Pittsburgh, but it would be very un- 

 wise to substitute a dozen dififerent local names for the old one, or even 

 attempt to make the world know it in the numerical disguise of Coal No. 8. 



The Nelsonville seam is found along the Hocking River for many miles, 

 rising to the west or northwest, and gradually sinking in the opposite di- 

 rection until it passes below the level of the valley, not far from the 

 mouth of Monday Creek. From that point it is reached by shafts. At 

 the mouth of Hamley's Run the seam is from fifty to sixty feet below 

 the surface, and at Salina and Chauncey about one hundred feet. At 

 Athens it was reached in a shaft two hundred feet below the surface. It 

 is to be seen in the hills bordering the river on the west, from the mouth 



