CAHABA COAL FIELD: GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 7 
Cotton boats are taken down it from the edge of the Coal 
field, or from Centreville every year. Joseph Lightsey 
scarcely ever fails taking some boats loaded with cotton 
down every year; he never attempts it, however, except 
during high water. 
In the south half of the Coal field the principal tributa- 
ries on the west side are Schultz’s C reek, Caffey’s Creek, 
and Shade’s Creek ; on the east side of the south half of 
the Coal field there are Little Cahaba River, Savage Creek, 
Piney Woods Creek, Beaverdam Creek, and Buck Creek, at 
Helena. In the north half of the field, the first large trib- 
utary of the Cahaba River is the large stream named the 
East Fork of Cahaba River, or Mill Creek, which joins the 
river at Parker’s Mill, at a point due southeast of Birming- 
ham ; then, farther northeast, Black Creek, after draining 
nearly the whole north end of the Coal Field, joins the 
river at a point three miles northeast of Henry Ellen. The 
Cahaba River itself, coming from the direction of Truss- 
ville, cuts through the Millstone Grit of Rocky Ridge and 
enters the Coal field near Hickman’s Mill. The amount of 
coal ever boated down this river is very small; none at all 
since the war between the States. George Gardner made 
an effort before the war, for a Montgomery company, to 
mine coal on Ugly Creek, and boat it down this river; his 
boats mostly got wrecked on the shoals, and the enterprise 
was abandoned. 
Steamboats have been up this river at times to Centreville, 
the county seat of Bibb county, a town on the river a few 
miles south of the Coal Field. 
The United States Government made some improvements 
on the Cahaba River some years ago, with the object of 
making it navigable. There are some rock shoals between 
Centreville and the edge of the Coal Field, but below Cen- 
treville, I am informed, there are no shoals more serious 
than gravel shoals to the Alabama River. The distance 
from the Cahaba Coal Field to the Alabama River by the 
meanders of the stream is about a hundred miles. 
The -principal mountain-forming rocks in the Cahaba 
Coal Field are the Millstone Grit formation and the Monte- 
vallo conglomerate. 
