184 



Report of the State Geologisi. 



between 1100 and 1300 feet from the surface, which fact strengthens the 

 claim in regard to the earlier well. 



The owners of the first well failed to realize the importance of the 

 discovery of the rock salt, and the discovery was not generally known, or 

 at least believed, until after the bed had been reached in many other places. 



In 1877, the Vacuum Oil Company of Rochester, began the drilling of a 

 well for oil at the mouth of a small ravine on the west side of the valley of 

 Oatka creek, in the town of Middlebury, Wyoming county, about one mile 

 south of the village of Wyoming. 



The first rock, reached at the depth of forty feet, was the soft blue 

 Cashaqua shale of the Portage group. The suceeding 593 feet was through 

 soft bluish or black shales, except ten feet of limestone at 300 to 310 feet 

 below the surface. At 673 feet the top of the Corniferous limestone was 

 reached and 597 feet below, 1270 feet from the surface, the drill entered a 

 stratum of rock salt that proved to be seventy feet thick. After penetrating 

 the salt bed, the drilling was continued through 115 feet of red shale of 

 the same character as that exposed in the vicinity of the Onondaga Salt 

 Springs and there ceased. 



The discovery was made public at once but it was nearly three years 

 later, in March 1881, that works of a capacity of forty barrels per day were 

 completed and the first salt was made from brine taken from direct contact 

 with the salt bed by artificial means. 



This well is known as the Pioneer well. 



In the spring of 1879, crystals of salt were found in porous shale at 

 the depth of 610 feet in a well drilled at Le Roy, about twelve miles north of 

 the Pioneer well. 



In October 1881, a bed of salt and shale 111 feet thick, of which eighty 

 feet was rock salt, was reached at the depth of 1520 feet in a well near the 

 station of the Rochester and Pittsburg railroad in the village of Warsaw, five 

 miles south of the Pioneer well. 



In 1885, the salt deposit was reached in a well at Rock Glen, eight miles 

 south of the Pioneer well, at the depth of 2015 feet , at about the same time, 

 at Silver Springs, two miles further south, at 2224 feet; at Gainesville 

 creek at 2450 feet and at Bliss at 2956 feet below the surface. 



All of these wells except the last three are in the Oatka valley, which 

 extends about twenty miles toward the south and a little west from LeRoy. 

 The other three mentioned are nearly in the same Tine continued about ten 

 miles from the south end of the valley. 



