192 



Report of the State Geologist. 



These wells are located at regular distances, the line of derricks extending 

 about a mile and a quarter toward the north from the well first drilled. 



In 1895 and in 1896, eleven wells were drilled to the salt bed for the same 

 company, on the west side of the valley near the mouth of the Vesper creek 

 ravine, nearly opposite Well No. 1, Group A, making a total of forty-one 

 wells drilled to the salt bed in this locality by this company. 



Forty of these wells are connected by iron pipes with the Tully lakes 

 that are situated on the plain at the top of the drift accumulation before 

 mentioned, and water from the lakes is forced by gravity down the Avells to 

 the salt where it becomes fully saturated brine. It then flows out through 

 other pipes, and into a large main that receives the brine from all the wells 

 and conveys it to the works at Syracuse, which are 360 feet lower than the 

 mouth of the lowest well. 



The bed of rock salt was found in all of these wells and in Well No. 3 of 

 Group G, it is thirty-eight feet thick, but in the " Cardiff well," which was 

 drilled in 1888, and was the next one put down after the salt was found in 

 Well No. 1, Group A, and situated only two and a half miles north of Well 

 No. 3, Group G, the Corniferous limestone was reached at 214 feet from the 

 surface and the total depth of the well was 810 feet, the last 100 feet being 

 all in the red shales. No rock salt was found. 



The Solvay wells must be located therefore, near the edge of the salt bed, 

 and it also seems clear that the bed does not become thinner toward the north 

 and gradually " peter out " as it does west of Seneca lake, but ends abruptly, 

 as though a part of it had been removed. 



The surface elevation at the mouths of the wells varies from 905 feet A. 

 T. at well No. 6, Group B, to 722 feet at No. 1, Group F. 



The thickness of the clay, sand and gravel passed through before 

 reaching the bed rock was ten feet in well No. 1, Group A, eleven feet in 

 Wells 1 and 2 Group C, and increased toward the middle, of the valley, 

 where in Well No. 5, Group E, it was 256 feet and in Well No. 5, Group D, 

 322 feet. 



The ereologtic horizon of the mouths of the wells is the middle of the 

 Hamilton group, the shales of which are exposed in neighboring ravines and 

 are but thinly covered on the hillsides, where the position of some of the 

 harder, sandy layers is made apparent by low escarpments that show the 

 southward <lip of the strata in a striking manner. The Tully limestone is 

 exposed aedr the top of the hill southwest from the wells where it is about 

 thirty feet thick- 



