( 



WEST VIRGINIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 9 



6 miles above Grafton, and the West Fork at Weston. It is 

 thus seen that a large percentage of the Ohio river section lies 

 below 1,000 feet. The bottom lands are wide in most places 

 along the 256 miles of the Ohio river, which borders this section 

 on the west, and along the Great Kanawha up to a point some 

 distance above Charleston. The bottoms are narrower along the 

 Little Kanawha, the Monongahela, the Big Sandy, the Guyan- 

 dot, the Elk, and so on, somewhat in proportion to the size of 

 the stream. 



''If we begin in the eastern part of Monongalia county at 

 1,500 feet and trace a level line southward it will pass a little 

 east of Grafton, east of Philippi, east of Buckhannon, along 

 the Braxton-Webster line, west of Fayetteville, and east of 

 Oceana, to the most eastern point of Kentucky." The line here 

 described may be said to mark the beginning of the mountain 

 section or the place where the hilly region ends and where the 

 mountain region of the state begins; though the one passes 

 almost imperceptibly into the other. Along this line — some- 

 times called a "line of rapids" — are to be found the "roughs" 

 of the Guyandot in Wyoming county, the falls of Great Kana 

 wha in Fayette county, Valley Falls in Taylor county, and 

 numerous other falls and rapids of other streams. As a rule 

 the portions of the streams above this line are too rapid to 

 admit of navigation, and in many of them even the successful 

 rafting of logs is impossible. The upward slope of the surface 

 from the 1,500-foot level is with the tops of thousands of moun- 

 tains arranged irregularly and deeply carved throughout the 

 great Back Alleghany region, and with the long, undulating 

 crests of the ridges which begin with Flat Top mountain and 

 Laurel ridge and end at the elevated crest of the AUeghanies. 

 Eastward from this crest there is greater uniformity, the 

 mountains trending northeast and southwest with considerable 

 regularity and lessening in elevation with each successi\ e ridge. 

 The 1,500-foot level, which may be taken as the eastern line of 

 the mountain section, is again reached in Grant county. The 

 mountain section, as here described, includes the counties of 

 Preston, Tucker, Pendleton, Randolph, Webster, Pocahontas. 

 Greenbrier, Monroe, Summers, Mercer, and McDowell, with 

 parts of Wyoming, Raleigh^ Fayette, Nicholas, Upshur, Barbour. 



