March, 1908.] 
Two Notable Landslides. 
287 
TWO NOTABLE LANDSLIDES.* 
George D. Hubbard. 
The landslide is the sort of phenomenon to have caught the 
attention of the geologist of a century ago, but with our present 
substantial grounding in uniformitarianism, and in our attempt 
to appreciate duly the ordinary, we are more than likely to under¬ 
estimate the importance of the extraordinary. Hence, I want to 
call attention to this rather remarkable, and, in some localities, 
prevalent, process of denudation. 
In many of the newer valleys of southeastern Ohio, land slide 
topography is almost omnipresent. Hundreds of acres of land 
along the steeper valley walls have been ruined or badly dam¬ 
aged for agriculture by slipping, and tumbling down the slopes, 
or by being covered with material which has tumbled down. 
The sliding usually so mixes the soil with the subsoil, or that part 
of the regolith yet unprepared for supporting plant growth, that 
the soil can no longer be used. Further, the tumbled, bunchy 
condition of a landslide prevents cultivation and harvesting, and 
even hurts the area seriously for pasture. 
Within historic time, there have been thousands of land¬ 
slides of various sizes in the hilly part of this state, and many 
occur every year even down to the present time. In the aggre¬ 
gate thev must be rather important physiographic phenomena. 
During the past sixteen months a considerable number of minor, 
fresh heaps of tumbled debris have been examined, and two very 
extensive piles have been studied. 
The first notable landslide studied in Ohio occurred in the 
spring of 1906, near the training track of a Mr. Corwine, about 
two miles up the Scioto from Waverly. The upper (Pre-Wis¬ 
consin) outwash terraces are here very extensively developed, 
and well preserved. Going northward or northwestward across 
the level upper terrace-top past the training track, one approaches 
a place where an area comprising many acres of the terrace has 
gone down 1-25 feet and slipped forward toward the stream 
carrving fine rich pasture and scattered, old oaks down with it. 
The slip has the appearance of recency. The section through 
the outwash here is, from the top downward, washed gravel and 
sand with much fine, poorlv-sorted, material, 25-30 feet; then 
blue clays and fine sands ideally stratified and containing, occa¬ 
sionally, strata of brown iron-stained sand, or layers bearing 
black sand of garnets, magnetite and some more valuable metal¬ 
lic oxides. This fine clay and sand attains an exposed thickness 
* By permission of the State Geologist of Ohio. Read at the meeting 
of the Ohio State Academy of Science, 1907. 
