THE AGE OF THE LICKING NARROWS AT BLACK 
HAND, OHIO.^ 
Kirtley F. Mather. 
The Licking river is formed at Newark, Ohio, by the confluence 
of three streams, the North and South Forks, and Raccoon creek. 
Thence it flows almost due east and joins the Muskingum at Zanes- 
ville. Newark lies in the center of a broad open valley, partly 
filled with glacial drift, at the head of the Licking river. At 
Claylick, seven miles downstream from Newark, the Licking river 
leaves this broad old valley and continues eastward in a narrow 
channel wTich, a mile and a half farther on, becomes a gorge, 
cut 90 feet deep, in the Black Hand formation. The walls rise 
perpendicularly from the stream's edge and there is scarcely 
room for the railroad tracks on either side. The river winds 
through this gorge for a distance of two and a half miles, and at 
Toboso the valley widens out again to about half the width of the 
first valley at Newark. 
The older and broader Newark valley continues from the vicin- 
ity of Claylick northeastward toward Dresden, but at Hanover is 
nearly filled with glacial drift. The rock topography of the region 
makes it apparent that in pre-glacial times this valley was occu- 
pied by a stream flowing southwestward, and tributary to the 
ancient Scioto. This stream has been named the Newark river, 
and it has already been pointed out that it must have been cap- 
tured and diverted by the present east-flowing Licking.- The 
simplest hypothesis to account for this piracy would be that when 
the ice sheet, classified by Leverett"^ as Illinoian, entered this 
region it acted as a dam across the channel of the west-flowing 
^ This paper is the result of investigations undertaken, as a partial requirement 
for a Master’s Degree, under the direction of Prof. Frank Carney of Denison Uni- 
versity, and was read before the Ohio Academy of Science, November 28, 1908. 
^ Tight: Bull. Set. Lab., Denison Univ., voL vii, part ii, p, 49, 1894. 
Leverett: U. S. Geological Survey, Monograph xli, p. 155, 1902. 
Ibid., p. 51. 
