WOODRUFF COUNTY, 229 
shrink or warp. The mixing of the clays, however, requires a great 
amount of care and time. The material of the lower bed must be 
dug up and allowed to lie for some time before it is incorporated with 
the upper clay. 
If the clay were dug from the lower bed during the fall of the year 
and left exposed to the disintegrating influences of the rains and 
frosts of the winter and spring its texture for brick or tile making 
purposes would be materially altered and improved. By such treat- 
ment it would be pulverized, mellow T ed, and almost completely tem- 
pered, and with slight additional treatment could be manufactured 
into bricks of a bright-red color, more uniform than those made from 
the upper bed alone, and of better texture than those made either 
from the upper clay or from a mixture of the two. 
As a material for the manufacture of drain tiles this winter-mel- 
lowed (day would Serve a very good purpose. It would turn out a 
stronger tile than any at present used. 
In May, 1905, Mr. J. Y. Woodson was operating a brick plant at 
Searcy, one-half mile west of the court-house. The yellow surface 
clay is used to a depth of 3 feet. The mud is pugged in a ring pit 
with a Raymond wheel run by horse power, and must be ground for 
one and one-half to three hours before it can be molded. In the 
summer, when the clay is dry, it requires 200 to 250 gallons of water 
to temper sufficient mud to make 1,000 bricks. In the winter it 
requires less than half that amount of water. 
The bricks are common wet-mud bricks molded by hand and dried 
in racks in the open air. They are burned in up-draft kilns of 200,000 
capacity. Wood is used for burning, and about three-fifths of a cord 
is used for each 1,000 bricks. The bricks require twelve to fourteen 
days for drying and six to eight days for burning. The plant is 
operated by six men and three boys, and the output is about 5,000 
bricks a day. 
WOODRUFF COUNTY. 
GENERAL GEOLOGY. 
The surface of the western half of Woodruff County is composed 
of the alluvial bottom lands of White and Cache rivers. The surface 
of the eastern half varies from a reddish clay to sandy prairie land, 
25 to 30 feet higher than the bottoms of Cache and White rivers. 
The prairie area is cut into north-south ridges by Bayou de Vue, 
Buffalo Creek, Caney Creek, and other small streams. The most 
prominent of these ridges is Nubbin Ridge, which has a north-south 
trend through R. 2 W. The top of this ridge is 25 to 30 feel above 
the Cache River bottom to the west. The soil on Nubbin Ridge i^ 
much poorer than the rich alluvial soils of the bottoms to the east 
and west. 
