114 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
Freeport coal is often a 3-bench coal, it is true, but it is not in this 
neighborhood, as has been already shown. 
If the Carbondale coal were the Lower Freeport seam, then the 
Nelsonville seam should be shown, as the strata rise to day along the 
valley of Raccoon Creek. There are chances without end to see every 
foot of the strata for 150 feet below the Carbondale coal along the line 
of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad, westward from Mineral City. 
The road is a long established one, and it has not spared pains to 
develop the coal seams along its line. Every seam that has held out 
any promise has been opened and proved within the last 25 years, but 
the result is that the Carbondale seam is the only one that is worked. 
It is not possible that a thicker and better seam lies undeveloped in 
this district where everything is naked and open. 
Again, if the Nelsonville seam were below the Carbondale coal, it 
should be found in borings at that point. Such borings have been made, 
and the records are known. 
Alexander Todd, Esq., of Loveland, Ohio, was Manager, and after- 
wards President of the Southern Ohio Coal Company during the years 
1869-70. Under his supervision, a hole was bored, starting from the 
level of the Carbondale coal within 20 feet of the mouth of the main 
entry. The earth was removed until the bedded rock was reached, and 
then the drill was started. ‘The hole was carried down 874 feet. A 
thin sandrock was first passed. At about 30 feet, an 18-inch seam of 
coal was passed (Lower Kittanning), but nothing else in the way of 
coal was found. 
Many other borings have been made in the valley, and if any one 
had ever struck a 6-feet seam of coal, shafts would have gone down 
within a year. All of the claims that are made as to the proved 
occurrence of a thick coal below the surface in this immediate region 
are without good foundation. 
The identifications of the Nelsonville coal in the valley of Raccoon 
Creek, as made by Hunt in his “ Mineral Resources of the Hocking 
Valley” (pp. 9, 25 and 27), are entirely inadmissible. In all instances 
but one, the seam, as thus followed, is found in reports of borings and 
shafts, but these reports neither agree with each other nor with the facts. 
The only instance where he finds the Nelsonville coal, according to his 
view, coming to day, is in the bed of Raccoon Creek in section 19, 
Brown township, near Brewer’s cut on the M.& C. R. R. The 7 feet 
