48 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
must have had his attention drawn to the great masses of local Drift 
with which it is obstructed. This Drift is largely composed of rounded 
pebbles of the limestones which form the highlands bordering the upper 
part of the valley, and they doubtless represent the materials which 
once occupied the gorge now opened northward through the watershed. 
The more easterly gaps present the same phenomena The valley of 
the Scioto was once a broad and deep trough, cut in the solid rock, now 
nearly filled with beds of gravel, sand, and bowlders, of which the thick- 
ness has never been determined. In boring the State House well at 
Columbus, 123 feet of coarse, valley Drift was penetrated before the rock 
was reached. The State House stands on a terrace of gravel, sand, and 
bowlders, which is on the eastern side of the old valley, and it is appar- 
ent that the old rock trough, here at least a mile in width, was once 
filled to this level. Its depth in the central portion is, doubtless, much 
greater than it is under the city of Columbus. 
From the great bend of the Cuyahoga a belt of gravel reaches southward 
through Summit and Stark counties, forming a geological and topograph- 
ical feature which will be found described in the reports on these counties. 
There are here, apparently, two deep channels, one of which is quite filled, 
and the other is partially excavated by the Tuscarawas river. The first of 
these lies west of Canton, and has been penetrated to the depth of 100 feet 
without finding the rock bottom. Buck Hill, of which a section is given 
on page 44, is one of the gravel knolls which mark the line of this 
channel. The other gravel belt borders the present course of the Tus- 
carawas in Stark county. The numerous borings that have been made 
for coal in and near the valley of this stream show that the gravel is 
sometimes more than 100 feet in depth, reaching far below the present 
stream bed. The gravel hills and terraces west of the river, at and below 
Massillon, form parts of this belt. At the Charity School, a well was 
sunk 100 feet in gravel and sand, and coniferous wood was taken out at 
the bottom. In the town of Dover, at the junction of Sugar creek and 
the Tuscarawas, a boring for salt showed an accumulation of gravel and 
sand reaching to the depth of 175 feet below the present surface level of 
the Tuscarawas. 
The accumulation of Drift in the valley of the Beaver, and in that 
of the Ohio, near the mouth of the former stream, is so unusual that 
Mr. Morris Miller, who has given much attention to the surface geol- 
ogy of this region, was much struck by it. In a paper which he has 
published, he accounts for the existence of this mass of transported 
material by supposing it to be the product of a great flood which 
burst through the gap I have described. It seems to me, however, that 
