122 ANNUAL REPORT 
stratified with the calcareous ones. The gas rock is a light colored sand- 
stone of moderate fineness. In the northern part of the territory the rock 
has less color and also fewer impurities than it has in the Sugar Grove 
field—if the testimony of experienced drillers can be relied upon. Farther 
south in Vinton county the sand has a decided brown color. The rock 
drills hard, suggesting that the grains of sand are well cemented together. 
It has not been customary around Sugar Grove to drill through the gas 
rock, and hence data bearing on its thickness are not abundant. The 
maximum reported is 34 feet, and the average is perhaps a little more than 
one-half of that. In the northern part of the field, that is around Homer, 
the sand is drilled through. Five wells selected at random show thick- 
nesses of 10, 28, 8, 12 and 18 feet, an average of I5. 
Below the gas sand is found a bed of shales commonly ranging from 
10 to 35 feet in thickness. This has a dark color, and is succeeded below: 
by red shales. Since work usually stops before the latter are reached, 
or when they have been penetrated a few feet, thus making certain that 
the position of the gas sand has been passed, data bearing on the thickness 
of these shales are meager. The McNichols well, a log of which has al- 
ready been given, credits 100 feet to the formation. The top of this red 
rock is regarded as the summit of the Medina. 
Rock Structure.—The strata in the Sugar Grove field have been con- 
sidered by some on a priori grounds to form an anticline, and by others 
a terrace. Neither, however, appears to be correct. On a line running 
about due east and west through Sugar Grove, the rock dips to the east 
nearly 260 feet in less than six miles, barometer measurement, an aver- 
age of 45 feet per mile. This shows neither arch nor terrace extending 
through the territory north and south. Further at the village Amanda, 
11 miles west of Sugar Grove, the Clinton rock lies 600 feet higher than 
it does at the village last named. This makes improbable the suggestion 
that the gas belt may lie on the eastern slope of an arch, as several reser- 
voirs of oil and gas are known to do in eastern Ohio. 
From Lancaster the rock dips southeast more rapidly than the bed 
of the Hocking river slopes, as is shown by the increasing depths of the 
wells in the valley of this stream. This excludes the idea of an east and 
west arch or terrace. 
Size of the Wells—The closed or rock pressure in the Sugar Grove 
field was originally about 700 pounds per square inch. At present it 
varies much. Thus at Lancaster, where the first wells were drilled, the 
pressure has fallen so low that with one exception all wells have been 
abandoned, while a mile or two farther north in the southern part of 
Pleasant township the pressure is still from 500 to 600 pounds. Near 
Sugar Grove the pressure (September I, 1902) was less than 200 pounds, 
in some wells only one-half of that, but farther away from the village it 
is greater. Thus a well drilled in the fall of 1902 on the Brandon farm, 
