CHAPTER LIX. 
REPORT ON THE GHOLOGY OF STARK COUNTY. 
BY J. S. NEWBERRY. 
SURFACE GEOLOGY. 
The surface of Stark county is without any striking features. It is 
generally rolling, and along the southern border may be called hilly, 
since the valleys of some of the draining streams are cut to a depth of 
three hundred feet. In most parts of the county the surface is pleas- 
antly diversified by rounded hills, with very gentle slopes, and which are 
cultivated to their summits. The valleys that divide these hills are 
broad and shallow, and rarely show precipitous sides or exposures of 
rock. 
The soil is generally light, often loam, sand, or gravel, and was origin- 
ally covered with a forest composed principally of oak, but in the cen- 
tral portion of the county there were many glades and openings where 
the timber was light. This consisted largely of willow-oak and black- 
jack oak, which formed clumps and islands, separated by spaces over- 
grown with wild grasses, flowers, and scrub oak. From the nature of 
the soil, the farmers of the county have usually been cultivators of grain, 
and Stark has long been famous for its crops of wheat. 
The altitude of the county is from three hundred and fifty to seven 
hundred and fifty feet above Lake Hrie; its eastern portion reaching up 
on the great divide or water-shed between the Ohio and Lake Erie. 
Like most of the other counties that lie along the water-shed, the sur- 
face of Stark county is dotted over with lakes such as have been de- 
scribed as occurring in Portagecounty. Of these, Congress Lake, in Lake 
township, Myers Lake, Sippo ‘Lake, etc., may be taken as examples. 
Here, too, as in the adjacent counties, we find many drained or filled lake 
basins, where peat and marl now hold the place formerly occupied by 
water. | | 
The extent of this kind of surface is, however, not great, as Stark has 
little marsh land, and since it is so abundantly supplied with excellent 
coal, it is scarcely probable that the scattered patches of peat will ever 
