CHAPTER LXXXVI. 
REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY. 
BY J. S. NEWBERRY. 
SURFACE FEATURES. 
Jefferson county hes altogether outside of the Drift area, and its super- 
ficial deposits are therefore only such as are derived from the decom posi- 
tion of the underlying rocks. These are shales, sandstones, limestones, | 
beds of coal, fire-clay, and iron ore—the usual components of the Coal 
Measures—and these when disintegrated have produced a soil which is 
somewhat varied locally, but is generally light and loamy and well 
adapted to the cultivation of corn and the small grains. Here, as in 
many other of the counties lying within the coal field and beyond the 
influence of the Drift, the great irregularities of the surface have pro- 
duced comparatively little effect upon the fertility of the soil, the hills, 
even though high and bold, being successfully cultivated to their sum- 
mits; and the narrow alluvial bottoms yielding scarcely better crops of 
corn. . 
Before the adyent of the whites all portions of Jefferson county were 
covered with a dense forest. This consisted of a mixed growth of tim- 
ber, although oak was the predominant variety. In the lower grounds 
hickory, ash, black walnut, butternut, and maple prevailed, while syca- 
mores and white maples bordered the streams. 
The topography of Jefferson county is very greatly diversified. On the 
east it is bordered by the Ohio, which flows from four hundred to five 
hundred feet below the tops of the hills which border it, and from six 
hundred to seven hundred feet below the highlands of the interior of the 
county. A convenient base line for measuring altitudes in the county 
is the River Division of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad, which 
follows the course of the Ohio, generally from forty to fifty feet above 
