804 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
and fifty feet will be necessary to reach its place in nearly all portions 
of the township back from the valley of'the Mahoning. This fact has 
limited the amount of exploration, and has, in some instances, led to the 
discouragement of operators before the proper depth was reached. So 
far as I can learn noreally valuable deposits of the Lower Coal are known 
to exist in the township. The Mt. Nebo mine, worked in the bottom of 
the valley on the south side, was formerly quite productive ; but it is now 
abandoned, and the basin which it tapped is supposed to be nearly ex- 
hausted. Coal No. 3 has been opened in the gorge south of Lowell, and 
on the opposite side of the river Coal No. 3a, both of workable thickness 
and of fairly good quality. The section in Grindstone Run on the 
south side of the river is given in the engraved sheet which accompanies 
this report. A few notes upon it are here given. 
The bed of the Mahoning at Lowell is cut in flaggy sandstone, 
which is well exposed to a depth of about fifteen feet. At the height of 
fifty to sixty feet above the river is generally supposed to be the place of 
the Block Coal, but it is no where visible in this vicinity, and it seems 
probable that there was here a ridge of Waverly shales which bounded 
its deposition. About sixty feet above the railroad a band of iron ore is 
found which was formerly worked by stripping. The outcrop is now 
covered, but the ore bed is said to have been double, with a band of shale 
two to four feet thick between the two benches. The upper deposit of 
ore is said to have consisted of an irregular sheet of nodules four or five 
inches in diameter; the lower stratum to have been regularly bedded 
from eight to twelve inches in thickness. This band of ore has been 
mined at numerous places between Lowell and Youngstown. 
About one hundred and thirty-five feet above the railroad, the first of 
the limestone coals is exposed. It has here a thickness of thirty inches, 
and has been considerably mined for local consumption. The coal is 
“dry, or open-burning, with considerable bone coal,” or impure cannel. 
The limestone is about twenty feet from the coal, and two feet in thick- 
ness. Above this is a bed of shale, and then a stratum of bluish white 
micaceous sandstone which has been largely used for furnace hearths in 
the Mahoning Valley. Above the sandstone is a bed of shale, and over 
this a stratum of fire clay eight feet thick on which rest, first, a coal 
Seam one and one-half feet thick, then limestone three feet in thickness, 
and above this two thin seams of coal and two layers of fire-clay. This 
mixed group of coal, limestone, and fire-clay probably represents Coal No. 
3@ and its limestone, but the thin coals above the latter are features not 
elsewhere noticed in Mahoning county. Thirty-two feet higher in the 
section is another seam of coal eight inches in thickness, with two feet 
