GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF HOLMES COUNTY, OHIO

     A minute and accurate description of the topography of Holmes County would require much more time and labor than can be given to the examination of this work.    An irregular succession of high hills and deep ravines occupy the surface, and that can be reduced to a system only in the most general way.  The valley of the Killbuck divides the county into two nearly equal portion is, on each side of which the hills gradually rise to the altitude of from four to five hundred feet, and then as gradually descend, on the east toward the valley of the Tuscarawas, and on the west toward that of the Mohican.  Innumerable interlocking in the most irregular manner, cover the face of the country.  These watercourses flow through narrow alluvial valleys or deep gorges, which separate the high hills that compose the greater part of the surface.  This succession of hills and ravines exhibits continuous exposure of all the rocks of the lower coal measures, and in no part of the State can their character and relations be more satisfactorily studied.  The soil is generally a light, pliable, calcareous loam, in the valleys rich in vegetable matter, and everywhere well adapted to the growth of wheat.  On the hills, in some places, the surface is covered with rocks, the debris of the coal sandstones, so as to be entirely unfitted for cultivation.  But a dense forest covers these rocky slopes, and the soil was originally everywhere rich.  Continuous cultivation has had its usual result in a largely diminished productiveness; but the means of restoring the fertility of the soil are easily obtained in the limestones, which crop out in every township, and by a proper use of them and of clover for soiling, the land can readily be made to equal or exceed its original productiveness in the grant staple of the county.
     The drift

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iron ore extending over most of the county, from which large amounts can be gathered, when needed, to mix with the richer ores of Lake Superior.  In many places the slopes of the hills between this coal and the one above it are covered with the fragments of this ore.  In Knox township, where these fragments are very abundant, it is reported that a continuous deposit of ore, eight feet thick, was penetrated in sinking a well.
     COAL No. 4. - A sandy shale separates the blue limestone from Coal No. 4.
     COAL No. 5. - The shale and sandstone overlying Coal No. 4 range from twenty-five to fifty-five feet in thickness where the horizon of Coal No. 5 or the gray limestone seam is reached.  This coal attains its maximum thickness in this county, in Salt Creek township, where it is three and one-half feet thick, with six feet of limestone resting directly upon it.  Very good coal can be obtained from the openings here.
     COAL NO. 6. - At an average of forty-five feet above the gray limestone is found the Saunders's, Horn's, and Shepler's banks, which occur in all the higher hills of the county are most widely known, and from which a large part of the coal mined in the county will, probably, be taken for many years to come.

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