Geological Structure & Topography, Hamilton Twp from Beers History of Warren County, Ohio
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The History of Warren County, Ohio

Geological Structure & Topography

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Transcription contributed by Martie Callihan 2 March 2005

Sources:

The History of Warren County Ohio
Part IV Township Histories
Hamilton Township by Horace Clinton
(Chicago, IL: W. H. Beers Co, 1882; reprint, Mt. Vernon, IN: Windmill Publications, 1992)

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608

The geological structure of Hamilton Township belongs almost entirely to the Cincinnati Group. The only exception to this is the alluvial land in

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609
the valley of the Little Miami River. The system of rocks denominated "The Cincinnati Group" is a formation of blue limestone, partially stratified, and has an aggregate thickness of nearly eight hundred feet. It was undoubtedly a ridge cast up at the close of the Lower Silurian age, and extended from near Nashville, Tenn., through Kentucky, and far into the State of Ohio. This great ridge separated depressed areas during the whole of the Upper Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous ages. The Cincinnati group contains many of the characteristic fossils of the Hudson River group and the Trenton limestone of New York. The blue limestone floor of Hamilton Township is covered by a blue glacial clay. Above this clay lies an ocherous deposit of from four to seven feet in thickness. On this ocher rests a light vegetable mold of surface soil. The land is very productive when properly cultivated. Building stone of excellent quality is abundant The township is well watered. The principal streams are the Conococheague Creek, (so named by Samuel B. Walker, a Government surveyor, who emigrated from the banks of the famous Conococheague Creek in Pennsylvania, in 1798, and located a large tract of land on this stream) Hen Run, Salt Bun (so named on account of a salt lick and spring on its bank), Bear Run and Mounts' Run. These streams all abound in the remains of extinct life so characteristic of the Cincinnati group. The Lower Silurian brachiopods and Upper Silurian trilobites and ptilodictya are numerously found along the bed of the Conococheague Creek, on the farm of A. J. Walker. There is a hill just below the old saw-mill on Mr. Walker's farm that abounds in fine specimens of the Orthis plicatella, one of the most interesting forms of ancient life.

The bed and banks of Salt Run are strewn with specimens of the well-known Orthoceras and the Atrypa type of the the Devonian brachopods. Some beautiful specimens of the Orthis biforata have been found in Hen Run on the farm of Henry Burton, and along the Conococheague Creek below the Camargo Schoolhouse.

Striated rocks, those strange, mute witnesses of one of the stupendous glaciers that brought them from their Northern home and cast them out along its broad and icy path, are scattered all over this township.

Here, too, are strewn the stone implements and weapons—both nealithic and paleolithic—of the Mound Builders. Indeed a rude manufactory of those implements was discovered in the early part of this century, near the Conococheague Creek, on the farm of James Hall, Esq.

Their great highway of commerce and war, which extended from the old copper mines of Lake Superior, to Florida, ran through this township, and we believe is yet traceable on the farm of the late James Ford near Zoar.

TOPOGRAPHY

The surface of the township, in the Southwest and North, is somewhat broken, but the hills are neither high nor precipitous, and most all the lands admit of easy cultivation. In the east and central part of the township, the land is more level, but sufficiently rolling to insure good drainage.

Numerous springs of excellent water abound in different parts of the township; water is obtained by digging to the depth of from twelve to forty feet.

At the time white settlers first appeared, the land was covered with a heavy growth of timber, consisting of oak, hickory, walnut, ash, maple, sugar, elm and other varieties of small growth.


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