Jefferson. - Area, 640 square miles; population in
1880, 27,935. The Clarion River is its northern boundary. The Red
Bank Creek, with its two forks of Sandy Lick Creek and its smaller
affluents, Mill Creek, Laurel Run, Red Lick, Trimble, Willow, Five-mile,
and Beaver runs, drains most of the county westward. Little Sandy
waters drains the south-western quarter, and the Mahoning flows (westward
also) along the Indiana county border. The county resembles Indiana
county as to its eastern and southern parts, and Clarion County as
to its north-western half; the basins all rising gradually north-eastward,
and the rolls between them running in straight parallel lines into
Elk and Forest counties; so that while the Barren measures cover most
of Bell and Henderson townships, and broad areas in Gaskill, Young,
McCalmont, Winslow, Snyder, Perry, Porter, and Ringgold, and the hill
tops in Knox, on half of the county exhibits the outcrops of the Lower
Productive coal measures, which grow thinner and thinner northward,
and at last leave most of the surface in Barnet and Heath, and much
of that in Eldridge and Polk, destitute of coal beds, a region of
Conglomerate No. XII. The "Indiana anticlinal" crosses Sandy Lick
near the Clearfield county line, and exposes No. XII along Wolf run.
The "Perryville anticlinal" passes Frostville, and dies away at Rockdale
mills in Washington Township. The "Waynesburg or Roaring run anticlinal,"
entering the county one mile east of its S.W. corner, runs straight
across it to the Elk County line 6 miles east of the Clarion River.
The "Bagdad anticlinal" crosses the whole county, passing 1 ½ miles
west of Brookville. The "Anthony’s bend anticlinal" runs parallel
with the last at a regular distance of 4 miles from it. The "Kellersburg
anticlinal" cuts across the north-west corner. Jefferson County therefore
has six remarkably regular coal basins. The Brookville anticlinal
brings up the Mauch Chunk red shale No. XI, and some of the Pocono
rocks No. X, along the Sandy Lick near the Armstrong county line.
The same formations are cut down into by the Clarion River all along
the northern county line. The Freeport upper coal (E) is not reliable
in this county. In the eastern townships it is thick enough, but of
poor quality; at Reynoldsville 4`, at Brockawayville thinner but better.
Its limestones 15 feet thick at Worthville, and keeps its unusual
thickness along a narrow belt from here to Perryville, but thins rapidly
westward and eastward, and cannot be found in Knox and McCalmont townships;
but it reappears around Brockwayville. The Freeport lower coal bed
is the main deposit of the county, and gives its great value to the
Reynoldsville basin. It is in all parts of the county of workable
thickness, sometimes thickening to 10 feet, but it varies much both
in size and quality. It is already extensively mined, lying 43 feet
beneath Coal E (4` just under the Mahoning sandstone, the cliffs and
blocks of which make a huge show.) The Freeport lower limestone (2`)
lies 10 feet under it, on top of the Freeport sandstone (30`) which
is here massive enough to make cliffs, but elsewhere in the county
is shaly and inconspicuous. The Kittanning group of three coal beds
is of small importance in this county; the upper nowhere exceeds 3`,
and its underlying Johnstown cement bed is merely an impure ferriferous
limestone. The middle coal is thicker in Knox and McCalmont, but impure,
and in Union Township shows its best aspect. The lower coal id persistent,
but small and poor everywhere. The Buhrstone iron ore enters the county
as far as Brookville, but fades away into insignificance. No trace
of it is seen on the Mahoning where it belongs at Perryville, but
it can be detected in the north at Brockwayville. The Ferriferous
limestone, which carries this ore, is not nearly so thick a stratum
as in Clarion and Armstrong counties. Its outcrop however runs along
the sides of all the valleys of the Red bank and Sandy waters, and
surrounds the hill-tops in the northern townships, furnishing an
indispensable guide to the classical positions of all the other strata
above and below it, especially for the sinking of trial oil wells.
The Clarion coal bed (B) is a mere streak. The Brookville coal bed
(A) is nearly everywhere of workable size, but impure. Its best show
is made in Beaver township, where are many small mines in it. Between
the three sub-divisions of the underlying conglomerate No. XII (300`
thick) lie shales containing very thin coal beds, of no value, the
equivalents of the Mercer and Sharon coals of the Ohio State line.
No oil fields are known in the county. (See Report H6.)
From: A geological hand atlas of the sixty-seven
counties of Pennsylvania :embodying the results of the field work
of the survey, from 1874 to 1884. By J. P. Lesley. (Report of
progress (Geological Survey of Pennsylvania), v. X ) Harrisburg, PA
: Board of commissioners for the second geological survey, 1885.
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