dred feet deep in the upper Mahoning sandstone. But adventurous drillers, one after another, struck new sources of oil. A second oilsand, and a third, were discovered at five hundred and seven hundred feet respectively. Finally the drill was sunk deeper still, until, at 1,300 feet, the Berea grit was found, holding a stock of oil large enough to make the Macksburg field, for the first time, a factor in the general market. It has produced as many as 3,000 barrels per day since then, and is now yielding 2,500 barrels per day. (At the present date, October, 1887, it has shrunk to small proportions.) But the shallow and the deep productive wells are alike definitely limited to the terrace that has been described. In other words, four oil-sandstones become productive in the same area when the structure is found favorable. That they do not communicate with each other is evident from the fact that the oils which they severally contain differ from each other in gravity, in color, and in chemical constitution. The depth of the Berea grit below sea-level in the terrace is 735 feet. Of twenty-four wells, occupying four square miles in this field, sixteen reach the Berea between 733 and 737 feet, and six are found by their records to be exactly 735 feet. On the northwestern margin of the terrace, at elevations of 728, 720, 713, and 704 feet, gas is found, but no oil. After many hundred wells have been drilled on all sides, the terrace which has been revealed by the engineer's level is alone found productive. The grain of the sandstone is in every way as promising, and its thickness as great, outside of the field as within it; and the sections, both above and a thousand feet below the Berea grit, appear identical in productive and in barren territory alike. It is hard to resist the conclusion that the Macksburg oil-field is dependent upon the structural irregularity here described, the other elements, of course, being presupposed. While the first three conditions of petroleum accumulation are found throughout the entire district occupied by the Berea grit, as has been shown, the last condition, which, like the rest, is a vital and altogether essential one, has been but infrequently complied with in the territory under consideration. In other words, the structure of the formation is mainly normal; the dip is regular and uninterrupted; and the monotony of its descent becomes fatal to the gathering of large stocks of oil and gas within it. In point of fact, there are but very few localities in these 20,000 square miles where any noteworthy value has thus far been obtained from the formation in the line of those coveted supplies, and but a single field of large production. There is ample room for future discovery in this territory, it is true; but it will be seen from the review now to be given that tests have been made in a great many localities, and at some points in sufficient number to demonstrate that either the character of the rock or its structure is such as to discourage large expectations of valuable returns from it. The general subject of structure, including folds or flexures, and terraces, has already been briefly treated in Chapter I; and the main facts of irregularity in this respect, so far as they have been discovered in eastern Ohio, are there pointed out. It is only necessary to state here, in review, that eastern Ohio is remarkably free from structural disturbances of all sorts. So large an area of old rocks, formed when the earth had presumably an ampler girth than now, could not have adjusted itself to the changing conditions without developing some low folds or arches. Those marks of disturbance we find mainly on the eastern border of the state; but they are in all cases of moderate proportions and often on so modest a scale that they can be detected only by the careful work of the engineer in districts that contain them. In treating of the subject now in hand, the production realized from the Berea grit thus far will be taken up first; and in the second place, the explorations which have proved unsuccessful, or which, at least, have not yet resulted in pronounced success, will be described. The Macksburg oil-field is so far in advance of all others in importance that it has been made the subject of a separate chapter. Its general character has been described on a previous page. B. PRODUCTIVE OIL AND GAS FIELDS. The Mecca Oil Field. Beginning in Trumbull county, in northeastern Ohio, we find the Berea grit a productive rock, even where it rises to day. The Mecca oil field has been a well-known center of small production since 1860. This production is still maintained, though on an insignificant and evershrinking scale. The township of Mecca embraces a flat-lying tract, the average elevation of which above the sea is not far from 900 feet. Its surface is made up of drift clays that have a thickness of from five to fifty feet. In the vicinity of West Mecca, the underlying rock is a sandstone which crops out to a small extent in the valley of Musquito Creek, and which can be reached at any point by shafts of a few feet in depth. The early settlers were obliged to sink their wells into this sandstone, and the water obtained often carried globules of dark-colored petroleum that would form a film over the surface. From early times the oil was saved in a small way and used for the same purposes as the Seneca oil of New York. But in 1860, when the interest in the Oil Creek region of Pennsylvania was at its height, the facts in regard to West Mecca oil became widely known, and a whirlwind of speculative excitement invaded this hitherto quiet neighborhood. Wells were drilled here by the hundred, some say by the thousand; and for a few months the Mecca field was a factor of some importance in the infant industry of petroleum production. The total number of wells drilled is estimated at 2.000 to 2,500 by persons well acquainted with the field. The oil was at once recognized as of very different quality from that of the Pennsylvania field. It was a heavy oil, its gravity being 26 to 28 В. It endured an excellent cold test, and, in a word, was found to be adapted in every respect to the highest uses as a lubricant. Its great value was soon learned, and the price rose for a little while to $50.00 per barrel. Although it soon receded from these extreme figures, it has been from that day to this worth many times more in the market than any other natural oil. What little is produced now finds ready sale at $15.00 per barrel. The wells do not exceed fifty feet in depth. In early times they were put down by hand, but latterly they have been drilled by portable machines that can be hauled from farm to farm by two or three yoke of cattle. The total expense of drilling is covered by a production of 50 to 60 gallons of oil, and the expense of pumping is reduced in like manner to very low terms, portable steam-pumps being sometimes moved from one well to another a few times a year, and in one case a wind-pump is used for raising the oil. Estimates of the production of the field vary widely. One conservative estimate makes 5,000 barrels the maximum production for a single year, but other estimates make the amount very much larger than this. Single wells are known to have produced from fifty to seventy barrels a day for several months in succession, and some of these wells are credited with a total production of 3,000 barrels. Wells are seldom pumped for more than three months after they are drilled. After that the oil is removed in a primitive way by the sand-pump, the supply continuing indefinitely, so far as present experience goes. The territory within which oil has been found in paying quantity can probably all be included in a tract five miles long by three miles wide, but half of the production of the field in its best days was derived from a single farm, and the bulk of the oil at all times has come from a few hundred acres at most. In the early days of this production a little gas was found associated with the oil, but the abundant puncturing of the rock that has gone forward here, long ago exhausted this supply on the West Mecca side. A small amount of gas is still found on the east side of Musquito Creek. In the spring of 1884 a shaft was sunk on the Cowdery farm, on the west half of Section 4, to the oil horizon, the object being to obtain a larger supply of oil. It was held by the projectors of the enterprise that inasmuch as every well in this immediate territory yielded oil, the shaft would secure a production as much greater than a single well as its area should exceed that of a single well. The wells were usually drilled eight inches in diameter. The shaft was made six by eight feet. It furnished an excellent section of the Berea grit. The rock was struck at a depth of seven feet. The first bed which was found was four feet thick. It consisted of uneven bedded sandstone, and is known as the "bogus rock." It always carries a little oil, and for that matter the lower portions of the bowlder clay are often saturated with oil. Under the "bogus rock" there was found thirty feet of shaly sandstone, blue in color, and with many black streaks of vegetable origin, such as are common in the Berea grit in its northern outcrop. This section is known as "flagstone," and is generally rather close-grained, and somewhat impervious to water. At a depth of forty-three feet the oil-rock, so-called, was reached. It consisted here of two or three beds of falsebedded sandstone, the lower one of which is very loosely cemented. The oil-sand had a total thickness of about nine feet. Water came into the shaft in large quantity at several seams or crevices in these lower beds, and the oil was brought along by it in drops, which found their way to the soft sandstone below, in which they were temporarily stored. When the oil is pumped by a steam-pump this loose sand is often brought with it, and the main trouble that is taken in preparing the oil for use consists in the removal of this sand. When the bottom of the oil-rock was reached at a depth of fifty-three feet, three entries or tunnels were driven at right angles to each other, northeast and west respectively. While the work was going forward several tons of sand were raised every day, and a large amount of water was also pumped. A small quantity of oil was produced in both sand and water, but the result was not such as was expected by the projectors of the enterprise, and the novel scheme of mining for oil by regular entries driven into the oil reservoir was soon abandoned. This, however, was not strictly the first attempt that has been made to mine for oil. The oil-rock has been already described as full of fresh water. A large volume is always found at the bottom of the oil-sand which the driller calls "Lake Erie. " Seams occur, however, in the lower part of the oil-rock that reduce the level of the surface water in the wells. These seams are known as "let-offs." The accumulation of the oil is intimately connected with the movements of the water in the rock. The best production occurs after the spring rains, or after heavy summer showers. The rain seems to wash the oil from the body of the rock and to bring it into circulation. The oil goes wherever the water does. The section that was obtained from the shaft, and which has been given above, is not quite a normal one. There is in it a larger measure of the upper or flagstone beds, than is usually found. In most of the West Mecca wells there are only about ten feet of this so called flagstone; under this, the oil-sand, with a thickness of ten to fifteen feet is found. Under the oil-sand, again, is found the "water sand," which is sometimes as much as seventy to eighty feet thick. The Berea grit in this vicinity is thus seen to have a thickness of a hundred feet, or even more. It is always overlain by a thin but very black fossiliferous bed of the Berea shale. An excellent section is furnished in the banks and the bed of Walnut Creek, within the limits of the village of Cortland, and a half-mile below. At the junction of Walnut and Musquito Creeks, the flag-rock that makes the upper bed of the Berea is found in the bed of the stream. It is covered by eight feet of Berea shale, very black and crowded with its characteristic fossils. The forty feet immediately above the Berea shale are made up of beds of fine-grained stone separated by thicker beds of shale or soapstone-an alternation of materials which is characteristic of this part of the Cuyahoga shale. Above this division are found quite heavy courses of finegrained stone, over which twelve feet of dark shale occur. Above the shale is the horizon of the famous Warren flagstone. There are twenty feet found in the present section referable to this horizon, but the quality of the rock at this point is inferior. This valuable stratum is thus seen to have its place about seventy feet above the surface of the Berea grit. Sections entirely similar to this have been penetrated in a number of wells drilled at and near Cortland for either water or gas. Four wells have been drilled at Mecca quite deep into the Ohio shale, one of them, the Grover well, to a depth of 1,135 feet. The series traversed consisted of beds of black shale alternating with blue or gray shale, after the usual fashion. They yielded a little gas and oil at various horizons, according to the traditions, but nothing of great value was found in them, and none of them are productive at the present time. Above the Warren flagstone the Cuyahoga shale continues as soft rock until the conglomerate sandstone is reached upon the high ground. The Mecca field is unique. It has been an interesting one, but it has had its day. There is not value enough in it to warrant the expenditure that would be required to carefully explore its structure. In fact, it is almost impossible at this time to obtain the data essential to an |