prospecting northward, and as a result several thousand acres west of Kamms and Berea was leased for gas and oil rights between 1905 and 1907 by the East Ohio Gas Co. and the Logan Gas & Fuel Co. The former company did most of the drilling and was still at work in 1908. It also purchased the site of the Newburg Salt Co. in Mill Creek Valley, and in 1907 and 1908 it deepened the old salt wells to the horizon of the Clinton (?) beds, which are now generally considered to be older than the true Clinton of New York. In most places the wells were unsuccessful, and few of them were even capped. One of these wells was fairly successful, however, and furnished the second example of deep-seated reservoir gas in the district. This well was drilled by the East Ohio Gas Co. at North Ridgeville, Lorain County, and was finished in June, 1908. It was sold to A. L. Mills, who furnished the drillers' record, which has been interpreted as follows:

Partial record of well drilled in June, 1908, at North Ridgeville

Thickness Depth (feet) (feet)

Drift

Bedford, Cleveland, and Chagrin shales and underlying shale of Portage age.
Devonian and late Silurian (Čayugan) limestones (water in limestone at 1,300 feet)..
Salina formation (upper part).

Salina (?), Niagara, and older (?) limestone (show of oil at 2,200 feet; water in limestone at 2,250 feet)..

Clinton sand..

Basal part of Albion (?) sandstone..
Queenston (?) shale.

At the time of casing the rock pressure was 840 pounds to the square inch, and the open flow of gas was reported to be 250,000 cubic feet a day. The supply from this well was used to light and heat several houses. The "show of oil" at 2,200 feet is undoubtedly at the horizon of the Newburg sand of present operations.

The next development in deep drilling for gas in this district, so far as the writer knows, was on October 17, 1911, when the Newburg Brick & Clay Co., near Warner and Canal Roads, South Newburg, "brought in" a gas and oil well at a depth of 2,520 feet. It was found in a "sand" between limestones of Niagara age, and this bed has since been called the Newburg sand. The well was still yielding both gas and oil in December, 1915.

Two wells were finished to the so-called Clinton sand, at a depth of 2,740 feet, in February, 1912, by the National Carbon Co. and the Winton Motor Carriage Co., near Highland Avenue, Berea Road, and the New York Central Railroad. Both wells yielded about 1,000,000 cubic feet of gas daily, and the pressure was about 1,100 pounds to the square inch. There was little drilling from that time until late in 1913, when several good wells were drilled in Lakewood. Early in 1914 several other successful wells were drilled in Lakewood and

West Park, but no actual boom started until January 30, 1914. On this date, at the plant of the J. L. & H. Stadler Rendering & Fertilizer Co., South Brooklyn, gas was found at about 2,400 feet in the Newburg sand. The initial flow of the well was about 12,000,000 cubic feet, and the rock pressure was 950 pounds to the square inch. The production dropped to about 3,000,000 cubic feet within six months, and when the service from this well was discontinued in August, 1915, the pressure was only about 100 pounds to the square inch. In April, 1914, there were already 55 producing wells, 10 of which were in the Newburg and the rest in the so-called Clinton sand. Drillers came from all parts of the country, and many persons inside the western limits of the city of Cleveland as well as in Lakewood and West Park insisted on having private wells in their own back yards. As a result of this demand drill holes were placed too near together, and the production of the older wells rapidly decreased. There did not seem to be very much decrease in the initial pressure and flow of the newer wells when compared with the earlier ones, but there was a notable decrease in the life of the newer wells.

The average life of the wells of the district is said by an official of the East Ohio Gas Co. to be about eight months; other records show that some wells lasted 12 to 15 months.

The record well of the Cleveland area is stated to be the Swift well, in the Newburg sand at Walworth Avenue and West Twenty-fifth Street, which had an initial flow of 13,500,000 cubic feet.

PRODUCING SANDS

The chief sands of economic importance have been called the Newburg and Clinton, and of these the Clinton has produced most of the gas in the Cleveland district. Some persons have applied the name Stadler sand to the Newburg, but the term "Newburg" has priority as well as more common usage. There is also one unimportant sand called the Stray sand, and the so-called Trenton lime (Trenton? limestone) has been prospected to a slight extent. (See pl. 19.)

Stray sand.-The Stray sand has been found in at least three places in Lakewood, at depths ranging from 1,355 to 1,400 feet, and its position must therefore be in the Devonian or the upper Silurian limestones The sand is about 3 feet thick and at two places produced oil. At the other place an initial flow of 4,000,000 cubic feet of gas was obtained. Water caused more or less trouble, and after a time the wells were abandoned or were deepened to the Clinton sand.

Newburg or Stadler sand.-The horizon of the Newburg or Stadler sand is found at depths ranging from 2,300 to 2,600 feet. In some places the Newburg is said to attain a thickness of 30 feet, but in others it is apparently absent. In the Lakewood district its thickness is rarely greater than 15 feet, but it becomes thicker to the south and

ness.

east, toward the Denison-Harvard district, where the maximum thickness is found. In that vicinity its depth below the surface also increases, owing to the southeast dip. According to reports made by the East Ohio Gas Co., the Newburg ranges from 3 to 17 feet in thickAt the pioneer well of the Newburg Brick & Clay Co. the sand was penetrated to a depth of 15 feet, a total depth of 2,520 feet being reached. The gas sand from this well was grayish, soft, and brittle and showed abundant cleavage planes. In polarized light even the smallest fragments showed high interference colors, which characterize certain minerals of very high double refraction. This sand dissolved almost wholly in cold dilute hydrochloric acid, and the solution showed little if any trace of iron. The properties noted previously are those of a fairly pure limestone, composed of calcite or dolomite. Another specimen of Newburg sand was grayish red and contained grayish, reddish-brown, and grayish-black particles, so that it might have been a mixture of three rocks. This sand was easily crushed, but some of the particles were hard enough to scratch glass. The grayish particles showed high double refraction and dissolved readily in cold dilute hydrochloric acid. The reddish-brown particles dissolved less readily, and the other particles were insoluble; the solution was colored yellow with iron chloride. This sand was calcareous but certainly originated from a more impure limestone than that obtained from the Newburg Brick & Clay Co.'s well.

f

The Newburg sand is therefore a calcareous or dolomitic limestone, more or less pure, and not a quartzose sandstone like the Clinton sand. It probably consists of a porous limestone similar to the Trenton (?) limestone of the Findlay-Fostoria region. The Newburg sand occurs in what is called the Big lime and belongs to the Niagara epoch of the Silurian. The horizon probably corresponds to that of the Lockport dolomite. Some of the wells that have been drilled to this sand without finding gas were continued down to the Clinton sand. Chemically the gas from the Newburg sand is said to be little any different from the Clinton gas, an analysis of which is given on page 121. The Newburg has been most successfully prospected in the southern and southwestern parts of Cleveland, known as Newburg and Brooklyn, especially in what is called the Denison-Harvard istrict, where the sand is thickest. One of the largest wells to produce gas from the Newburg sand was the Stadler well, at Denison Avenue and the Belt Line, which really started the gas boom in the Cleveland territory. Although this well came in with 12,500,000 cubic feet of gas, at a rock pressure of 950 pounds to the square inch, it lasted only from January 30, 1914, to about August, 1915. Because of the general interest in this well, its log as given by the drillers, with geologic interpretation, is appended.

Log of Stadler well, Denison Avenue and Belt Line, Cleveland

Clinton sand.-Although the sand that occurs from 75 to 150 feet below the Niagara limestone has long been known as the Clinton sand, it very certainly does not belong to the true Clinton formation but to the older beds here called Albion (?) sandstone, which, like the Newburg, are of Silurian age. On account of the common use of the term "Clinton," however, it is here used for the convenience of students of the economic geology of the region. The sand is found at depths ranging from 2,700 to 2,900 feet. In the northern part of the Cleveland district it is reached constantly at a depth of about 2,750 feet, but toward the south and east the depth increases, owing to the dip of the rocks in those directions. According to reports, its thickness ranges from 5 to 50 feet. The East Ohio Gas Co. gives figures ranging from 5 to 35 feet. At the plant of the Cuyahoga Brick & Shale Co. in Parma Township, between Ridge and Pearl Roads, the top and bottom of the Clinton sand were reported at 2,823 and 2,867 feet, respectively, giving a thickness of 44 feet. The Twin City Oil & Gas Co., at West One Hundredth Street near Bertha Avenue, drilled from 2,737 to 2,765 feet in the Clinton, a distance of 28 feet, but reported that "the Clinton here is 50 feet deep, which is about double the normal thickness." The thickness most commonly given is about 20 feet. J. C. Gillette, of the National Carbon Co., states that one of the reasons for differing reports is that some drillers include in the Clinton certain rocks that do not belong there. In his experience he finds, on approaching the Clinton, first a layer of reddish clayey sand, ranging from a mere film to 12 feet in thickness, which contains some gas. Below this sand lies 3 feet of shale, and then comes about 20 feet of gray, faint pink, or whitish sand, which is the chief gas reservoir. If these three strata were all included as Clinton, they would make up a thickness approaching 35 feet.

Two specimens of pink and gray or white Clinton sands have been investigated. They consist of quartz sand stained more or less with

iron oxide, which even in the white sand dissolves in cold dilute hydrochloric acid and stains the solution yellow with ferric chloride. Neither sample showed any traces of lime, and the white sand originated from a grayish porous, friable quartzose sandstone, particles of which could be seen in the sand and were hard enough to scratch glass. Two other specimens of grayish color were examined, but tliese contained limestone fragments along with the sandstone and consequently effervesced easily with acid. The limestone particles undoubtedly came from horizons above the sand. Although the Clinton sand is generally porous, it is sometimes reported as very dense and hard, so as to require shooting in order to open up the flow of gas. The two following analyses were furnished by the East Ohio Gas Co.

Analyses of natural gas from Cleveland and West Virginia

Several hundred wells have been drilled to the Clinton sand, about a fourth of which have been dry or gave so little gas that their production was not utilized. A comparatively small number of wells have yielded an initial flow of 10,000,000 cubic feet or more each, and a few of these started, according to reports, with about 13,000,000 or 14,000,000 cubic feet daily. Like most wells in the Newburg sand, many Clinton wells have declined rapidly in production. The record of a well in the Clinton sand as given by the drillers, with an interpretation, follows:

Log of Winton Gas Engine Co.'s well, West One Hundred and Sixth Street, between Madison and Western Avenues, Lakewood