The Teays River

No. 10 OHIOGeoFacts DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES • DIVISION OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

THE TEAYS RIVER

The Teays River was an ancient stream, comparable in size to the This lake is estimated to have covered an area of nearly 7,000 modern Ohio River, that once drained much of the east-central U.S., square miles (modern Lake Erie has an area of 9,910 square miles) in including nearly two-thirds of Ohio. It was destroyed by the glaciers southern Ohio and parts of West Virginia and Kentucky. It is named of the Pleistocene Ice Age about 2 million years ago. Remnants of Lake Tight in honor of the pioneering study of the Teays system the valley of the Teays River are preserved as fl at-bottomed valleys by Denison University professor William George Tight (1865-1910). in hilly, unglaciated southern Ohio and as deep valleys now fi lled Lake Tight is estimated to have existed for more than 6,500 years as with sediment in the glaciated portion of the state. interpreted from seasonal layers in the sediment deposited on the The Teays River system originated long before 2 million years lake bottom. This lake clay is known as the Minford clay, named ago, in the Tertiary Period, and had its headwaters in western for a Scioto County community. It is mined in some areas as a raw North Carolina near Blowing Rock. It fl owed northward across material for making brick and other ceramic products. Virginia and West Virginia, where its course is marked by the val- Eventually the waters of Lake Tight rose to an elevation suffi cient to leys of the modern New breach drainage divides River (a misnomer, as it is and create new drainage actually very old) and the WI channels, which in some Kanawha River. From St. MI cases were opposite in Albans, West Virginia, the IA NY direction to the original Teays fl owed westward Teays drainage. These to Wheelersburg, Scioto ERIGAN RIVER new drainage channels County, Ohio, and then GLACIATED REGION cut below the elevation e s r northward to Chillicothe, R u of the Teays, forming a IV o TEAY ER c Ross County. This valley S e new drainage system v PA i t

a DIVIDE segment is dramatically n known as Deep Stage. r

IL e IN t OH l visible on satellite im- a This event marked the agery. beginning of the modern Chillicothe marks the MD Ohio River drainage sys- southward limit of glacia- tem, although it would tion in central Ohio, and WV require many further TEAYS the valley of the Teays dis- modifi cations from lat- appears beneath glacial R er glaciations to fi nally I MO V

KY E sediments (drift) at this R VA shape the present course point. However, by means of the modern Ohio River. of water wells and other In recent years there has data, the buried Teays AR been debate among geolo- valley has been traced TN NC gists as to the course of the beneath the glacial drift Gulf of Mexico Teays across the glaciated northwestward across Classic interpretation of the preglacial Teays River and an alternative course (dashed line) favored by some portion of Ohio. Some Pickaway, Fayette, Madi- geologists. The entire extent of the Teays and its tributaries north of the glacial border is buried beneath thick suggest that the deep son, Clark, Champaign, glacial drift. Northern Ohio was drained by the Erigan River, which followed the axis of what is now Lake buried valley in western Erie, and fl owed into the ancestral St. Lawrence River. Neither the Great Lakes nor the Ohio River existed Shelby, Auglaize, and at this time. Ohio that is interpreted to Mercer Counties to the be the valley of the Teays Ohio-Indiana border. At the Ohio-Indiana border the valley of the was formed by a meltwater stream fl owing along the ice front of an Teays appears to be continuous with a buried valley that has been early glacier. These geologists prefer the explanation that the actual traced westward across Indiana and Illinois, where it emptied into course of the preglacial Teays River was northward through the an embayment of the ocean, now occupied by the Mississippi River. central part of the state, where it connected with a now- vanished In Ohio, this buried valley is up to 2 miles wide and in some areas ancestral system, known to geologists as the Erigan River, in what lies beneath more than 500 feet of glacial drift. is now the Lake Erie basin. This question of the course of the Teays is not easily answered THE END OF THE TEAYS AND because the valleys of the Teays and other drainage systems were CREATION OF THE OHIO RIVER greatly modifi ed by the erosive action of several Pleistocene glaciers. These valleys either have been destroyed or are now deeply buried The earliest of three or more major glacial advances destroyed beneath thick glacial deposits. Part of the answer may be determined the Teays River system in western Ohio. The edge of the glacier from maps of the bedrock surface beneath the glacial drift, which created a massive dam that blocked the northward-fl owing Teays show the course of preglacial valleys. Such maps, known as bedrock- and created a major lake in southern Ohio. The lake waters rose to topography maps, depict the confi guration of the bedrock surface an elevation of nearly 900 feet, creating an intricate pattern of long as if all overlying unconsolidated sediment had been removed. fi nger lakes in tributary valleys. Numerous ridge tops poked above Bedrock-topography maps for many Ohio counties and 7.5-minute the waters as islands. quadrangles are available from the Division of Geological Survey. Ver Steeg,Karl,1946,TheTeays River:OhioJournalofScience,v. 46,p.297-307. Melhorn, W. N.,andKempton,J.P., eds.,1991,Geologyandhydrogeology King, C.C.,ed.,1983,Teays-age drainageeffects onpresent distributional Hansen, M.C.,1987,TheTeays River:OhioDivisionofGeologicalSurvey, Coffey, G.N.,1961,Majorpreglacial, Nebraskan,andKansanglacialadvances The DivisionofGeologicalSurveyGeoFactsSeriesisavailable America SpecialPaper258,128p. of theTeays-Mahomet bedrock valleysystem:GeologicalSocietyof 11, 14p. patterns ofOhiobiota:BiologicalSurveyInformativeCircular No. Ohio Geology, Summer, p.1-6. in Ohio,Indiana,andIllinois:OhioJournalofScience,v. 61,p.295-313. on theWorld Wide Web: satellite image Area covered by FURTHER READING • ThisGeoFacts compiledbyMichaelC.Hansen •November1995 www.OhioGeology.com feet higherinelevationthanthemodernOhioRiver. PhotobyWilber Stout. Wheelersburg, SciotoCounty. Thevalleyisabout1.5mileswideatthispointand150 Eastward viewacross anabandoned segmentofthepreglacial Teays Rivervalleynear Wisconsinan glacierisalsovisible. Huntington toWheelersburg. Thesouthernlimitoftherelatively recent broad valleys.ThemodernOhioRiverfollowsthevalleyofTeays from and from Wheelersburg toChillicothe,Ohioare illustratedbylight-colored, Teays River, comingfrom theeasttowardsHuntington,West Virginia, Kentucky andWest Virginia. Theabandonedsegments of thepreglacial LANDSAT 7satelliteimageofsouthernOhioandadjacentportions of

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