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STATE OF MICHIGAN Plate XVII. A. Grainer block. Saginaw Plate Glass Company, MICHIGAN GEOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SURVEY Saginaw, Michigan. ........................................................20 Plate XVII. B. Chemical plant. Saginaw Plate Glass Publication 8. Geological Series 6. Company, Saginaw, Michigan........................................20 Mineral Resources of Michigan with Plate XVIII. A. Plant of the Diamond Crystal Salt Company, St. Statistical Tables of production and value of Clair, Michigan. ..............................................................27 mineral products for 1910 and prior years Plate XVIII. B. Grainer block. Diamond Crystal Salt Company, St. Clair, Michigan. .........................................................27 PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF R. C. ALLEN Plate XIX. A. Plant of the Delray Salt Company, Delray, DIRECTOR, MICHIGAN GEOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL Michigan.........................................................................27 SURVEY Plate XIX. B. Plant of the Detroit Salt Company, Oakwood, PUBLISHED AS A PART OF THE ANNUAL REPORT 0F THE Michigan.........................................................................28 BOARD OF GEOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SURVEY FOR Plate XX. A. Plant of the Peerless Portland Cement Company, 1911 Union City, Michigan. .....................................................33 LANSING, MICHIGAN Plate XX. B. Plant of the Michigan Portland Cement Company, WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD CO., STATE Gray Village, Michigan. ..................................................33 PRINTERS 1912 Plate XXI. A. Plant of the Wolverine Portland Cement Company, Coldwater, Michigan. ....................................34 Plate XXI. B. Plant of the Wolverine Portland Cement Contents Company, Quincy, Michigan. .........................................34 Michigan Coal by R. A. Smith ........................................ 1 Michigan Gypsum by R. A. Smith................................ 14 MICHIGAN COAL.1 The Salt Industry of Michigan by Chas. W. Cook ...... 18 BY R. A. SMITH. Michigan Cement by Chas. W. Cook........................... 28 CONTENTS. Michigan Gold by R. C. Allen ....................................... 34 Chapter I. Occurrence and Extent of Coal Areas..........1 Oil and Gas in Michigan by R. A. Smith...................... 39 Chapter II. The Michigan Coal Basin. ...........................2 Thickness of Coal Measures ................................... 3 Variation in Michigan Coal Measures...................... 5 Illustrations Areas Favorable for Coal Occurrence..................... 5 Chapter III. Tests And Analyses Of Michigan Coals.....5 Heating Power -- Boiler Tests ................................. 6 Figures Summary ................................................................. 7 Figure 12. Map of the Michigan Coal Basin.............................3 Chapter IV. Erosion and Disturbance of Coal...............7 Figure 13. Production and value curves for Michigan coal ....14 Drift Filled Channels ................................................ 8 Sandstone Channels ............................................... 8 Figure 14. Sketch map showing location of gypsum producing Faults or Displacements.......................................... 9 areas and gypsum deposits............................................15 Chapter V. Development of Coal Mines........................9 Figure 15. Graphic representation of the annual production of Principles to Guide Exploration ............................. 10 gypsum, gypsum products, and values, 1868-1910. ......17 Methods of Exploration and Developing................ 10 Figure 16. Map showing producing salt districts of Michigan.21 Chapter VI. Value of Coal Lands and Coal Rights......10 Chapter VII. Production...............................................12 Figure 17. Production curve for salt in Michigan and the United States. ............................................................................25 Chapter VIII. Mining Methods.......................................12 The Mines.............................................................. 13 Figure 18. Map showing cement plants in Michigan, 1911....29 Figure 19. Map showing the location and direction of anticlines CHAPTER I. OCCURRENCE AND EXTENT in lower Michigan............................................................44 OF COAL AREAS. Plates Occurrence. Coal occurs in beds associated with shale, fire clay, black band ore, limestone, and to a less Plate XVI. A. Salt plant of the R. G. Peters Salt and Lumber extent with sandstone. The latter more often increase in Company. .......................................................................20 abundance at the expense of the coal. This is a most Plate XVI. B. Anchor Salt Company plant, Ludington, significant fact. The coal may be in a single bed or in Michigan. ........................................................................20 several, separated by beds of shale or so-called slate, fire clay, etc. These laminae of shale may be no wider Publication 8, Geological Series 6 / Coal-Gypsum-Salt-Cement-Gold-Oil and Gas – Page 1 of 44 than a knife blade or may be many feet thick. Often thin elevated above water bringing the Maxville within the veins of shale interbedded with the coals may thicken so reach of the erosive agents which cut it up into a network that a single vein of coal becomes several distinct beds. of river valleys. The Maxville on the southeast was wholly removed from Jackson nearly to Tuscola Co., the The upper coals of Michigan are very apt to show this coal measures lying directly on the Marshall. In late phenomenon. This makes it very hard to correlate them Maxville time, the topography on the eastern side of the because corresponding veins vary in level more or less basin may have somewhat resembled that of eastern with the thickening and thinning of the shale laminae. Kentucky. When the region was depressed these Sometimes these, though often very persistent even valleys became bays, lagoons, and estuaries possibly when thin and knife-like, disappear and several beds, resembling the conditions of a drowned coast. It was in distinctly separated at one place, become a single thick these depressions that vegetable material collected. one at another. In other cases, the content of clayey Near Jackson, the Maxville forms the hills with the coal matter increases gradually so that a coal vein grades measures lying in between and flanking them. The vertically and laterally through cannel coal, bone coal to Jackson trough was hardly more than 150 yds. wide and black shale. It is these shales with their gradation a few hundred feet long. From this it may readily be phases which many drillers confuse with true coal and seen that in the southern and eastern parts of the basin, thus are led to report great thicknesses of coal where especially, few if any of the coal veins could be little or even none exists. The shales, usually black, continuous for any great distance. form in most cases, the roof of the coal seams. Shale forms an impervious roof, but is likely to be weak, and 1Mainly an abstract of A. C. Lane's treatise in Vol. VIII, 1902, Michigan thus need a good deal of timbering, if close to the rock Geological Survey, with addition of statistical and other data. surface. An impervious roof is all important in Michigan as water is so abundant. At best, Michigan coal mines CHAPTER II. THE MICHIGAN COAL BASIN. are much wetter than those of Ohio and Indiana, but the water conies chiefly from the coal—the foot wall. The The Michigan coal basin, or the northern region of the cost of getting rid of the water is one of the chief factors Interior Basin, as it is now called, is the only one that lies that permits Ohio operators, in dull times, to lay down at in the Great Lakes drainage area. It comprises some a small profit their excess coal at the very tipples of 11,500 square miles and occupies almost the exact Michigan mines at prices ruinous to Michigan operators. geographical centre of the Lower Peninsula. It is most A sandstone roof is a very wet roof as in the case of the ideally located, being in the heart of a thickly populated Gage No. 3 and no mine is known to have a real and rapidly growing manufacturing district. Not only this, limestone roof. The Verne coals, however, are apt to but numerous railroads, Saginaw Bay and River, which have considerable limestone associated with them. penetrate to the very heart of the field, and the system of Great Lakes offer a means, of distribution unequaled Extent. Coal beds in most districts are usually anywhere. Indeed, it is largely due to the rapid growth of continuous for considerable distances and the existence manufacturing cities along the lower Great Lakes and of a coal bed can be predicted with some degree of the easy access to their markets that Michigan, with thin certainty for some distance from known occurrences as and variable veins of low grade coal and wet mines, in Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Michigan, such conditions owed the sudden and wonderful development of her coal do not obtain. The beds thicken and thin, divide or unite, industry between 1897 and 1908. No where in the and pinch out so rapidly, or are cut out by sandstone history of the coal industry of the United States; is there beds or by erosion so often, that the finding of a thick a like parallel in growth, unless we except the recent one bed at lone place forms no proof that the same bed or of the Triassic basins of Virginia. The Coal Basin may other beds may be found