Selections From The Splinters - Volume 12

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Comments upon available gravel at Henry, no good rock on the Vermillion, lots of coal.

Tiskilwa, Ill. Aug. 23, 1886

B. F. Booker, Esq.,
Keokuk, Iowa.

Dear Sir:

Yours bearing date of 22^nd at hand.

There is an abundance of gravel suitable for ballast at Henry also on the bottoms of Crow Creek.

I failed to see or hear of any good quarries on the Vermillion River. Such ledges as I saw exposed were of limestone, full of shakes and flaws and not suitable for anything but very ordinary rubble masonry. There is an abundance of coal on the Vermillion River. The same beds which are found at Streator and Wenona underlying the whole country to the Illinois River at La Salle and Marseilles. These veins of which there are 3 vary in thickness and quality in different localities.

I do not think that much prospecting has been done either at Lowell or Farm Ridge to determine exactly what may be depended upon at those points in the matter of coal supply.

The local demand is supplied from outcrops in the bluffs. The out cropping vein is the upper or poorest one of the three and the coal is rendered still more inferior from exposure, but from all that I can learn, the lower veins exist in these localities and when opened the output would be equal in quality and quantity to that at Streator. The vast bed of limestone, Plainfield to Lemont, exists, but I do not think it can be reached without a great deal of stripping except in the vicinity of the river at Lemont.

There is a quarry opened about 1-1/2 miles from Plainfield which will furnish a good but not superior quality of limestone.

There are large beds of gravel in neighborhood of Plainfield but the country is so flat that it will be unhandy opening up pits. About 3 ft. of stripping on top of gravel.

There are some fine gravel banks near the line at La Grange.

Yours respectfully,
(Signed) Horace Ropes

Expect to connect with Mr. Robinson about Wednesday P.M.

Volume 12 Splinters page 95 transcribed in altered form for the web by Matt Lee.

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