The Bloomsburg red shales outcrop to the south, but are not very well exposed, while the main valley west of Laurelton is largely composed of the upper Salina rocks.
Beyond the Dunkard church and cemetery the road rises to the north flank of the Bloomsburg red shale ridge, where the rocks of the lower Salina member dips 35° to the northwest with marked cleavage planes dipping about 55° to the southeast.
James Pursley has opened several ore-pits south of the Heranimus church in the field east of his house and just north of Penns creek. The rock measures all through this farm crop out with steep angles, and show largely a section of the lower Clinton yellow shales, but without much sandstone.
The horizon of the ore developed is rather uncertain, although unquestionably beneath the Ore sandstone, and, therefore, either some one of the Danville beds or possibly the lower Block or Bird’s Eye fossil ore beds, occurring in Snyder county near the base of the Clinton group.
None of the old openings could be inspected, having been long since abandoned; but the superficial examination which was all that it was possible to make seemed to indicate the presence here of two distinct beds of ore, probably 250′ geologically apart and separated by brownish-yellow shales holding a bed of sandstone several feet thick, and a possible representative in this field of the Iron Sandstone.
From Mr. Pursley’s information on the ground, one pit sunk on the top of the ridge, about 6′ deep, struck a 12″ ore bed dipping steeply (60°) southeast. The ore was fair. North and south of this about 30 and 40 yards the ore outcrops again, making a double synclinal and anticlinal.
A short distance east where the ridge is cut off in a bluff facing Penns creek at Weikert station, the first or most northern outcrop is opened 12″ thick on a dip of 50° N, W. This drift has been carried in 25 yards and stoped up 60 yards, with several additional adits near the hill top, 200′ above creek level.
The same ore-bed has evidently been opened in two drifts a little further south, one in the synclinal basin and the
