America’s Early Aborigine Flint Mines
By Don Scott

For over 60 years, the Scott family, Marie, Betty, Joseph, Kenny, Paul, Don and Kenneth PHOTO Scott studied America’s “Flint Artifacts”, including Coshocton, Hocking and Perry Counties’ Upper Mercer and the Flint Ridge Vanport archeological mining operations and much more.

We live between Flint Ridge and the Perry County quarries, which are about 40 miles apart. We often hear from the experts, “Hey, what’s with all that black flint where you live?” We could write volumes about our exciting mine explorations and studies. It was common for us to spend every time available exploring and studying these extensive mines. We feel it is important to convey what we have discovered before it is lost to time.

America’s flint formations are in small to large regional areas. Most of America’s flints are low quality and not qualified as flint, but is actually chert. Experts say; “As long as we understand it, it is ok to call chert flint”.

Flint is dense and has a conchoidal fracture; it’s weather resistant and has a luster. Conversely, chert may fracture in many ways. It’s dull, porous, and tends to weather with a white patina. Some areas contain several layers of cherts, flints and limestone, one above the other from 20 to 50 feet apart. In Ohio, the colorful Vanport known as Flint Ridge “Jewel flint” (photo) starts in section 20 of Franklin County at about 1,235 feet above sea level (ASL) on the knobs, and then east and usually found around 1,100 feet ASL. The black Zaleski layer is found about 800-1,000 feet ASL and looks like the Upper Mercer but is freer of cavities, is higher in quality, has more density, shine, translucence and looks sandy. The Upper Mercer known as Coshocton ranges in elevations from 700 to 1,100 feet ASL and lays 105 feet below the Vanport and 43 feet below the Zaleski.

Newer geological cherts and flints at higher elevations are better in quality and have more silica. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and many states beyond have thousands of outcroppings and hundreds of mines. Ohio’s beautiful jewel quality Vanport Flint has massive geological formations, followed by the Upper Mercer, then Zaleski and smallest is the footprint of the Brush Creek, Columbus, Delaware and Mississippian formations. Ohio cherts include Bisher and Devonian. Our Ohio Aborigines found thousands of exposed outcroppings of chert and flint all over North and South America, which they used for arrows, drills, knives, spears

and various tools. Continued extractions of certain outcroppings turned into large mining industries. The Vanport mining operations found additional deposits beyond Flint Ridge, in Jackson, Hocking, Lawrence, Perry, Scioto and Vinton Counties.

The Upper Mercer’s, (known as Coshocton) mining is scattered. One of the massive linear mines in Perry County, only obvious 30 years ago, is now difficult to find due to the erosion from the hillside above. Many of the mines and outcroppings in America are no longer found due to the loss of flint to erosion, no-till farming, modern flint knappers and building constructions. The massive amounts of waste debris from knapping around the flint mines was once thick in the mining areas are mostly gone today. The many large American flint mines ten thousand years ago developed into commercial trading operations with distribution into the surrounding states and beyond.

America’s cherts and flint deposits are in layers associated with saltwater marine limestone. Simply put, chert and flint were formed as the shallow sea’s salt waters invaded the coal formations. The salt water reacted with the acids from the land-grown vegetation making up the coal and masses of liquid silica washed out to sea. The compressing weight of sediment from hundreds of thousands of years, converted the remaining silica gel layers into flint and chert. Ohio’s marine formations contain chert and flint with few exceptions. Sometimes there are layers of scattered flint nodules, or irregular lenses in the limestone. Glacial, water and wind erosion exposed outcroppings of these sediment-covered formations. Ohio’s chert and flints’ appearance vary from black, gray, clear, green, pink, red, blue, purple and white. Irons like pyrite made black, blue, gray, green, pink and reds. Limonite makes the stones brown and yellow. Hematite makes the red and purple colors. And the coal’s carbons give different grays and blacks.

Many flints are fossiliferous, with colorless vitreous quartz crystals.

Many of America’s flint mines cover large areas. Flints vary in colors, from pinkish, light brown, milk white, variegated brown with other colors. A huge area of Illinois, Iowa and surrounding states has a wonderful white flint that knapped into wonderful points including the Great Lakes early Paleo Dalton,

and beautiful early Archaic. The black blue Upper Mercer flint’s large area is in Coshocton, Muskingum, Licking, Hocking, Eastern Fairfield, Vinton and most of Perry County. There is a massive area of brown flint starting in Eastern Ohio going east through Pennsylvania into the Eastern U.S. In Southern Indiana, there is a famous area of very productive mines with beautiful green flint called “Indiana Green”. West of the Mississippi there are massive obsidian mines caused by volcanoes, traded all the way East to the Atlantic Ocean. I personally found an obsidian blade core on our farm in Eastern Ohio.

Many mines find the flint attached to a base of blue limestone.

Mining was commonly accomplished by under mining the layer of limestone on the hillsides or digging linear pits in the flat areas. Some flint was mined by digging into the outcroppings back into the hillside forming caves however; none of these cavities appears suitable for living shelter due to their dampness.

America’s mining extractions were massive, very laborious, from the Paleo

through all of the Archaic and Woodland and Mississippian periods. Exploratory conical pits were dug by all cultures searching for the best flints. The perfectly shaped conical pits are exploratory digs for flint.

In Memory of: Paul David Scott