The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-09-06
THEDAKOTA COAL FIELDS
The Structure of the Bad Lands-A
Chaos of Red Clay.
Flaming Fields of Coal Converting Clay
Into Terra COtta-The Marvellous
Freaks of Fire and Water.

AS one ltdN6S 1OlSlldlCh dhN NPPAO"SASS
the Little Missouri the country undergoes a
gradual transition from rolling prairie and
becomes scalloped with irregular mounds,
ridges and pinnacles. Rising in the early
morning | saw from the car window what
at first took to be prairie fire kindled from
the locomotive, but which proved not to be
the superficial vegetation of the early sum-
mer now sere and brown, but really bed
OF so-called Ignite, similar to that mined at
the bluffs of Pyramid Park. This coal is of
the kind known as Ignite, and does
not belong to the Goals of the carboniferous
age, of which nearly 1000, 900 square miles
are spread in some half dozen different
patches from Nova Scotia to eastern Kansas,
anS of which our Indiana and Pennsylvania
Goals are typical representatives. The Goals
of the Western plains of the Rocky noun
tains and of the Pacific slope, are, geologi-
cally speaking, of much later formation.
The productive coal fields of the West are
known as the great Ignite formation"
and are transition between the cretaceous
and the eocene periods. The coal fields of
the Western United States do not exceed
10000 square miles; of this three-fourths is
east VI IhS IlOChy IIOuubdllSi pdlG dOOu1
New Mexico, area near Denver and
Marshall and the Upper Missouri and Y ell
lowstone area. Coal is not as abundant or
OF as good quality in the west as in the east,
although much of the cretaceous coal is of
fair quality. The Yellowstone and Missouri
river Goals have from to 10 per cent. of ASH
45 to 80 per cent of coke (pure carbon)
about per cent. of water and 80 to 40 per
cent. of volatile matter. Their heating pow
er is much less than that of Indiana block,
which has 63 per cent. of carbon or COKE
only per cent of ash, but half as much
water and about the same amount of gas.
To get the best use OF these Goals, they are
mixed with from one-fourth to one-half
with eastern Goals for railroad use. The
Goals which underlie, and by their burning
have, in fact, formed the bad lands, are
rich in various sulphurets, and like the slack
Goals about our own coal-mines, take fire
spontaneously. The area near the track,
which saw on the morning of Aug. 4 was
burning at its edges only, and about a space
of some 200 feet in diameter. As the coal bed
burned the baked clay and thin soil fell some
two feet forming fault" in the strata, and
flame was about foot high, and the heat
was transforming the clays above them into
beds of rock, having the character of hard
burned brick or drain tile, only of finer tex
ture than of ordinary commercial pottery.
We saw the same fire on our return and for
forty miles the track is ballasted with the
natural brick or terra Gotta of the ragged
hills or buttes-any well-defned hill of the
plains is called a butte-among which the
train wends its way. At times a pure terra
Gotta is formed, as porous as though sawdust
had been mixed with the clay before burn
ing. Such pieces are tougher than pumice-
stone; only the powerful blows of heavy
hammer break them. Most of the burned
masses show qualification and break into
splintering fragments, and again with
shell-ke fracture. Where the coal-beds
were thick, the heat great and iron abundant
in the clay the substance has been fused in to
fragments of every conceivable shape, some-
times taking on suggestive and imita-
tive forms. Many such personate
masses are seen on the way
from Pyramid Park. ten miles to
the burning mine they look like irregular
masses of lron-ore, and are very heavy. One
such is known as the Lady of the Bad
Lands, and aroused the intensest interest of
Major Bickham, who was ever on the alert
Tor any feminine appearance, and has
treated the readers OF the Dayton (O) Jour
nal to an igneous and somewhat aqueous
legend of her. / may say that have her
nose and left ear in my possession, and know
themto be only fragments of clay iron
stone.
The burning NINE" ten miles from the
station is a bed of Ignite on fire. 1t gives
OIL so sulphurous an odor that at first
thought the heat due to the decomposition
of sulphides. But the glow is red; little sui
phurous acid is formed; you can stand over
the crevasse or fovet that is formed without
fear OF burning suffocation. Sulphur is
volatilized and re crystaized on the edges of
the crevces. There no smoke; the air
QuIyers with the heat as IN a spring morn
ing over waarm field. The burning area is
ten to fifteen rods square, and has been on
fire since the first visit by white men, and
no one knows how many centuries BEFORE
1t progresses but a few ieet each year
Sticks, grass, etc, thrust in the crevces
formed by the earth's caving away as the fire
creepS through and consumes the coal be-
meath, are at once set on fire. At one place CT
CARS were lighted, so that the myth of Pro-
metheus bringing fire to needy men was
again realized.
This fire is but one of a number that are
known on the Bad Lands. Throughout an area
200 miles long from north to south and over
fifty miles wide the traces of similar fires
are seen. They have probably occurred
wherever this coal is found. The view from
some of the ridges defies description; it is
stranger than any gorge or volcanic forma-
tons, and as difficult to describe as the
geysers or the Yellowstone canon. As one
approaches from the east over the Northern
Pacific he passes over. praries of gentle
undulations and monotonous outlook, not
unlike those of Northern Illinois, except
for the absence of trees and streams of water
But long before we reach the Bad Lands
proper-certanly sixty seventy miles east
OF the little Missouri region-an occasional