The Berea Sandstone, or Berea Grit: A Building Stone and Grindstone from Northern Ohio

     One mid-morning after a 12-hour night shift I was woken up by a phone call. The man on the line was looking for a geologist, someone who knows about building stones in Northeast Ohio. I asked him if it was the Berea Sandstone. He said he thought that is what it was. He owned what he called a mine, but really meant a quarry of the stone and was in some kind of dispute about its boundaries and depth. He needed to know its thickness. Not being an expert in this area I referred him to the Ohio Geological Survey in Columbus, knowing that they had some old reports about the Berea Grit, as the sandstone is called in its building and grindstone manifestation.

     Since some of my blog posts are related to personal experience, I thought I would research and write a bit about the Berea Grit and its history and qualities as a building stone. The sand is indeed thick in Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. It outcrops in Northeast Ohio, near Cleveland, where it has been extensively quarried and milled.

     As an oil and gas geologist from Ohio I am well aware of the Berea Sandstone, having mapped it in Southern Ohio and studied oil and gas production from it. It was once thought to be of the Early Mississippian period but now is assigned to Late Devonian. The sand made several river channels through West Virginia and deltas in Western West Virginia and Ohio. Many of these produce natural gas and oil. I even mapped one section I interpreted as an ebb tide delta with a single well of prolific gas production (by Berea standards). A little further in Ohio there is an older sandstone just below it, known as the Second Berea, that makes up offshore marine bars. An equivalent sandstone in Western Pennsylvania is known as the Murrysville Sandstone. The Berea Sandstone is also present as a lower permeability rock in Kentucky where it produces oil and there is an equivalent but likely slightly younger sandstone in Michigan. The sediment source of the sand was the highlands of Eastern Canada.  

     The qualities of the sand lend themselves well to being a building and grinding stone. Berea Grit has a high silica content, composed mainly of quartz grains with silica cement. An old book/magazine from 1896 notes that quarrying of Berea Sandstone began in 1830. First, until around 1840 or 1845, only grindstones were produced. Then flagstones and building stones were produced. By 1893 the dozen or so companies producing the stone consolidated into the Cleveland Stone Company, which was the largest sandstone producer in the United States at the time. As a building stone the Berea faces several large courthouses and buildings in the U.S. and Canada. It is also used as a patio stone. The Berea Sandstone Patio company recognizes two grades of the Berea: The Amherst Gray and the Birmingham Buff. 

     The sandstone is named after the town of Berea, along the Rocky River, twelve miles southwest of Cleveland and six miles from Lake Erie. There is an annual Berea Grindstone festival in the town.

 

“The requirements for a good, natural grinding stone are that it be sharp sand, clean—free from clay or other impurities—and strongly cemented together. However, when this ideal condition is reached, any further cement is objection-able, since it reduces the grit. The coarser the stone the faster the cutting. The Berea grit is composed of about 4 percent super hard aluminum oxide (corundum) bonded with about 93 percent silicon dioxide (quartz), the remainder being iron, magnesium, and calcium oxide. Near perfect in grain, the sandstone was ideal, cutting evenly and efficiently.”

 

Source: Berea Sandstone Patio (website)

     The Berea is also quarried in South Central Ohio as the Waverly Stone but there it is of lower quality, having a higher clay content. The high-quality Berea Grit in northern Ohio was easy to cut and milling the stone into shapes resulted in very little waste. It was used extensively as a grindstone and as a whetstone. In 1915, about 85% of the grindstones in the U.S. were made from Berea Grit.

     Unfortunately, there were some tragedies regarding the stone’s production. Towns with quarries were jagged and uneven with rock strewn about. The workers, particularly in the mills where the stone was turned to make grinding wheels, developed silicosis as the fine silica dust entered and accumulated in their lungs. Many workers died from it. Incidentally, the more recent increase in black lung disease from coal mines (after falling somewhat when better safety measures came) is really attributable to silicosis as mining machines tear through adjacent sandstones to get to other coal seams. The average time a worker spent in Berea Grit quarries and mills was just 5 years.

     Precision grinding machines made of alloy steel began to replace grinding stones at the turn of the century. The steel machines used new synthetic materials for grinding: vitrified emery, carborundum (silicon carbide), and alundum (artificial corundum) became the abrasives of choice for grinding wheels. These materials replaced sandstone. Cheaper concrete and cement replaced the sandstone for use in sidewalks, curbs, and foundations.

 Use of the Berea for Core Testing for the Oil and Gas Industry 

     The Berea Sandstone is also used in the petroleum industry as a standard for testing cores. “For the past 30 years, Berea Sandstone core samples have been widely recognized by the petroleum industry as the best stone for testing the efficiency of chemical surfactants.” A company called Cleveland Quarries supplies Berea for this purpose as well as for Berea Patio company and other uses. The high permeability of the sand lends it well for use as a testing standard. Cleveland Quarries’ Berea Sandstone Cores markets the rock for this use and describes three grades based on permeability and other features:

 

“Split Rock has visible laminations but can be classified as homogeneous. These samples typically yield mD ratings between 100-300.

 

Liver Rock has little top no visible laminations and is homogenous. These samples typically have mD ratings above 500 and can be found with mD ratings up to 900 when measured with air.

 

Dundee samples are from the Massilon Formation. While having consistent porosities and densities to our Berea Sandstone™, our Ohio Sandstone samples are not considered homogeneous. Its laminations do not run parallel to each other and is very porous, therefore yielding the higher ratings of 900mD-2500mD.”

References:

 

Wikipedia: Berea Sandstone. Berea Sandstone - Wikipedia

Rowley, Ira P. (1893). "Sandstone Interests of Northern Ohio - IV". Stone; an Illustrated Magazine. D. H. Ranck Publishing Company. pp. 200–203. Stone; an Illustrated Magazine - Google Books

Ohio’s Sandstone: Once the source of the World’s Finest Grinding Stones. Dana Martin Batory. Early American Industries Association. Excerpted from The Chronicle Vol. 60 No. 1, March 2007. Ohio’s Sandstone: Once the Source of the World’s Finest Grinding Stones – EAIA (eaiainfo.org)

Berea Sandstone Patio. Website. Berea Sandstone - Patio stone, sandstone, Cleveland, Ohio (sandstonepatio.com)

Berea Sandstone Cores. Website. Berea Sandstone Cores | Cleveland Quarries