Excerpt from History of Reynoldsville and Vicinity: Including Winslow Township

Until long after the Carboniferous age had passed all life was in the water. The land was yet nothing 'but rock, bare and desolate. There was no sound of singing birds and chirping insects. Only the crash of the lightning, the roar of thunder, and the moaning of the wind broke the stillness as the storm beat against the rocky hills.

When the Carboniferous era had passed away there came the Triassic, then the Jurassic and the reptile age, and the Cretaceous period. Later was the post-tertiary era. With these divisions of time came new animal and vegetable life.

In the glacial period, of the later era, the cold was intense, the climate being like it now is in Greenland, where in the valleys ice is often several thousand feet thick and is deep on high eleva tions. While there is abundant evidence of such a period having existed in sections of what is now Pennsylvania there is but little proof of it in some of the central counties including Jefferson. But it must have existed here at least at intervals, the glaciers coming from the north.

At that time an immense quantity of earth was dug out in this vicinity} by the action of ice making a depression which later created a lake, as is shown by the present formation of the surface of the ground. The foot of this body of water} was just below Reynolds ville, and extended from near the present railroad cut to the oppo site side; of the valley. A ridge yet remains which made a barrier to the lake. It wore through this ridge after a great many centuries, emptying itself, and what is now the Sandy Lick icreek was then gradually formed. Previously the water ran out through a more shallow channel a little south of the present course of the creek and flowed into what is now Trout Run a short distance above its mouth. One branch of the lake extended to the present location of Rathmel, and another to that, of Soldier, a distance of two or three miles from the foot. The head was near what is now Sabula, mak ing it not far from 13 miles long. A part of the present sites of Falls Creek and dubois were covered by it. The same region even now is so level that were the Sandy Lick Creek just below Reynolds ville darned to 83 feet above its present level the lake would reform and its waters would flow eastward through the Sabula tunnel. In the ages following its formation the bottom was covered with sand and gravel which washed into it and now when digging water wells on the low ground in Reynoldsville no rock is found, only sand and gravel being encountered.

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