Flint Ridge

People have been quarrying this ridge for at least twelve thousand years.

Flint Ridge Ancient Quarries and Nature Preserve sits in Hopewell Township, Licking County, Ohio, about three miles north of Brownsville where Brownsville Road meets Flint Ridge Road. The old quarry pits are still visible in the ground, and there is a museum on the site owned and run by the Ohio History Connection.

The stone is Vanport flint, a variety of quartz, and it sits in the Vanport Limestone Member of the Allegheny Formation, which is Pennsylvanian in age. Geology.com records the outcrop as a layer between one and twelve feet thick running along the ridge, and calls this one of the most important localities for flint in eastern North America.

Native Americans worked it from hundreds of separate small quarries strung along the ridge. Some travelled hundreds of miles to get here and take it. What they made from it, tools and weapons, then travelled a great deal further: Ohio flint has been found as far west as present-day Kansas City and south around the Gulf of Mexico.

The trade ran in both directions, which is the detail that turns a quarry into a map. Flint from the Knife River area in what is now North Dakota has been found at archaeological sites in Ohio associated with the Hopewell culture. Stone was moving across the continent in both directions, and this ridge was one end of it.

The quality is the reason. Flint holds an edge, and the discovery that it could be worked into sharp tools was made independently by Stone Age people almost everywhere it could easily be found. Where it was not available locally, people travelled or traded for finished tools or raw pieces, because survival depended on having a durable material that would take an edge.

Ohio flint is the official state gemstone of Ohio, which for once is a designation that means something. This is protected ground and a nature preserve, so come to look at the pits and the museum rather than to fill a bucket.