THE SHARON FORMATION: AN IMPORTANT, BUT ALMOST FORGOTTEN, HISTORIC DIMENSION STONE IN NORTHEASTERN OHIO

During the nineteenth century, the Sharon Formation was widely quarried for building purposes, including dimension stone, in northeastern Ohio. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, however, the use of the Sharon as a dimension stone was eclipsed by the use of the more famous Berea Sandstone. Although small amounts of the Sharon Formation continued to be quarried for dimension stone into the twentieth century, it was almost forgotten as a building stone. Bownocker, in his Building Stones of Ohio (1915), makes no mention of once important Summit County quarries, and structures made of Sharon Formation stone have sometimes been mistakenly referred to as being made of Berea Sandstone.

Most Sharon Formation quarries were small and supplied stone for local use. Summit County quarries in Akron and in Twinsburg Township led in production of building stone. Some of these quarries, including the Parmelee quarry in Twinsburg and the Tressel & Schneider quarry in downtown Akron, are depicted in nineteenth-century county atlases and insurance maps. These maps show quarry locations, and in some cases, size; illustrations of some show their mode of production. There seem to be no historic maps of some quarries, and some are not noted in the historical literature. A number of Sharon quarries can still be located, although some are partly or completely obscured by urban and suburban development.

Most quarried Sharon was beige, but a desirable, rarer red facies was also quarried. Both color types contain abundant iron, either as hydrous goethite (brown), or oxidized hematite (red). Most existing Sharon structures are beige: Examples are the base of the Civil War Monument (1876) and the Cochran house (1836) in Twinsburg, and the Perkins Mansion (1837) and the old stone schoolhouse (c. 1840) in Akron.

Despite its softness when first quarried, Sharon Formation stone has held up fairly well when used for buildings and other structures, arguably because of its high porosity and permeability, as well as case hardening. In parts of the unit, kaolinite and iron-oxide cement has limited the infilling of pores by later cementation, and point and concavo-convex grain contacts, and early clay cement, have helped to bind and armor its sand grains.