Beechmont Neighborhood Association

Knobs, Indiana & Kentucky

in Indiana

New Albany is situated on the Ohio river, just below the great Falls, and at the foot of the "Knobs." It has a population of about fifteen thousand, and is largely engaged in manufacturing; among the most prominent are the Ohio Falls Iron Works; New Albany Rail Mill; Steam Forge; Star Glass Company, and New Albany Glass Works. The Star Glass Company have extensive houses and machinery for making all sizes of fine finished plate glass and mirrors, and are, also, largely engaged in the manufacture of window glass and bottles.


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The "Knobs" are, conical shaped hills composed of the soft shaley rocks which lie at the base of the lower carboniferous limestone formation; the lower portion being the "black slate," which here rests immediately upon the corniferous limestone. The hills at Edwardsville are about six hundred feet above low water in the Ohio river at New Albany.

At the base of the "Knobs," in the northwestern edge of the city, there is, above the valleys, sixty or seventy feet of greenish, marly shale, which contains one or more bands of impure, carbonate of iron, from four to six inches thick, which will yield from forty-five to fifty per cent. of metal. The earthy part is mostly carbonate of lime. A similar ore is used at the Nelson furnace, in Nelson county, Kentucky, and the quality of iron made from it is good. Superimposing the shales, is a heavy bedded sandstone, usually fine grained, even colored, and well adapted for building purposes, and hearthstones for blast furnaces. Above the sandstone are layers of encrinital limestone, that are extensively quarried, near Edwardsville, for building purposes. Surmounting the whole are the geodiferous beds, and sandstone and cherty lithostrotian beds, making, in all, about six hundred feet of strata, above the low water of the river, at New Albany.

The road will pass this ridge through a tunnel, which is now under construction.

In the bed of Indian creek, at the crossing of the road to Byrneville, the same layers of limestone are visible, that are seen at an elevation of about five hundred feet above the Ohio river, at William Benson's quarry, four and a half miles west of New Albany. Byrneville, fourteen miles from New Albany, is on the geodiferous limestone, and between there and Fairdale, in Harrision county, the cherty, ferruginous limestone is the prevailing rock. It is readily eroded and dissolved by running water, which has given rise to caves and "sinkholes."

In Kentucky

"The Knobs" is the physiographic region that borders the Outer Bluegrass. It consists of hundreds of isolated, steep sloping, often cone-shaped hills (see photo above). In physiographic terms, the hills are monadnocks or erosional remnants. They were originally continuous with the Mississippian Plateau, but were separated from the plateau by stream erosion. Many of the knobs are still capped by erosionally-resistant limestones or sandstones (see cross section A-A' below). The sharp slopes of the Knobs are mostly composed of shales of the Mississippian-age Borden Formation, which are less resistant to erosion than the overlying limestones and sandstones. The base of the Knobs commonly contain Devonian black shales (see cross section A-A' below). The Knobs physiographic region occurs along the outcrop belt of the Devonian-Mississippian contact. The knobs are usually associated with the outcrop belt of Silurian and Devonian rocks which commonly crop out nearby. Bernheim Forest (south of Louisville) and Berea, Kentucky are located in the Knobs Region.