Bituminous rock

After months of distractions, I'm trying to get back onto some local history projects. Thanks in part to a post at the Researchers Anonymous bb (by RA member Rick Hyman), I finally bit the bullet and joined Ancestry.com. In addition to its intended use for genealogy research, the site contains many helpful resources for local history researchers. I'm using it to gather info about the early County residents involved in bituminous rock mining, production, transportation and construction. The mining took place mostly on the lands of a handful of North coast property owners. Some were originally dairy farmers like the Enright and Majors families. Others seem to have been mainly miners, like A. Walrath and I. L. Thurber. Davis and Cowell also got involved; the northwest corner of their holdings contained some bituminous rock.