Pennsylvanian System
Type section and synonyms: The name Danville was first used by Bradley (1870, p. 250-252) for a coal near Danville, Ill. Wanless later (1956, p. 11) designated the E2 sec. 7, T. 19 N., R. 11 W., Vermilion County, Ill., as the type locality for this coal, which Kosanke and others (1960, p. 35) recognized as the Danville (No. 7) Coal Member of the Carbondale Formation of Illinois. Use of this name was extended to Indiana by Wier (1961, 1965) and Wier and Gray (1961), and the coals previously known as Coal VII (Ashley, 1899, p. 842), the Millersburg Coal (Fuller and Ashley, 1902, p. 2), the Upper Millersburg Coal (Wier and Stanley, 1953; Wier, 1958), and the Little Newburg Coal (Owen, 1839, p. 11: 1856, p. 36: Ashley, 1909, p. 97) were designated the Danville Coal Member of the Dugger Formation (Wier, 1961, 1965; Burger, 1970).
Description and correlation: The Danville Coal Member in Indiana is a bright-banded bituminous coal cropping out from the Ohio River at Newburgh, Warrick County, northward to southern Vermillion County. It ranges from 0.2 to 6.5 feet (0.1 to 2 m) in thickness and thins generally from north to south, averaging 4.3 feet (1.3 m) in Vermillion and Vigo Counties, 3.3 feet (1 m) in Sullivan and Knox Counties, and 2.1 feet (0.6 m) in Pike, Gibson, and Warrick Counties. The coal contains clay and shale in thin partings, films of clay in vertical joints, and local concentrations of pyrites or marcasite.
The Danville coal, the uppermost member of the Dugger Formation, has been strip mined in places along its Indiana outcrop. It is erroneously called Coal VI by the miners in northern Vigo County and southern Vermillion County. The correlations of the Danville Coal Member and the older Hymera Coal Member, which are recognized throughout much of the Indiana coalfield, with two coalbeds that are locally called respectively the Upper and Lower Millersburg Coals in the southern part of Indiana are still tentative. The correlations are uncertain because continuity of the beds is interrupted (Gray, 1979).
