USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 2
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Soils are everywhere the products of rock disintegration, and so the quality of the soils in any locality must necessarily be determined, in a great measure, by the kind of rock from which they were derived. Then, considering this, every layer, from the very oldest rocks of the Mississippi Valley and every later forma- tion, has contributed its quota of materials toward making the present fine con- dition, and the history of lowa's soils, therefore, embraces every stage of geo- logical development, and almost every variety of soil. Buchanan soil is almost uniformly good.
We have told something as to the geological formation of these Iowa prairies, but there is another question quite as interesting and more puzzling. It has been the subject of scientific investigation for many years to determine the real causes which have produced the great treeless plains of the Mississippi Valley. East of Ohio prairies are unknown, but as we go westward they increase in number and size. In Western Indiana and from there to the Rocky Mountains, west and north, prairies prevail, although groves are often seen, and timber generally borders the lakes and streams. lowa is included in this vast prairie land.
In Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, the prairies are quite level, while in łowa they are quite rolling, affording fine surface drainage. This absence of trees on the prairies is, by some authorities, attributed to the physical character of the soil, and especially its exceeding fineness which is averse to the growth of anything but a superficial vegetation, and an insuperable barrier to the neees- sary aceess of air to the roots of deeply rooted vegetation. Other authorities claim that the treeless prairies are the result of unnatural causes not due to the influence of the elimate, nor the character or composition of the soil, nor to the character of any of the underlying formations, but to antumnal fires, which have left the prairies treeless, and strangely enough we do find them on every kind of a surface, level, hilly, and broken, and every variety of a soil, alluvial, drift and laeustral, and sometimes a single prairie whose surface includes all these varieties, portions of which may be sandy, gravelly, elayey or loamy, as are right here in Buchanan County. An encyclopedia article on this subject coneludes that the continuons growth of the same species of plants upon the same soil with the exerements from the roots and the animal accumulation of their own dead foliage and stalks, become poisonous to the particular species though perfectly nutritions to plants of different species. Especially is this notice- able with trees which eventually become sickly and die, then forest fires rage through those sickly and dead places, and utterly destroy the remnant of vege- tation ; after these autumnal forest fires, rank weeds and grasses would grow and they in turn would ripen and dry and be consumed by fire, and thus with not enough grass eating animals to feed down this luxuriant growth of wild prairie grass the same conditions continued until the qualities of the soil that had become noxious to trees had been assimilated and in Nature's rule of "rota- tion of crops." the soil was again fitted for their growth. Trees were beginning
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
to resume possession of the prairies when the settlement began, and the increase of the butl'alo and other grass eating animals had decreased the inflammable material for those ruinous autumnal fires. And this seems a very plausible solu- tion to this interesting question, especially since we have the records of the pioneers as to the awful destruction and unquenchableness of the fires that used to sweep through the prairies at an early day, and which they had to fight vigorously with every known means. But when we remember that the wild prairie grass was so thick in some places one could scarcely separate it (enough to see the earth beneath) and so long that it would switch a man on horseback in the face, the intensity and rapaciousness of these fires are not to be won- dered at.
Two Independence gentlemen, Mr. E. B. Older and Dr. S. Deering, though not professional scientists, found time, in the midst of aetive business pursuits, to make themselves familiar with the seienee of geology in general and of Buchanan County in particular, and to them are we indebted for mueh of the data herein. Mr. Older gave the information in regard to the general geologieal features of the county, while Mr. Deering gave a fine account of the principal fossils found here.
Both of these men, now long since gone to their eternal reward, were highly respected and prominent citizens of Independence for many years, and were men of wide knowledge and experience.
Mr. Deering had at one time, about the year 1877, discovered some dark shale in a fine stone quarry east of town and the apprehension was that they might find coal anderneath. Ile interested and assisted the state geologist, Professor Calvin, who made a thorough examination and in his report gave Mr. Deering credit as the discoverer of several new and interesting species of shales.
The common limestone which underlies the greater portion of Buchanan County, lines some of the river beds and banks, and creeps out in numerous places is what is known as Devonian rocks. About one-fourth of the county on the east and northeast is underlaid by the Upper Silurian. Both of these kinds of rock are composed largely of different varieties of limestone, mixed with shale. Many fine specimens of the Devonian rocks are found along the Wapsie and Otter Creek, and although they are easily quarried, they are not valuable for building stone, being too easily crumbled and too irregular, while the Upper Silurian is excellent for building purposes and formerly was used ahnost entirely for foundations which have been substituted in late years with cement blocks. Buchanan is said to be one of the richest counties in the state in fossils of the Devonian Age. The old quarry half a mile east of Independence, near the HI. T. Lynch home, was noted for its rare fossil shells and was visited by many paleon- tologists from abroad, and at that time, Mr. Deering had probably the best collection of fossils that had ever been made. What became of this collection " we are not aware. In describing his collection it says he had specimens of eighteen different genera and twenty-six species. Five of the latter were pro- nouneed by Professor Calvin "new to seienee."
The finding of dark, slaty shales ( that often oeeur in the Devonian limestones) in the bottom of those quarries made quite a bit of excitement in Independence. The quarry men thought they had discovered a veritable coal mine and penetrated the shales to a considerable depth but further drilling only proved discouraging
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
for it exposed just the same dark shale mixed with fragments of real coal, but nothing of any value except the discovery of these five new species.
Writing about the probability of coal being a native "gem of these parts" we .read in a Civilian of the early date of March 12, 1857, where a public well (and with the proverbial town pump, we suppose) was being dng on Main Street between the postoffice and the White House (one of the early day hotels), a blessing to the business men as well as the families of the upper part of the village. The well had been excavated to the depth of about twenty feet when they discovered what they supposed was coal. The item says "In appearance it resembles the cannel coal of Missouri and from a trial made, it appears to be of a superior quality." (Evidently they were mistaken or else our beautiful Main Street might have been a dirty mine dump long years since.) Another remark in that item was that the ground was frozen solid to a depth of six feet and that in March. Water was first drawn on May 6, 1857. Not only did our forebears think they had discovered a coal mine under the town pump, but we find quite a lengthy article in a June, 1858, paper-substantiating the fact that gold was certainly and satisfactorily and positively found in this county-because Mr. E. Miller, who lived about three miles southeast of this village, had been seen by the editor of the Civilian to wash out several speci- mens of genuine gold. Messrs. Clark Hedges and Meyers, ou the same day found several specimens on the Elzy Wilson farm east of Independence (now the McGill place). Several niee specimens were found near Fairbank. Mr. Jed Lake also dug up chunks of gold (it does not state where) which would be considered a paying yield even in California. On Monday, several gentlemen who were still credulous, visited the diggings to see for themselves, and they came back perfectly satisfied that gold is deposited in the soil of Buchanan County. It has also been found at Camp Creek, but by far the most encouraging pros- pects were on Otter Creek, where gold exists in quartz. Mr. J. S. McGary panned out some "color of gold" (as the Forty-niners called it) in Wilson's spring on the Brandon road but not in any sensational quantity. Rocks of this species from the size of a hazel nut to that of a man's head, bearing a good proportion of gold in quartz, have been picked up quite plentifully. E. B. Older bought one piece for which he paid a dollar and several other specimens have been sold from thirty cents to a dollar. These specimens could not have been brought from California as there is too much rock in proportion to the gold. A short time will tell us whether digging will pay as there are quite a number now prospecting.
This reads like a fairy tale, but it was actual happenings and like the miners' mountains of gold, our prospeets all panned out.
For the scientific reader the following data is taken from the Annual Report, 1897, of the Iowa Geological Survey prepared by Samuel Calvin :
SITUATION AND AREA
Bnehanan is one of the important agricultural counties in the northeastern part of Iowa. Its location is so near the Mississippi River that it attracted early attention from the pioneer homeseekers. Before the advent of the railroad the great watercourse was the main highway of travel, and Dubuque was one of the
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
points from which immigrants began the overland journey into the interior of the state. Buchanan is the third county west of the river, and its relative prox- imity to what was at the time the nearest market had its influence in determining the choice of many settlers; but the principal attraction was found in the beautiful expanses of undulating prairies, with soils marvelously fertile and easy of cultivation, in the groves that dotted the prairies, and in the wide stretches of woodland skirting drainage streams that ran clear and full through the whole round of seasons.
Buchanan County embraces sixteen congressional townships. The second correction line divides the county into two nearly equal parts. Delaware and Dubuque counties lie between Buchanan and the eastern boundary of the state. Fayette and Winneshick separate this county from Minnesota. Buchanan is bounded on the west by Black Hawk, and on the south by Benton and Linn.
GEOLOGICAL WORK IN BUCHANAN COUNTY
Previous to the inauguration of the present survey, the geology of Buchanan County was the subject of more or less study by a number of observers. As usual, in this part of lowa, the first geologist to enter the county was Dr. David Dale Owen, whose parties exploring the mineral lands in the autumn of 1839, exam- ined the townships since named Middlefield, Fremont, Madison and Buffalo. Limestone is reported at one point in Madison Township, but in general no rock was seen except granite boulders, some of which are described as of gigantic size.
The next geologist to visit Buchanan County was Prof. J. D. Whitney, but no detailed work was undertaken, and the report subsequently published contained only a very briel reference to the exposures along the Wapsipinicon from Independence to the south line of the county. No rocks were noted except those
belonging to the Devonian period. In the same report Prof. James Hall described and figured a number of interesting fossil forms from the quarries wear Independence. In Hall and Whitney's report the limestones at Inde- pendence are correlated with the Hamilton formation of New York.
In 1872 Hall and Whitfield published a paper on the Devonian of Iowa, referring incidentally to the limestones at Independence. and correlating them. as had been done before, with the New York Hamilton.
Certain coral-bearing beds at Waterloo, now known to lie above the lime- stones at Independence, were. however, referred by Hall and Whitfield, in the report cited. to the Corniferons or Epper Helderberg, while the Lime Creek shales, which carry a fauna intimately related to the fauna of shales below the Independence limestones, were correlated with the New York Chemung.
The shale beds lying below the Independence limestones were described by Calvin in 1878. The position and characteristics of the Independence shales were noted. and attention was directed to the fact that the fauna of these lower shales was very similar to that found in the shales along Lime Creek, in Floyd and Cerro Gordo counties. The Independence shales, however, lie near the base of the Devonian system, as it is developed in lowa, while the Lime Creek shales lie near the summit. with at least 150 feet of limestones between the two horizons : and the practical identity of the two fannas could lead but to the conclusion that the whole Devonian of lowa, as then known, belonged to a single series.
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
There are some references to the rocks of Buchanan County in the report of the tenth eensus. The statistics on the quarries and building stones of Iowa were compiled by MeGee. A brief description of the quality of the stone near Independence and Quasqueton is given, and all the Devonian strata of the state are referred to the Hamilton system.
There are frequent references to the topography, drainage and rock exposures of Buehanan County in McGee's memoir on the Pleistocene history of North- eastern Towa. The records of a number of wells give the best seetions so far available of the Pleistocene deposits of the county.
TOPOGRAPHY
The surface of Buchanan County presents little variety in the way of topo- graphic forms. Much the greater part of the surface is covered with drift of Iowan age, and is diversified only by the gentle swells and broad, ill-drained sloughs that everywhere mark the presence of this sheet of till. Examples of erosion are almost entirely absent over the whole area of lowan drift, the topographie forms being due mainly to the eecentrieities of iee molding. Only along the drainage courses are there any signs of erosion since the retreat of the lowan ice, and even here the process is in the incipient stage, for it is gener- ally limited to the cutting of the shallow channel and to the earving of short, secondary trenches that extend back only a few rods from the stream. The general surface of the country remains about as it was left by the lowan ice. The general drift surface is practically unmodified by erosive agents.
In the interval between the going of the Kansan ice and the coming of the . Iowan the surface of the older drift was deeply eroded, and in many cases the present surface configuration is controlled to a greater or less extent by the inequalities thus produced. Indieations of pre-Iowan topography, only partly disguised by the later drift, are seen-first. in the valley of the Maquoketa, and, second, in the gravel ridges rising forty or fifty feet above the level of the valley, in the northeast corner of Madison Township. The broad, shallow depression followed by Buffalo Creek, is a partly-filled pre-Iowan valley. It may indeed be preglacial. At all events it was a drainage course at the close of the Kansan, for beds of Buchanan gravels laid down during the melting and retreat of the Kansan ice, and now highly oxidized, are strewn all along its course in Buchanan County. The same is true of Pine Creek and its valley in the western part of Byron Township. The same is true to. a greater or less extent of every stream in the county. Their valleys, if the broad depressions in which they flow deserve to be called valleys, are not products of erosion since the retreat of the lowan ice. They were determined by the character of the surface before the lowan drift was deposited. This later drift simply veneered. without completely disguising the old valleys. Nearly all these valleys were waterways when the Kansan ice was melting and were partly choked by trains of gravel which is now recognized as the valley phase of the Buchanan gravels.
That the lowan drift, in certain localities, is very thin, and simply mantles a topography developed in pre-Iowan time, is illustrated at numerous points. There are ridges of weathered Buchanan gravels over which the lowan till is limited to a few inches of dark loam. Even in the valleys the deposit of Iowan
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
age is not infrequently less than a foot in thickness. A rounded, rocky bluff, rising sixty-five feet above the level of the river, in the southwest quarter of Seetion 4, Perry Township, has numerous Iowan boulders strewn over the entire surface, from the level of the water up to the summit, and stands as an example of an old topography practically unaffected by lowan drift. Over by far the larger portion of the county, however, the lowan drift completely conceals the characters of the pre-Kansan surface and presents a topography peculiarly its own.
Where typically developed, the lowan drift plain exhibits a surface that is rather gently undulating. The relief curves are low, broad and sweeping, with the concave portions often longer than the convex. Drainage of the broad, gently concave lowlands is imperfect, or was so before the introduction of artificial conditions. The only evidence of erosion is found in the narrow, shallow chan- nels of the drainage streams eut but little below the level of the otherwise unbroken plain.
Taken as a whole Fremont Township has more of the typical characteristics of the lowan drift plain than any other area of similar size in the county. The relief in general is very low, large areas being flat and imperfectly drained. This is particularly true of the broad plain which is bisected by Prairie Creek. From a short distance north of the center of the township, this stream flows in a narrow, shallow, trough-like diteh ; but the gradient is so low that the sluggish current is frequently brought apparently to a standstill by heds of spatter doek and other pond weeds that choke the channel. The broad, gravelly plain east of Buffalo ('reek, in the western part of the township, grades imperceptibly into the relatively high ridge of drift between Buffalo and Prairie ereeks, a ridge that forms the watershed between the Wapsipinicon and Maquoketa systems of . drainage. This ridge would. however, be inconspicuous if set in the midst of topography of pronounced erosional type.
All the other townships are out by drainage streams of more or less impor- tance, and these, as already noted, follow pre-lowan valleys that give more than the usnal amount of diversity to the surface. But over the greater part of every Township the Features that characterize Fremont are duplicated with only slight modification of details. In some instances, as over most of Newton Township, the curves are slightly sharper and the amount of dry land, as compared with the sloughs or damp meadow land. is greater. Newton, on the whole, has more perfect drainage than Fremont. There is a large area of very gently undulating land between Bear Creek and the Wapsipinicon River in Homer and Cons townships. Westburg is a distinctively prairie township with some moraine- like knobs and hills in Seetions 10 and 15, and some dry gravelly and sandy ridges in Sections 5 and 6; but in general the surface has the low, monotonous undulations of nneroded drift. Buffalo Township is divided, almost diagonally, by a very broad, shallow sag in the general surface, the sag being followed by the west branch of Buffalo Creek ; but with the exception of some sand hills and rock exposures in Sections 13 and 24, the whole township is occupied by typical lowan drift unmodified since the retreat of the lowan glaciers. The eastern part of Fairbank Township is a very level, dry plateau in which a sheet of Iowan drift varying from two or three to thirty feet in thickness overlies an extensive bed of Buchanan gravels. The platean is a unique piece of prairie land, without
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IHISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
the usual undulations, and without any indication of imperfect drainage. The underlying gravel seems to afford an easy means of escape for the surplus surface waters.
From Section 12 of Jefferson Township to the south line of the county, Lime Creek flows in an old valley, forty to fifty feet in depth, with numerous rock exposures along the sides, and a very meager amount of Iowan drift eoming down on the slopes to the level of the stream.
The most anomalous piece of topography in the county is seen in the high hills bordering the Wapsipinicon River, in Liberty Township, northwest of Quasqueton. From the west line of this township to Quasqueton the river flows in a gorge 130 to 150 feet in depth. The highlands indeed begin, but are at first not very pronounced, in Section 24 of Sumner Township, and they attain their greatest height in Section 29 of Liberty. The land near the river is con- spicuously higher than that farther back on the drift plain. The stream, as in the case of the other anomalous rivers of MeGee, here seems to go out of its way to cleave a channel in the highest land of the whole region. This highland seems not to have been invaded by lowan ice. Where it merges into the drift plain there are sometimes bare stony hills and channels of pre-Jowan erosion, as in the west half of Section 24, Sumner Township, and in Sections 31, 32 and 33, Liberty Township. On the flauks of the hills, a little higher than the level of the drift, there is a deep deposit of sand, but the sand, at still higher levels, gives place to true loess. There is a heavy capping of loess overlying Kansan drift on the hills north of the river gorge, in Sections 29 and 30 of Liberty Township. From all the data that can be gathered concerning it, this area of hills and highlands seems to have projected as an island above the surface of the lowan ice. The region embraces an area of a number of square miles, lying on both sides of the river, beginning in the southern part of Section 24, Sumner Township, and extending southeastward to Quasqueton. It rises above the surface of adjacent lowan drift to a height of 100 feet or more at the points of greatest elevation. The larger part of the area is north of the river. It was while the lowan glaciers stood in the surrounding region that the loess was deposited over the higher summits and the beds of sand were laid down at the middle and lower levels.
A curious bit of topography breaking into the general monotony of the lowan drift plain is seen in the south half of the northeast quarter of Section 28, Middlefield Township. There is here a series of prominent knobs and rounded hills separated by sharp, narrow valleys, the whole arrangement and aspect recalling a fragment of the terminal moraine of the Wisconsin drift. The summit of the highest point is eighty feet above the road at the east end of the group, a road which follows, on even grade, the valley of Buffalo Creek. The height above the creek is about ninety feet. The knobs are grassed over and afford no opportunity to examine their structure, but numerous large granite boulders sprinkled in the sharp valleys suggest that they are of Iowan age. Elsewhere the broad sag constituting the valley of the Buffalo ascends very gradually in a direction at right angles to the stream and imperceptibly blends with the surface of the upland drift.
. There are numerous gravel terraces along the Wapsipinicon River between Littleton and the south line of the county. The gravel is in all cases pre-Iowan,
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
dating from the deposition of the Buchanan gravels. A well marked terraee. separated from the river by a sandy flood plain, passes through the center of Section 25, Cono Township. Another terrace of the same age and same structure oceurs in the western half of Seetion 3 in the same township. There are others of similar type in Sections 28 and 29 of Washington Township, and in Sections 13 and 24 of Perry. All these terraces rise abruptly to a height of ten or twelve feet above the swampy or sandy flood plain between them and the river, the height of the slope being indicative of the amount of erosion that has taken place since the gravels were deposited.
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