USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 3
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DRAINAGE
The drainage of Buchanan County is effected chiefly by the Wapsipinicon River and its branches. This stream flows in a general southeast direction from near the northwest corner of Perry Township to near the southeast corner of Cono. It follows the southern or southwestern margin of its drainage basin. Its main branches flow in from the north, there being no affluents of any impor- tance from the south or west. Streams flowing into the Cedar River and draining the southwestern corner of the county have pushed their sources baek to within two miles of the Wapsipinicon, restrieting the drainage area southwest of the stream to a comparatively narrow zone. On the other, or north side of the stream, the drainage area is much wider. The tributaries are long, and some of them originate within less than a mile of Buffalo Creek, which drains a very low and narrow valley northeast of the Wapsipinicon. The law that streams in Jowa seek the south side of the valleys, with longer affluents and the wider portion of their drainage basins on the north side, is very generally, though not univer- sally. true.
The Little Wapsipinicon enters the county at Fairbank, near the northwest corner, and drains the western half of Fairbank Township. The eastern half of this township is in general a level plateau without undulations or drainage courses. the surface waters apparently escaping into a bed of Buchanan gravels which here underlie the lowan drift. The Little Wapsipinieon joins the main stream at Littleton, in Perry Township. Otter Creek, which, with its branches, drains Hazelton Township, is a stream of some importance, supplying valuable water power at two points, and entering the main water course in Section 19 of Washington Township. The eastern part of Washington Township is drained by a number of small streams, among which larter Creek, that flows into the river above Independence, is probably the most important. Pine Creek drains the southwestern part of Butfalo Township and the greater part of Byron and Liberty. In western Byron it flows in a partly disguised pre-lowan valley. The banks of the creek are not marshy, as is usually the case in prairie streams. for the reason that heavy beds of Buchanan gravel underhe the surface drift. In Liberty Township this stream euts into the anomalons highlands described under the head of topography. Owing to the thinness or total absence of the later drift along its lower course, Pine Creek loses the character of a prairie stream in seetion 9 of Liberty Township, and thence to its mouth runs in an old valley, whose sides present a great number of interesting roek exposures.
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
Buffalo Creek is a typical prairie stream, flowing in a shallow channel cut in drift all the way from the north line of Buffalo Township to where it crosses into Delaware County, near the middle of the east line of Newton. Its drainage basin is very narrow and all its affluents, except the east branch in Buffalo Town- ship, are short, intermittent streams, usually following mere sags or sloughs, without definite channels. Buffalo Creek is in the main parallel to the Wapsi- pinieon, and is a part of the Wapsipinicon drainage system, the two streams coming together in Jones County, near Anamosa.
The drainage in the northeastern part of the county belongs to the Maquoketa system. The greater part of Madison Township is drained by the south fork of the Maquoketa, and nearly all of Fremont Township is drained by the sluggish Prairie Creek that eventually joins the Maquoketa near Manchester, in Dela- ware County.
Spring Creek, Lime Creek and Bear Creek, that drain the part of the county southwest of the Wapsipinicon basin, bear tribute to the Cedar River. They are all of the ordinary type of prairie streams except Lime Creek, which, in the southern half of Jefferson Township, follows a pre-lowan valley, forty or fifty feet in depth. This old valley seems not to have been filled with lowan drift, and its walls are diversified with numerous low, rocky cliffs, or rounded, rocky prominences, covered with a scant layer of residual soil.
GENERAL RELATIONS OF STRATA
The geological formations of Buchanan County belong to three different systems-namely, the Silurian, Devonian and Pleistocene. The Devonian follows the Silurian in natural sequence without any considerable break; but between the Devonian and the Pleistocene there is a gap of inmeasurable extent. The Silurian and Devonian systems are represented by the limestones and shales that make up the universally spread foundation rocks of the county. These are the so-called indurated rocks. They are the rocks that are worked in all the limestone quarries and are exposed in all the rocky knobs and ledges that project through the loose superficial materials or soils. All the Silurian and Devonian beds are more or less altered marine sediments. On the other hand, the Pleistocene beds are composed of loose, unconsolidated materials laid down by a number of different processes upon the surface of the land. Most of these materials were transported and spread out by glaciers. The pebble-bearing or boulder-bearing yellow and blue clays, so generally distributed over the county and so universally recognized by well diggers and others who have occasion to make excavations to any considerable depth below the natural surface, are all of glacial origin. Glaciers transported the granite boulders that, within the limits of this county, are sneh conspicuous and striking features in every prairie landseape. Torrents of water from melting glaciers transported, sorted and deposited the great beds of rust-colored Buchanan gravels that are found at numerous points in almost every township. The modern streams have built up deposits of clay and sand that are part of the Pleistocene system, and even winds have been instrumental to some extent in shifting and rearranging the loose surface material and making new deposits of Pleistocene age.
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
For the term Buchanan. as applied to the interval of time following the age of the Kansan drift, it may be found convenient to adopt the name Yarmouth, proposed by Leverett. But the only recognized deposits referable to the time immediately following the disappearance of the Kansan glaciers are those to which the name Buchanan gravels is applied, and it is for this reason that the term used in speaking of these deposits is retained. It must be borne in mind, however, that the deposition of the gravels seems to have been practically coin- cident with the withdrawal of the Kansan ice, and from this point of view a strict elassitiration might require us to regard the gravels as only a phase of deposits properly belonging to the Kansan stage. Admitting all this, the faet remains that the marked structural differences between the Kansan drift and the Buchanan gravels renders their separation for purposes of study and treatment a matter of very great convenience.
A similar explanation seems necessary with respect to the use of the term loess for the interval following the Jowan drift. The intimate genetic relation between lowan drift and loess is such as to require us, in a rigid system of classification, to look upon the two deposits as different phases representing the same stage ; and it is only as a convenient way of recognizing the differences in physical characteristics which distinguish them that the two are separated. The Buchanan gravels were certainly not laid down until the Kansan ice had retreated from the surface over which they were spread. Loess may have been deposited on the highlands northwest of Quasqueton while the lowan ice was at its maximum, or even before the maximum was reached. Absolute contem- poraneity between lowan drift and loess is much more possible than between Kansan drift and Buchanan gravels in the same neighborhood.
NIAGARA LIMESTONE
The Niagara limestone is found in all the outerops in the northeastern part of the county. With one or two exceptions presently to be noted, the roeks of this series are coarse, granular, vesicular dolomites, interbedded at certain locali- ties with large quantities of chert. The beds all belong to the Delaware stage and are simply an extension of the strata exposed in the northwestern part of Delaware County.
Along the Maquoketa, near the southwest corner of section 10, Madison Township, there are exposures of the coarse Niagara limestone in some low knobs bordering the stream. Excepting some casts or impressions of Halysites catemilatus, the beds are unfossiliferons. Niagara limestone is exposed over an area of several acres in extent in the southern part of section 18 and northern part of 19, in the western edge of Madison Township, and there are exposures on the township line between sections 18 of Madison Township and 13 of Buffalo. The limestone here oreurs in stony knobs or prominences and affords a section twelve or fifteen feet in thickness. The beds are quite regular, from two to six inches in thickness, and they have been quarried in a small way at one or two points, and in at least one locality they have been used in the manufacture of lime. The drift is very thin on all the low, rounded hills of the immediate neighborhood, so that the stone could readily be exposed and quarried over a much larger area, if the demand warranted the effort. Silicified colonies of the
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
corals Halysites eatenulatus and Favosites favosus are the principal fossils, and with these are associated a number of Stromatoporoids, silicified, and practically structureless in their present condition. Near the middle of the west line of section 16, in Madison, there is an outerop of Niagara, covering a small area, and affording silieified corals, mostly Syringopora tenella.
In Buffalo Township there are exposures of Niagara limestone near the southeast corner of section 13. Where the road between sections 13 and 24 of this township crosses the east branch of Buffalo Creek there is a vertical ledge of Niagara which forms the west abutment of the bridge. Other exposures occur at intervals for a mile or more below the bridge. All are of the coarse, granular type, and all indicate a horizon about the middle of the Delaware stage, the equivalent of the Pentamerus and coral-bearing zone described in the report on Delaware County.
Niagara limestone is exposed at numerous points along Otter Creek and its branches, in the northern part of Hazelton Township. The outerops are almost continuous along the stream courses in Sections 2 and 10, north and northeast of Hazelton. In the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 10 the roek appears in thin, irregular beds which furnish Lyellia americana and Helio- lites interstinetus. In the southeast fourth of the same quarter seetion a quarry was opened that showed thin layers in the upper part of the working and thicker beds near the base. There was a large amount of chert interbedded with the limestone. Natural exposures of the same beds, much weathered and overgrown with moss, extend along the low bluff east of the quarry for a distance of 500 feet. In the talus along the base of the bluff, and in the wash of the ereek, there occur Lyellia americana, Syringopora tenella, Favosites hispidus, Favosites favosus and Favosites alveolaris, or a species with pores in the angles of the corallites and closely related to F. alveolaris and F. aspera.
All the exposures in Section 10 of this township show the coarse, granular facies of the Niagara dolomite; but in the southwest- quarter of Section 2 the coarse dolomite passes beneath fine-grained non-dolomitized limestone which may possibly represent the horizon of the evenly-bedded quarry stone in the upper part of the Delaware stage in Delaware and Jones counties. This fine- grained limestone varies in color from light drab to blue. It breaks with con- choidal fracture and has the grain of lithographie limestone; but the texture is not quite uniform and all the pieces observed were still further rendered valueless as lithographie stone by numerous checks and flaws. Some quarries have been worked in this horizon in the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 2, the largest becoming known as the John Conrad quarry. The layers vary in thickness from four to ten inches. The beds are light gray in the upper part of the quarry ; bluish in the lower part. Near Coytown, in the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of Seetion 2, the light gray facies of these upper beds is exposed in a quarry that has been worked in the manufacture of lime. Near the top of this quarry the layers seem to be brecciated, and thin beds of lithographie limestone are irregularly interbedded with a rather coarse crystalline dolomite. Neither at Coytown nor at the Conrad quarry were any fossils observed in the fine-grained limestone, nor were any found in the overlying residual clays to indicate that beds of the ordinary Niagara type, containing silieified corals and other organic remains, had ever existed above it.
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
In the banks of Otter Creek, south of Hazleton, there are ledges of Niagara limestone rising above the level of the water to a height of fifteen feet, and on the hillside sloping to the west there are outcropping ledges, alternating with spaces concealed by clay or sod, up to a height of twenty-five to thirty feet farther. Near the level of the water the layers are quite regular, and free from fossils so far as noted, except for a single east of a small individual of Orthis biforata, such as oreurs not infrequently in certain phases of the Delaware stage, in Cedar County. Higher up, on the slope of the hill. Lyellia americana and the Favosites with pores in the angles of the corallites, which is referred to the species Favosites alveolaris, are not uncommon. These two, indeed, are the most characteristic and persistent species of the Niagara limestone in this part of Buchanan County. There is a small quarry of evenly-bedded Niagara limestone cast of the creek, in the northeast quarter of Section 18. Hazleton Township, Imt the best onterop of Niagara in this township is seen in the hill west of the west branch of Otter Creek, on the road passing between Sections 7 and 18. The locality is known as the Mignet Hill. A section showing twenty-five to thirty feet of rock is here exposed. The lower beds exposed contain Halysites eatenulatus, Syringopora tenella and Ptychophyllum expansum. Higher up there is a larger assemblage of typical Niagara corals, including Heliolites interstinetus, Lyellia americana, Halysites catenulatus and Favosites alveolaris. At the summit of the hill the beds are largely made up of thin, expanded forms of Stromatopora not silicified. One-fourth mile further west the rock is again exposed, and in the residual surface materials are silicified colonies of Heliolites, Lyellia, Haly- sites and Favosites. A few layers of soft, earthy Niagara limestone, very much decaved by weathering, are exposed in the railway cut in the south edge of Ilazleton, but they show nothing of special importance.
While no onterops of Niagara were seen in Fairbank Township, the formation underlies the drift over an undetermined area, but one of considerable extent. in the northeastern corner. On the little Wapsipinicon River, one and one-half miles north of the Town of Fairbank, the Niagara limestone forms a high bluff on the south side of the stream. The bluff rises forty feet above the level of the water, and the vertical cliffs of brownish-yellow, weathered dolomite measure sixteen fret. On the rounded slopes above the projecting ledges the soil contains masses of residual Niagara chert and silicified Niagara corals, showing that the Niagara limestone is present up to an altitude equaling that of the summit of the bluffs. This fact is of interest only when taken in connection with another fact-namely, that at Fairbank, only a mile and a half south, there are quarries opened in Devonian beds, and the level of the Devonian quarries is forty feet lower than the summit of the bluff of Niagara limestone, twenty-five feet. lower than the brow of the vertical cliff of massive Niagara dolomite. The later Devonian was deposited against the side of a steep, antielinal fold, which lifted the Niagara of northeastern Buchanan much above the position it normally would have occupied had the strata retained, relatively, the position in which they were laid down on the floor of the Silurian sea. To this upward folding of the Niagara is due the strong reentrant angle which is made in tracing the eastern edge of the Devonian area from the central part of Fayette County to near the southeast corner of Buchanan.
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
CORRELATION OF FORMATIONS
The earlier geologists of lowa attempted to correlate the Devonian strata of the state with certain recognized Devonian beds belonging to the geological column of New York. Owen referred a part at least of the Devonian formations he encountered west of the Mississippi to the Hamilton series, and nearly all subsequent geologists have followed his example. The fact is, however, that the Devonian system of lowa was deposited in an area geologically isolated from that in which the eastern Devonian was developed. The conditions of sedimentation were different in the two areas. The order and succession of faunal conditions were not the same. The eastern Devonian faunas, subjected to certain physical conditions and undergoing certain modifications, probably migrated from the northeast along the eastern border of the continental nucleus, while the western faunas of the same period seem to have come from the northwest along the western border of the Devonian continent. The conditions encountered were different and the modification of the species progressed along wholly different lines. Even in the case of species that are common to the two provinces, there is evidence that the time and order of arrival at the same latitude on opposite sides of the old continent were not the same. The Devonian fauna of lowa is intimately related, in certain respects, to that at the ramparts of the Mackenzie River; it bears some resemblance to the Devonian fauna of the Eureka District of Nevada; but, for purposes of minutely correlating strata, it would be mis- leading to compare it with the fannas of this period in the eastern province. As an illustration of the extent of the error into which even the most eminent and experienced of geologists may be led when attempting to correlate the eastern and western Devonian by means of the geological fannas, it is worth noting that some years ago the quarry stone at Raymond was referred to the Schoharie stage, the coral-bearing beds at Waterloo were called Corniferous, the limestones at Independence were assigned to the Hamilton, and the Lime Creek shales were called Chemung. Now the Lime Creek fauna is found in shales below the Inde- pendence limestones, and so, judging from the fanna, the Independence shales are also Chemung. Furthermore, the coral-bearing beds at Waterloo are younger than the limestones at Independence, for they lie above them, and the quarry stone at Raymond is still younger than the coral beds that were referred to the Corniferous. Beginning with the Independence shales, the actual order of the strata in lowa, according to the correlation referred to. would be-(1) Chemung, (2) Hamilton, (3) Corniferous, (4) Schoharie-a complete reversal of the order observed in New York. It may be repeated, for the sake of emphasis, that the western Devonian cannot be correlated, except in a broad and very general way, with that of the east.
All the beds of this system observed in Buchanan County are referred pro- visionally to the "Middle Devonian, " and this notwithstanding the faet that no positive evidence of an erosion interval between the Silurian and Devonian is known to exist.
INDEPENDENCE SHALES
The Independenee shales belong to the Wapsipinieon stage of Norton. The underlying "Otis beds" are not known in Buchanan County, and the shales in
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
question constitute the lowest recognized member of the Devonian in this part of łowa. In the county there are no natural exposures of the shales that show well their characteristics and entire thickness. The most that is known here concerning them was learned from shafts sunk at the old Kilduff Quarry east of Independence. The formation was penetrated to a depth of twenty feet and was found to consist of dark-colored shales, alternating with thin beds of lime- stone. At certain levels the shale was very dark, carbonaceous, and contained vegetable remains, some parts of which had been transformed into true coal. There are outerops of the shales in the river bank, at the level of the water, near the center of the north line of section 10, Summer Township. There is a small exposure of the shales in the bank of the creek in the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of section 35, Washington Township ; and they are seen again near the bridge at Quasqueton, in Liberty Township. Running through this formation at a certain level is a bed of unfossiliferons, laminated, clayey lime- stone that splits into thin leaves one-fourth to one-half an inch in thickness. This phase is easily recognized, and exposures of it are seen along Harter Creek, in the northwest quarter of section 27. Washington Township, and along the Wapsipinicon, in the southwest quarter of section 24. Summer Township. In general, however, the natural exposures are few and unsatisfactory, the position of the beds being such that the outeropping edges are either covered with talus or are sodded over.
CEDAR VALLEY LIMESTONE
The line of division between the Wapsipinicon and Cedar Valley stages of the lowa Devonian may conveniently be drawn at the top of the Spirifer pennatus zone. Above this line there is a marked change in the character of the limestone and a still more marked change in the fauna. The rock is harder, at first ranging from yellow to dark gray in color, and the evidences of erushing and disturbance have almost entirely disappeared. The character- istic fauna of the lower beds ceases abruptly, and in the zone immediately following the S. pennatus beds corals become the predominating type. The most common species is Acervularia profunda, and in the beds characterized by this fine coral there occur Favosites alpenensis and several other species of Favosites, Alveolites goldfussi, Cladopora magna, Cladopora palmata, two or more species of Zaphrentis, Aulocophyllum, more than one species of Cyathophyl- lum, Ptychophylhun versiforme and Cystiphyllum Americanum. Besides the corals there are a number of peculiar stromatoporoids that have as yet received no attention from paleontologists. Near the base of this zone, but in a narrow band containing but few other corals, the large and beautiful Phillipsastrea billingsi oceurs locally in considerable numbers.
PLEISTOCENE
The surface of Buchanan County is very generally covered with, beds of drift or other deposits belonging to the Pleistocene System. The Sub-Afton- ian or Pre-Kansan drift has not been recognized at the surface, but its pres-
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HISTORY OF BUCHANAN COUNTY
encé is demonstrated in numerous borings and excavations by a soil and forest bed horizon underneath the blue clay of Kansan age.
KANSAN
Kansan drift is spread almost universally over Buchanan County. In some cases it comes almost or quite to the surface ; in other cases it is reached only after penetrating ten or twenty feet, or even more, of the later lowan till, and in still other cases, it is buried beneath lowan till and Buchanan gravels.
The Kansan till is normally a blue clay intersected by numerous joints and carrying large numbers of pebbles and bowlders of dark colored, fine grained greenstone. Fragments of limestone are not uncommon, and there are also some bowlders of light colored, porphyritie granite. The bowlders and bowlderets of various kinds are quite generally faeetted and striated on one or two sides. Where the Kansan drift was not disturbed by the later Iowan ice invasion there is a zone of oxidation, varying in thickness, and recording the changes that took place in the superficial portion of the drift as a result of exposure to weather during the long interval between the retreat of the Kansan ice and the advent of the lowan. The oxidized zone is only partly preserved in No. 2 of the section last above described. Fragments of wood, many.of which are referable to the American larch, Larix americanus, are distributed through the entire thickness of the blue Kansan till. Wood is however, more abundant in the lower part of the formation ; and it reaches its maximum in the forest and soil bed that marks the Aftonian horizon and separates the Kansan from the Sub-Aftonian drift.
BUCHANAN GRAVEL
In the latitude of Buchanan County the disappearance of the Kansan ice was attended by strong currents of water flowing away from the ice margin. These currents were loaded with glacial debris including fragments ranging from fine silt to boulders a foot or more in diameter. The course of the cur- rents was marked by deposits of sand and gravel more or less sorted and stratified, and not infrequently cross-bedded on an extensive scale. It is to these particular deposits that the name of Buchanan gravel has been applied. Beds of the gravel are strewn continuously for miles along the valley of Buffalo Creek in Byron and Middlefield townships. They are common along Pine Creek in the western part of Byron. They are conspicuous along the Valley of the Wapsipinicon between Littleton and Independence. All the streams, in fact. are bordered more or less generally by trains of gravel. But the gravels are by no means confined to the stream valleys. They are found quite as frequently on the high lands, and some of the highest points in the county are marked by the presence of coarse, ferruginous stratified deposits of this age. Streams may have flowed in glacial canyons along the hilltops while the adjacent lowlands were still occupied by heavy bodies of ice.
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