USA > Iowa > Chickasaw County > History of Chickasaw and Howard counties, Iowa, Volume I > Part 4
USA > Iowa > Howard County > History of Chickasaw and Howard counties, Iowa, Volume I > Part 4
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Some small beds of limonite or bog iron-ore are found at a number of points in the county. None were seen of sufficient extent to justify their exploitation on a commercial scale. Probably the best known is that which occurs in the north- east quarter of section 24, Dayton Township.
WATER SUPPLIES
Chickasaw County is well supplied with an abundance of pure, wholesome water. No area of similar size is better provided with streams, and a proportion- ately large part of the population depend on stream water as a supply for farm stock. There are not many springs in the county compared with some other regions of our state, but well water of good quality is readily found on every farm. Most of the wells end in the drift, water being found either in seams in the glacial clays or in streaks of sand and gravel interbedded with the clays. In the broad stream valleys water is usually reached at depths ranging from twenty to thirty feet, in the beds of gravel belonging to the Buchanan substage. In a few instances wells penetrate the underlying limestones.
The farm wells about New Hampton are reported to end in a bed of water- bearing sand which lies immediately on top of the limestones, and the depth of the ' wells ranges from 125 to 160 feet. Eight or ten miles north of New Hampton, drillers report that wells go down 200 feet without striking rock. A depth of 200 feet is not infrequently reached in Dayton and Fredericksburg townships without penetrating the whole thickness of the drift. The town well of Lawler, in the valley of Crane Creek, goes down through Buchanan gravel and Kansan clay to a depth of 135 feet. It is 137 feet deep and is reported to go into the rock only a foot or two. Wells on higher ground near Lawler show a thickness of 165 feet for the Pleistocene deposits, and go some distance below the level of the stream in the adjacent valley before encountering rock. In a well near Jerico the lime-
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stone was reached at a depth of 221 feet. The railway well at Ionia is 145 feet deep and ends in what is reported as "quicksand." The boring of deep farm wells has furnished reliable data concerning the surprising thickness of the great mantle of drift which overspreads nearly the entire county and effectually conceals the underlying rocks.
Shallow wells drawing supplies of water from the great gravel trains of the Buchanan age, are found in all the stream valleys. At Lawler, for example, water is obtained on any of the residence lots by simply driving points into the gravel to depths of from fourteen to sixteen feet. In the vicinity of Little Turkey post- office driven wells need go only twenty-five feet into the gravel beds to get unfailing supplies. In all the other stream valleys the situation is much the same.
At New Hampton the city well has a depth of 235 feet. The mantle of drift is 135 feet in thickness; the boring went 100 feet into the limestone. The well is ten inches in diameter; the water rises within thirty feet of the surface; the supply is ample to meet all demands so far made upon it. In the western part of the county some of the farm wells penetrate rock to greater or less distances.
Remains of the Aftonian forests, in the form of splintered fragments of wood worked up into the blue Kansan clay, are found in nearly all wells bored into the drift. Well drillers report that it is not unusual to strike a flow of gas at depths ranging from twenty to forty feet. No decisive tests relative to the quality of the gas have been made, but it is stated that at Bassett a lighted lantern was ex- tinguished when let down into a well from which gas was escaping. It is quite probable that all the gas encountered in boring wells in the glacial deposits of this region consists largely or wholly of carbon dioxide.
WATER POWERS
Considering the number of streams, there are not many water powers developed in the county. The water power on the Cedar at Nashua, and those at Chicka- saw and Greenwood Mills on the Little Cedar are the most important.
SUMMARY
Chickasaw County presented few features of interest to the older geologists. It was simply a great prairie plain traversed by numerous clear streams. The soils are exceptionally deep and exceptionally fertile : but the very depth and the uni- versal distribution of the mantle of loose materials have effectually concealed the quarry stones and other geological resources. Agriculture is, and must always remain, the most important industry of this county. There is building stone enough for all local needs in the few limestone quarries and in the universally distributed granite bowlders. There is some good lime burning rock available, and road materials, in the form of extensive beds of Buchanan gravels, are everywhere abundant. If any one regrets the absence of coal and other mineral products. let him remember the wealth producing qualities of the soils, which no right thinking man would exchange for the conditions favorable to mining; let him remember that the farms of Iowa are worth more than all the gold and silver mines of America.
CHAPTER II GEOLOGY OF HOWARD COUNTY
INTRODUCTION-LOCATION AND AREA-PREVIOUS GEOLOGICAL WORK-PHYSIOGRAPHY -TOPOGRAPHY-DRAINAGE-STRATIGRAPHY-GENERAL DESCRIPTION-ORDOVI- CIAN SYSTEM-GALENA-TRENTON-MAQUOKETA OR HUDSON RIVER-DEVONIAN SYSTEM-GENERAL DESCRIPTION-PLEISTOCENE SYSTEM-KANSAN STAGE- IOWAN STAGE-ALLUVIUM-THICKNESS OF THE PLEISTOCENE DEPOSIT-SOILS- UNCONFORMITIES-ECONOMIC PRODUCTS-QUARRY STONE-CLAYS-LIME- WATER POWERS-SUMMARY.
LOCATION AND AREA
Howard belongs to the northern tier of counties and is the third in order counting westward from the northeast corner of the state. With reference to the distribution of the geological formations of Iowa, its location is one of unusual in- terest. Along the Upper Iowa. or Oneota River. in Albion Township. Howard County possesses some of the characteristics of the Driftless Area, a unique area which includes a large part of Allamakee County and parts of Winneshiek. Fayette. Clayton, Dubuque and Jackson. From this area Howard County is separated by a narrow marginal zone of Kansan drift. The border of the Iowan drift passes through the northeastern part of the county, and so northeast of the lowan boundary the country is rolling Kansan drift covered with loess, while by far the larger part of the county, lying southwest of this well defined line of division. belongs to the level or gently undulating, uneroded, loessless lowan plain. One of the interesting geological features of this region is the absence of the Niagara lime- stone or any representative of the Silurian system, for here the Devonian overlaps upon the shales and shaly limestones of the Maquoketa stage of the Ordovician. The margin of the overlap and the contact of the Devonian with the Maquoketa may be studied at various points within the limits of the county now under con- sideration.
The artificial boundaries of Howard County are the state of Minnesota on the north. Winneshiek County on the east. Chickasaw on the south and Mitchell on the west. The county is divided into twelve civil townships. The four southern townships, as organized for the administration of local government. are nine miles
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long from north to south, and so each embraces one congressional township and a half. The northern townships are each only five miles in length from north to south, sections I to 6 in each case being omitted. The other four townships are of the usual size. The county is a rectangle, the dimensions being approximately twenty miles from north to south and twenty-four miles from east to west. The area is therefore 480 square miles more or less, the variation from the theoretical area depending on the natural convergence of north-south lines and errors in the original surveys.
PREVIOUS GEOLOGICAL WORK
Previous to the organization of the present survey, Howard County received but little attention at the hands of official geologists. In connection with the survey made by Hall & Whitney during portions of the years 1855, '56 and '57, the north- ern counties of the eastern part of the state were hastily examined by J. D. Whit- ney for the purpose of determining their leading geological features, without, however, attempting anything like detailed investigations. In the report 1 which followed the references to Howard County are very meager and relate almost wholly to the position, importance and course of the drainage streams. The report of Dr. C. A. White makes no reference 2 to the county we are now considering ; but in 1872 Doctor White read a paper at the Dubuque meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 3 in which he discussed the geo- logical significance of fossils found in the drift of Howard County near Lime Springs. McGee in his "Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa"# makes a number of references to the topography, drainage, indurated rocks and glacial de- posits of Howard County. Geologists and paleontologists have long been attracted by the interesting fauna which may be collected from outcrops of the Trenton and Maquoketa formations along the Upper Iowa, or Oneota River, above and below Florenceville, in the northeastern part of the county; and on this account there are frequent references in geological literature to the rocks and fossils of the Florenceville region. In the report of Fillmore County, Minnesota,5 the rocks of Howard County, especially those about Lime Springs, receive more or less attention in the way of comparison of outcrops in Iowa with outcrops on the other side of the state boundary. The Devonian limestones of the area under discussion in this report are very highly dolomitized and, lithologically, they resemble certain phases of the Niagara beds farther south. While some of the exposed sections are rich in casts of fossils, there are others which are quite barren, and the result has been that nearly all the writers mentioned above, either in printed text or published maps, have referred some of the dolomitized Devonian to the Niagara series.
1 Report on the Geol. Surv. of the State of Iowa: By James Hall and J. D. Whitney ; Vol. I, Pt. I, pp. 306-312, 1858.
2 Report on the Geol. Surv. of the State of Iowa: By Charles A. White, M. D .; Vols. I and II, Des Moines, 1870.
3 On the Eastern Limit of Cretaceous Deposits in Iowa: By C. A. White. Proc. Am. Ass'n for the Adv. of Sci. Twenty-first Meeting, p. 187, Cambridge, 1873.
4 The Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa: By W. J. McGee. Eleventh Ann. Rept .. U. S. Geol. Surv., p. 189 et seq., Washington, 1891.
5 The Geology of Fillmore County: By N. H. Winchell: The Geology of Minnesota. Vol. I, of the Final Report, pp. 268-324; Minneapolis, 1884.
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The overlap of the Devonian on the Maquoketa is something unlooked for, un- expected.
PHYSIOGRAPHY
TOPOGRAPHY
The loess margin of the Iowan drift plain passes through the northeast part of Howard and divides the county into two very distinct topographic areas, each of which is again divided into smaller areas according to the extent to which the glacial deposits are developed. The line separating the two principal arcas passes from Minnesota into Iowa near the northwest corner of section II, Forest City Township, from which point it bends to the west and then turns nearly due . south, traversing the eastern edge of section 10. After passing into section 15 the line makes an abrupt bend to the east, passes through the northern part of section 14, whence, veering southward, it maintains, with some minor deflections and sinuosities, a general southeasterly course until it leaves the county a few rods south of the northeast corner of section 36, Albion Township. The area north and east of this line is comparatively small; only about 22 square miles, all told, are here included ; but within this limited space there is more of varied topographic interest than in all the rest of the county. On one side of the line, in the smaller area, the surface deposits are Kansan drift, overlain by loess ; on the other side the surface is occupied by a young drift sheet, the Iowan, upon which there is no loess, but large granite bowlders of types wholly absent from the northeastern part of the county, give character to the long vistas of gently undulating plain. The small northeastern area may be called the Loess-Kansan, the larger area to the southwest is the Iowan.
The topography of the Loess-Kansan Area. Excepting the valley of the Upper Iowa, or Oneota River, the surface of the Loess-Kansan area presents a series of rounded hills separated by ravines which have been cut by flowing water. Stream action is the dominant characteristic of the region. All its present topo- graphic features-the hills, ravines and even the deep river valleys-are due to the carving and shaping effects of ordinary surface drainage. Outside the river valley and its immediate tributaries, the topography is a direct product of the run-off of the ordinary storm waters. The underlying drift, as already intimated, is what has been called in recent geological literature the Kansan. The surface of this ancient glacial deposit, by reason of long exposure to rains and other meteorologic agents, was deeply trenched, and the sculpturing resulted in pro- ducing, on a small scale, a mature type of erosional topography. At the time of maximum development of the ice sheet which deposited the comparatively recent Iowan drift, the carved surface of the old Kansan till, outside the border of the Iowan ice, was covered with a thin veneer of the fine clay called loess. This loess was moulded over the inequalities of the eroded Kansan surface. The deposit was doubtless thicker in some places than in others, but, after all, the thickness was practically uniform, the variations being no greater than would be found in a mantle of snow laid down in comparative quiet upon an uneven surface. And so it was that by the deposition of the loess the characteristics of the old topography were not veiled or obscured to any noteworthy extent. The hills and ravines into which the drift surface had been carved were not changed, but
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retained the same position and the same relative heights during and after the proc- ess of loess deposition. It is true that some minor features of the topography of this region are due to trenches cut in the recently deposited loess, but in general the amount of erosion since the loess was laid down as a mantle over the trenched surface of the Kansan drift is so small as to be scarcely appreciable. This fact becomes the more evident when the Iowan area is studied, for except in a few very limited portions of the Iowan plain where conditions have been unusually favorable to the action of erosive agents, the surface of the younger drift, which in age is contemporaneous with the main body of the loess, remains practically as the glaciers left it. Over nearly the entire extent of its area, the amount of erosion that took place in the surface of the Iowan drift between the retreat of the lowan ice and the occupation and cultivation of the territory by the white man, would have to be expressed by zero. Except in a very few un- important details, therefore, the topography of the Loess-Kansan region is not due to erosion of the loess, but is controlled by surface forms which had been de- veloped long before any loess was deposited. All deep cuts, for roads or railways or for whatever purpose made, in Loess-Kansan areas of Iowa, whether in Howard County or in other portions of the state, show that the present loess surface is essentially parallel with the old eroded surface of the Kansan till. The reader will pardon the apparently unnecessary reiteration involved in the statement that all field evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the view that the topography of Loess-Kansan areas is fundamentally pre-loessial. The loess never filled the valleys and trenches and leveled up the surface as some have supposed. Its thickness and relation to the surface have never been very different from what they are today.
Over the greater part of the Loess-Kansan area of Howard County, the surface forms have been developed by erosion of a sheet of drift. A marked departure from the type of topography generally prevailing in the region is found in the charmingly picturesque valley of the Upper Iowa, or Oneota River. This valley is a deep trench cut into the indurated rocks. The rock-cut gorge is in places com- paratively narrow, its depth ranges from 75 to 125 feet, the walls are steep, it resembles in some of its characteristics the valleys of the Driftless Area. As to age, the topography of the greater part of the northeastern division of Howard County is post-Kansan, having been chiefly developed, as already noted, by erosion of the drift surface during the long intervals between the retreat of the Kansan ice and the deposition of the loess. On the other hand the rock-cut valley of the Oneota is much older than the Kansan, it is evidently preglacial. There are no indications that this part of Iowa was ever occupied by the ancient ice sheet that. over the major portion of the state, preceded the Kansan ; but that the valley was deep and open as it is today when the ice of the Kansan stage was melting is attested by terrraces of rusty Buchanan gravel at various points along the stream. A concrete illustration of these old gravels, deposited by floods from the melting Kansan ice and rising but little above the level of the water in the present channel. is found south of the bridge at Florenceville, near the middle of section 10. Albion Township. The margin of the valley rises to an altitude of about one hundred feet above the surface of the terrace. It is in sections 11 and 12 of this township that the most picturesque features of the Oneota valley, features most nearly allied to those which characterize the Driftless Area, are developed.
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Topography of a mixed type, partly preglacial and in part due to erosion of Kansan drift, occurs in the south half of sections II and 12, and in sections 13. 22, 23 and 24, Albion Township. The same type, indeed, occurs in small areas on both sides of the river as far west as section 10, Forest City Township. The surface in these localities is quite generally covered with Kansan drift, but the drift is so thin and so meager that the present topography is largely controlled by the erosion which had taken place in the preglacial rock surface.
The Topography of the Iowan Area. The Iowan area embraces much the larger part of Howard County. There was a time, however, when the whole county, and practically the whole surface of Iowa, presented an appearance topo- graphically like the northeastern part of Albion Township. The period during which the surface of the old Kansan drift was carved and sculptured by agents of erosion was of unknown duration, but manifestly it was very long as compared with all post-glacial time. At a date very recent compared with the age of the Kansan drift, glacial conditions recurred ; a new ice sheet, coming from the north- west, flowed over the eroded Kansan surface, obliterating the old erosional topog- raphy as far as it went, and leaving the surface, when the ice melted, in the form of a gently undulating plain. Constructive work of glacial ice in spreading out and piling up morainal detritus was the potent factor in developing the resulting topography. Erosion was in no way concerned. Erosion has not effected any general modification of the surface since the glacial ice disappeared from the region.
The ice sheet which, in this part of Iowa, followed the Kansan and modified the surface of the older drift, was the Iowan. Iowan glaciers covered all of Howard County except the few square miles of the Loess-Kansan area already described. The Iowan ice advanced to what is now the boundary line between the two topographic areas of the county and there stopped. On one side of that line the topography is old, on the other side it is young. Along the boundary line there is usually a great thickening of the loess ; and as ordinarily seen from the Iowan plain the margin is marked by a series of hills which, from a distance, present the appearance of a terminal moraine. From the summit of the marginal ridges the observer looks in one direction upon a tumultuous series of erosionally developed and well rounded hills and ridges: in the other direction the landscape is an uneroded plain stretching away to an uninterrupted horizon, as level as a sea.
The typical characteristics of the Iowan plain are best illustrated on the broad. flat divides between the drainage courses. The region having its center at the southeast corner of Saratoga Township, may be cited as a concrete example of the ideal Iowan plain. But all portions of the county lying southwest of the Iowan-Loess boundary, and not immediately adjacent to streams, present essentially the type of topography found in Oak Dale Township. The surface is every- where a plain, diversified with long, low, sweeping undulations. Such inequali- ties and irregularities as are present are due to the manner in which the drift material was arranged by the action of the lowan glaciers, and not to any sub- sequent carving or shaping by drainage waters. Drainage is as yet very imper- fectly developed. There are no definite drainage channels in these inter-stream areas. The storm waters simply flow off along the broad, shallow, concave sags which gradually blend into the gentle swells of low, flat eminences representing the higher and more perfectly drained portions of the surface.
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The streams of the Iowan arca, in the western three-fourths of the county, flow in shallow depressions broadly concave from side to side, the margins of the depressions blending imperceptibly into the general Iowan plain. This is the condition presented by the Wapsipinicon and Little Wapsipinicon in Afton Town- ship, and by Crane Creek in Saratoga, Howard and Paris townships. These valleys are all, in a sense, remnants of a pre-Iowan, even of a pre-Kansan, topography, which has been modified by deposits of drift. The streams are following ancient valleys which are almost completely filled. Along all these streams there are beds of ferruginous, highly oxidized Buchanan gravels which show that here were drain- age courses when the Kansan ice was melting. The gravels rest on Kansan drift with which the old valleys, probably preglacial, were partly filled. and are in turn overlain by Iowan drift. The gracefully curving surfaces of valleys and uplands are sprinkled with Iowan bowlders. The Upper Iowa, or Oneota River, above Chester, occupies a broad-bottomed, imperfectly drained valley which is some- what sharply set off from the adjoining uplands by a low terrace of Buchanan gravels. The old preglacial valley which was followed by the post-Kansan drain- age and is still followed by a post-Iowan stream, was not so completely filled with the drift of the two recognized ice invasions as were some of the other preglacial valleys of the county. Both of the known drift sheets of this territory become much attenuated toward their margins, in the direction of the Driftless Area. Both are exceedingly variable with respect to the amount of material deposited in different localities. In some places the Kansan drift is thicker than the Iowan. In other places the reverse is true.
Along the Turkey River in the eastern part of the Iowan area, there is a region of very thin drift, and the old preglacial topography expresses itself in spite of the fact that, twice at least, the surface had been overflowed by glacial ice. Beginning at Vernon Springs, the valley of the Turkey River is a deep, rock-cut gorge of the preglacial type, excavated in Devonian limestones. There is a small amount of drift over the hills ; but the indurated rocks crop out in many places, and the surface of the hill slopes is strewn with untransported fragments of native limestone. A few bowlders of both Kansan and Iowan types may be recognized amongst the loose surficial materials. From Cresco south to the north line of section 35, Vernon Springs Township, the country is a typical Iowan plain. South of the point named the region becomes hilly ; the Iowan drift thins out; knobs of thoroughly oxidized Buchanan gravel of Kansan age appear, even on the uplands ; and the surface, carved into rounded rocky prominences, descends to the river valley which, at New Oregon, is more than one hundred feet deep measured from the upland plain. The Village of New Oregon is built on a terrace of old rusty Buchanan gravel, the structure of which is well shown a short distance west of the north end of the bridge. The gravel terrace shows that the valley, with practically its present depth, served as a drainage course to carry off the waters from the melting Kansan ice. That it served the same purpose when, later, the Iowan ice was retreating is attested by fresh stratified sands on land of WV. H. Pat- terson, in the east half of the southwest quarter of section 34, Vernon Springs Township. The hilly arca dominated by preglacial topography embraces a zone a mile or more in width on each side of the Turkey River, from Vernon Springs to the east line of the county.
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