USA > Iowa > Des Moines County > History of Des Moines County, Iowa, Volume I > Part 5
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I. Chester limestone.
2. St. Louis limestone.
3. Keokuk limestone.
4. Upper and lower Burlington limestone.
5. Kinderhook beds.
All these beds are found in Iowa except the first, and all in Des Moines County except the first and second. The Kinderhook bed derives its name from the Town of Kinderhook in Southern Illinois. The Kinderhook group at Bur- lington consists of seven beds. Commencing at the bottom, No. I is composed
33
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
mostly of fine-grained shale, ranging in color from a blue to yellow. Its thickness is from 100 to 250 feet. Borings at Burlington on Lower Main Street by Mr. Bosch show the thickness of this bed to be 250 feet. The upper portion of this bed contains in some places many fossils. Bed No. 2 is a solid limestone about six inches in thickness, and lies immediately on the top of No. I. This bed con- tains many shells. No. 3 is a band of limestone averaging three inches in thick- ness. It is what is called oolithic limestone. The peculiarity of this limestone is, its grains are like the roe of a fish. In many places it contains shale. Bed No. 4 has an average thickness at Burlington of twelve feet. It is a solid limestone and withstands the effects of freezing and thawing. No. 5 is a fine grained yellow sandstone and full of fossils. Its thickness will average seven feet. No. 6 is an oolithic limestone, and has a thickness of about three feet. Its color is a light gray. This limestone can best be seen at Kemp's Quarry, south of Burlington. No. 7 is an impure limestone, and may be considered good for nothing. The above completes the Kinderhook group. On the top of the Kinderhook group rests the Burlington limestone. If one wishes to see a portion of the Kinderhook and the Burlington limestones, go out to Flint Creek to what is called Starr's Cave and he will observe that a portion of this overhangs that below. The lower portion belongs to the Kinderhook group. If he will but examine, he will find at the bottom of the Kinderhook on the ground next to the wall of stone a fine white substance, and testing it, will find it to be epsom salts. How epsom salts came to be there is this: The Kinderhook limestone contains carbonate of mag- nesia and sulphuret of iron, in iron pyrites, in fine particles. When exposed to the weather the pyrites are decomposed, and by uniting with the magnesia dis- place the carbonic acid, with which it was once combined, and forms epsom salts. All the surface of Des Moines County lies below the carboniferous formation, except in the western part of Augusta Township, where exist the lower strata of the carboniferous formation, in which can be found an inferior quality of coal at certain places.
BURLINGTON LIMESTONE
It is somewhat difficult to determine at all points where the Kinderhook group ends and the Burlington limestone beds commence. One gradually passes into the other, and both contain, to some extent, fossils of the same char- acter. This is true only as to the lower bed of the Burlington limestone. The beds between the layers of the Burlington limestone are separated by a layer of silicon deposit. This deposit indicates there was a subsidence and destruction of life forming the lower deposit. In fact this must be true, because none of the kind of fossils in the lower bed are found in the upper. Both divisions of the Burlington limestone are crinoidal, but the species in the lower are entirely distinct from those in the upper, showing that there was an entire extinction of life in the lower before the formation of the upper. Burlington is known all over the world by geologists as possessing the most fruitful field where can be found so many species of those "flowers of the sea" sometimes called. Messrs. Wachmuth and Springer spent many years in investigating these, the most wonderful fossils, classifying the different species and grades. Up to 1870 Mr. Wachmuth has classified as follows :
Vol. 1-3
34
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
Crinordæ 338 species, included in 40 genera
Blastordæ
17 species, included in 4 genera
Echenidæ
6 species, included in 4 genera
Asterordæ
4 species, included in 4 genera
Ophimidæ
4 species, included in 4 genera
Total species. 366 56
Since the above time Messrs. Wachmuth and Springer have discovered and classified many more species and genera of this form of life. The Burlington limestone is not comprised wholly of calcareous crinoids. This formation con- tains the remains of vertebrates, but only of fishes. Fish teeth and spines are found, such as belong to the shark. Some are found which belong to the Ganoid family, like that commonly called by fishermen "Billy Gars." Both layers of the Burlington limestone are frost proof, and furnish good material for building purposes and street curbing, but little of it can be used for making lime, because of its color being too dark. But to retrace to a certain extent what we have gone over: Any one interested can find exposed the lower Kinderhook formation, which is the shale used by the Burlington Brick Company in the manufacture of paving brick. The investigations of Wachmuth and Springer show that the transition and development of the various grades of clements was gradual, a development from a weaker into a larger and stronger. The species in the lower Burlington are small and fine in structure, those in the upper bed are large and stronger. In order to fully show geologic conditions as they exist in Des Moines County, and to be of practical benefit to the people of the county, we copy the following from volume 21, pages 625 to 639, in Iowa Geological Survey, being the report by W. H. Norton, geologist, whose work was in reference to "Under- ground Water."
TOPOGRAPHY
The topography of Des Moines County is controlled for the most part by a few simple factors. The county is wholly in the area of the Illinois drift, and by far its larger part is an upland molded to a nearly level surface by the Illi- noisan ice.
On the east the upland overlooks from a singularly straight and steep escarp- ment the broad bottom lands of the Mississippi. The interstream areas of the upland, chosen by the railways in preference to the valleys, present to the eye level or slightly undulating floors, with low swells and sags ten to twenty feet in relief. The tabular divides are incised along their edges by steep, narrow, young ravines which lead down to the broader shallow valleys of the creeks. Their digitate lobes, still flat-surfaced, reach even to the escarpment overlooking the Mississippi, where the minor water courses break into cascades as they descend from hanging ravines. Ground water in an upland so young may very naturally stand high, except near the dissected edges.
The Mississippi, which forms the eastern boundary of the county, here passes diagonally across a broad alluvial floor, five miles in width, traversed by numer- ous inosculating bayous and overflowed by the river's annual floods. To the south
BRIDGE ACROSS MISSISSIPPI RIVER, BURLINGTON
ROCK FORMATION NEAR STARR'S CAVE, BURLINGTON
35
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
this strip of flood plain narrows until, at Burlington, where the great river saps the bluffs of the escarpment, it is entirely lacking.
Skunk River, which bounds the county on the south, flows for most of its course through a narrow valley. Five miles above its mouth it develops a flood plain which opens broadly on that of the Mississippi, since here the river trav- erses a deep pre-glacial valley filled with easily eroded drift.
GEOLOGY
The country rock of Des Moines County belongs wholly to the Mississippian series of the carboniferous. At the base of this series lies a group of shales and shaly limestone, the Kinderhook, measuring, as sounded in the deep well at Crapo Park in Burlington, about three hundred feet in thickness. Only the upper portions of the Kinderhook are 'exposed within the county. The bulk of the stage consists of soft blue "mud-rock" shale, well known and easily recognized by all well drillers. Toward the top, however, are clayey sandstones and impure limestones-transition beds to the overlying Osage stage.
The Osage stage comprises two formations, the Burlington limestone at the base, and the Keokuk limestone at the top. The lower part of the Burlington limestone is characterized by the singular whiteness of the cuttings obtained by the driller and by the fragments of crinoid stems and plates of which the lime- stone in places is largely composed. Because of its easy solubility, this limestone has been extensively tunnelled by subterranean waterways to which numerous sinkholes give access. It occurs in two beds separated by about twenty feet of cherty and calcareous shale, and forms the country rock over about one-fourth of the entire county, underlying a broad upland belt along the Mississippi. Upon this basal white limestone lies a well-defined bed of chert or flint about thirty feet thick, to which the Iowa State Survey has given the name Montrose chert. The chert, which composes the upper division of the Burlington limestone, is overlain by the Keokuk limestone, a blue compact limestone containing much chert in flinty nodules and irregular bands, passing upward into geode-bearing shales, which furnish cuttings of milk-white chalcedonic silica and crystals of quartz.
The St. Louis limestone forms the summit of the Mississippian series over southeastern Iowa and forms the country rock in the southwest corner of Des Moines County. The beds include white marl, gray and brown limestone, and a hard, brittle, broken and recemented limestone of fine grain in angular fragments whose interstices may be filled with greenish clay.
The Des Moines stage of the Pennsylvania series occupies only a few isolated areas in the southwestern part of the county. Its rocks consist of buff sandstones and may reach a thickness of 50 to 100 feet.
The surface deposit over the uplands of Des Moines County is the loess-a soft silt of dust, buff above, in many places gray at base, and free from sand, pebbles and larger stones. Beneath the loess in many places lie as many as three distinct stony clays separated by different water-laid deposits. The uppermost is the Illinoisan drift, a yellow or, where unweathered, a bluish stony clay, gener- ally bleached and leached superficially and supporting an ancient soil developed during the long interval which elapsed after its deposition and the accumulation upon it of the loess. Beneath the Illinoisan drift lies the Kansan, a hard, stony
36
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
clay, blue where not weathered. Lowest of all lies the Nebraskan drift, a still darker stony clay. Ancient soils and buried peat bogs and beds of sand and gravel in many places separate the Kansan drift from both the Illinoisan and the Nebraskan.
UNDERGROUND WATER
Sources
On the broad flood plain of the Mississippi, sheet water is found in river sands and gravels at depths of sixteen to twenty feet. Driven wells, consisting of 11/4- inch pipe with a sand point, are almost universally employed.
On the narrow flood plains of Skunk River and the other streams of the county the alluvium is of little importance except in villages. The Village of Augusta, situated on the Skunk River bottoms, draws its house supplies from wells from sixteen to twenty-four feet deep, sunk to rock through river deposits which find a sheet of ground water about two feet deep moving riverward in sand resting on the rock surface.
Some of the silts at the base of the loess supply water, especially for shallow open wells on the tabular divides in places where ground water stands near the surface owing to the flatness of the land or to local sags. The beds lying between the Illinoisan drift and the Kansan include in places sands of some thickness. Unfortunately these beds also include old soils, muck, and buried wood, which in places injure seriously the quality of the water.
Water is also obtained from the sands and gravels which separate the Kansan from the underlying Nebraskan drift and also from the sand and gravels that in some places rest on the country rock.
Besides these fairly constant water beds of the drift, irregular and inconstant beds of sand and gravel may occur in any of the drift sheets, and, where of suf- ficient continuity and extent or sufficient connection with interglacial sands, may form local water beds adequate for small wells.
On the whole the drift, where thickest and where least dissected by stream ways, forms an adequate reservoir for ground water and the supply of common wells. But where bedrock comes near the surface and the drift sheets are thin, and where they have been intricately cut by streams leaving the steep-sided and narrow divides locally called "breaks," the drift is often found nearly dry and water must be sought in the rock beneath. The drift is specially thick along the terminal moraine of the Illinoisan sheet which extends from north to south through Washington and Pleasant Grove townships. Here the ridge of the moraine rises sixty or seventy feet above the level of the adjacent uplands plains and the drift has not been found less than one hundred and twenty feet in thick- ness. On this ridge wells find water in drift sands and gravels. Other areas of specially thick drift occur where ancient rock-cut river valleys have been filled with glacial and interglacial deposits. Several deep wells in drift from Sperry to southeast of Latty point to a buried channel which apparently debouches into the Mississippi channel between Flint River and the north line of Burlington Town- ship. A deep drift well a mile south of Kossuth marks perhaps a northeast tribu- tary of this channel, although it may point to an independent valley leading to the Mississippi. Thus near Latty, along a north-south line a mile in length, are
37
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
three deep wells, two of which are nearly one hundred and ninety feet deep and strike no rock, and the third-the most northern-233 feet deep, finds the blue shale of the Kinderhook at 231 feet. Drillers report "deep country" from south of Dodgeville, running northwest to between Pleasant Grove and Yarmouth. Other wells of exceptionally deep drift reported from Middletown, northwest of Danville, and east of New London, may mark another buried channel whose rock floor lies at about the level of the present bed of the Mississippi at Burlington. A few flowing wells from the drift are reported on low ground from Danville to south of Middletown.
The basal member of the rocks exposed in the county, the shale of the Kin- derhook, is dry. Wells finding little or no water before reaching this shale have penetrated it to a depth near Augusta of 220 and 257 feet, and near the Mississippi north of Burlington to even as much as three hundred feet without success. Un- less the owner is prepared to go through this heavy shale, and several hundred feet still deeper to tap the Galena waters, the drilling should be stopped on reach- ing the Kinderhook, and a well sunk in another place.
The limestones overlying the Kinderhook are water bearing, the chief aquifiers lying in the lower part of the Burlington limestone. Ground water collects in this limestone in the crevices, joints and waterways formed by solution, its down- ward progress being stopped by the underlying floor of impervious shale. The upper cherty member of the Burlington ( Montrose chert) is also water bearing. The St. Louis limestone probably carries water in the small area which it occupies in the southwestern townships, as may be inferred from the known water beds along its outcrop farther to the west.
At and near Burlington, except for the drift gravels found on the rock and minor veins, the first dependable water bed is the Silurian. It is apparently this bed which supplies wells about five hundred feet in depth, affording to some of them a generous yield. The initial head seems to have been about five hundred and seventy feet above sea level, but no exact statements can be made since requests made of the city officials for information as to the elevation of the different well curbs have not been answered. A sharp fall of static level was observed in several wells on the completion of the Clinton-Copeland well. The water bed is evidently overdrawn, and flows from it can no longer be expected, except from the lowest levels. To protect the wells at Burlington which now draw from it no further drafts should be made, and all wells drilled in the city should not only seek a deeper supply but should also case off the Silurian water. In quality the Silurian water is hard and corrosive. As shown in the analyses, calcium approaches four hundred parts per million, sodium runs between seven hundred and eight hundred parts, and the sulphate irons somewhat exceed two thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight parts in one of the wells. The total solids were about four thousand parts per million in the wells analyzed.
The reference to the Silurian of the water bed of the 500-foot wells at Bir- lington is made with a good deal of hesitation, although no other reference seems possible, since the Crapo Park well record places the base of the Maquoketa shale (Ordovician) below the bottom of these wells. On the other hand, the Crapo Park record is supported by but few sample drillings over the critical horizons. Some of the wells reach nearly to the supposed base of the Maquoketa. Local drillers speak of this water bed as the St. Peter sand rock, a term rather easily
38
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
applied to the water-bearing Galena dolomite, a rock which crushes under the drill to a sparkling crystalline sand, but which it seems hardly probable would be applied to any Silurian rock that appears in the samples of any of the Burlington wells. The Galena forms one of the chief water beds at Fort Madison, and appears in full thickness at Mount Pleasant, where again the Silurian contains no water-bearing rock, if the record and the large amount of anhydrite present are reliable guides. It is hoped that the question whether the Silurian or the Galena supplies the water for the 500-foot wells at Burlington may soon be definitely settled by obtaining a complete set of samples of the drillings of a well reaching to the well-defined horizon of the St. Peter.
New wells should not fail to go as deep as the St. Peter, which here lies about two hundred and sixty feet below sea level. The formation is exceptionally thick at Burlington and yields generously. The pressure is much higher than that of the Galena, the static level apparently reaching at present six hundred and thirty or six hundred and forty feet. Because of the marked difference in pressure of the St. Peter and the Silurian waters, the Silurian should be cased off to prevent lateral escape of the deeper waters through its waterways. The quality of the St. Peter water is much better than that of the higher flows, containing less than one-half the solids in solution, the greatest differences being in the sodium and the sulphate irons, according to Hendrixson's analyses. As but three wells at present draw water from the St. Peter, no overdraft has yet occurred.
The water beds lying beneath the St. Peter are tapped by but one well, that of Crapo Park. The water from these beds has about the same static level as that of the St. Peter, but is distinctly superior in quality, the combined waters of all horizons in the park well containing only about half as much dissolved solids as that of the St. Peter and the Galena combined and one-fourth that from the Galena alone. As the static level at Crapo Park is more than one hundred feet higher than the lower grounds of the city, wells drilled in the manufacturing parts of the city situated near the level of the Mississippi will have higher pressure and proportionately large discharge.
CITY AND VILLAGE SUPPLIES
The city well at Crapo Park has a depth of 2,430 feet and diameter of 6 inches from the surface to 1,700 feet and 5 inches to bottom; cased to limestone at a depth of 18 feet. The curb is 685 feet above sea level, and the head 38 feet below curb. The tested capacity is 250,000 gallons a day, the water coming principally from 950 feet below surface. The well was completed in 1898, at a cost of $5.095. by Tweedy Brothers, of Keokuk. Later a casing was inserted between depths of 110 and 210 feet, as a result of which water rose to 30 feet below curb.
The following record is based on determinations made by the writer of sam- ples of drillings saved by F. M. Fultz, superintendent of the Burlington Public Schools. It agrees for the most part with the record given by Mr. Fultz.
39
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
RECORD OF STRATA IN CRAPO PARK WELL AT BURLINGTON
Pleistocene :
fect
feet
18 18
Carboniferous :
Mississippian (422 feet thick; top, 667 feet above sea level) : Limestone, buff; effervescent rather slow; some chert in small chips
23
41
Limestone, buff and white, granular ; rapid effervescence .. 37
78
Limestone, light yellow : in fine meal; rapid effervescence ; some chert 19
97
Limestone, buff ; in fine meal and flour ; rapid effervescence ; some chert
13
110
Limestone, magnesian or dolomite, blue-gray, crystalline.
39 149
Shale, blue and drab (Kinderhook ) 291
440
Devonian and Silurian (140 feet thick; top, 245 feet above sea level) :
Limestone ; in light gray, highly argillaceous powder ; rapid effervescence 140 . 580
Ordovician :
Maquoketa shale (108 feet thick ; top, 105 feet above sea level ) :
Shale, light gray, highly calcareous ; in powder. 38
618
Shale, drab 70 688
Galena dolomite and Platteville limestone (257 feet thick ; top, 3 feet below sea level) :
Dolomite, light buff, crystalline-granular; with hard brown bituminous shale at 868 feet ; 6 samples. 207
895
Limestone, buff, finely granular; rapid effervescence. 31
926
Dolomite, light yellow ; in sand and powder. 19 945
Saint Peter sandstone (120 feet thick; top, 260 feet below sea level) :
Sandstone, fine-grained, white; some limestone; grains of considerable range in size ; moderately well rounded .... Sandstone; clean, white; somewhat coarser than above ..... 45
10
955
1,000
Sandstone; as above ; much hard, green shale like the basal shale of the Platteville limestone 40
1,040
Sandstone, clean, white; largest grains reach 0.7 millimeter in diameter 10 1.050
Sandstone; as above; largest grains slightly exceed 1 milli- meter in diameter. 15 1.065
Prairie du Chien stage (565 feet thick ; top, 380 feet below sea level) :
Dolomite, light gray, some chert. 35 1,100
Marl, white and pink, highly dolomitic : large residue of fine quartz sand and argillaceous material and flakes of chert ; 3 samples 235 1,335
Dolomite ; in fine, light yellow, crystalline meal. 15 1,350
Thickness
Depth
Loess and drift.
40
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY
Thickness
feet
Depth feet 1,360
Sandstone and pink oolitic chert.
10
Dolomite, arenaceous, or sandstone calcareous, all in fine, yellow sand
20
1,380
Dolomite, light yellow, highly arenaceous ; angular grains of
20
1,100
pure dolomite and rounded grains of quartz sand. Marl, white; residue minutely quartzose.
IO
1,410
Chert and dolomite.
9 1,419
Dolomite, buff and light gray ; in fine sand ; cherty ; 4 samples
56
1,475
Unknown; drillings washed away
44
1,519
Dolomite and chert.
6
1,525
Chert and dolomite, gray.
20
1,545
Dolomite, gray, cherty and arenaceous
25
1,570
Dolomite, light brown, cherty
15 1,585
Dolomite, gray, cherty
45
1,630
Cambrian :
Jordan sandstone, Saint Lawrence formation, and underlying Cambrian strata (800 feet penetrated ; top, 945 feet below sea level) :
Unknown, drillings washed away.
40
1,670
Sandstone, calcareous, or dolomite, arenaceous, buff ; dolo- mite in angular particles with rounded quartz grains. .
35
1,725
Unknown ; drillings washed away
275
2,000
Sandstone, light gray ; in fine angular meal ; minute grains of quartz and of glauconite with dolomitic cement or matrix ; 4 samples 95
Dolomite, gray ; in fine chips, minutely quartzose, 3 samples. . 35
2,130
Sandstone; as from 2,000-2,095 feet ; brownish, highly glau- coniferous
95
2,225
Sandstone ; fine grains of clear quartz, some pink, some with secondary enlargements
IO
2,235
Sandstone, gray, glauconiferous, calciferous ; grains varying in size, some being large and well rounded. 35 2,270
Sandstone; as from 2,000 to 2,095 feet.
5 2,275
Sandstone ; in loose grains of clear quartz, largest, diameter of 1 millimeter 85
2,360
Unknown; drillings washed away.
40 2,400
Sandstone, dark brown, glauconiferous; in rounded grains and minute siliceous particles ; chips of drillings have rough surfaces (due to projecting granules) and not the smooth fractures of quartzite.
5 2,400
Sandstone, yellow ; in chips of minute grains of quartz and glauconite and some rounded quartz grains, embedded in dolomitic matrix or cement ; chips crumble easily after
2,095
Sandstone, clean ; grains well rounded; largest reaching I millimeter in diameter. 20
1,690
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