USA > Iowa > Harrison County > History of Harrison County, Iowa, including a condensed history of the state, the early settlement of the county together with sketches of its pioneers > Part 3
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
the Big Muddy. One singular peculiarity in regard to this Mis- souri bottom land is, that in many places directly up against the bluffs the surface of the soil is lower than the surface of the banks on the margin of adjacent lake or river. As time passes away these low localities fill up by the wash and deposits from the hills, and in turn become the most valuable lands in the en- tire county. To substantiate this assertion, I will instance the farming lands of Mr. Charles Gilmore, in Raglan township, which in 1857 was so low and miry that nothing grew thereon but wild canes, and these to the height of ten to fifteen feet, and so sloshy was the soil that a saddle blanket would mire therein, if left over night. This same low land has been filled during the past thirty years to a depth of six and eight feet, thereby making the owner one of the best corn-producing farms in the entire county. This condition of natural improvement has not been limited to this particular spot, but has been general at every output of stream along the entire bluffs.
From the first settlement of the county, up to and until the year 1858, the entire scope of country along the bluffs, from the south line of the county until the Soldier river is reached, was so low and miry that in order to pass from the bluffs to the bottom lands in Cincinnati, Clay and Taylor townships, all were com- pelled to center at the crossing at or west of the farm now owned by Mr. Henry Garner, in Raglan township. This diffi- culty has been remedied by the constant deposits in these low places, as well as by a system of grading, by which every other section line furnishes a good highway to and from the Missouri river.
I would not dismiss the reader without calling attention to some of the principal lakes in the county, these all being on the Missouri bottom. The grandest and best of these is "Smith's Lake," in Little Sioux township, located in section 31, township 81, range 45, and section 6, township 80, range 44. This body of water is over 400 yards wide by a mile in length, and in many
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
places 100 feet deep. The water in this lake is furnished by sub- terranean springs, except that which flows therein in the spring freshets from the Little Sioux river. This is the grandest body of water on the entire Missouri valley, and is stocked with the largest and gamiest kind of fish that are known to the waters of western Iowa. This beautiful body of water is located snugly up against the bluffs, in fact so closely hugging the same that the bluffs are apparently so precipitous that an individual could scarcely climb them; then on the eastern bank the same is sel- vaged with a magnificent growth of native timber, reaching far toward the south of the lake, and this seemingly reaching partly up the precipitous bluff, gives to the landscape such a magnificent background, that water, bluff and timber possess such a peculiar blending as to constitute a picture the admiration of all.
The eastern bank of this lake, so nicely shaded by forest trees, reaching down to the very margin of the water, invites the lover of fun and frolic to this rustic, cool retreat in the hot summer montbs, to fish, sleep, dream, put up political jobs and "steal a while away from every cumbering care." The pinnacle of these bluffs which so abruptly stop at this lake, furnishes the grandest observatory in the west part of the county. Here the eye first catches, to the west and south, the six-mile selvedge of timber lands along the Missouri river; this enveloped in the un- certain shimmering haze of a summer's day, looks like a vast rim; over this and to the east and north, the outline is like that of a hollow basin, part of which is made up of graceful, undu- lating prairie swells, which rise and fall, one beyond another, until distance blends the whole into lines of light and shadow.
Round Lake, in the center of Morgan township, possesses no peculiarity, except its size and general worthlessness. This was at some time in the past, part and parcel of the river-bed of the Missouri, and by some freak has been divorced therefrom, and at the present depends entirely on the swells of the Missouri, in the spring time, or June freshets, for existence.
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
Horse Shoe Lake, in Clay, is of the same character as that of the one last described, except in this, that the latter is supplied with water from the Soldier river, and in spring or June rises of the Missouri, from the latter.
Noble's Lake, partly in this and the remainder in Pottawatta- mie county, located in Cincinnati township, is a beautiful body of water, and at all seasons of the year is a resort for those who have piscatorial tastes. This, like the Smith lake, is well stocked with pickerel, bass, cat, buffalo and sun-fish. The bluffs which border the broad flood-plain or bottom-land of the Missouri river along all that part of its course which forms the western boun- dary of this county, are so peculiar in character and appearance that they cannot fail to attract the attention of every one who sees them for the first time. Their strangely and beautifully rounded summits, occasionally mingled with sharply cut ridges, smooth and abruptly retreating slopes, and the entire absence of rocky ledges, except in rare instances, when they appear only at their base, cause them to present a marked contrast with those of the Mississippi and other rivers of the eastern part of the state, where rocky ledges support and compose the greater part of their bulk.
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES.
Some of the physical properties of this deposit are so unus- ual that they merit especial mention. When it is known that there is no rocky support to these Missouri river bluffs, although they are frequently so steep that a man cannot climb them, it is very apparent that the material composing them is different from the, earth ordinarily met with, and which it resembles upon its ordinary surface. Its peculiar property, however, of standing securely with a precipitous front, is best shown in artificial excavations. For all practical purposes of building founda- tions, even of the most massive structures, and for all roads, etc., the ground it composes is as secure as any other, yet it is every- where easily excavated with the spade alone. Notwithstanding
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
this fact it remains so unchanged by the atmosphere and frost, that wells dug in it require to be walled only to a point just above the water line; while the remainder stands securely with- out support of any kind, that the spade-marks remain visible upon it for many years. Embankments also upon sides of roads or other excavations, although they may be quite perpendicular, stand for many years without change, and show the names of ambitious carvers, long after an ordinary bank of earth would have softened and fallen away to a gentle slope. An instance: a well dug by Mr. Ed. Houghten in Cass township in 1857, which for thirty years has remained in good condition, only being walled with rock or brick at the bottom to a distance of ten feet, the depth thereof being forty-six feet, at the present remains in per- fect condition. Indeed, so securely does the material of this strange desposit remain, when excavations are made in it, and so easily is it excavated, that subterranean passages of many miles in length might be readily constructed in it without meeting any impediment. Any fortifications built upon these hills, which form a continuous line along the greater part of the western border of the county, if future emergencies should ever require them, might be readily undermined by digging such subterra- nean passages; and if there were any cause or use for such works, catacombs might be successfully constructed in any of them that would rival those of ancient Rome.
In Harrison county the post-tertiary deposits exhibit their usual characteristics, and besides these we have limited exposures of the upper coal measures which appear in the valley of the Boyer. The drift and bluff deposits are both well developed in Harrison county, where the latter attains near its maximum thickness. The drift deposits comprise both the glacial clays and the modified gravel-beds. We seldom find both these beds well developed at a single locality, and more often they are so atten- uated by denudation as to present a striking contrast to the con- dition they present in central Iowa. The glacial deposit is 3'
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
seldom exposed more than a few feet, and it is doubtless compara- tively thin throughout this section. It fills depressions in the subjacent formations, and in these situations it has been sub- jected to less extensive erosion than it has on the higher points, where indeed this deposit has been generally entirely swept away. In such places the gravel-bed attains, or retains, a thick- ness of several feet-perhaps at some localities as great as thirty feet. At other places, however, even the gravel deposit has been wholly denuded, or is represented by a thin sheet of pebbles and sand which have been converted into a quite durable concrete. Springs are of frequent occurrence along the outcrop of the gravel and blue clay deposits, and they always give a reliable horizon, showing the inequalities of the denuded drift surfaces, and also the line of demarcation between these deposits and the bluff formation. On the south side of the Boyer, on the south- ern borders of the county, the drift deposits rise in the base of the bluffs to an elevation of thirty feet above the bottoms. On the opposite side of the valley, in the vicinity of the Missouri valley, the bluff deposit constitutes the entire height of the bluffs, which are here two hundred feet in height above the Mis- souri bottoms. In the valley of the Little Sioux, in the north- ern side of the county, similar exposures of the drift are met with. Three miles above the village of Little Sioux, on the Wilsey farm, a tufaceous deposit is in process of formation at the base of the bluff deposit. It is underlaid by a gravel-bed which in places has been incorporated in the calcareous forma- tion, forming a very durable concrete layer. Similar deposits have been found on the Widow Vanderhoof farm in Harris Grove, and on the farm of Mr. Wm. Morrow in Raglan, and the con- crete bed is exposed at numerous localities in various parts of the county, as in the base of the bluffs on Smith's lake and elsewhere.
The bluff formation, as has been stated already, constitutes the bulk of the rounded divides between the streams, and in the bluffs on the Missouri bottoms it reaches a thickness upwards of
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
two hundred and fifty feet. Owing to the tenaceous nature of the bluff material, landslides are of very unfrequent occurrence; and it is also due to the same condition of this deposit, that by the slow process of weathering by the action of atmospheric agencies, and the little rills which issue from the gravel-bed, these bluffs assume the varied and picturesque outlines which form so striking a peculiarity in the topography of the upland border region in this part of the state.
The most interesting subject for study presented by this formation in this county are the terraces which occupy the valley of the Soldier river, in township 81, range 44. The lower benches are from thirty to fifty feet in height, and are found on both sides of the stream, which has at different times eroded new channels-the old ones existing to-day as "old river beds," or low meadow lands of surpassing fertility. The main terraces are confined to the west side of the valley, and, compared with similar phenomena observed elsewhere in the state, they are truly colossal. The benches of different elevations are often separated from one another by deep, narrow ravines, or shallow depressions, which are more or less exaggerated expressions of the identical features associated with these formations in the drift region from which they differ, only in the nature of the material of which they are composed, and possibly in the date of their formation. They have a very gentle, regular inclination from the uplands toward their valley faces which are abruptly terminated by the steep descents peculiar to terrace formations. The intermediate terraces are quite regular in conformation and vary from sixty to one hundred feet in height. The high ter- races are somewhat less distinctly defined, though, varied from the opposite side of the valley, they present no appreciable differ- ence from the lower benches, their upper surface forming gently undulating or nearly level plains, one hundred and fifty feet above the bottoms, offering a prominent contrast to the very irregularly weathered surface in the upland heights between the
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
Soldier and the Little Sioux, which lift their furrowed crests to the height of two hundred to three hundred feet above the valley.
These terraces in the bluff deposits, notwithstanding the fact that it is newer than any other deposit except its own alluvium, are certainly of the same age as the other terraces, of the same river, that have. been formed in the drift or any other formation, for they all originated from the same cause, and are nearly or quite simultaneous. The evidence that this deposit was formed as sediment in the fresh water lake, may be summed up thus: The material is very fine and homogeneous, such only as could have been deposited in comparatively still waters. It contains a few shells of fresh water and land mollusks, and no other. It does not contain any marine remains. It is, there- fore, not of marine origin; besides which, no inland deposit of marine origin is known that has, like this, occurred subsequent to the drift period. The material of the deposit is essentially the same as the sediment of the Missouri river at the present time. This sediment is so abundant now in that river, that if it were possible to throw an obstruction across its valley as high as its bluffs it would become rapidly filled with essentially the same material that it originally deposited, and subsequently in part swept out. This is constantly illustrated in the reservoirs of the St. Louis water works, which become filled with the sediment of the water taken from the river, so that they must be periodically re-excavated. The proportion of sediment contained in the water of the river in its earliest history, was probably somewhat greater than it is now, and any lake-like expansion that may have existed in it at that time must have become so quickly filled as to have occupied an insignificant part of the time-history of its valley, although the act was an important one in that his- tory. It seems probable that the broad lake that occupied a part of what is now Western Iowa was mainly filled with sediment while yet the glaciers hovered around the upper course of the Missouri river, and were there grinding the material which
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
served for the filling. The filling was, of course, most rapid in the case of the muddiest rivers, and those which flowed over formations that are not readily disintregated could contain but little sediment. Therefore, their lakes are not filled. If such a river as Missouri had emptied into the great northern chain of lakes, they would have become so completely filled with its sediment that they would never have been known as lakes to civilized man, but tributaries of the St. Lawrence river would have traversed the region they now occupy.
PRIMARY ORIGIN OF THE BLUFF MATERIAL.
' Ascending the Missouri river, we find in Nebraska, Dakota, and even in Northwestern Iowa, the source from which the material of the bluff deposit was derived. Stretching from here far away to the Rocky mountains, and bordering the great river on either side, is an immense region occupied by the most friable formations on the continent-those of Cretaceous and Tertiary ages. Seeing these, we at once cease to wonder that the waters of the Missouri are muddy, because it is so evident that they could not be otherwise. The Tertiary strata are largely silicious, and the Cretaceous are scarcely less so, but are very nearly pure chalk. It is from the last named strata that the bluff deposit has derived its nearly ten per cent of carbonate of lime. All these friable strata are even now furnishing abundant sediment to the streams that flow into the Missouri river, but at the close of the glacial epoch, fine sediment was, if possible, still more abundant, because then the whole region was strewn with grind- ings fresh from those " mills of the gods "-the glaciers.
The soil in the upland consists of the light colored deposits of bluff formation and only differs from that of the bottoms in the finely comminuted condition of the silicious materal of which it is nearly composed. Both upland and bottom soil are derived from the same sources-that of the Missouri bottom being the coarser, because the finer particles are swept away by
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
the current of this ceaseless flood. Year by year, as the annual June rise or flood appears, vast quantities of this filling sediment are deposited in every place where the waters of the Missouri. river are forced, and as a consequence, the locations where this annual deposit is made, are fast assuming a higher and more valu- able condition. It may be truthfully said that this soil is nearly inexhaustible, from the fact that many tracts of land in valley and on the bottoms have been for the past quarter of a century continually planted in corn and without any nourishment to the soil, still yield fifty to seventy bushels per acre. Mr. Isaac Bedsol of Magnolia, having dug a well to the depth of sixty- eight feet, took of the soil from the bottom thereof, scattered it over the surface of part of his lot, to the thickness of twelve inches, sowed oats thereon, and was surprised, at reaping time, at having a really good crop. There are but two kinds of soil in the entire county, the bluff and the bottom, and as before stated, in these there is no difference of character except the former is the finer material.
.
Stone is only found in two or three places in the county and is restricted to that of limestone. The greatest deposit of this is located at and adjoining the mills of Mr. James McCoid in sec- tion 19, township 79, range 42, at the southeast corner of the town of Logan. These quarries have been quite extensively worked and considerable quantities used for foundations for build- ings in the immediate vicinity, as well as being shipped for simi- lar purposes to Council Bluffs and elsewhere. The stone from this quarry was used for the foundation to the court house and jail at Logan. The same limestone outcrops on the right bank of the Boyer river, one-fourth of a mile below Logan, on the tract of land owned by Mr. Jas. A. Lusk, the same being in sec- tion 24, township 79, range 43. This last bed of lime-stone fur- nishes a tolerable building stone, for which purpose it was quar- ried and used in the old court house in Council Bluffs. The quarry at the McCoid Mill is covered with nearly fifteen feet of
-
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
the following substances, viz .: eight feet irregular bedded shaly, impure limestone with clay partings exposed; one foot yellow, marley clay; two feet black carbonaceous shales; six inches yel- low clay; one foot blue impure limestone; 2 feet yellow, indur- ated clay; fifteen feet limestone deposit.
The deposit at the Lusk quarry is a much superior article to that at the McCoid mill, but owing to the vast amount of earth covering the same, makes the cost of quarrying so considerable that the same cannot be successfully operated.
In sections 27 or 28, township 80, range 42, in Boyer town- ship, near the old site of Donmeyer mills, a bed of reasonably fair limestone of the thickness of ten or more feet is found. This is located on the left bank of the Boyer river, two miles south of Woodbine and six miles north of Logan, from which considerable quantities of building stone have been quarried, and at which place in the year 1858 one William Evans owned and operated a lime kiln, producing the lime from the rock, then gathered from the bed of the river. Unquestionably there are many other deposits or beds of stone in the county, which up to the present time remain undiscovered. At the mouth of Elk Grove creek, one-fourth mile northeast of Logan, quite a deposit of limestone is found, but at the present not sufficiently worked to give the quantum of deposit.
COAL.
Up to the present time no coal deposits have been discovered, notwithstanding at and near Logan, and six miles northeast, on the Boyer river, a limited outcrop of upper coal strata appears. It is not improbable that coal may be found by boring, but the productive measures lie at the depth of several hundred feet, and owing to the accessibility of the coal fields in the central and other parts of the state, it will be some time before the demand in this county for coal will justify risks and the great expense incidental to the mining at the depth of four hundred or more
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
feet, which is the estimated distance from the surface to the deposit, if deposit there be.
TIMBER.
The finest growths are not very limited in their extent, and the distribution thereof has been governed by circumstances fa- vorable to their preservation. In the deep shaded ravines which crowd up into the bluffs bordering the Missouri bottoms, all along the smaller streams, and on the margin of the Missouri river, as before stated, a belt of from one to six miles in width, the most vigorous growth of native timber is found. Well up in the in- terior of the county, in Lagrange, Union and Harrison town- ships, is found Harris Grove, covering an area of not less than 5,000 acres; then Twelve Mile Grove, in Douglas and Boyer townships, with her 1,000 acres; Bigler's Grove, in Boyer and Jefferson townships; Union Grove, in Union township; Spen -. cer's Grove, just north of Missouri Valley, of 2,000 acres; Brown's Grove, in Calhoun, Taylor and Magnolia townships, the largest of any; Raglan Grove, in Raglan township; the Spink's Grove, in Magnolia and Allen townships; the Flower's Grove, in Jack- son township; and Warner's Grove, in Harrison township; together with the innumerable crystalization of excellent timber in divers other localities, with the artificial groves at each farm house, places this county, as respects timber, beyond want.
Many of the leading farmers assert that few outlays yield a better income than that of growing artificial groves. Mr. W. B. Copeland and Mr. John Wood, in the near vicinity of Logan, have experimented on this, and being men of mature judgment, attest that, with reasonable care, a ten-acre ten-year old grove will furnish an abundance of timber for all practical uses of the ordinary farm.
There is vastly more timber in the county at the present date than there was in 1852, at the time the lands in the county were surveyed by the government, from the fact that the owners
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HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY.
thereof have kept out the prairie and forest fires, by reason of which the timber belts have spread out in every direction. Again, in the past decade, the substitution of wire fences in lieu of the warping, shrinking cottonwood planks, has given an armistice to the cottonwood and all other groves. The great demands made upon the timber belts on the margin of the Missouri river, and in the canyons along the bluffs, at the time of the building of the Union Pacific railroad, threatened the entire destruction of all this timber. But when this road was completed, nineteen years ago, the demand ceased; and the substituting of wire, as aforesaid, for fencing, has caused these timber localities to ex- pand and put on a growth, which at the present time far exceeds the quantum at the time of the first settlement of the county.
In the past ten years quite a market was at hand for walnut logs, to be shipped to Chicago and other places, by reason of which many of these old monarchs of the forest, four or more feet in diameter, were hewn down and cast upon the cars; still these will soon be replaced by others more numerous and thrifty.
The rivalry in the lumber trade, facilities for shipment by rail to the many stations in the county, have placed the pine timber of the north in competition with local mills to such extent that the former can be had more cheaply than the latter, and the local mills have gone out of business.
The coal imported out rivals the wood in cheapness, and at a cost of $3.50 to $4 per cord for wood, the hard and soft coal in all villages in the county are preferred.
NATURAL GAS
Has not been as yet a production of the county, unless at the farms of W. H. H. Wright and Mr. S. J. P. Marsh, in Harrison township, in the northeast corner of the county. The citizen- ship of the county at the present have so limited a knowledge in respect to this modern production of nature's great labora- tory, located thousands of feet below the surface, that little or
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