USA > Iowa > Lucas County > History of Lucas County, Iowa containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc > Part 38
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the present day. Every race that settled in the Delta degenerated, and was only sustained by immigration. So, likewise, the population on the sites of all the city-states of antiquity, on the coast of Syria, Asia Minor, Atrica, Italy, seated like the people of Rome on low ground under the ruin-clad hills of their ancestors, within reach of fever and plague, are enervated and debased appar- ently beyond redemption.
" The history of the nations on the Mediterranean, on the plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Deltas of the Indus and the Ganges, and the riv- ers of China, exhibit this great fact: the gradual dissent of races from the highlands, their establishment on the coasts in cities sustained and refreshed for a season by immigration from the interior, their degredation in successive gen- erations under the influence of the unhealthy earth, and their final ruin, efface- ment or subjugation by new races of conquerers. The causes that destroy indi- vidual men, lay cities waste, which, in their nature, are immortal, and silently undermine eternal empires.
"On the highlands men feel the loftiest emotions. Every tradition places their origin there. The first nations worshipped there, high on the Indian Cau- casus, on Olympus, and on other lofty mountains the Indians and the Greeks imagined the abodes of their highest gods, while they peopled the low under- ground regions, the grave-land of mortality, with infernal deities. Their myths have a deep signification. Man feels his immortality in the hills."
There comes to this locality-in fact, to all the western country-in the autumn, a spell of the most delightful weather, one of the most charming periods of the year, known as " Indian Summer." The mellow rays of the sun, and the soft gentle breezes, as they commingle with the golden or copper colored haze of the atmosphere, awaken dreams, fairy and delu- sive. Here, this period bears the name of Indian Summer, from the fact that early settlers ascribed this peculiar haze to the burning of the prai- ries by the Indians at that time. This, however is not the cause, as a simi- lar spell of fine weather prevails in various other countries at this season . of the year. In England it is known as "Martinmas Summer," (from St. Martin); in France it is known as "l' ete de St. Martin," (Summer of St. Martin); in Germany, as "Alte Weiber Sommer," (Old Woman's Sum- mer); and along the western coast of South America, as "St. John's Summer." In no portion of the world, however, do we believe this per- iod of the year to be grander than in our own. It "laps all the landscape in its silvery fold " for weeks: and finally marks the changing season-blends autumn into winter. The splendor of the forest is brief, its gorgeous colors are fleeting, but there is joy in the period and the scene, which awakens the purest communings of the soul with this nature's holiday.
One who has lived a quarter of a century in Iowa, and passed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, says that nowhere between the two oceans can be observed so many magnificent spectacles at the risings and settings of the
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sun, as in an Iowa autumn: "Golden clouds, 'dark clouds with silver lin- ing,' atmospheres full of delicious haze-sometimes like floating gold and silver dust-great bands of rosy light shooting upward to the zenith, mark these grand panoramas and make them so beantiful and brilliant that no one who has been entranced by their grandeur can ever forget them! It is seldom that these free exhibitions of the sublimi ties of nature ere even equalled in any land, and we doubt whether they are ever sur- passed in Italy."
This is the " Red Man's Summer," of which the poet * sings:
When was the red man's summer? When the rose Hung its first banner out? When the gray rock, Or the brown heath, the radiant Kalmia clothed? Or when the loiterer, by the reedy brooks,
Startled to see the proud lobelia glow Like living flame? When through the forest gleam'd The rhododendron? Or the fragrant breath Of the magnolia swept deliciously O'er the half laden nerve?
No. When the groves
In fleeting colors wrote their own decay, And leaves fell eddying on the sharpen'd blast That sang their dirge; when o'er their rustling bed The red deer sprang, or fled the shrill-voiced quail, Heavy of wing and fearful; when, with heart Foreboding or depress'd, the white man mark'd The signs of coming winter: then began The Indian's joyous season. Then the haze, Soft and delusive as a fairy dream, Lapp'd all the landscape in its silvery fold.
The quiet rivers that were wont to hide 'Neath shelving banks, behold their course betrayed By the white mists that o'er their foreheads crept, While wrapped in morning dreams, the sea and sky Slept 'neath one curtain, as if both were merged In the same element. Slowly the sun, And all reluctantly, the spell dissolved, And then it took upon its parting wing A rainbow glory.
Gorgeous was the time, Yet brief as gorgeous. Beautiful to thee,
* Mrs. Sigourney.
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Our brother hunter, but to us replete With musing thoughts in melancholy train. Our joys, alas! too oft were woe to thee; Yet ah! poor Indian, whom we fain would drive Both from our hearts and from thy father's lands, The perfect year doth bear thee on its crown, And when we would forget, repeat thy name.
GEOLOGY.
They are comparatively few who pause to question Nature; and fewer still are they who stay to question the inanimate rock. . On the landscapes and beneath the surface are indications of a history that challenge investi- gation; on every hill and in every valley are facts waiting to be noticed and interpreted, and whether the mass of men notice them or not, the story they illustrate still has its charm. The hills were here when men
. came; the rills and creeks bubbled as merrily on their way to the sea then as now; the broad rich acres of prairie land were as fruitful then as now, and the promise as great. Why then stay to study these familiar rocks? or why pause to discuss their origin ?. Let the following facts answer these questions, and answering arouse intelligent interest.
The geological history of Lucas county is one of peculiar moment, and affords some very suggestive facts relative to its past vicissitudes. It ex- tends in point of time over many thousands of years, and embraces per- iods of repose and periods of remarkable change. Its history, climatolo- gically, has been one of deep interest, and embraces changes so radical and so directly at variance with one another as to be almost incredible. There have been long ages when it basked under a torrid sun; and then these ages gave place to others; remarkable for polar frosts. Life, in all the luxuriance and variety of a tropical climate, gave place to the desert wastes of an Arctic zone. Nor were these changes sudden. They are there; stamped in the very rocks at your doors, or limned upon the landscape of your valleys, not as great and farreaching catastrophies, but as grad- ual transitions, indisputably marked as such by the fossil forms that roll out from the rock you crush, or see traced with a delicacy no draughts- man can imitate.
There have been times when Old Ocean, heedless of his doings, dashed against the rocky barrier that dared dispute his way, or rolled in solemn conscious might above its highest point; times when a beautiful and varied flora thrived on its surface, and times when there was naught save a waste of desert water. We strike our pick in the shales on the hillsides,
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and behold! there in the coal that gives us warmth and drives our en- gines, are the fairy forms that made the fern paradise of the coal period- beautiful arguments those of changes that thousands of years, as we meas- ure them, would not compass.
In presenting the following principal facts in the geology of Lucas county, enough only has been given of the lithological characters of the various rock strata to enable the interested reader to identify them. Many points of interest from a geological stand-point, have necessarily been omitted; their introduction would have unduly lengthened the chapter, and scarcely possessed any general interest. To trace, briefly, the changes that have occurred, and to note their probable causes are the main pur- poses of this sketch. There has been given a detailed account of the various strata from above downwards, hence each formation is to be con- sidered later than the one next succeeding it. Chronologically, this method of treatment takes us backward in time, and as we reach successively the older strata, we are gradually approaching earth's morning; geographi- cally we thus deal first with the entire surface of the county; subsequently, and with particular reference to the Lower Coal Measures, we have to do with local outcrops of rock strata.
The entire surface of Lucas county, except in the very valleys where the surface soil is called alluvium, is covered with the drift, a formation which derives its name from the manner of its introduction over the sur- face, a method hereafter to be explained. The term " drift," as it is com- monly employed in geology, " includes the sand, gravel, clay, and bould- ers occuring over some parts of the continents, which are without strati- fication or order of arrangement, and have been transplanted from places in higher latitudes by some agency which (1) could carry masses of rock hundreds of tons in weight, and which (2) was not always dependent for motion on the slopes of the surface."-Hall. This agency was ice either the form of an extensive glacier, or detached masses called ice-bergs. The whole surface of North America, to the thirty-ninth parallel, bears evidence of the denuding and transforming power. It requires not a lit- tle stretch of the imagination to conceive all the streams of Lucas tied to their banks by bands of ice. The ice-locked rill ceases to babble over its rocky bed, the forests have gone like a vision, and all is one mass of mov- ing ice, a veritable palaeocrystic sea. In its progress onward old valleys were filled and new ones dug, rocks were polished, fragments detached and rounded, hills levelled and the entire aspect of nature changed. It left at our very doors masses of rock, large and small, or buried them in the hill-side, to excite our wonder and arouse us to speculate as to their origin. They were brought hither from some northern locality, where the material from which they were derived is found in situ, and hence the
2
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general movement of the glacier was to the southward. In this county the drift is exposed in all the valleys and ravines, and sometimes on the hillsides where the surface soil, or humus, has been removed. A few feet of this soil removed by the spade will expose the drift in its upper layers, which are here arranged in a kind of stratified manner, and which consti- tute what is called modified drift, a drift in which the materials have been assorted, in a rude sort of way, and arranged in strata by the action of water. This rearranging, or modification, was effected after the melting or recession of the glacier which brought the materials here; and perhaps in one of those periods of subsidence or continental depression which made the greater portion of Iowa one vast inland sea. In the deepest valleys the outcrops of the drifts are to be seen to the best advantage, and there they should be studied in order to learn all its peculiar features. But wherever seen the same essential features are presented to the eye. It is seen to be a compound of clay and gravel, with occasional beds of sand, and is deposited with considerable regularity of stratification. It usually contains many small and well-worn pieces of gneiss, prophyry, hornblende, and other primary rocks, together with occasional small fragments of limestone, sandstone, and bits of slate and coal, which have been torn from rocks and transported from points more or less remote from their present locality. The bluffs along the Mississippi river are almost entirely composed of drift, a most striking difference be- tween them and those along the Missouri, which are, superficially at least, composed of the loess.
By far the most important geological formations in this county are the coal measures, with which the county is entirely underlaid. Lying im- mediately below the drift are found the Upper Coal Measure strata, which, though spread over the greater portion of the western half of the county, do not often appear as surface rocks; nor do they frequently outcrop in the beds of the larger streams as might naturally be expected. This is due, perhaps, to the very deep deposits of the drift, through which most of the streams in this part of the county flow. The only well-known locality, where this formation does outcrop is on Long Branch, a tribu- tary to English creek, and its exposures are to be found in the northwest. quarter of section 3, township 73, range 21, where their appearance has been utilized as quarries. And even here the outcrop does not present the appearance of being a continuous portion of the greater mass which underlies the major half of the county. They are perhaps the remnants of a much larger exposure, which causes that need not now command our attention, have reduced to a small area compared to the original mass. At the close of the chapter will be given brief notes on the lithological character of the three coal measures, all of which appear in this county, and will enable those interested to identify them. It is now sufficient to
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state that the Upper Coal Measures probably are thickened to the west, in Lucas county, and that there both they and the Middle Coal Measures, must be pierced before coal in sufficient quantities to repay mining will be found.
The next strata, those of the Middle Coal Measures, comprise a con- siderable portion of the rocks which are presented to view in this county. As studied by Dr. C. A. White,* the formation first appears on the White- breast creek, in this county. In this division of the coal measures is found the so-called Panora coal, named from the village of that name in Guthrie county, where it was studied at a fine exposure. This exposure, and another one in the immediate vicinity of Wheeler's Mill, present the lithological character of these rocks in a splendid manner for study. A few feet above the Panora coal at this locality, appears a second, perhaps local, bed of coal, which has not been opened in the northern extension of this formation, and to which the name of Wheeler coal has been given. The following succession of strata were there observed:
FEET.
No. 10. Mottled blue and yellow shales. 4
No. 9. Wheeler coal.
15
No. 8. Mottled blue and yellow shales. 8
No. 7. Grayish impure limestone, two layers 2
No. 6. Blue shales 5
No. 5. Hard, brittle bluish lime rock
No. 4. Bituminous, fissile shale 1}
No. 3. Panora coal
1}
No. 2. Blue shales
2
No. 1. Yellow, gritty shales
6
These shales and limestones contain numerous fossils, characteristic, some of them, of their strata and of the formation. The discussion of their use is reserved to the close of the chapter. In the northern portion of the county, on English creek, in the southeast quarter of section 10,
* The work of Dr. White is often condemned as inaccurate and incomplete. The inac- curacy, if such there exists, is the result of the incompleteness, the latter caused by the short-sightedness of the general assembly which ordered the disorganization of the sur- vey, and the publication of the results obtained, before opportunity was given to correct data and results. Twice has the state instituted a survey, and as many times summarily brought it to a close before its work was fairly begun. Once, under Dr. Hall the state per- secuted researches of this character, allowed the director, Dr. Hall to advance moneys to pay the assistants and then repudiated the debt-which to this day remains unpaid-and brought the survey to an end. The time is coming when a survey must be had, and it is to be hoped is in the near future. Dr. White demonstrated enough of our geology to show the necessity of a complete geological and natural history survey, and the sooner this ob- ject is brought to the legislature and intelligently acted on, the sooner will the higher inter- ests of the state be served. R. E. C.
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township 73, range 21, a very instructive section was observed, which here follows:
FEET.
No. 7. Yellow, arenaceous shales 13
No. 6. Earthy, yellowish gray limestone 2
No. 5. Blue shales, with Septaria * 10
No. 4. Impure, bluish gray limestone
No. 3. Black carbonaceous fissile shale
No. 2. Parora coal . . 1}
No. 1. Light colored and bluish shales 8
At the point where this section was taken, considerable very good coal has been mined by drifting into the hill. Another section, taken in Pleas- ant township, section 17, township 73, range 20, shows the stratum of Wheeler coal, but the Panora coal is here wanting. Following is the section:
FEET.
No. 7. Yellowish, gray, arenaceous shales 10
No. 6. Wheeler coal.
1
No. 5. Light blue, gritty shales 10
No. 4. Light bluish, earthy limestone 3
No. 3. Dark blue shales.
No. 2. Bluish, impure limestone. 7
No. 1. Black, carbonaceous, fissile shales 3
" In the southern tier of townships, along the Chariton river, no rock exposures come to our notice. It is not improbable that the Middle Coal Measures immediately underlie at least portions of the southeastern town- ships. In Otter Creek township, in the northwest part of the county, ex- posures are equally rarely or never met with. On Stony Creek, in the northern part of Liberty township, the Panora coal is found at one or two points, and in the bed of the stream, or low in its banks, the Lacona coal outcrops. This bed is overlaid by fossiliferous bituminous shales, identi- cal in every respect with the horizon as it appears at intervals lower down Stony Creek, within the borders of Warren county. The upper bed is said to be fifteen inches in thickness, but the abandoned and fallen-in con- dition of the banks, prevented any measurements being made."- White.
The Lower Coal formation is by far the one of greatest value in the county. It is confined mainly to the eastern portion of the county, and is extremely irregular in its western boundary. It is probably wholly con- fined, as a surface rock, to townships 72 and 73, range 30, and to town- ship 72, range 21. These townships are those comprised by Pleasant,
*Septaria, a term now little used in science, is a name applied to mud-cracks, which have been filled with harder material, often silicious.
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Cedar, and Chariton. Its best outcrops for study appear in the northeast- ern part of the county on a branch of the North Cedar, called Flint creek. At this point a three foot seam of coal shows itself, and here has been opened and successfully conducted for a long time one of the best coal mines in the county. The following account of the Lower Coal Measures is taken from the report of Dr. White:
" A few hundred yards above Cole's mine in the bed of Flint creek, at the ford, we find an imperfectly exposed coal-bed two feet, more or less, in thickness, which is immediately overlaid by a one foot layer of conglomerate or pudding stone, cemented with ferruginous material, and above this, ten feet of grayish, blue, coarse sandstone, with obliquely laminated layers, 'giving an exposure of from ten to fifteen feet in thickness. The coal is traversed and interrupted in its continuity by seams and wedge-shaped masses of pyrite and indurated pyri- tiferous shale, which renders it worthless for any practical purpose. Higher up, the creek the sandstones crop out in the banks where good gravel quarries may be opened with little labor. At the ford, the beds have a slight southeasterly dip down the stream, but their relative position to the lower exposures could not be satisfactorily determined, though it is thought probable that this bed overlies the coal horizon seen at Cole's mine.
"On Mr. J. A. Rudisell's farm, in the northwest quarter of section 10, town- ship 73, range 20, sandstone outcrops in the hill sides, and in the bed of a branch of Second creek, which is probably equivalent of the rock last described. A short distance above Mr. Rudisell's, coal has been discovered on Second creek in the southwest quarter of section 10, which is doubtless referable to the bed exposed at Cole's mine, on Flint creek, two miles to the northeastward. This locality, however, has not been developed* and the thickness of the coal was not ascertained. Three miles due south of Rudisell's, near the steam-mill on the North Cedar, coal has been worked to a more or less considerable extent for sev- eral years. The mine is situated some distance above the mill on the west side of the valley, in section 27, township 73, range 20, on the Fowler estate. At the time of our visit the entry was filled with rubbish and water, in consequence of which no measurements were made. The coal is reported from three to four feet thick, and is overlaid by a few feet thickness of carbonaceous shales and dark blue clays. Half a mile below the mill, also in section 27, a three foot bed of coal is known, which is, doubtless, the same as that seam at the above expo- sure, and which may prove to be identical with the bed at Cole's mine men- tioned above. .
" No rock exposures were met with on the north Cedar, above the last men- tioned locality. But crossing the intervening divide, over a fine, upland prai- rie, in the valley of the Little Whitebreast, in the vicinity of Thompson's Mills, between two and three miles northeast of Chariton, several workings have been opened in a coal bed, low in the valley, from which quite large quantities of coal have been taken. The only exposure showing any considerable thickness of the associated strata, is that seen in the right bank of the stream just above the
*This was written in 1870.
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mill, where a fifteen to twenty inch coal bed outcrops ten feet above the creek. Between the coal and the water level, bluish and light colored shales occur, while above the coal, some fifteen feet of dark blue shales, capped by twelve feet of blue and yellow arenaceous shales are found. The coal is immediately overlaid by an irregular layer of pyritiferous nodules, which at some places afford a few fossils. Entries have been driven into the coal at several places in this vicinity, the bed ranging from twenty to thirty inches, and yielding an average quality of coal. The strata have a southwesterly inclination, which is locally equal to five feet in the distance of thirty-five yards. *
There is some doubt as to the relative position of this coal horizon. It bears a somewhat striking resemblance to the lowermost or Lacona coal in the Middle Coal measures, and this resemblance is enhanced by the appearance of arena- ceous deposits a few feet above the coal, as is shown in the exposure at Thomp- son's mine. But no indications of the presence of other and well known strata belonging to the lower division of that formation were observed at this locality, therefore, the present coal bed is provisionly referred to the lower coal meas- ures.
Other and very similar exposures are met with in the three townships above named, but since they all belong to the Lower Coal Measures, no further reference need be made to them. We have thus seen that all the coal measures that are to be found in the state have an appearance in Lucas county. The last we have considered was the one to be first found; it is the westward extension of the great coal-bed of the Des Moines valley, and is the cne alone in which the coal wealth of Iowa con- sists. These measures have been divided by geologists, into the Upper Middle and Lower, for convenience in study, but they are not wholly arbitrary divisions. It will be noted by the careful observer in this county, that the Lower Coal Measures have numerous and sometimes large strata of sandstones. These are characteristic of this division. Taken in connection with the deposits of fire or potter's clay, which invariably are to be found below the coal seams, they form a most relia- ble guide as to the horizon to which they should be referred. The strata next above are also arenaceous, but to a much less extent, and have none of the strata of fire clay. The Upper Measures are characterized by the prevalence of limestones among the strata. The Middle Measures are to be regarded as transitional between the first and last. The other lithological differences which should be noted by the student have been pointed out in the sections made at various localities. It will be noted .also that the heavier or thicker beds of coal are found in the lower, the next in thickness and quality in the middle, while no beds of workable coal are to be found in the upper measures. Aside from these general features that will serve to distinguish these' formations, there are other facts, but they are not so patent. Reference is made to the palaeontolog-
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