USA > Iowa > Hancock County > History of Winnebago County and Hancock County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 2
USA > Iowa > Winnebago County > History of Winnebago County and Hancock County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 2
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
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finest in the whole country. Ocheyedan mound is only half so high. The famous Lapham Mound, Wisconsin, though more than 800 feet above the level of Lake Michigan is not so high above the basal plain as is our Pilot Knob. The visitor approaches Pilot Knob more easily from Forest City. The mound is visible from the streets of the town as indeed from the prairies almost anywhere for miles in any direction looming up dark and blue along the horizon. The highway climbs at first by easy ascent but at length ascends rather abruptly to the west- ern extension of the hill whence the Knob still looms above us nearly a mile farther to the east. Between lie mountain meadows, as typi- cally such as if the mountains really rose around us; sedgy bogs girt around by the white ranks of the aspen, walled in by impassable ridges. A tiny lake (Dead Man's) lies to the south 200 feet above Lime creek, fed by springs, cold and clear, in summer decked by water lilies and all forms of northern aquatic vegetation, but the knob is nearly a hundred feet above us still. Forests of oak and ash, linden and hickory spread all around, diminishing as we ascend, until we reach the wind-swept summit, perfectly bare; a miniature mountain in every particular. The view from the summit is certainly the finest of its kind. The Knob is so isolated and so steep on almost every side that the prospect in every direction is limited only by the powers of distinct vision. On the plain below us covered, as we know, with hillocks and knobs, all in- equalities vanish. The scene entire seems level where houses, groves and towns appear in varied colors to the far horizon's rim. Here is the natural park for the people of Forest City.
Having thus seen something of the nature of the topography with which we deal, we may now take a more comprehensive view and note its general arrangement. It is immediately apparent that there are no knobs to the south and west, and no plains to the north and east. The traveler on the Milwaukee railway approaching from the east meets the knobs at Clear Lake or near it: they keep him company to Britt and then disappear entirely. He has passed through the margi- nal, or Altamont moraine of the Wisconsin drift in this locality, a dis- tance of some twenty-two miles. If the reader will consult the map of Cerro Gordo county published in this series of reports" he will dis- ' cover that outwardly, that is, on the eastern side, the moraine termi- nates by a comparatively uniform front, the line of demarkation be- tween the hill country and the succeeding plain is nearly straight, or at least not very irregular; the inner margin of the moraine is quite the reverse. The ice seems to have returned from north and west again and again as if loth to release its hold, but recession onee begun the margin never quite reached again its farthest eastern out-push. By
* Report of the Iowa Geological Survey, Vol. VII, p. 180.
.
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consulting the maps it will be noticed that the existent drainage sys- tem is in large measure correspondent to geological history as por- trayed. It would seem as if the inner margin of the moraine was first correspondent in general with the eastern bank of Lime creek and the east fork of the Iowa river. The first return gave us in the same way the west fork of the river and the series of lakes to which we have already alluded. Subsequent advances and retreats presented in each case a somewhat arcuate or V-shaped front extending mainly east and west and leaving as results of marginal drainage the pecu- liarly paired affluent streams which in Kossuth county especially form the head-waters of the upper Des Moines. It is probable that these later morainic fields will be found coincident with others in Palo Alto and Emmet county which will again unite with those already noted in Dickinson and Clay and so form a more or less continuous recessional moraine across the entire field of Wisconsin invasion in northern Iowa.
A peculiar feature of the topography of Kossuth county may be mentioned here. Extending from the north part of Portland township entirely across Ramsey township and into Ledyard is a deep, well- defined depression known as Union Slough. The banks are in most places precipitous, twenty or thirty feet high and evidently the result of some former erosion. We say former erosion because there is evi- dently no erosion now. The bottom is flat, a mile at least in average width, without present channel or even drainage; simply a sharply outlined morass or swamp a mile or more in width and ten miles long, shut in by high.banks and hills. At present the whole surface is cov- ered with water from one to three or four feet deep, so level that a stream escapes from each end, south into Buffalo creek, north into the Blue Earth river. This trough-like valley is no doubt a section of the channel of some preglacial stream, probably part of the stream now represented by the Des Moines, a part that in some way escaped obliteration, although cut off, especially at the south by glacial detri- tus, piles of gravel and sand. It seems probable that Buffalo creek itself, after passing the south end of the slough, may occupy for a little way, till it reaches the river, part of the same old channel, and possibly the Des Moines also does the same thing here and there in its course southward.
Another topographic feature that is at first sight rather anomalous is the Irvington ridge. A high plateau extends from the river east and north from about Irvington around by St. Benedict and Wesley and so northeast until it joins the morainic hills south and east of Woden. The most prominent margin of the plateau is along the south and follows almost exactly for several miles the section-line road
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one mile south of the middle of Irvington township. This plateau is only about twenty or twenty-five feet higher than the Hutchins-Britt- Corwith plain, but it is perfectly named, as Prairie creek in the several branches, finds at the platean-margin a cutting point and erosion has worked back in rather unusual complexity from the erest. The topog- raphy looks much older than it really is, for there is no reason to suppose it earlier than the glacial epoch we are discussing. It seems probable that the platean represents the margin of an advance of the ice sheet which immediately receded, stopping some miles to the north where the knobby-drift region may be first traced and that in this ad- vance either no moraine was left at the south or it has been obliterated by erosion, at first exaggerated by the nearness of the ice-front. The drainage has, however, been always principally toward the Des Moines channel; there is a fall from the eastern crest toward the river of about four feet per mile.
DRAINAGE
The drainage of the area before us instead of determining the topog- raphy is almost entirely determined by it. In some places the drain- age is perfect or nearly so; in many places there is no drainage at all. There is however a general slope to the south or southeast and when natural drainage fails it is still possible by ditching to reach the end desired and some of the finest farms in the country border a brimming county ditch.
The naturally drained parts of these counties are in the main those immediately contiguous to the principal streams. Among the mo- rainic hills there are, of course, many well drained fields; but these are often so situated as to make their cultivation difficult until the adjoin- ing marshes are drained or tiled.
The principal streams of the three counties are: the Des Moines river and its tributaries, the Iowa river in two branches, and Lime creek, affecting principally the eastern side of Winnebago county. The Des Moines river, or rather the eastern fork of that stream, takes rise in southern Minnesota and enters Kossuth county from Emmet county some twelve miles south of the State line. The stream is of less importance until joined by its principal eastern tributary, Buffalo creek. From the point of this union some three miles south of the center of Kossuth county the river courses almost directly south through the middle of the county and emerges almost exactly at the center of its southern boundary. The river is a fine perennial stream. The valley of the river from its union with the Buffalo down to the Algona city limits follows apparently an old time channel. The flood plain is wide with much alluvium. At Algona the channel seems to
I-2
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WINNEBAGO AND HANCOCK COUNTIES
have been pushed west by the drift. At any rate the valley is here new and narrow and is flanked by narrow choppy ravines. Below the city the valley widens again and at Irvington seems to have been at one time gorged with gravel, probably because of the sudden bend at this point to the west. The most remarkable thing about the valley is its depth and the extent of erosion it displays. When, as evidenced by the topography, the glacier lay about Bancroft and Burt the marginal drainage was into the channel of the Des Moines especially by way of the Black Cat, Buffalo Fork and Linder's creek and these tributaries all show the same very marked erosive features. Indeed all the streams that converge immediately north of Algona are more or less deeply eroded and the drainage of this part of the county, south of a line passing through Lone Rock, is proportionally good. The stream channels cut thus deep in the prairie are here and there quite heavily bordered by native woods and the natural scenery is often beautiful.
The streams in the northern half of Kossuth county are all simply sloughs. Mud creek, the longest of them is well named : for the greater part of its course through several townships it has no eroded channel and waits the tardy aid of a county ditch. The Blue Earth river flow- ing north carries a strong current and seems to be the principal out- let of Union Slough and probably carries away most of the water from the public ditch which enters the upper end of the slough, draining Ledyard township.
The Iowa river is especially interesting because heading in the ter- ritory before us and so illustrating the beginnings of a characteristic .or typical prairie stream.
The Iowa river drains the eastern half of Hancock county and flows southward in two perennial forks, both determined in course by the topography of the moraine, both, but especially the western, primarily a drainage channel for the inner margin of the Altamont. Neither gives evidence anywhere within our limits of any extended erosive power. Where the valley is large or wide its width is referable to the original position of the knobs or hills more than to any carving done by the stream. The east fork of the Iowa river takes origin in a series of marshes occupying the central sections of Madison township, Han- cock county. Some of these swamps are within less than half a mile of the course of the west fork in this locality. Having gathered the waters of most of the sloughs in Madison township and the north part of Garfield township, winding about amid the morainic ridges and ever escaping southward where the hills have left a convenient gap, the stream tends at length almost directly southward along the east line of Garfield township and so continues for some eighteen or twenty miles, leaving the county five miles from the southeast corner. The stream
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receives its principal tributaries from the high flat prairies of Ell and Avery townships, the moraine on the east side of the river holding a respectful distance, four or five miles or more away; on the east the valley is limited by morainie swells and ridges all the way; these are especially prominent in the vicinity of Goodell and Klemme. At the latter point the stream has cut through an eastward projecting spur. Near the old town of Amsterdam in Avery township the river has a wide alluvial sandy flood plain, but it emerges from the county with only a narrow slightly eroded valley. The west fork of the river in its rise and progress is more remarkable still. Crystal lake may be called the head of the Iowa river. Its outlet flows east or northeast and passing through a gap in the morainic ridge just south of school- house number one in Crystal township, helped by a ditch, the stream turns southeast into Madison. It seems that the waters of Edwards Lake at time of overflow, a rare occasion, also seek the same channel, although it is possible that in high water the lake might drain equally well into a marsh to the east. This latter has been ditched into com- munication with a branch of Lime creek, care being taken to avoid the upper ramifications of the east fork of the river. Such are the difficul- ties under which one of the principal rivers of Iowa is determined in its first outgoing.
Once started the river streams on from one swamp to another avoiding many and finally, as the east fork, on the bounds of Crystal township turns directly south passing Eagle lake one-half mile to the west, but draining it only indirectly and in most cirenitous fashion, then on south, almost directly south, limited by moraines now on this side now on that but forming no valley for itself until it euts through the moraine to the east at last in Winfield Township and thenceforth occupies a channel distinctly erosional until it leaves the county within about three miles of the point of emergence of the east fork. The streams are thus seen to be nearly parallel. Their direc- tion and proximity are equally remarkable. They are more than once within three or four miles of each other. The phenomenon is ex- plained only when we study the topography which they have not caused but by which they are from first to last conditioned. For this reason these streams, although perennial and of considerable importance are less efficient in conveying away the surplus water of the fields. Only at the last have the currents sufficient fall and force to excavate a chan- nel. Hence only in the southern townships of the county are the val- leys really serviceable. Erosion has nowhere affected the secondary streams, and ditches are the order of the day.
Another prairie stream which must be mentioned here is the Boone river. This also takes its rise in Hancock county and is likewise of
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minimum service as a drainage channel. As above remarked the gen- eral slope of the country is south and the Boone in most of its course simply creeps aimlessly about upon the surface. Erosion appears in the vicinity of Corwith and thence south, but the main stream and all its tributaries are simply wide low swales or depressions over which the waters spread in times of flood, but, except as aided by human de- vice, produced no erosive change whatever. Paradoxical as it may seem, the valley of the Boone in Hancock county is an almost level plain; a depression unperceived by him who passes over it.
Lime creek is the third principal drainage channel of the territory now examined. This water rises in Minnesota and enters Winnebago county as a considerable stream about three miles east of the northeast corner of Norway township. The general course for many miles is al- most directly south, the westing being only about four miles in Winne- bago county. This stream also represents the original drainage of the inner margin of the Altamont. The whole of the three eastern townships of this county is morainic. In fact these townships have practically no drainage at all, for there are, strange enough, no tribu- taries to Lime Creek from the east. Beaver Creek in the southeast is of value to Mount Valley township; but although the whole country is hilly it is without natural drainage to a very large extent. On the other hand a considerable but very imperfect drainage enters Lime creek from the west. The county ditch following sloughs and swamps, some in natural connection and some not, now drains all of Newton township, drains Lake Harmon in Logan township and even the east side of King township. The channel of Lime creek is generally wide but uneven, little eroded above Forest City. At Forest City the ero- sion is very marked. Forest City occupies part of a morainic ridge some seventy feet above the flood plain of the creek, so that the valley here is not only deep but remarkably narrow. There is every reason to believe that the creek has since the retreat of the ice cut through the moraine, which is indeed part of the Pilot Knob system, and so found its way into the much broader valley immediately to the south. This valley, however, leads east; there are in places considerable flood plains and here and there a considerable deposit of gravel; but in gen- eral in Hancock county the creek simply winds about among the mo- rainic hills showing only here and there evidence of efficient erosion. Immediately northwest of Forest City is a sandy plain including a number of the south-central sections of Forest township. This with the rather wide alluvial bottom land or flood plain of the creek from Leland south all tends to confirm our conclusion that at Forest City the narrow valley has only recently, as such things are esteemed, been cut down and through. If one examines the map and the general trend
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of the moraines there sketched, together with the course of the Lime creek as far as Forest City and that of the east fork of the lowa, he can hardly resist the conclusion that these streams might really have been one but for the curious intervention of the successive morainic ridges which first dammed up Lime creek altogether and then shunted it away off eastward and northeastward ere ever it made escape southward and eastward in accord with the general slope characteris- tic of this part of Iowa, and the general trend of Iowa streams.
All the streams here described are remarkable in that they take origin in simply wide-extended meadows, great marshes on which the water is generally nowhere deep enough to prevent luxuriant growth of sedgy vegetation, but which seeps away with such slowness as to be- come in fact a perennial fountain. The effect of man's interference has been in many cases,-by no means yet in all,-to hasten by ditch- ing the escape of the marsh water and at length of the storm water, so that such rivers as the Iowa are likely more and more to become tenu- ous and uncertain in dry weather, more and more impetuous, sudden, erosive torrents in time of protracted rain.
GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The geological formations represented in these three counties are very few; in fact, but two, and these are no more than two superim- posed sheets of till or drift with no indurated rocky strata exposed or even discoverable, except by the well-digger's drill, in the whole area. The geology is almost wholly surface geology and apart from the topography just described offers few themes for present discussion. There are no quarries, save the scattered bowlders of the prairie; sometimes so large that a single one constitutes for a time a local quarry, sometimes so abundant that a single farm may furnish build- ing stone for the neighborhood and to spare. Here are named the only geological formations recognized :
Group.
System.
Series.
Stage.
Cenozoic.
Pleistocene.
Glacial.
Wisconsin. Iowan. ( ?)
Kansan.
THE PLEISTOCENE SYSTEM KANSAN DRIFT
The Kansan drift is the name applied to the vast body of glacial detritus spread over nearly the whole area of Iowa and constituting still the superficial deposit of the larger portion of the State's area.
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Older than the other generally recognized drift sheet it lies beneath these and so, as in our present field is only here and there exposed, al- though everywhere discoverable. The farmer who sinks a well, or sometimes even the man who excavates a cellar, the road-maker who cuts the hills, the railway engineer who empties a pocket of gravel,- anyone who for any reason cuts through the common country clay is sure to encounter sooner or later what he calls a hard-pan of blue clay. This experience is so general that it is everywhere understood. The blue clay is a recognized sub-stratum of which everybody is sure, the only question being as to relative depth or position and its thickness. The student of surface deposits recognizes in this omnipresent sheet of blue clay a member of the Kansan drift. Whatever may be above it or below it this much over the whole state, with few minor exceptions, is fixed and constant. Now in the area here described the blue clay, so far as discovered, comes naturally nowhere to the surface. It is probably very near the surface in many places, covered by the black soil only; but its proximity to the surface even where so reporteu, could not be confirmed. The Kansan clay has however been uncovered in places not a few by artificial means and sometimes by erosion. Be- sides, the bottom of Union Slough and the beds of many of the lakes and sloughs are said to be blue clay. The bottom of the Irvington gravel pit seems to be blue clay, and road cuttings between Algona and Irvington, along the river, reveal the same peculiar, easily identi- fied formation. Along the road that leads up from the river south- west in section 10 a peculiar jointed clay may be observed which repre- sents an oxidized upper portion of this same blue clay horizon. The experienced traveler along the highway will catch many such glimpses, especially after heavy rains when erosion is everywhere usually fresh and clean. It may be worthy of record that for such observation the summer of 1902 gave exceptional opportunity. But beyond all sur- face exposures, the record of every deep well in the whole country es- tablishes the presence of the Kansan drift as the universal subjacent stratum over our entire area. Just above this hard-pan of blue clay there is often found in other parts of lowa a deposit of hard compact brown or reddish gravel, and traces of this are also not lacking in the surface exposures referred to along the Des Moines river.
It was to be expected that traces of the Iowan drift had been dis- coverable here. This deposit in Cerro Gordo county and all the country east constitutes the surface and lies directly upon the Kansan or upon the country rock. It seems, however, that in this neighbor- hood the Iowan deposits are very thin, very scanty, represented in many places, as it appears, by trains of bowlders only.# Besides the
* See Vol. VII, pp. 174-5, Geological Survey.
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opportunities for observation, for tracing lines of contact in materials so easily displaced are not many. The country as already shown is flat save as covered by piles of the later drift, conditions entirely un- favorable to stratigraphic observation. It is difficult to say how much farther than present known limits the Iowan may have extended west- ward; its western moraine has been obliterated in this latitude, did such ever exist; nevertheless it is to be hoped that somewhere within the limits of the counties now before us, possibly in Hancock or Winnebago county, probably not in Kossuth, which is too far west, some section more fortunate may one day reveal the sequence of all the Pleistocene deposits that here properly belong or may in good reason be assumed. There is evidence also in the report of well-diggers for this region, of the existence of still other, older, Pleistocene deposits beneath the Kansan. Everywhere come the usual reports of the finding of muck, twigs, sticks, etc., under the blue elay, with bad water from the black horizon. All this indicates, of course, that this blue clay bed covers an older surface, a surface once green with vegetation as is the present, though with a somewhat different vegetation as the twigs and sticks would show. Besides, after passing the blue clay the drill often goes through gravel, and other drift material for considerable distances be- fore reaching limestone. Thus at Lake Mills the town well showed some twenty-five or thirty feet of such material, other wells are re- orted as showing even more. That is to say there is at least one other drift sheet under that here described as Kansan, but we have not vet sufficient data for its delimitation or definition.
In the same way in which we learn of this formation we come to a knowledge of the rocky floor which at greater or less depth underlies all this great body of drift gravels and sand and clay. The limestone that crops out in Cerro Gordo and Humboldt counties may guide ns somewhat in determining the foundation limestones next the drift in Hancock and Kossuth. They represent possibly the Kinderhook stage of the Lower Carboniferous, or the Lime creek stage of the Devonian, on the south, with the Cedar Valley stage of the same system in the north, especially in northern Hancock and Winnebago counties .* The limestone oceurs at no great depth in any part of our field ; thus at Lake ยท Mills the depth is reported one hundred feet; at Thompson, nearly west, one hundred and eighty feet; at Germania, directly west of Thompson, only seventy feet. At Lone Rock and in that vicinity the limestone lies at from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet be- neath the surface; at Garner, at one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty; at Britt, one hundred and twenty-five feet ; at Algona, two hundred and thirty feet is the report. If this is true the well must have
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