USA > Iowa > Allamakee County > Past and present of Allamakee county, Iowa. A record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 7
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The first petit jury was: Reuben Smith, A. W. Hoag. B. D. Clark, David Miller, John Stull, Charles R. Hoag, A. L. Barron, Thos. Cosgrove, and H. M. Willson.
The first term in Waukon was set for Monday, June 6, 1853; but it is recorded that "the presiding judge, in order to give time for the preparation of a suitable place at Waukon, the newly-selected county seat, by written order, directed that the court be adjourned till tomorrow." June 7th the court was again adjourned one day. W. C. Thompson was sheriff ; and R. Ottman, deputy clerk, acted in the absence of his superior, L. B. Hodges. Much delay in the Vol. 1-4
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
business of the court was occasioned by the fact of jurors and witnesses having been summoned to appear at Columbus.
On the eighth the sheriff returned into court with the grand jury, and the court was opened with Judge Wilson of Dubuque presiding. Files of the old Lansing Intelligencer show that Judge Wilson arrived at Lansing on the seventh, on the steamer West Point, and opened the court the next morning in the court- house at Waukon, which is described as being a small and rather inconvenient log cabin, "but considering that the official whose duty it was to provide suitable accommodations ( referring to Elias Topliff, county judge ) had refused to do so, and that the structure was erected by a private enterprise, as good as could be expected." The difficulty arose from the unwillingness of Topliff and Hodges, who were interested in the town site of Columbus, to surrender the county seat from that place, as will be narrated in the chapter on county seat elections.
In the records of this June term at Waukon, appears the following: "Then came Benjamin M. Samuels and moved the court to adjourn to Columbus, for the reason that Columbus was legally the county seat of Allamakee county ; which motion, after the argument of counsel, was overruled by the court, where- upon the counsel for the motion excepted."
L. B. Hodges, clerk of the court, not appearing at his post, the sheriff was dispatched in search of him. When brought into court he resigned his office, and no proceedings were had against him. Lewis W. Hersey was appointed to fill the vacancy. After disposing of a good-sized docket of some forty-five cases the court was adjourned until November 7.
At this June term the grand jury consisted of M. B. Lyons. Joel Baker, J. W. Hoag. James Hoag, Harman S. Cooper. A. Cheedle. James S. Mitchell. Ezra Reed, Ezra Pettit, Robert Isted, David Jamison, Thos. Newberry. Henry Noble, Peter M. Gilson, and Henry Johnson.
It is interesting to note that at this early day there was a demand for divorces, one being granted at this term, and one case dismissed only to come up again at the fall term, when two divorces were granted. There had been one granted at the Columbus term of court; and the famous case of Post vs. Post was the first case tried in the county, as before narrated.
The next term was opened at Waukon, November 7, 1853. Judge Thos. S. Wilson : S. Goodridge, district prosecutor ; L. W. Hersey, clerk ; John Laughlin, sheriff ; Thos. A. Minard, deputy. There was a large number of cases on the docket, among them a number of indictments for gambling and betting, keeping gambling houses, selling liquor, and assault and battery. These were all con- tinted under $200 bonds, and at a later term nearly all were dismissed. The first state case that came to trial was one against Grove A. Warner and James A. Davis for robbery. They lived near Merrian's Ford, or later Myron, in Post Township, and Warner had served as clerk of Commissioners' Court in '49 and '50, was a justice of the peace, and a shoemaker by trade. It seems that Thos. and Jerry Gorman came into possession of some $600 or $700 and in considering where to place it for safety against the time they should have occasion to use it, one of them consulted Justice Warner. Not long after the Gormans were robbed of all they had about them, which happened to be only about $60, they having found a depository for the main portion of their funds. Davis was convicted. at this term, the verdict being "robbery in the first degree." and received a sen-
71
PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
tence of ten years in the state penitentiary. Warner disappeared, and his bonds- men forfeited his bail.
Judge Dean in 1880 wrote thus entertainingly of the first courthouse :
"Waukon, now having become the seat of justice (by recent county seat election ), and there being a term of the District Court to be held in June follow- ing, some provision must be made, and a proper place provided ; so a purse of money and labor was raised, and a log cabin about ten feet by fourteen that belonged to Mr. Pilcher and stood near the place where Mrs. Cooper now lives (now owned by John J. Arnold), was purchased and moved to the new town site, and erected on or near the spot where the Mason House now stands. [Now the Allamakee .- Ed.] This was the first courthouse in the town. To this was attached a small board addition in the shape of a lean-to for a grand jury room, and in this building the Hon. Thos. S. Wilson of Dubuque held the first court ever held in Waukon, opening June 9, 1853. The building was so small that when the jury took a case to make up their verdict, the court, attorneys, and spectators took the outside, and they the inside, until they had agreed. During this court all parties here from abroad found places to eat and sleep as best they could, every log cabin in the vicinity being filled to overflowing.
"This little log cabin was so utterly lacking in size and accommodations for county business, that in the fall of the same year it was moved down on what is now Spring Avenue and used as a blacksmith shop, but was subsequently moved onto the farm now ( 1880) owned by Dr. Mattoon, and is used by the doctor as a corn crib; [a few years later it was demolished .- Ed.] and Sewell Goodridge, prosecuting attorney and ex-officio county judge, built a small frame building on the east side of Allamakee Street, with hardwood lumber and basswood siding, made at some of the sawmills on Yellow River. This building was used for county officers, courts, etc., until 1857, when it became too small for the business of the county, and Elias Topliff, then county judge, built alongside of it another frame building about the same size, and the two were used for county purposes until the county seat was removed to Lansing, in 1861."
The action of the County Court providing for this building is thus preserved in the court records: "On this 6th day of September, A. D. 1853, being the day (by previous arrangement ) for entering into a contract for putting up a county building, the proposition of William Ramsdall being the lowest bid, it was ordered by the court (by said. Ramsdall giving sufficient security ) that the said William Ramsdall should have the contract, which contract was entered into for the amount of $325." This was the first of the two small buildings referred to by Judge Dean, the second being added in 1857.
These little buildings having withstood the vicissitudes of nearly sixty years, having escaped the dangers of fire and storm to which many stauncher structures have succumbed, still stand on the spot where first erected, in mute appeal to the interest of all who possess a spark of reverence for the venerable, or near-venerable, or a sympathy for high estate brought low. Various have been their uses and occupancy since vacated by the courts of justice and the high officials of our county government in 1861. The writer of these lines has a vivid recollection of a line of men and "big boys" drawn up in the vacant room when used as a recruiting station, late in 1861, or 1862; and a strong impression was
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
made upon his youthful mind by the wavering, but finally all-but unanimous, response to the call, "for three years or the war, two paces to the front!"
In 1859 'and '60 the present courthouse was built, completed in 1861. The contract was let to Chas. W. Jenkins and John W. Pratt for $13,500; of which sum Waukon contributed $5,000, and after the county seat was once more restored to her in 1867 the new building was occupied by the county and the little old frame buildings on the east side of Allamakee Street were sold, and are now occupied as a cabinet shop and a barber shop.
Herewith is presented a view of this little old original courthouse as it now appears, the last picture that it will be possible to produce as it has at this writing just been sold and will soon be replaced by a substantial structure.
IDEAL SKETCH of ROCK FORMATIONS of ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
Vertical Seale , 100 ft - lin. By E Orr
10 ft
Lo: ss 2 Soit
200
Towar Till
Pleistocene Group
20.
Kansan TRH
Fr. Atkinson
20.
30.
Clermont Shales
Maquoketa Group
Elgin
50.
Limestone
Galena
GalEna -
225.
Limestone
Trenton
CTONP
Decorah Shales
Platville
50.
Limestune
3 .
Wienwird Shales
Ordovician
-Unconformity (?)
Heave Quarry
Prairie du
Chien
GrunA
Oneota
200.
Load Crevice
Limestone
80.
Jordan Sandstone
40 +
St. Lawrence Limestone
Potsdam G TOUR
Quarry Beds
25 %
Quarry Beds
Cambrian
Dresbach Sandstone
+ 700.
Level of Kiver
St Peter Sandstone
50.
Shakopee Limestone
20 00
NEW Richmond Sandstone
QUAT-
CHAPTER VIII
GEOLOGY OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
By Ellison Orr
"Geology treats of the Structure of the Earth, of the various stages through which it has passed, and of the living beings that have dwelt upon it,-together with the agencies and processes involved in the changes it has undergone. It is essentially a history of the earth." In these words Professors Chamberlain and Salisbury, in their very complete work, define the science which we will apply to a study of the rock and soil formations of our county.
It is quite well settled that no matter when or how the great interior bulk was formed, great changes have taken place and much has been added to the outer or crustal portion of our world, the only part at all accessible for investi- gation and study.
It may be said that the very latest changes were made and are still going on at the surface, and that there we find the newest formations. Just beneath the surface we find those somewhat older. Below these are those older still, while at the greatest depths to which we have been able to penetrate are found the oldest. This is generally but not always the condition. Sometimes the surface has been heaved up in long, narrow and much broken, distorted, and folded moun- tain chains, in which rock strata hundreds or even thousands of feet in thick- ness are in places found standing on edge, and in other places great masses are entirely overturned so that the natural order is reversed and the oldest rocks are found on top.
It may be remarked in passing that mountain making instead of being a sudden and tremendous upheaval, is a slow process, the formation of a range taking a long time, and that while the great rock masses are being broken and twisted and thrust skyward, they are at the same time being disintegrated and dissolved by frost and water, ground down by moving ice and snow, and worn by winds. One force building up, the other wearing down. After the mountain making forces cease to operate, the forces that tear down still continue, and very old mountain ranges formed long ago, have the least height, sometimes being worn down to chains of rounded hills.
In places the up-thrust, instead of breaking the crust along an extended line, forming mountains, is heaved up into great flat domes covering large areas, some- times thousands of square miles in extent. Such are plateaus. Where such up-
75
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
heavals are of great age, much of the later formations has been eroded away, exposing often rocks of great antiquity.
The Labrador Plateau illustrates such an ancient upheaval and later erosion.
It is by studying the rocks brought up from below and exposed in mountain making, those brought to view by the wearing away of plateaus, and those ex- posed by the cutting downwards of stream and river valleys, that it has been possible to classify the rocks, learn the materials of which they are composed, and discover the plant and animal remains buried and hidden in them.
Beginning at the surface, we find it very generally covered by a mantle of soil, clay, sand, gravel, and broken rock. This is rock waste. Sometimes this mantle is largely formed by the disintegration and decay of the solid rock on which it lies and the crevices of which it fills. The soluble portion of the rock has been carried away by air and water action. the insoluble part left. This is usually a stiff tenacious red clay over limestone rock, to which geologists have given the name of geest, and a bed of loose sand over sand rock. Over the geest, in northeastern Iowa. and just below the black soil at the very surface, is a stratum of yellow clay varying in thickness from a couple of feet up to twenty or more. In places there is found between the geest and this yellow clay, a blue clay filled with reddish pipe-like concretionary formations. Both of these clays are called loess. The origin and manner of formation of the loess is still in dis- pute. By some geologists it is regarded as of aeolian origin, that is, that it was formed by dust caught up and carried by the winds from large areas of arid clay at no great distance and redeposited where found now. By others it is thought to be of lacustrine origin,-the settlings of a lake. As the loess differs in different places both are probably right. The loess of the Missouri valley is most likely wind formed. that of our locality may have been deposited at the bottom of a lake surrounded by glaciers. For at one time all of North America. as far south as the Ohio river, the northern part of Missouri and Kansas, nearly to the Rocky mountains, was covered with a great sheet of ice. A study of this great glacier by the record which it left behind when it finally melted away seems to indicate that during an age of much greater cold than we now have, it began to accumulate in Labrador and Keewatin, forming an ice cap such as now covers Greenland. As it became thicker and thicker it began to spread and flow or move very slowly southward, in the course of time reaching the limits men- tioned. Then there came a change. The climate became milder and the front of the ice began to melt and recede. As the glacier in its southward movement had gathered up the sand, the geest and clay, and had broken up and ground the hard rocks over which it passed and mixed and frozen them into itself, so, when it began to melt, the water running away in the swollen streams and rivers left behind the clay and rocks, where they were when the ice movement stopped
Sometimes the deposit thus left is only a few feet thick, sometimes it is hundreds. It is a stiff sandy clay containing abundant ice-worn rocks from the size of a marble to that of a house and is known as the drift or glacial till. If the front of the glacier remained stationary for a long time,-that is, if it melted away at the front as fast as it advanced .- this glacial till was heaped up in small rounded hills, and a range of such hills marking the place where the old glacier seemed to rest is called a terminal moraine. Glacial till dropped from a rapidly receding glacier,-one that melted much faster than it advanced .- is called a
77
PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
ground moraine, the surface of which is usually very flat. This is the reason for the monotonous dead level of our western prairies, they being largely gla- ciated areas where the till was deposited as a ground moraine. The ice worn rocks or boulders are of kinds not found near the surface in this region but have been torn from their beds far to the north. It is by them that we have been able to trace the course of the glacier's movement.
These erratic boulders are largely of granite, greenstone, quartz, and other ancient rocks from the Labrador table land. From their hardness they have re- ceived the local name of "nigger heads."
Four times the great ice sheet advanced across what is now Iowa and four times receded, finally to disappear from the continent except on the high moun- tains and Greenland. It was thousands of years advancing and thousands re- treating. From data obtained from the cutting away of the gorges below Niagara Falls and the Falls of St. Anthony at Minneapolis, it has been computed that it has been about eight thousand years since the ice disappeared from the most northerly parts of the United States, and hundreds of thousands of years since it first invaded the same territory. The era of time during which this was taking place was called the Ice Age.
The rock mantle then of the country we are to study is formed of the black soil at the surface,-clay containing much humus or decayed vegetable matter ; the loess of two kinds below that, resting on the geest, or where there is drift, on that ; then the geest resting directly on the hard rocks.
An exception to this is the flood plain of the Mississippi river. The islands, and the soil and sand under the ponds, sloughs and channels of the great stream, down many feet to bed rock are alluvial deposits, washed in from the sur- rounding country.
For Allamakee county these formations may be approximately expressed in the following table :-
Black surface soil
I inch to 2 ft.
(Alluvial, Mississippi flood plain ) 100 ft.
Iowan (yellow ). loess
I foot to 20 ft.
Kansan (blue) loess o foot to 6 ft.
Drift (only in S. W. part of county) o foot to 60 ft.
Geest (rock residue)
o foot to 3 ft.
THE STRATIFIED ROCKS
If the mantle of soil, clay, sand and glacial till were to be removed, the hard or indurated rocks would be exposed for inspection.
Particularly noticeable then would be the much greater depth of the valleys, and their existence where they are now unknown. Everywhere under the drift soil, could be seen on the rocks the scratches and grooves made by the boulders frozen in the great ice plow as it moved slowly but irresistibly over them.
The rock exposed, if it were examined over wide areas would be found to vary greatly in color, composition, hardness and the manner of its occurrence, but still could readily be grouped together in two great classes. About four- fifths of all the land surface would be rock arranged in layers or strata, and
78
PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
generally not very hard. The remaining one-fifth would be hard, generally crys- talline rock, usually massive or without stratification, and usually showing evi- dence of having at one time been heated extremely hot. The latter are called crystalline rocks and are the older, being always found beneath the former or sedimentary or stratified rocks, except where overturned in mountain making, or where they are cooled lava, volcanic ash or other matter ejected by volcanoes, in which case they are often of the newest formations. Many of our great moun- tain cones like Vesuvius and Ætna in Europe and Mount Hood in this country are made up wholly of rock formed of matter thrown up from deep in the earth. Such rocks are called igneous, and when of great age are often very crystalline.
In places, notably in Idaho, New Mexico and Arizona, matter in a molten condition appears to have flowed out of fissures in vast quantities and covered great tracts of country with sheets of igneous rock of quite uniform thickness. Where this occurs, and in the case of the ordinary volcanic cone, these rocks are then often found overlying the sedimentary rocks.
The crystalline granites are of the oldest of the rocks. They were once thought to be part of the earth's original crust. But later investigations lead to the belief that no part of such crust is now in existence in its original form, but that it has been so folded, crushed, and ground, and changed chemically and by metamorphism, eroded and redeposited, that it is now entirely different. These granites are only exposed in mountain chains or on very ancient plateaus,-the "first dry land" up thrust from the sea,-or where very shallow deposits of sedimentary rocks overlying them have been entirely worn away by erosion.
Most of the rocks of the crystalline class now exposed have once existed as rock in a very different form and had a different composition from their pres- ent one. In all probability, excepting those of igneous formation, they were at one time all sedimentary. The change has been produced by great heat, pressure, and crustal movement, and they are said to have been metamorphosed, and are called metamorphic rocks. Marble is a metamorphic limestone.
All the older rocks of the crystalline class bear evidence of great crushing, folding and fracturing. They were shattered again and again by the violent crustal movements of the young earth. The fissures filled with hot solution of rock material that hardened to be again shattered and again made a solid rock, the process often being repeated many times.
Geologists have given to these older rocks of this class in North America the name of the Archaan complex. No rocks of this complex are found in our county, or even in the state except in the extreme northwest corner, where there are a few outcrops of Sioux quartzite, a rock of this era.
Stratified rocks are those found in layers or strata. Most stratified rocks were formed as a sediment or deposit at the bottom of the sea or of other bodies of water. Some stratified clays and sands have been formed by the winds, and river flood plain deposits formed by running water have more or less stratifica- tion. The strata may be as thin as paper or may be many feet in thickness.
The stratified rocks of sea formation may be divided into three kinds :- Sandstones, clays and shales, and limestones. The first two have been formed from the disintegrated, crushed and pulverized rocks of the land surfaces washed by the rain into the rivers and carried by the rivers to the sea.
POSTVILLE - Elevation, 119512. Well, 515 ft. deop
WAUKON - Elevation, 1279 ft. Well, 577 ft. deep
Iron Hill - Elevation, 1320 ft.
× Lycurgus
Church
Elevation, 1216 ft.
ELEVATION, 1055. fr
Artesian Well , 748 ft. deep
- Mississippi River
7
5
water
Level
of
Mississippi
River
-
Sectional View of Rock Formations of Allamakee' County. Iowa. Along a line beginning at Lansing, thence to top of Mt. Hosmer and along divide vis Church and Lyourgus to Iron Hill; thence, via Waukon and Forest Mills to Postville. Horizontal Scale - 1 inch - 5 milee Vertical Scale ¿ inch - 100 feet.
ROCK FORMATIONS
1 Dresbach Sandetone
2&3 St. Lawrence Limestone 11 Galena Limestone
Jordan Sandstone 12 Elgin Limestone
5 Oneota Limestone
6 New Richmond Sandstone
7 Shakopee Limestone
8 St. Peter Sandstone
9 Platteville Limestone
10 Deborah Shales
Quartzite
13 Clermont Shales
14 Ft. Atkinson Limestone
15 Kansan Till
16 Iowan Till
17 Kansan Loess By E Orr
18 Iowan Loess
LANSING - Elevation, LS4 fe.
×
X
Forest Mills
Yellow River
villana Creek
-Well, 396 ft. deep
Ax Missouri Tron Co's Plant
X
12
10
X
×
4
81
PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
The sand was precipitated, or settled, first near the shores of the ocean, or other bodies of water, where it was spread out evenly by wave action, forming beds.
The clay and other minerals dissolved out of the rocks by the rains and brought down by the rivers, were mostly carried farther out and deposited in deeper and quieter waters.
The same processes that formed our oldest sedimentary rocks formed our newest and are still at work.
In ages to come the sandy beaches of our present sea shores, and the mud flats, and the clays of the quieter waters, will be by heat, pressure and chemical changes, changed, the loose sand to sandstone or quartzite, and the mud and clay to indurated clays and shales.
When animals, fishes and plants, living in the sea, die, the fleshy and other soft parts decay and the skeletons, teeth, shells, and scales of animals and fishes, and parts of the plants, settle to the bottom, are covered by the sand, the mud, or the clay, and are preserved. Land animals, birds, and plants are washed down by the rivers and their least destructible remains scattered over the sea or lake bottom and preserved in the same way. This was just as true in the past as the present.
Such remains, when found in rocks, are called fossils. In the rocks of latest formation they are often but little changed. In the older formations they have usually undergone chemical and other changes. Often after the bone, the shell or other part is covered up it is dissolved away or decays leaving a cavity of the exact shape of the part imbedded. This cavity is later filled by lime or silica held in solution by water filtering through the rock. A perfect cast of the original is thus formed.
Sandstone rocks were poor preservers of animal remains, and except when they are of recent formation few fossils are found in them.
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