USA > Illinois > Mason County > Centennial history of Mason County, including a sketch of the early history of Illinois, its physical peculiarities, soils, climate, production, etc. > Part 6
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A seam of coal was stated also to have been met with near the bottom of the boring, but its thickness could not be satisfactorily ascertained. I also heard it stated that a seam of coal about two feet thick had been worked by the early settlers of the county in this vicinity, and afterwards abandoned on account of its poor qual- ity. No traces of the outerop or the old workings are now visible,
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
and I am not able to state with any degree of exactness the place in the series of this seam of coal, though it is undoubtedly among the measures of the upper beds.
At Rankin's mill, about two miles farther up the stream, in the northwest quarter of section 7, township 19, range 3, the creek flows over a bed of limestone, which is also quarried at one or two places on the southern bank. The rock is a light gray or bluish gray, irregular bedded limestone, and contains a few of the com- mon coal measure fossils, of which Spiriffer, Cameratus, S. Lin- eatus, Athyris Subtilita, and a few others only were collected. Its thickness here as ascertained by means of a well dug in one of the quarries, was eleven feet, and underneath it was found four feet of black slate, underlaid by seventeen feet of fire-clay, and then six feet of limestone. The hole is continued by a boring to a depth of eighty feet from the surface, at which depth a seam of coal was struck, the thickness of which I was unable to ascertain. This, or a similar bed of limestone outcrops on Lake Fork of Salt Creek, in section 23, township 19, range 8, in a ledge about three feet high, which has been quarried to a slight extent at one point near the center of the section.
The above comprises all the natural exposures within the limits of this district. There remain, however, various shafts, borings, &c., which, over the larger portion of the territory, afford us the only means whatever of ascertaining the character and the thickness of the underlying beds. Of these, with one or two exceptions only, the shafts alone furnish sufficiently reliable sections of the strata, and as yet but two or three have been sunk. At Lincoln the shaft afforded the following section after passing through about seventy feet of soil and drift:
I Light blue arenaceous shale. 6 feet.
2 Hard blue limestone, containing corals. 3
3 Black slate 0 Io inches.
4 Coal. I
6
5 Fire-clay. 6 feet.
6 Arenaceous shale 3
The black slate which had been taken from the shafts was too much decomposed at the time of my visit for me to obtain from it any very well preserved fossils, although among the rubbish I ob- served various indistinguishable fragments of what had apparently
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IIISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
been fossil shells. The coal in this section is probably not below No. 6 of the Illinois river section, and may possibly be still higher. About four miles south of Lincoln, on the land of Mr. J. Brancher, near the center of the south line of section 14, township 19, range 4, a hole was sunk by boring to the depth of two hundred and fifty feet, and three seperate scams of coal are reported to have been met with. Unfortunately, however, the thickness of the variation and the thickness of the beds could not be obtained, and we are there- fore unable to form an opinion as to the equivalents of these seams. In a boring at Atlanta in the northern part of this county a seam three feet and six inches thick was reported at a depth of two hun- dred and forty feet; the overlying bed as reported consisting of alternate strata of slate, soapstone, limestone, &c. This is probably coal No. 6, although without a more positive evidence than is afforded by a single isolated boring, nothing can be stated with ab- solute certainty.
The two shafts at Bloomington, which have been mentioned in the remarks concerning the drift in the previous portion of this chapter, affords us the most satisfactory section of any excavation in the district, enabling us to identify the two seams of coal which they penetrate, with Nos. 4 and 6 of the general Illinois river section.
The following section, made up from records furnished by both shafts, illustrates well the variation of the strata of the middle coal measures of this region. This section commences at the base of the drift, and its upper portion, from 1 to 4 inclusive, was afforded by the Bloomington Coal Company's shaft, and the remainder by that of the McLean County Coal Mining Company, a mile further south, along the railroad track :
I Clay shale 16 fect.
2 Sandstone 32
3 Clay shale. I
4 Coal No. 6 4
5 Fire-clay 13
6 Limestone. 2
7 in.
7 Fire-clay IO
S Clay shale S
9 Fire-clay 15
10 Shalc. 3 6 in.
II Soft blue slate 22
7 in.
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
12 Black slate 5
13 Coal No. 4 4 6 in.
14 Fire-clay . 6 9 in.
No. 2 of this section is light colored laminated sandstone, con- taining a few remains of fossil plants. In the more southern shaft it seems to be replaced by a conglomerate. No fossils were ob- tained from any of the other beds excepting the black slate No. 12, over the lower coal, which contained in great abundance Lingula umbonata, Aveculopecten rectalaterarea, Cardina fragilis, and other fossils characteristic of the shales of this coal. A rather pe- culiar feature, however, is the comparative rarity of the Discina Nitida, usually the most abundant fossil in this State, only one or two specimens being found in rather a protracted search.
In the northern and eastern portions of McLean county we have only the records of several borings, which afford but few particu- lars as to the character of the underlying beds. Just over the coun- ty line in Livingston county, about two miles from Chenoa, in a northeast direction, a ledge of blueish-gray, irregularly bedded limestone outcrops in the side of a ravine. In general appearance this rock is similar to that noticed in the preceding pages as occur- ring on Salt Creek, in Logan county, and like it, is probably in the upper part of the coal measures.
ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY.
From the preceding remarks it will be seen that although four of five different seams of coal underlie different portions of this district, but two of them have been worked to any extent. The upper of these two, No. 6 of the general section, is worked to a slight extent along the Illinois river, in the region of Peoria and Pekin, and is also the upper seam in the Bloomington shafts. Its thickness in these localities ranges from three to four feet. The coal in this bed is generally softer and more impure than that of the next seam below, and its workings have frequently been forsaken for those of the lower bed. The sixteen-inch vein of coal which has been mentioned on a preceding page as occurring on a ravine a short distance back of Wesley City, and which I have there con- sidered as still higher vein of coal, may possibly be this seam, in spite of its lesser thickness, as is a characteristic of this bed, in other parts of the State, where it has been identified, to vary considerable
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
in its thickness; in some cases, indeed, thinning out very rapidly in the space of a few feet.
The more reliable indications of the accompanying limestone beds, with their characteristic fossils, cannot under all the circum- stances, be well observed, nor, indeed, do they appear to be invari- ably present.
The lower coal, No. 4, is the seam which is now mined in nearly all the principal workings within the limits of this district, and will, generally, average here near four feet in thickness.
The coal is generally harder, and a better heating material than that of the upper bed, besides being more reliable in its thickness.
It, however, contains in some parts its share of impurities, but often so disposed in the vein as to render them easily separable. In some of the shafts near the city of Pekin, the seam of coal which I have referred to in the preceding pages, contains in its lower por- tion, about sixteen or eighteen inches above the base, a thin seam of fire clay, separating it into two unequal portions, and sometimes a vein of slate or slatey coal is reported to otcur only five or six inches above the bottom. In the upper portion, also, there is often what is called "hickory," or mixed coal and shale or sand rock. The thickness of good coal, however, is sufficient to render its working profitable.
At Bloomington, the shafts were first sunk only to the upper coal, which was worked for a short time, and then the shaft having been deepened, the upper bed was abandoned, and only the lower scam was worked. The difference in quality was very marked at this place, the lower coal was very much superior to that of the upper seam.
Beneath this coal, No. 4, we find by the boring, opposite Peoria, by Voris & Co., two seams of coal, at the depths of one hundred and twenty and two hundred and thirty feet, and, respectively, four and three feet in thickness, which are most probably Nos. I and 3, in the general sections referred to. Although we have no positive data as to the existence of these or other beds under the coal No. 4, in other portions of the district, yet, from their existence at this point, and from our general knowledge of the development of the lower coal measures of this State, it seems quite probable that these seams of coal might be found at the proper depths in other parts of this and the adjoining counties.
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
A boring of from two to two hundred and fifty feet below the known horizon of No. 4, or to five, seven or eight hundred feet from the surface, in different parts of the district, would probably penetrate all the coal' measures, and settle all the questions in re- gard to the existence and development of the underlying coal seams.
The upper coal seams are perhaps represented in this district, by the bed reached in the Lincoln shaft, and it may be, also, by the small vein near Wesley city, in Tazewell county, which I have in the preceding pages referred, with doubt, to a higher level than No. 6, though still admitting its possible identity with that bed it- self. In neither of these localities is the seam of sufficient thick- ness to be worked with much profit, excepting where it might per- haps be profitably worked in a small way by stripping along the line of its out-crop.
BUILDING MATERIALS.
This district is, as a whole, scantily supplied within itself, with building stone, the greater portion of its surface being occupied by drift deposits.
Along the Illinois river, in Tazewell county, the sandstones of the coal measures have been quarried, to some extent, to supply local demand, and in some localities appear to afford a stone suita- ble for foundations, cellars, walls, etc.
The limestone beds which also occur in the coal measure strata in this region, though generally of inconsiderable thickness, may also furnish a limited supply for the same purpose, as well as for the manufacture of lime.
The limestone ledges, noticed as occurring on Salt creek and Lake Fork, in Logan county, also furnish fair material for the rougher kinds of masonry, and have been considerably quarried for this purpose.
Dimension stone, etc., when used in this district, are brought from beyond its limits; in a great measure from the quarries at Joliet.
Clay and loam, suitable for the manufacture of a fair quality of red brick, are found in nearly all parts of the district, and have been made use of in most of the principal towns within its limits. Sand, for building purposes, is also sufficiently abundant.
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
MINERAL SPRINGS.
We may, perhaps, properly mention under this head, the arte- sian well sunk by Messrs. Voris & Co., on the edge of the bottom land along the Illinois river, opposite Peoria, in which a current of water, holding in solution sulpherated hydrogen, was struck at the depth of seven hundred and thirty-four feet. When struck, it was stated to have had a head of sixty or seventy feet, and the flow is said to be nearly as strong at the present time. This water ap- pears to be derived from the upper portion of the Niagara group, but before the boring had reached its present depth, a vein of saline was met with at a distance from the surface of three hundred and seventeen feet.
Copperas and saline springs occur in various places in this dis- trict, and occasionally give names to some of the minor streams. Such names as Salt creek and Lick creek occur here as in other parts of the State. These springs, however, are few in number, and can hardly be considered of any economic value.
It is, perhaps, superfluous to mention at length the agricultural capabilities of this district, since the capacities of its soils, etc., are so well known, and its territory so generally taken up and occu- pied by actual settlers, and now under high cultivation.
I may safely say, however, that, with the exceptions of some sandy portions along the rivers, there are no extensive tracts of what may be called poor land. There are, indeed, some tracts of comparatively low bottoms, or marshy land, which are not at pres- ent available for all kinds of agriculture, but these are generally of limited extent, and are rapidly diminishing under an improved sys- tem of drainage, which places them at once among the more valu- able lands of the district. The numerous railroads now traversing the country, those projected and in process of construction, by mak- ing all portions readily accessable to the centers of trade, will add greatly to its present wealth and guarantee its future prosperity.
TREELESSNESS OF PRAIRIES.
[ To Prof. Winchell, L. L. D., Professor of Geology and of Botany, in University of Michigan, we are indebted for the follow- ing interesting contribution : ]
The prairies of the Mississippi valley, especially those lying within the limits of the great State of Illinois, constitute one of the most remarkable features of North American topography. Hun- dreds of thousands of acres, stretching through all the central and western portions of the State, present a scene of almost unbroken level and treelessness. The great prairies are neither a perfect plain, nor in all cases completely undiversified witlı arboreal vege- tation. The surface is generally undulating, and here and there rise gravelly knolls and ridges on which the timber has obtained a foothold. But these wooded spots are often many miles apart, and scarcely serve to rest the eye, wearied with the monotony of an interminable view of fenceless meadows and unsheltered farm houses.
The traveler, leaving Chicago by one of the great southern routes, passes out through the muddy and straggling outskirts of the western metropolis, and, ere he had thought of the great prai- ries through which he had expected to pass, he finds himself at sea. Looking from his car window, the country landscape seems at first to be entirely wanting. He feels as if passing over a trellis bridge, three hundred feet above the surrounding region. The customary objects-forests, shade trees, fences, houses, distant hills-which elsewhere lift themselves to the horizontal plane of the eye, are not here. The traveler must make a second effort, and look down up- on the level of the country upon whose bosom he has now launched.
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
The sensation is that which one experiences when going to sea. The rattling of the train is easily transformed into the puffing and creaking steamship, while the interminable prairie, mingling its distant and softened green with the subdued azure of the summer sky, can be likened to nothing but the ocean's boundless expanse. The ever recurring undulation of the prairie is the grand ocean swell, which utters perpetually a reminiscence of the last storm, while the evening sun, with dim'd lustre, settles down into the prairie's green sod, as to the mariner he sinks into the emerald bosom of the sea.
"These are the gardens of the Desert-these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
And fresh as the young earth ere man had sinned.
The prairies-I behold them for the first- And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch
In airy undulations, far away, As if the Ocean, in his gentlest swell Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless forever-Motionless ! No !- they're all unchained again. The clouds Sweep over with their shadows, and beneath
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem again to glide along, and chase The sunny ridges."
Illinois has been styled the garden State of the West. The deep rich pulverulent soil of the upland prairie, and especially its readi- ness for the plow, without the intervention of a year's hard labor in opening "a clearing," have always constituted powerful attrac- tions for the settler from the stony hills of New England, and the wooded regions of other States.
From our earliest knowledge of the prairie, speculation has been rife as to their treelessness and origin. The old and popular belief was that which attributed their treelessness to the annual burning of the grass by the Indians. But the prairies present other pheno- mena, which the annual burning fails to explain besides; the treeless- ness remains in regions where the burnings have ceased. And, further, the treeless prairies were not the only regions burnt by the Indians. And if they were, it seems more likely that the Indian burned the rank grass because the region was treeless than that the
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
region became treeless from the burning of such vegetation as flour- ishes in the shade of a forest.
It has been suggested that the region was originally forest-cov- ered, and that the southern cane flourished in such luxuriance among the trees as to rob them of their moisture and nourishment, and thus caused their extinction, and the cane having deprived it- self of the forest shade and protection, was itself scorched out by the rays of the summer sun. This theory is in every way unsatis- factory.
With others, the absence of trees is to be attributed to the ab- sence of moisture in the atmosphere, and also of the soil at certain seasons of the year. It cannot be doubted that the trecless plains of the far west, and also other regions, have failed to produce arbo- real growths through an insufficient supply of moisture. Still other treeless regions are such from an excess of saline constituents in the soil. But all such regions have nothing in common with the prairies of Illinois, except their treelessness. The topography and soil constitution of Illinois prairies points to a different and peculiar history. Moreover, trees occupy the dryer knolls of the prairies in the midst of common atmospheric conditions.
Exactly the reverse of this theory is that which attributes the absence of trees to an excess of moisture in the soil at certain sea- sons. But we well know that there is no soil so wet and stagnant but certain trees will flourish upon it-the willow, the cottonwood, the beach, the black ash, the alder, the water oak, the American larch, the arbor-vitæ, or some other tree-some of them standing joyously half the year, if need be, in water most stale and stagnant. Many swamps and sloughs are, indeed, treeless, but is this in con- sequence of the inability of the willow to take root and maintain itself, or rather in consequence of the formation of the swamp so recently that the germ of the tree has not yet been scattered over it? Moreover, wetness cannot be attributable to large portions of Illi- nois prairies which are entirely trecless. Is there a different cause for treelessness here? It has been suggested within a few years by high geological authority, that the lack of trees is caused by exces- sive fineness of the prairie soil. It can scarcely be denied however that other soils, as pulverent as that of the prairies, are densely cov- ered with forest vegetation, and that in the same latitudes, and under the same meteorological conditions. On the other hand certain soils of a coarse texture, are equally treeless. But the final
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HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.
objection to this theory, and to all other theories which look to the physical or chemical condition of the soil, or even to climatic pecu- liarities, for an explanation of the treeless character of the upland prairies of the Mississippi valley, is discovered in the fact that trees will grow on them when once introduced-not water-loving trees exclusively, but evergreens, decideous forest trees and fruit trees, such as flourish in all arable soils, and habitable portions of our country. Every one will now admit that trees will flourish upon prairies. In proof of this fact the prairie farmers for many years have been actively and successfully engaged in their introduction. "The prairies," says a noted author, "may easily be converted into wooded land by destroying with the plow the tough sward which has formed itself on them. There are large tracts of country where, a number of years ago, the farmers mowed their hay, that are now covered with a forest of young, rapidly growing timber. In like manner, the uplands of St. Louis county, Missouri, which were, in 1823, principally prairie lands, are now covered with a growth of fine, thrifty timber, so that it would be difficult to find an acre of prairie in the county." This testimony is confirmed by numbers of persons from various parts of the State with whom I have con- versed on this subject. The introduction of timber as a branch of rural industry, is now systematically pursued. A drawback to the cultivation of forest and fruit trees, is the violence of the prairie winds, and the occasional severity of the winter weather.
There are pretty satisfactory evidences that the soil of the prai- ries is of lacustrine origin. It has the fineness, color and vegetable constituents of soil accumulated upon a lake bottom. We find in it, moreover, abundant fossil remains of a lacustrine character. Fresh water-shells of a species still existing in lake Michigan, are found in localities many miles from the existing shore. Finally we have found all around the chain of great lakes, abundant proofs that their waters once occupied a much higher level than at pres- ent. We have discovered the object that dammed the waters to this extraordinary height. In short, we have ascertained that the prairie region of Illinois must have been a long time inundated- whether such inundation contributed to the characteristics of the prairies or not. I think it did. If I ascertain that the cause for an inundation exists; if I see the traces of an inundation all the way from the Niagara river to Illinois; if the barrier which shuts out Illinois from the lake is not one-third the hight of the ancient lake
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HISTORY OF. MASON COUNTY.
flood; if I find throughout the region exposed to inundation, the peculiar soil deposited by fresh waters, together with traces of lacustrine animals, which never wander over land, do I not discover a chain of facts which necessitates my conclusions? During the floodtide of the lakes, Lake Michigan must have found an outlet towards the south.
We find a corroboration of this. The broad, and deep, and blufflined valley of the Illinois river was never excavated by that inconsiderable stream. The deserted river valley discovered at in- tervals farther north, indicates the former southward flow of large bodies of water. At Lemont this valley is distinct, with its bound- ing bluffs and its "pot-holes," worn in the solid rock of the ancient river bed. This was the work of the lake in its declining stages. At the earlier period, when the waters of Lake Michigan stood one or two hundred feet higher than their present level, how much of the region south and west of Chicago must have been sub- merged? The ancient lake must have reached its arms into Iowa, Northern Indiana and Southwestern Michigan. While the ex- panse of lacustrine waters was brooding over the region destined to become a prairie, they busied themselves in strewing over the tombs of pre-glacial germs a bed of mud which should forever prevent a resurrection. Lake sediments themselves inclose no liv- ing germs. You will see the seeds of grasses and of fruit trees washed in by the recent storm, floating upon the surface and event- ually drifting to the leeshore. If they ever sink to the bottom and wrap themselves in the accumulating mud, it is after they have lost their vitality. Sunken and buried, they go to decay. Let a lake be drained and the bottom remains a naked, barren, parching, shrinking waste. No herbs, or grasses, or trees burst up through the pottery-like surface. But everywhere, from beds of ancient glacial materials, vegetation is bursting forth and announcing itself. "Lo! here I am!" speaks the nodding young pine, that has been slumbering just beneath the surface through the long and undis- puted possession of the deciduous forest, which the axe had just mown down. Not so in a lake bottom. Here are the cerements of the dead, not the wrappings of the slumbering. When, there- fore, the ancient lake relinquished dominion over Central Illinois, it left a devastated and desolate country. Around the ancient shores of the abandoned area the emerald forest had stood nodding and blossoming and fruiting, while the inundating lake had washed
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