Past and present of the city of Quincy and Adams County, Illinois, Part 52

Author: Collins, William H. (William Hertzog), 1831-1910; Perry, Cicero F., 1855- [from old catalog] joint author; Tillson, John, 1825-1892. History of the city of Quincy, Illinois. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1228

USA > Illinois > Adams County > Quincy > Past and present of the city of Quincy and Adams County, Illinois > Part 52

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the geodes are embedded yield readily to the influence of frost and moisture, and the geodes are readily weathered out, and may be found in great numbers in the beds of the small streams which interseet these beds. Good specimens can be obtained from the bed of the small creek at Twenty-fourth and Loenst streets.

The Keokuk timestone can be traced along the bluffs from Quiney to the north line of the county. At Bear Creek it forms a vertical cliff from forty to fifty feet in height. It is also found on all the small streams in the western part of the county as far sonth as Mill Creek, and on both forks of that strean, though not on the main creek.

If we attempt to trace this limestone into the eastern part of the county, we find that it is overlaid by still another kind of limestone, called the St. Louis limestone. This can be readily seen along the streams in McKee township, and on the Walnut Fork of Mill Creek in Gilmer township, and again on the tributaries of Bear Creek in Mendon township. On the main ereek it can be traced for several miles farther east, where it passes under the shales which belong to the coal measures.

The coal measures form the bedrock over the whole of the northeastern part of the county, and are so called because they con- tain the workable seams of coal. The rocks of this group contain shales, sandstones, bitum- inous slates and bands of limestone. with seams of coal and fire clay. The whole thick- ness does not exceed one hundred and twenty feet. There are three seams of coal, known as No. 1, which is deepest down and from 11/2 to 2 feet thick: No. 2, 2 to 3 feet thick; and No. 3, abont 1?3 feet thiek. The middle coal seam (No. 2) is most regular, and furnishes the best coal in the county. Near Camp Point, on the south fork of Bear Creek, there is an outerop of it which has been worked for a long time. Likewise onterops are found along some of the tributaries of Bear Creek in the western part of the township; on Little Mis- souri Creek in the northeast part of Clayton ; on Cedar Creek in the extreme northeastern part of the county ; on a small branch of Me- Gee's Creek south of the village of Clayton ; and in the extreme southeastern section of Mendon.

South of Clayton the country is quite roll- ing and hilly, but the ravines seldom expose the bedrock, and no eoal is found outeropping, though it probably underlies most of the sur- face north of MeGee's Creek. After crossing the creek at Hughes' Ford, in the southeastern part of the township of McKee, coal is found in the bluff on the south side, with outerops

of the St. Louis and Keokuk limestones below it. Sonth of Liberty and west of Kingston coal outerops at various localities along the head waters of MeDonald's Creek, and before the construction of the C., B. & Q. railroad the beds were worked quite extensively and the coal hauled on wagons to supply the Quincy market.

In the southern part of the county the coal measures are very irregular in their develop- ment and are probably ontliers from the main coal fields. North of Columbus the three seams are found in regular order. Coal No. 2. or the Colchester seam is by far the best developed, and probably underlies all of the townships of Camp Point, Clayton, Houston and North- east, and may be reached by shafts at a depth of from 75 to 150 feet. South of Columbus there is no development of coal which would lead us to expect that this region will ever become a valuable mining region, though suf- ficient coal may be found in the vicinity of Liberty and Kingston to supply the local de- mand for some years to come. Mill Creek, on the western borders of this region shows con- tinnous exposures of the limestones which lie entirely below the coal measures and which mark off a horizon below which no workable coal seam has ever been found.

In the northern part of the county the coal measures rest upon the St. Louis limestone. In the extreme southern and southeastern part this limestone is not present, but the coal measures rest directly upon the Keokuk or Burlington limestones, so that when any one of these is reached in searching for coal it is useless to go deeper.

Underneath the Burlington limestone is a formation called the Kinderhook Group, about one hundred feet in thickness, composed of sandy and clay shales and thin beds of im- pure limestone. About thirty feet of this is exposed beneath the Burlington limestone in the creek bluffs of Fall Creek, abont twelve miles south of Quincy. Frequently a bed of black or chocolate-colored shale is found in the lower portion, and because of this many have been led to believe that coal might be found in it. This black shale was reached in a boring in search of coal just below the city of Quiney, at a depth of one hundred and fifty feet. As it lies nearly four hundred feet below any coal seam known in this county, all efforts expended in the search of coal in this formation can only result in failure.

To sum up the rock formations found in the connty, a complete section through all of them would show (1) about one hundred feet of the coal measures on top: (2) forty to fifty feet of the St. Louis limestone: (3) eighty to

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one hundred feet of the Keokuk group; (4) about one hundred feet of the Burlington lime- stone, and (5) fifty feet of the partly exposed Kinderhook group at the bottom. A boring in the northeastern part of the county would probably go down through all of these in the succession given above. In the western and southern portions the upper formations have been eroded away, leaving the lower part of the Keokuk group on the surface, with the Burlington exposed beneath it in the bluffs along the Mississippi.

Let us now examine some of the deposits in the bottoms between the bluffs and the river. We find layers of dark bluish-gray or choco- late-brown clays, alternating with layers of sand, a formation quite different from the loess on top of the bluffs. This is called allu- vium, and evidently has been layed down hy the annual overflow of the river.

If we examine the layers of limestone in the quarries. we find many fossil shells and curious ring-like structures, crinoid stems, the remains of animals of a kind found only in the deep sea. That is to say. these limestone rocks must have been formed at the bottom of the sea. In the different Timestones men- tioned above we may find characteristic fos- sils, by means of which the kind of limestone may be recognized wherever it is seen. In the loess have been found the remains of mam- moths, mastodons and other extinet animals, indicating that it is a deposit of much later date than the limestones, and was probably formed in a fresh-water lake, into which the bones of land animals and the shells of land snails were swept by streams running into it from the adjacent land.

The alluvium is, of course, a still more mod- ern formation, as it is even now being depos- ited by the river.

If we travel back into the county away from the river, we find that the loess thins out as we approach the highlands in the interior of the county, and finally gives place to a forma- tion composed of yellowish-brown or bluish clays, mixed with sand, gravel and large boulders of water-worn rock, the whole mass showing little or no trace of stratification. It is simply a heterogeneous mass of the water- worn fragments of all the kinds of rock that are known to occur for several hundred miles to the northward. embedded in brown or blue lays. Most of the large boulders are sand- stones, granites, porphyries and various other igneous or metamorphic rocks, which have been transported by some powerful agency from their mother ledges on the borders of the Great Lakes. There are also many smaller rounded boulders, which have been torn from

the stratified rocks of our own and neighbor- ing states. Fragments of native copper, lead ore coal and iron are often found in this mass, but this does not imply that there are mines of these minerals in the near vicinity, but that they have been brought from farther north by the same agencies that carried the rest of the material. The technical term for this formation is "drift." It underlies the loess or is overlapped by it, and is therefore older in origin. Thin layers of this drift can be seen between the limestone and the loess along the bhiffs at Quiney A coal shaft at Coatsburg penetrates a bed of it eighty-five feet thick, and beneath it is found a layer of black soil two and one-half feet thick, resting upon a stratified clay. This soil was probably an ancient surface soil which overspread the land before the age in which the drift was piled upon it.

If we travel up and down the Mississippi, we observe that the valley is ent out of solid limestone to the depth of from one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet or more, and from five to ten miles in width. In some por- tions of this valley some of this drift is found underneath the alluvium. Evidently it filled in portions of the valley before the present river was formed, and the rock-bound valley must have been excavated by some mighty agency before the deposit of the drift and he- fore any of the existing water courses were formed.

In order to understand the geological his- tory of Adams county it is necessary to go back to the beginnings of the American con- tinent. Geologists, by long and patient study and by methods of reasoning too complicated to be taken up in this short treatise, have sue- ceeded in classifying the varions rocks accord- ing to age and origin. The oldest rocks in the continent are found in (1) extensive areas of Canada north of the Great Lakes: (2) an axis through the Appalachian mountain system ; (3) a similar axis along the Rockies: (4) numerous strips along the Pacific coast : and (5) small isolated areas in Dakota, Missouri and Texas. There is good evidence that at one time these areas constituted the only land in what is now North America. The entire region now occupied by the Mississippi basin was at the bottom of the sea. These areas formed nuclei around which the rest of the continent was built. Just as immense de- posits are now being made along our coast lines hy the river carrying sediment into the sea, so deposits were made along these ancient coast lines, and sooner or later a gradual ele- vation of the sea bottom brought these de- posits to the surface, and thus the continent

PAST AND PRESENT OF ADAMS COUNTY.

slowly grew. Age after age passed, each one consisting of millions of years, and the great sea lying between the Rockies and Alleghanies was gradually crowded out of existence until now only a remnant of it. the Gulf of Mexico, is left. Even this will probably disappear in time, and the Mississippi River will then empty into the Atlantic Ocean, and all the rivers which now empty into the Gulf will become tributaries of it.

It was during the process of the filling in of this sea that the Kinderhook and St. Louis limestones and coal measures of Adams county were deposited one on top of the other. The growth of the land was not a continuous one. Portions of the sea bottom were elevated above sea level and eroded by the weather and the streams. and then depressed below sea level to receive another deposit. This ele- vation and depression in some cases oceurred many times, and accounts for the absence of the St. Louis formation between the Keokuk and the coal measures in the southern part of our county. Again, while the coal measures were being formed there must have been at least as many elevations and depressions of the land as there are seams of coal. Each seam represents a forest which must have grown while the land was above the sea level. This minst have been depressed below sea level in order that the limestones and shales might be deposited on top of it, and so on for every seam of coal. We have in our county only a small part of the total thickness of the coal measures, so that after the coal measures were completely formed and perhaps other deposits laid on top and the land became permanently elevated above the sea, it must have been greatly eroded. The streams out their chan- nels down through the rock, and assisted by the action of the weather, removed much of the rock material, wearing away all the forma- tions down to those now exposed. It was dur- ing this period that a great river eroded the rock-bound channel now ovenpied by the Mis- sissippi, and it is probable that the erosion was so complete that no falls or rapids re- mained in its course. There was a landscape with its forests, rivers and valleys somewhat similar to that which we have now. Then eame the ice age: the climate grew colder: snow accumulated in the region in the vicinity of IIndson's Bay, and became perhaps several miles in depth. forming an immense glacier or ice sheet, which with the tremendous pres- sure of the ever-increasing snow behind it was pushed out over the land in a southerly direc- tion. The moving ice broke off pieces of rock from the ledges, ground them together and seraped the soil from the surface of the land,

forming a great mass of material which we have designated as "drift." This was pushed into the water courses, filling them up in places, or piled up at the edges of the glacier, where the ice melted. This is why we find in the "drift" so many boulders from the region of the Great Lakes.

There is evidence that as the climate changed the glacier advanced and retreated many times, now piling up material at its end, or dropping it broadcast as it melted away, scooping out basins in the soft rock here, damming up a water course there, so that at the close of the ice age the map of the conn- try was completely changed. Old rivers had been wiped out of existence and new ones formed. Numerous lakes were formed in the seooped out basins and dammed up streams, and it is probable that our loess deposits were formed in one of these lakes. Since that time erosion has been going steadily on. The ont- lets of many of the glacial lakes have cut down the barriers which enclosed them and drained the lakes. The rivers have settled down and now beenpy in part the old pre- glacial water courses, but wherever a fall oc- eurs in a large stream there is in many cases good evidence that a dam exists in the old water course, and the river is making its way around this dam across country, so to speak. and falling back into the old water course below the dam. As time goes on, all the falls and rapids will disappear, all the elevated por- tions of land will be weathered away by the action of the elements, unless some other stu- pendons forces intervene and cause a repeti- tion of the phenomena described.

ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY.

Soil .- As an agricultural region this county is hard to surpass. The more elevated alluvial bottom lands bordering the Mississippi are ex- ceedingly prodnetive, and the untillable por- tions are covered with a heavy growth of val- nable timber. The loess deposits. extending through the entire length of the county from north to south and from the brow of the bluff overlooking the Mississippi eastward from five to ten miles, furnish a soil of remarkable fer- tility. The surface is undulating, giving free surface drainage, while the subsoil is rather porous, so that the land is not in a very large degree subject to the deleterious influences of remarkably wet or dry seasons. This soil is admirably adapted to the growth of fruit and garden truck. The drift clays of the eastern part of the county have given the soil of that region the character of a stiff clay loam, bet- ter adapted to the growth of wheat and grass than anything else. In the northeastern part

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of the county there is a considerable area of level prairie, covered with a deep, black soil, highly charged with vegetable matter derived from the growth and decay of shrubs and grasses which have covered its surface. The subsoil here is not porous, so that it does not permit the surface water to pass freely through it. As a result these lands are likely to suffer greatly from too much water during a wet season.

Sand and Clays .- The clay and fine sandy deposits of the loess form an excellent ma- terial for the manufacture of common brick. This may be obtained anywhere in the western part of the county. In the eastern part the drift elays can be mixed with the sand from the beds of streams for this same purpose. Directly underneath the coal seams are de- posits of fire clay, which in some places can be worked with the coal and used for the manufacture of fire bricks. Between coal seams No. 1 and No. 2 is a layer of fine light blue clay shale, which where exposed weathers into a fine plastic clay, suitable for the manu- facture of pottery.

Limestones .-- The Burlington, Keokuk and St. Louis limestones deseribed above all fur- nish excellent material for either building stone, or, when carefully selected, for lime. The Burlington and Keokuk are most access- ible around Quiney, and the St. Louis farther east. The Burlington ranks highest, and as the deposit is nearly one hundred feet thick, may be considered as almost inexhaustible.

Coal .- About one-half the entire county is underlaid by coal measures, but the coal seams, with the exception of the middle one, are very irregular in their development and therefore of little valne for the production of coal. The middle seam has an average thick- ness of over two feet, and is frequently as much as thirty inches, and is of fair quality. It may be found over all the northeastern por- tion of the county, if the coal measures are penetrated to the proper depth. The prin- cipal drawback to the successful mining of the seam is the shaly character of the roof, necessitating considerable cribbing. This coal seam will afford about two million tons of coal to the square mile, and the time will come when it will pay to work it wherever it can be reached.

CHAPTER XLIX.

AGRICULTURE: THE DISTRICTS OF ILLINOIS- DEVELOPMENT OF LANDS-FARMERS' INSTI- TUTES - SOILS - CROPS - CATTLE, HOGS, HORSES, POULTRY-ROADS-HORTICULTURE.

By Hon. G. W. Dean.

The County of Adams lies on the Mississippi River, in the State of Illinois, in the center of the great corn helt of the United States. The Base Line runs centrally through it, and it includes ranges 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 in the most fertile part of the Mississippi Valley. On its western boundary, along the river, lies some of the most fertile lands known for agricnl- tural purposes, and by leveeing and tiling most of it has been brought into cultivation. That portion known as the bluff lands is among the most fertile of the county. They produce all the grains and vegetables in abun- dance. These table lands hie more or less along the west side of Payson, Burton, Elling- ton, Mendon and Ursa townships. All these lands sell readily at high prices; and a con- siderable portion of them are used for exten- sive gardening, which pays in proportion to the skill of the gardener. These garden products are the best that rich soil and eul- tivation can develop. The remaining town- ships are mostly prairie land, fertile and pro- dnetive, and although it has been cultivated ever since its earliest settlement, it produces as good crops as in the beginning. Therefore the development of the county's agricultural interests are commensurate with the general progress.

The State of Illinois is divided into three agricultural districts-namely, the northern, the central and the southern. There is also known to agriculturalists a corn belt which virtually feeds the world with corn and its prodnets-pork. beef and mutton. This corn belt runs through the States of Ohio, Indiana. Illinois, Missouri. Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. These seven states furnish the surplus of agri- culture. The others are barely self-sustaining. Illinois furnishes more agricultural exports than any other of these states, and produces the most products of the farm. This corn belt includes the northern and central divisions of Illinois ; therefore Adams county, being in the center of that division, claims her share of the honor of this great exportation.

The staple field erops are corn, wheat, oats, hay, clover seed, timothy seed and potatoes : these grow vigorously and produce good erops. The soil seems to be peculiarly adapted to these field crops, and more especially to the farmer's garden. Our farmers, as a general rule, have taken fairly good care of their soil.

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PAST AND PRESENT OF ADAMS COUNTY.

Occasionally a farmer or a gardener will fail to make a living, while others under the same circumstances and conditions have done well; therefore, not the soil, but the man who han- dles it, is at fault if it fails to produce.

The lands of Adams county, as Nature has provided, can be kept up, and have been de- veloped so as to raise better crops than in pervious years. Help is scarce and farm labor is expensive, therefore improved farm ma- chinery is used to the general advantage of our farm owners. And as to the benefit to the tenant farmer, I know of no better place for him to start than here, by renting a good farm, well improved. If he can't pay cash rent, he may give one-half of the erop of corn and hay, and two-fifths of wheat and oats. There are just such openings for good tenants, who can take a lease for five years, and at the end of the lease buy the farm, so that the interest on the debt will be less than the rent paid. Then the tenant is on the way to sne- cess. There is reported by the Department of Agriculture, in the Year Book, the case of a merchant who inherited a farm in the East, fifteen acres, with a mortgage on it of $7,000. This was perhaps three or four times as much as it was worth, and it would seem that a common sense man would have let the farm pay the debt by foreclosure. But this man moved upon his farm, and in time lifted the mortgage. This shows what industry and economy can accomplish. There are owners of good farms in Adams county today who commeneed as tenants, and who now rank among the best farm owners. It is quite prob- able that the tenants of today will ultimately own much of the best lands of our county.

"Have the farmers of this county gained much from government experiments?" we are asked. We unquestionably answer, "Yes." The government has issued bulletins on almost every conceivable product of agricultural in- dustry, and they are furnished free to anyone who will ask for them. But as our "suggestive (mestions" demand something about our conn- ty farmers' institutes, we will disenss this sub- jeet later on.

All the tillable lands in the county are not what we call corn lands. Some of them will raise only one corn crop profitably without rotation. These rough lands, such as those in MeKee and Concord townships, would be more profitable if seeded to grass and used as pasture. To raise grain on them fertilizers will have to be applied every year, and then the soil will wash away. But by pasturing, the stock will fertilize them and the grass roots will hold the soil. The timber among the creeks and branches should be carefully

guarded, as it is a valuable product. If one- half of MeKee township were seeded down to blue-grass, elover and timothy, and the poor lands fenced into large pastures in such a way as to make water convenient, and the blue- grass pastured early in the spring and late in the fall, it would make a great ranch. Then if the other half were fenced into grain and hay fields in such a manner that they could be used as feed lots, she could, with her timber and rock and coal and great supply of stock water, be a marvel of wealth. We believe it would make an experiment station more valu- able than any whose record is yet published to teach how to redeem the abandoned farms of the country, and we doubt not that it would be the "one thing needful" which would de- termine the debated question of building the much needed railroad east through the eoun- try.

As time passes and farmers are experiment- ing more and more on the flat lands of the country by different modes of enltivation, they have overcome much of the damage pre- viously dne to wet lands, and good erops are grown where twenty years ago the land was not fit for cultivation. Therefore tiled drain- age has not received the attention that it might otherwise have received. All the land is drained where it is necessary to bring it into enltivation, but more of it would be better through being tiled.

Farmers are living well now, and are mak- ing improvements in every line of agriculture; their old houses have been replaced by new ones; the old dilapidated rail fences, which have lived out their usefulness, are fast dis- appearing, and in their stead is the wire fence. There are no more fence rows where the weeds are higher than the fence : the houses and barns are adequate to the conditions of the farmer, and are beautifully and substantially painted and repaired; the lawns are clothed in na- ture's beauties and are artistically arranged ; the family gardens in their season abound with almost everything known to the vege- table kingdom, and the county seems to be taking on new life. All this is being brought about through the influence, direct and in- direct, of the Illinois Farmers' Institute.

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Past and present of the city of Quincy and Adams County, Illinois, Part 52

Author: Collins, William H. (William Hertzog), 1831-1910; Perry, Cicero F., 1855- [from old catalog] joint author; Tillson, John, 1825-1892. History of the city of Quincy, Illinois. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1228

Author: Collins, William H. (William Hertzog), 1831-1910; Perry, Cicero F., 1855- [from old catalog] joint author; Tillson, John, 1825-1892. History of the city of Quincy, Illinois. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1228