USA > Illinois > Jo Daviess County > The History of Jo Daviess County, Illinois, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc., a biographical directory of its citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion history of the Northwest, history of Illinois Constitution of the United States > Part 102
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The probable extent of the county covered by, this formation, is a little less than one third. There are many places throughout this extent where the eroding streams have cut down through the Niagara, into the Cincinnati shales, and even reached the Galena limestone below both.
Such is the superficial area covered by this rock, stated approximately. Its lithological character has been so often written that it seems superflu- ous to speak of it here. The rock is generally massive, irregularly bedded; tough, of a yellowish color on fresh fracture, but weathering to a reddish- brown. It is full of chert bands; and some of the Niagara hills are macadamized with a thick floor of finely broken, dendrite-speckled flints, which remain from the decay of the strata formerly enclosing them. These flint hills, or flint covered hills, are characteristic of the Niagara limestone formation. The maximum thickness of the Niagara limestone in this county can not be accurately stated. The denudation which has taken place on its top, and the difficulty of ascertaining the bottom, make it almost impossible to measure its thickness correctly. Its heaviest outcrop is probably along Small Pox Creek, where it reaches a thickness of over two hundred feet. As de. veloped in this county it is exceedingly liomogenous in character-the vari- eties observed at Racine, LeClare and Cardova, being wanting. In chemi- cal analysis, lithological character, and general appearance, it is very similar to the Galena limestone. If a difference can be detected, it is less sandy and crystalline, and tougher than the latter formation. Its type or charac- teristic fossils are also different.
These are chiefly Pentamerus oblongus; Favosites favosa; Halysites cateularia; Astrocerium venustum, and one or two species of Stromapo- tora formed corals. The Pentamerus are the traditional "petrified lick- ory nuts," so often spoken of by the miners and well-diggers. Huge blocks. of the stone, in places, are sticking full of them. On the silex sown hills, bushels of rough weather-stained specimens of the Favosites can be col- lected. These old Niagara seas swarmed with the coral builders; and many of the Niagara beds of rock were little else than coral reefs.
The Cincinnati Group .- The green and blue shales and limestones of the Cincinnati group underlie the Niagara limestone wherever the latter is developed in the county. There are not many natural outcrops of these shales, and they never stand out in ledges or rocky exposures, unless where quarries are opened into the covered rocks. Even where quarries are
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HISTORY OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY.
opened into this formation and then abandoned for a few years, the rapid disintegration soon covers up the rocks with a gently sloping talus.
The parts of the county underlaid by this formation can be told at a glance. All around the mounds and monnd-like elevations; all around the outer boundary lines of the Niagara formation, up either side of all the val- leys of erosion which have cut through it, the gentle slopes extending from the general level of the country np to the base of the bold Niagara exposures, are underlaid by rocks and shales of the Cincinnati group. These slopes may be represented by a narrow band two or three hundred yards, more or less, in width, encompassing all the Niagara fields and outliers in the county, and running np either side of all the valleys that are cut through it. When this is said, the superficial area underlaid by the Cincinnati group is as well indicated as it could be by many pages of description. One or two localities, however, deserve a passing notice.
At the northern terminus of Terrapin Ridge, near Elizabeth, the milky looking clays and shales are washed and furrowed out by the rains, exposing many fine specimens of the hemispherical-shaped coral Chatetes petropoli- tanus. I have found dozens of good specimens of this coral in the clay- washed road at this locality.
East of Scales Mound the track of the Illinois Central Railroad is laid for several miles almost upon the top of the Galena limestone. Several rather heavy cuts in that locality show good exposures of the overlying Cincinnati shales. These beds contain in certain layers a very great abun- dance of minute fossils, principally a small Nucula.
The general character of this group in Jo Daviess and Carroll Counties is almost identical. The upper layers are thin-bedded argillaceous and silicious shales, of a light buff or creamy color. Where thick-bedded enough to quarry, the stones have a kiln-dried, dusty appearance. Lower down, the shales become blue or greenish in color, sometimes separated by thin bands of green, marly clay; still lower, some massive strata of a deep ultra-marine blue color may be found, exceedingly liard, and giving ont a clear ringing sound when struck with a steel hammer; below these there is found in some localities a black carbonaceous shale, so highly charged with carbon as to burn with a bright flaine as though impregnated with oil, and the bottom of the deposit is made up of thinner strata of alternating yel- low, blue and green shales and clays. Wherever the rain cuts through the soil into these shales, or the little streams wash them, thie wet clays have a greasy look, and the trickling waters a creamy and greenish color. There are no gradual beds of passage into the overlying Niagara or the underly- ing Galena limestones; but the formation preserves well its distinctive characteristics. The beginnings of its foundation stones and its cap rocks are always easily recognized.
The thickness of the deposit can not be accurately stated. A true sec- tion, as developed in the Mississippi River bluffs, from Bluffville, in Carroll County, to the month of Fever River, would run from eighty to one lun- dred and twenty feet. In the interior of this county it nowhere, perliaps, reaches to one hundred feet, and in some places it is only from forty to sixty feet.
The deposit is full of well preserved fossils. The Orthoceratite beds in Dubuque County, Iowa, have long been famous for the number of well pre- served Orthoceratites with which they are crowded.
The Chætetes petropolitanus is a characteristic fossil, and is found in great abundance at Elizabeth, and in the washes and ravines at other places.
..
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HISTORY OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY.
Fragments of a branching coral, and the small bud-like heads of an encrinite, are generally found in the same localities. In a few places I observed immense numbers of the fragments of Isotelus gigas; also several species of Orthis, among them Orthis lynx; associated with Ambonychia radiata, Strophomena alternata, fragnients of two or three species of Orthocera, and one or two of the new fossils described in the Third Volume of the Illinois Geological Reports, Strophomena unicostata and Tentaculites sterlingensis, were also observed.
The Galena Limestone .- This is the great bed-rock of the county. From Dunleitli to about the mouth of Small Pox Creek it forms thi e rocky bluffs on the Mississippi River. All the northwestern, northern and north- eastern part of the county, except a few of the mounds heretofore named, is underlaid by it. The eastern part of the county, extending a short dis- tance south of Morseville, is also underlaid by the same rock. All the larger streams in the county, including Sinsinawa, Fever and Apple Rivers, Rush, Small Pox and Plum Creeks, with their principal tributaries, flow along the surface or ent into this formation. It immediately underlies the surface deposits of something like two thirds of the county.
The maximum thickness of the Galena rocks in this county is not known. It is probably not far from three hundred and fifty feet. At Elizabeth, shafts are sunk one hundred and fifty feet deep, and what is known as the flint strata among ininers was not reached. At the places of these shafts the Galena had been considerably dennded. The flinty strata generally is characteristic of the middle of the formation. It may be, how- ever, that the estimate from this basis is too great. No ontcrop observed was over about two hundred feet thick.
Its litliological and stratigraphical character is too well known, and has been too often given in these reports, to require an extended notice here, as all into whose hands this report will be likely to fall will probably have access to those descriptions. The rock is a thick-bedded. sub-crystalline, compact, cream or chrome colored dolomitic or magnesian limestone. It weathers out into forms almost as fantastic and picturesque as the Niag- ara above it. Along the streams its weathered out ledges present the same castellated and mnural appearances; and some of its ontliers rise into towers and chimneyed shapes of the most striking outlines.
Fossils are not so numerons in the Galena limestone of this county as in that of Carroll, Stephenson, or Winnebago. At Morseville, among the stones and debris thrown out from the lead diggings, I obtained several fine specimens of Bellerophon, the only fossil there observed. Illaenus crassicauda and I. taurus have both been found at Galena; a large species of Cypricardites is also frequently found, especially in the quarries in Carroll County. Mur- chisonia bellicinta and Receptaculites Oweni, two of the most characteristic Galena fossils, are found less frequently here than in any other portion of the formation in neighboring counties. A section of the largest Orthocera ever discovered in the lead region, perhaps, was found in the Galena lime- stone at Morseville, some two years ago, by some of the miners. It was eighteen or twenty inches long; a siphuncle nearly three inches in diameter projected about four inches at one end; the septa, somewhat loose, looked somewhat like a ribbed human body with a projecting neck. Of course those who saw it supposed that a petrified human trunk and neck had been discovered.
Trenton Limestone .- This limestone is only met with in two localities in the county. At Dunleith, and a little above it, there is a low outcrop
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HISTORY OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY.
along the banks of the Mississippi River. It is here a light bluish-gray rock, regularly and rather thinly bedded, with shaly partings, showing many of its characteristic fossils. These layers are near the top of the formation and have some of the characteristics of the superincumbent Galena. They, in fact, begin to partake of the nature of beds of passage into that rock.
Other exposures of this limestone may be seen along the north branch of Fever River, commencing about three miles northeast of Galena, and continuing until the Wisconsin line is reached. The outcropattains a thick- ness of about twenty-six feet at its heaviest exposure, at Tuttle's mill.
This is the lowest formation any where outcropping in the county, or that can be regarded as belonging to a section of Jo Daviess County rocks. We are now prepared to give that section, naming the approximate average thickness of the formations:
SECTION OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY ROCKS.
Quarternary Deposits. Alluvium, loess, river terraces, clays, sands and hard-pan
20 to 75 feet.
Niagara Limestone. Heavy-bedded reddish-brown dolomitic limestone, weathering into cliffs and castellated exposures, similar in lithological character and appearance to the Galena limestone 40 to 200 "
Cincinnati Group. Green and blue and buff-colored shales; thin- bedded gray limestone, and hard, thick-bedded glassy rock. 42 to 80 " Galena Limestone. Heavy-bedded, cream-yellow dolomitic
· limestone, the lead rock of the Northwest; somewhat granu- lar, and crystalline, and showing beds of passage into Tren- ton below. 100 to 275 “ Blue Limestone. Thin-bedded gray limestone and shales and glass rock of miners 10 to 26 "
ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY.
Building Stone .- There is the greatest abundance of good building stone in this county, so distributed as to make it of easy access to all its citizens. All the formations are quarried. In Pleasant Valley a number of good quarries are opened in the Cincinnati group of rocks. These quar- ries are in the brows of the hills, on either side. The stone obtained is sufficiently thick-bedded and compact to make a good building stone. It has a dry, dusty, kiln-dried appearance. Several farm houses are built of this material in the valley. So far it seems to answer well for farm uses, without exhibiting a tendency to disintegrate. The best of it would, I think, be unsafe for massive and long-enduring masonry, but for light masonry it seems to answer well.
The blue limestone outcrops, along the north branch of Fever River, afford some good building stone. This is a light-gray limestone, rather thin-bedded, and of enduring properties. The outcrop at Dunleith also splits into a conveniently handled stone, and is used extensively for eco- nomical purposes.
The massive ledges, exposures, and natural outcrops of the Niagara and Galena limestone along nearly all the streams, in the brows of all the bluffs, and hills, and in all those parts of the county where these lieavy deposits are the bed rocks, furnish an inexhaustible supply of a coarse, enduring, valuable stone, suitable for all sorts of heavy masonry, such as bridge piers and abutments, foundations, cellar walls, and even public build- ings, and private residences, They require considerable dressing for these
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HISTORY OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY.
latter purposes, but when dressed into good shape, their rich, warm, brown and cream colors, and the fact that they season into almost the hardness of a granite, and have an enduring, solid, substantial appearance, makes them prominent among the materials of economical value in the county.
Lime .- The abundance of timber and the abundance of good magne- sian limestone, afford all the facilities for manufacturing large quantities of good, coarse, strong lime.
Clays and Sand .- The clays associated with the Cincinnati shales are sufficiently pure to furnish a potters' clay, good for the manufacture of com- mon crockery ware. At Elizabeth I noticed several outcrops of this potters' clay in some of the streets and lots of the village. Four or five miles south of Elizabeth, on the Mount Carroll and Galena road, the Jenkins' pottery is located. This establishment has been in operation for quite a number of years, and has built up quite a remunerative business. The clay is obtained near by. It is not altogether pure and free from foreign substances; but these difficulties seem to be mostly overcome by the processes through which it is put in manufacturing. The result is, a ware largely used in this part of the state, as the Jenkins' pottery wagons are well known in all the neighboring towns, villages, and cities.
Common yellow and red clays, for ordinary brick, exist everywhere in the greatest abundance. Sand, suitable for building purposes, is not so universally distributed, neither 'is it so scarce as to be a matter of serious inconvenience.
The Associate Minerals .- Associated with the galena, and deserving a passing notice before that important mineral deposit is referred to, are several other mineral substances well known in the lead region. The most important of these is the sulphuret of zinc, blende, or "black jack" of the miners. This is a useful ore of zinc, but is quite difficult to reduce. The carbonate of zinc, smithsonite or "dry bone" of the miners, is considered a more valuable mineral. Iron pyrites also occur in connection with these minerals, in considerable abundance. At the celebrated Marsdens' lead, all these associate minerals may be seen associated with each other and with the galena, with the Galena limestone, and with spar and other substances. This mine has offorded the best cabinet specimens of these minerals in com- bination to be found any where in the lead regions. Brown hematite, and several other mineral substances, occur in occasional small quantities, but they are not of interest, in an economical point of view. None of these associate minerals have become articles of commerce, except, perhaps, the carbonate of zinc; and it is doubtful if even that exists in sufficient quanti ties to make it an article of value in the economical resources of this county.
Galena or Lead Ore .-- The great mineral interest of the county, as every one knows, is lead. Indeed, it is second to mineral interest in the state, except that of coal. The leading ore of this metal has given its name to the great and important rocky formation in which it is chiefly found in this part of the country, to an important city in the midst of its heaviest deposits, and to the township in which that city is located.
The scope of this county report does not embrace a very extended essay upon the mining or metallurgy of lead, or a topographical survey or description of the crevices, leads, lodes and diggings, nor a scientific discus- sion of the modes of occurrence and phenomena observed in its workings. It is rather the province of this report to present the geological formations
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HISTORY OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY.
of the county, and some general remarks upon the extent of its mineral and other 'resources. The "Lead Region " has been closely examined and ably written upon by Professor J. D. Whitney, for the three States of Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. It will be unnecessary to repeat here what he has presented so well in the first volume of the Reports of the Illinois Geolog- ical Survey. That volume will be as accessible to the common reader as this, and to that volume we refer. the reader for surveys and descriptions of the crevices and leads, and a detailed account of the different diggings, their positions, peculiarities of form, extent of working, amount of ore produced, and facts collected in regard to them. 'A brief resume of some of the facts and history of lead and the lead region may not however be out of place.
Galena, or the sulphuret of lead, called in the common speech of the lead region "mineral," when pure, is composed of 86.55 pure lead and 13.45 sulphur. It crystallizes in the form of the cube and its secondaries, las a perfect and easily obtained cleavage, and a bright, silvery, metallic luster on fresh fracture. The lead ore obtained in this county is nearly pure galena. It sometimes contains faint traces of silver.
From 1827 the mines rapidly grew in importance and multiplied in numbers. From 1840 to 1850 the greatest degree of prosperity was reached in the mines, about midway between those years being the very acme of mining prosperity. Galena became the mining metropolis of the North- west. Thousands of rough miners swarmed through her streets. All sorts of moving vehicles were seen in her thoroughfares, and every language was spoken, every costume worn. The miner generally spent all he inade, was poor, and held his own remarkably well. And that reckless spirit, bred of all uncertain pursuits, was abundantly manifested among the miners who assembled in the lead region. Card playing and whisky drinking, quarrel- ling, and that rough desperate life developed among adventurers of all classes gathered about Galena, was characteristic of those of all other mines. But in the midst of it all, the City of Galena grew to unexampled prosperity and wealth, and for hundreds of miles round was the centre of commerce and trade for the whole country. Treasures came up out of the ground, flowed into the city, and there remained and built it up. The discovery of the California gold mines swept from the lead mines all that floating part of its population ready for a new excitement, and also much that was of a more permanent nature. The lead mining interest rapidly decreased in importance, until the financial troubles of 1857 drove many back to mining as a matter of necessity. At the present time considerable attention is paid to mining, and it is probably a fact that mining labor generally is better and more uniformly paid now than at any period in the history of the mines. With all the vast amounts of mineral found, it is also a fact that but a very small proportion of the ground has been proved.
We can not arrive at even an approximately accurate amount of the mineral mined in Jo Daviess County. According to Mr. Whitney, the amount of lead received at Chicago and St. Louis, as per records of the Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade, from 1853 to 1859, including both years, was about 181.000,000 pounds. This was from all sources. Of this amount, he thinks about one sixth was derived from the mines in Illinois, almost exclusively in this county. This would give about 30,000,- 000 for this county for that period, which period was the least prosperous time for mining known to exist for many years. From the detailed descriptions given of particular leads and ranges, by the same gentleman,
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HISTORY OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY.
in the first volume of the geological report of Illinois, we find that he gives the produce of certain enumerated mines up to that time at about 64,000,- 000 pounds. The Apple River diggings are supposed to liave produced from one half to one million of pounds. The Elizabeth group of mines are stated, by Henry Green, Esq., an old miner and smelter, to have produced from 60,000,000 to 75,000,000 pounds. Mr. Green is probably below the amount actually produced. The Vinegar Hill diggings, being a group of about forty lodes or mines, are supposed to have produced 100,000,000 pounds. This statement is made upon the authority of Mr. Houghton's pamphlet upon the Marsden lead. From the same authority we learn that the maximum production of the Jo Daviess County mines, in 1846, was 56,000,000 pounds. The Council Hill mines are supposed, by D. Willnot Scott, Esq., to have produced 19,000,000 pounds. The Morseville mines are stated to have produced from one quarter to one lialf million pounds. Captain Beebe stated a few years ago that five furnaces were in operation in the county, smelting annually 8,750,000 pounds of pure lead, some of which was obtained outside of the county. The Marsden lead is said to have pro- duced 3,000,000 pounds of mineral ..
From these figures-and they are imperfect enough-it can be seen that the mineral interest of this county in the past has been a matter of great magnitude. Together with Shullsburg, Mineral Point and Dubuque, this Northwestern lead basin has been, and yet is, one of the greatest min- ing localities in the world.
The superficial area of the country underlaid by productive lead depos- its, so far as known at the present time, is limited, embracing but a small fraction of the area of the Galena limestone. The lodes or ranges are prin- cipally located in groups. The diggings, mines or workings are in patches; but seem to have many features in common. The most southern productive mines in the county are on the great east and west range of mineral passing through, and just north of Elizabeth. This mineral range commences at the mouth of Yellow Creek, a few miles southeast of Freeport, in Stephen - son County, where an old shaft exists, which used to be heavily worked a good many years ago. The next group of mines on this range to the west is at Morseville, in the southern part of Jo Daviess County. Here lead has been mined more or less for many years.
The next heavy mines westward, on this same mineral range, is the group at Elizabeth and Weston. About 2,500 acres here are prospected over and mined in. It is an irregularly shaped tract of land, about six miles long from east to west. The Village of Elizabeth is located upon its southern edge, a little east of its centre.
The Elizabeth mines were discovered at a very early day, and worked to some extent. In 1846 more than 800 miners are stated to have been en- gaged in mining about Elizabeth and Weston. At this time one ninth of all the mineral raised in the lead region is supposed to have been ob- tained here.
Leaving the Elizabeth lead fields, the next heavy mines are found a few miles west, on the east and west slopes of the bluff range, bordering the Mississippi River. These are the New California mines, discovered acci- dentally only a few years ago, by a fisherman, who resided in a wild glen on the Mississippi River. At this point the rocky bluffs rise abruptly. The ranges are found by drifting into them a little above water level, going in where a crevice is noticed rising vertically through the rocks. The min-
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HISTORY OF JO DAVIESS COUNTY.
eral found is heavy mineral, existing in large cubes or cogs in some in- stances. It resembles the large bodies of mineral found in the Marsden lead. On the east slope of the bluff range, where the hills fall away grad- ually to the level of the interior, several lodes are struck by sinking shafts down to the ranges. The following ranges have been struck in these mines, and perhaps a few others, the names of which I did not learn: Wise Range, Mc Kenda & Graham, Davis & Brownell, Bernard & Co., Lester, Sanders & Hony, Felt & Clymo, Wakefield & Co., Marble & Young, Dye & Co., Sam- nel Taylor. Other valuable ranges will doubtless be discovered, when all the crevices are examined.
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