History of Whitley County, Indiana, Part 2

Author: Kaler, Samuel P. 1n; Maring, R. H. (Richard H.), 1859-, jt. auth
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: [Indianapolis, Ind.] : B. F. Bowen & Co.
Number of Pages: 940

USA > Indiana > Whitley County > History of Whitley County, Indiana > Part 2

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The Laurentian rocks are thus devoid of fossils or contain only the remains of the simplest aquatic forms. In North America. they comprise the surface of a vast "V" shaped area of 2,000,000 or more square miles which lies, filled with wild lakes, pine- clad, rugged, almost impassable, spread in savage sleep from Labrador to the Arctic ocean. This area embodies the general form of the North American continent, and was the nucleus of all the land which was afterward added to it. From these old Laurentian rocks, came the debris and sedi- ment which was laid down in the bed of a shallow ocean to form the rocks comprising the surface of what is now "Indiana."

At the close of the Azoic or lifeless aeon, during which the Laurentian rocks were formed, the Paleozoic or Aeon of Ancient Life was ushered in. At its beginning the entire area of what is now known as In- diana was covered by a broad ocean which stretched far away to the south-west, while to the north and north-east it extended be- yond the present sites of the great lakes. This ocean is known to geologists as the In- terior Paleozoic Sea. Into it was carried the sediment derived from the erosion and destruction of the old Laurentian rocks by water and air, which agencies then, as now. were ever at work. The Potsdam sandstone of the Cambrian era, which probably under- lies the Trenton limestone of the Lower Si- lurian beneath the greater portion, if not all of Indiana, was one of the first strata to be laid down in this sea. But as none of the surface of Indiana is represented by the Potsdam stone, it will be passed with this mere mention.

Following the Cambrian came the sec- ond grand subdivision of Paleozoic Time,

WHITLEY COUNTY, INDIANA.

the so-called Lower Silurian or Ordovician Age. At its beginning, the sea covering Indiana and the area to the north and east was of course more shallow, as 1,000 feet or more of Potsdam sandstone had been de- posited on its floor. This first great stratum of Ordovician rock to be laid down in this sea, which is of interest to us, was the Tren- ton limestone, which, during the past two decades, has become so noted in Indiana as the source of natural gas and crude petro- leum. It is a well known geological fact that most, if not all, limestones owe their origin to the presence of minute organisms in the water in which the limestone was formed. The animals from whose remains the Trenton limestone was, for the most part, derived, were probably very low forms, the polypo and bryozoans of the ancient Si- lurian seas. In untold numbers they ex- isted, and the carbonate of lime, which makes up eighty per cent of the unmodified Trenton rocks, is largely the remains of their secretion and incrustations. Associated with these lower forms were myriads of higher ones, crinoids, brachiopods, trilo- bites, gastropods and even fishes. The pres- ence of such swarms of animal life made necessary the existence of an abundance of plants ; since the plant must ever precede the animal and gather for the latter the energy, and form for it the food, the living proto- plasm, necessary to its existence. These plants were mostly marine algæ or sea weeds and fucoids, though doubtless many other forms existed of which no remains have been preserved in the rocks of that age. The Trenton limestones were evidently formed in rather clear waters, at moderate depths. Near the bottoms of these shallow seas great

beds of calcareous sediment were gradually collected, and were swept to and fro by the tides and currents. Rivers from the older Cambrian rocks brought down their eroded particles and added to the thickness of the ocean floor. Within these beds of sediment both plants and animals found a grave, their bodies in vast numbers being buried beneath the slowly accumulating de- posits of centuries. Once buried in such deposits, they did not decay, as do animals on land, because by the waters above and the calcareous ooze around them, they were shut off from free oxygen, which is the chief agent in decay. Gradually this ooze of fine sediment was, by the agency of the sea- water, cemented and consolidated into lime- stone. In this manner that great layer of Trenton rock which underlies all of Indiana at variable depths, was formed. From it has been derived, directly or indirectly, more wealth than from any other one formation, either underlying or forming a portion of the surface of the state. In time the waters of the ocean containing this vast stratum of Trenton limestone, with its enclosed accu- mulations of undecayed plants and animals, became turbid, and instead of calcareous sediment, deposited mud and clayey sedi- ment in thick beds on top of the limestone strata. These deposits of mud and silt were afterwards, by later deposits, compressed into the fine grained, impervious Utica shale, 100 to 300 feet in thickness, which thus effectually sealed the Trenton limestones and so retained within them the oil and gas derived from their enclosed organic remains. This oil, and its more volatile portion, the natural gas, was not formed in a short time, but is the result of a slow decomposition or

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destructive distillation, carried on through thousands of centuries. Accumulating in vast reservoirs, the more porous portions of the Trenton limestone or mother rock, it there remained until man came with his iron drill and furnished a vent through which it could rise. Then by combustion he caused it to yield up the stored energy, conserved since the sun's rays fell on the plants of the old Silurian seas.

After the Utica shale had been laid down as a thick, impervious cover above the Tren- ton limestone, there followed the Hudson River epoch, during which 200 to 600 feet of alternating beds of shale and limestone were deposited in the old sea bottom where now is Indiana. These form the uppermost division of the lower Silurian age. During the myriads of years necessary to their depo- sition, marine forms were excessively abundant, and the advancement in the scale of animal life was correspondingly great. All the principal groups of marine inverte- brates which came into existence during the Trenton epoch were represented, but the species were widely different. In addition to life in the sea, there came also to be life on land. Acrogenous plants, forerunners of the ferns and mosses, harbingers of the vast forests of future centuries, came into being along the moist waterways of the growing continent, while insects, the first winged creatures, began to traverse the air. As yet, no part of Indiana was above old ocean's level, but at the close of the Ordovi- cian, after the Hudson River limestones and shales had been laid down, a great upheavel, caused by some subterranean force, brought above the sea a large island of Ordovician rock which ever since has been dry land.

This upheaval was greatest over the point where Cincinnati, Ohio, is now located, and the "Cincinnati uplift" is the name given by geologists to the island and the broad belt of shallowly submerged land which extended from its northern shore in a north-westerly direction, diagonally across the area of the future Indiana. The main portion of that is- land comprised the south-western corner of what is now Ohio and a part of north-east- ern Kentucky. It also included a small part of what is now Indiana and formed the first and the oldest portion of the surface of our state. The area whose surface rocks be- long to this Hudson River formation com- prises part or all of Wayne, Union, Fayette, Franklin, Dearborn, Ripley, Ohio, Switzer- land and Jefferson counties. Over this area the exposed rocks are composed of a series of bluish, thinbedded limestones intercalated with bluish green limey shales, while at the top are massive sandy limestone beds of a brownish color. The shales are soft, easily weathered and very fossiliferous, while the bluish limestones are in places largely com- posed of fossils.

Whitley county is included in that part of Indiana covered by Hudson river lime- stones and shales at the close of the Lower Silurian time. As a part of an island, there- fore, upheaval from the Ordovician seas, was the first born land of Indiana; and to that little corner all other portions of our noble state were added in their turn by the workings of nature's forces during after ages.

At the end of the Ordovician or begin- ning of the Upper Silurian age, the Interior Paleozoic Sea had greatly diminished in area. A broad belt of land had been added

WHITLEY COUNTY, INDIANA.

to the southern border of the old Laurentian namely: the Clinton, the Niagara and the Water Lime, or Lower Helderberg. Each is represented by its characteristic rocks, bearing the peculiar fossils of its time. The crest, especially over what is now Wisconsin and a portion of northern Illinois; while, extending from what is now Labrador down to Georgia, was another broad belt, follow- . Clinton epoch is represented in the state by a ing the general trend of the present close-grained, salmon-colored limestone, varying in thickness from a few inches only to about seven feet. It outcrops in a very narrow strip along the western edge of the area of the Hudson River limestone, already mentioned as the oldest rock in Indiana, and overlies that formation beneath the surface of at least the eastern third of the state. It it has no economic importance, and serves only as a line of demarkation separating the older Silurian rocks from those great beds of Niagara limestone which were afterward laid down in the Upper Silurian seas. Alleghany mountains. By the raising of several large islands above its surface at the time of the Cincinnati Uplift, aided by the broad belt of shallowly submerged land al- ready noted, the area of the Interior Sea was still further diminished and to that por- tion covering what is now the north-eastern part of Indiana and. the greater part of Ohio. West Virginia, New York and Pennsyl- vania, the name of "Eastern Interior Sea" is given. This was simply a great bay or eastward extension of a greater "Central Interior Sea," which, at that period covered At the beginning of the Niagara epoch, the waters of the Central and Eastern In- terior Seas were laden with sediment and beds of bluish-green shales, known as the Niagara shales, and varying in thickness from two to forty feet, were first laid down. Owing to the gradual changes in the level of the sea bottom, and a consequent shifting of its tides and currents a clearer, deeper water then resulted, within whose depths there existed life of great variety. Corals and bryozoans were especially represented, and from their remains and those of other marine forms were gradually constructed those beds of gray and buff Niagara lime- stone, varying in thickness from one hun- dred feet along the Ohio river to four hun- dred and forty feet in the northern and north-western portions of the state. most of Indiana, southern Michigan, Illi- nois and a large portion of the present United States west of the Mississippi river. The most north-eastern limits of the Eastern Interior Sea were the present sites of Albany and Troy, New York. The rock-making material which was deposited on the floor of both it and the Central Interior Sea, was derived in part from the land along their borders, but mainly from the limey secre- tions of the life within their waters. The dry land draining into them was small in area and hence there were only small streams for the supply of sediments. Yet, in the course of countless years, sufficient material was deposited to form the thick layer of Ni- agara limestone which now forms the sur- face rock over much of northern and eastern Indiana.

The epochs of the Upper Silurian age, as represented in Indiana, are three in number,

Near the close of the Niagara epoch, a gradual uprising of a portion of the Eastern and Central Interior Seas took place. From

WHITLEY COUNTY, INDIANA.

their bottoms there emerged a long penin- sula-like strip of land, whose general trend was north-west and south-east. In the former direction it was imperfectly attached to those portions of Wisconsin and Illinois which had come into existence during the Ordovician era. At its lower extremity it merged with that old island of the Cincinnati Uplift which had formed the first land of our present state. The surface rocks of the north-western corner of Indiana, a narrow and probably interrupted strip extending diagonally across the state, a wide area in the central third and a narrow southern prolongation along the western border of the pre-existing Hudson River group, were thus, for the first time, brought above the level of the sea. It appears that the force which caused this upraising of the Niagara sea floor was more pronounced at certain points than at others, and so caused a num- ber of dome-like ridges or crests resembling true upheavals in the Niagara beds. These domes are present in an area extending from the Illinois line in Newton county, through the Upper Wabash Valley nearly to the Ohio line, being especially prominent near Wa- bash, Delphi, Monon, Kentland and other points in the region mentioned. In them the Niagara strata, elsewhere nearly hori- zontal, are strongly tilted and show other evidence of a true upheaval. These domes were at first probably small islands whose crests remained permanently above the sur- rounding sea. They thus formed, for a long period, a more or less broken or inter- rupted connection between the larger area of the Niagara to the south-east and that area in north-western Indiana which was from now on a part of the continent proper.

The Water Lime and Lower Helderberg are too closely related limestones of the Upper Silurian age which, in Indiana, so merge as to be difficult to distinguish. They represent an epoch between that of the Ni- agara limestone and the lowest or oldest rocks of the Devonian era. Their texture and composition show them to have been laid down in very shallow seas, close into the shores of the recently upraised Niagara limestone. The Water Lime is an impure magnesian hydraulic rock, ranging in thick- ness in Indiana from twenty to ninety feet. It out-crops near Kokomo where have been found numerous fine samples of its most characteristic fossils, gigantic crustaceans, two feet or more in length, closely related to the king crabs of the present seas. Over the extensive mud flats of the closing period of Upper Silurian time they were the un- doubted rulers, while in the nearby waters sported descendants of those mail clad fishes which first appeared in the Trenton period of the Lower Silurian era.

The Lower Helderberg represents the final epoch of Upper Silurian time. In In- diana its rocks form a buff to gray cherty limestone twenty-five to 250 feet in thickness and often irregular and uneven in its bed- ding. It directly overlies the Niagara lime- stone where the water lime is absent. Out- crops occur at Logansport and other points to the north-west and drill holes sunk for oil and gas show that it probably forms a por- tion of the surface rock beneath the deep drift covered area of the northern third of the state.

The advance in life during the L'pper Silurian era was not proportionately as great as that of the preceding age. The

WHITLEY COUNTY, INDIANA.

earliest of Arachnids, the scorpion, came to be, their first remains being in the water lime, showing that they were neighbors of the giant Eurypterid crustaceans. Cock- roaches and progenitors of dragon flies were also present, but remains of other terrestrial forms are few or lacking. Among marine invertebrates, cephalopods reached the acme of their development. the gigantic ortho- ceratites of this group, whose remains are so common in the Niagara limestones of Wabash and adjoining counties, being worthy of special mention.

We have seen that by the beginning of the Devonian Age or era, which succeeded that of the Upper Silurian, the waters of the great bay known as the Eastern In- terior Sea had become farther separated from those of the Central Interior Sea by the uprising of the Niagara limestone area of eastern Indiana and western Ohio, and also by the deposition along the margin of this formation of the sediment comprising the water lime and Lower Helderberg lime- stones. A probable connection still existed between the waters of these two basins across the broken or interrupted strip connecting the main body of Niagara limestone in east- ern Indiana with the main land area of the same formation in north-western Indiana and northern Illinois.

The Devonian rocks of Indiana may be roughly classed as representing two great epochs, the Corniferous and the Genesee, the former being represented by beds of more or less pure limestone, ranging up to fifty-five feet in thickness ; the latter by beds of black or brownish bituminous shales, which reach a known maximum thickness of 195 feet. The waters in which the ma-

terials of the Corniferous limestones were deposited were clear and comparatively pure and in them sponges, corals, crinoids, trilo- bites and lower animal forms existed in great profusion. From the lime secreted by these marine forms, the upper and purer beds of the Corniferous rock are mainly composed. The great abundance of coral life during the period is grandly shown at the Falls of the Ohio, opposite Louisville, Kentucky, where the Corniferous beds have a notable outcrop. Here "the corals are crowded together in great numbers, some standing as they grew, others lying in frag- ments, as they were broken and heaped up by the waves ; branching forms of large and small size being mingled with massive kinds of hemispherical and other shapes. Some of the cup corals are six or seven inches across at the top, indicating a coral animal seven or eight inches in diameter. Hemis- pherical compound corals occur five or six feet in diameter. The various coral-polyps of the era had beyond doubt, bright and varied coloring like those of the existing tropics ; and the reefs formed therefore a brilliant and almost interminable flower garden."

Near the close of the Corniferous epoch deposits of silt, mud and sand began to be- cloud the clear waters and put an end to the life of many marine forms. The upper beds of rock then laid down, known as the Ham- ilton, contain in places quite a percentage of magnesia and clay, and embody those vast deposits of hydraulic limestone which, in southern Indiana, have been so extensively used in making natural rock cement. The Corniferous rock, when raised above the sur - face and added to the pre-existing land of

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WHITLEY COUNTY, INDIANA.

the state, formed along the western margin of the latter an irregular strip five to forty miles in width, extending from the pres- ·ent bed of the Ohio river at Jeffersonville northward to the present site of Logansport and Monticello. North of the Wabash it has been found to be the surface rock in a number of the deep bores sunk for oil, but on account of the thick mantle of overlying drift, its exact limits are unknown. It is probable, however, that at the close of the Corniferous epoch a strip twenty miles or more in average width and extending nearly across the state was, in this region, raised above the floor of the old Devonian sea, to become a part of the permanent land of the future state. The south line of this strip ran through Whitley county from the east to the west in a north-westerly direction, putting all the county in the strip except a small part of Jefferson, a larger part of Washington and perhaps the half of Cleve- land township, along the south side of the county.

During the latter part of the Devonian Era those lowly acrogenous plants known as Rhizocarps flourished in vast numbers in the fresh waters and brackish marshes of the time, and their spores by countless millions of tons were carried out as sediment into the surrounding seas. Mingling with the mud and silt and sand, brought down by erosion from the rapidly increasing land surface, they formed those vast mud flats which have since, by age and pressure, been consolidated into the thick beds of brown and black, finely-laminated shales which form the rocks of the Genesee epoch in Indiana. At New Albany the outcrops of this shale are 104 feet in thickness and

especially prominent, so that the local name, "New Albany black shale," has been given it by geologists of the state. Along the western edge of the Corniferous limestone, this shale forms a continuous strip three to thirty-five miles in width, reaching from the present site of New Albany north and north- westerly to Delphi and Rensselaer. Over much of this strip it is covered by a thick mantle of drift, but everywhere within the area wells or the eroding streams have proven it to be the surface rock. The black shale has also, by deep bores, been found to be the rock immediately underlying the drift over much of the area embraced within the two northern tiers of counties in the state.

The Genesee shale is rich in bitumens, de- rived from the spores of the ancient Rhizo- carps, which also give it color. When kin- dled, it will burn until they are consumed, and it is therefore, by the uninitiated, often mistaken for coal. These bitumens are, by natural processes, sometimes separated from the shale and in the form of gas or petro- leum are collected in reservoirs in it or in the underlying Corniferous limestone.

During the thousands of centuries of the Devonian Period, a great advancement took place in the flora and fauna of the times, especially in the vegetation of the land and the development of the higher aquatic vertebrates. Among the acrogens growing on land, ground pines, tree ferns and equi- seta or horse-tails came into existence and flourished in vast numbers. Their remains are often found in the corniferous limestone. into the sediment of which they were drifted and preserved. The first Phanerogams, con- ifers of the yew and cycad families, were also evolved, their leaves and branches be-

WHITLEY COUNTY, INDIANA.

ing found in the upper or Hamilton beds of the Corniferous epoch. As the land plants increased in number and variety, in- sect life became more varied and numerous. Many Hies abounded and the first musicians of the earth appeared in the form of Or- thopterans which, by means of their shrilling organs, enlivened the solitudes of the strange old Devonian forests with their love calls and wooing notes. Among fishes, the Ga- noids and Selachians, of which our gar- pikes, sturgeons and sharks are degenerate descendants, reached the acme of their de- velopment ; while gigantic species of Dip- noans, or lung fishes, now only represented by the dog fish, or "John A. Grindle," abounded in the bays and bayous about the ancient Genesee flats.

At the beginning of the Lower or Sub- Carboniferous Era, which followed the De- vonian in regular sequence, we find more than half of Indiana above the level of the sea. By the deposition and subsequent rais- ing of the rocks of the Corniferous and Gen- esee epochs, the gap between the large era of Niagara limestone in the eastern part of the state and the mainland to the north- westward had been filled, and that portion of the future Indiana became for the first time a part of the slowly growing North American continent. The rocks which were afterward added on its western side were deposited on the sloping floor of the Central Interior sea which stretched far away to the south-west, and they consequently have a notable dip in that direction. The lower- most stratum of the sub-carboniferous rocks in Indiana is a thin but very persistent bed of greenish limestone, known as the Rockford Goniatite limestone. It is but about two feet

in thickness at its most notable outcrops, and hence forms but a very narrow area of the surface rocks of the state. It serves well, however, as a line of demarkation separating the Upper Devonian shales from the thick beds of Knobstone which represent one of the early and important epochs of Lower Carboniferous time. These Knobstone rocks consist at the base of a series of soft, bluish shale, which gradually become more arena- ceous or sandy, until toward their western horizon they merge into massive beds of im- pure grayish sandstone. The formation ranges in known thickness from 440 to 650 feet. The name "Knobstone" was first given it by that eminent geologist, David Dale Owen, because its siliceous strata weather into those peculiar conical knobs or hills which are so prominent a feature of the topography in the southern unglaciated por- tion of its area. By the deposition and up- raising of the knobstone a strip of territory, three to thirty-eight miles in width, extend- ing from the Ohio river south-west to New Albany north and north-westerly to a point a few miles south of the present site of Rens- selaer, Jasper county, was added to the ex- isting land of the future state. Deep bores have also shown the knobstones to immedi- ately underlie the drift in a strip of varying width along the extreme northern border of the state. By its deposition and subsequent upraising over this area, all of the northi- eastern portion of the state became for the first time dry land, and the waters of the Eastern Interior Sea were forever banished from the future Indiana. Over much of the northern part of its main area in Indiana, the Knobstone is at present more or less covered by glacial debris, its strata being exposed

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History of Whitley County, Indiana, Part 2

Author: Kaler, Samuel P. 1n; Maring, R. H. (Richard H.), 1859-, jt. auth Publication date: 1907 Publisher: [Indianapolis, Ind.] : B. F. Bowen & Co. Number of Pages: 940

Author: Kaler, Samuel P. 1n; Maring, R. H. (Richard H.), 1859-, jt. auth
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: [Indianapolis, Ind.] : B. F. Bowen & Co.
Number of Pages: 940