History of Ingham and Eaton counties, Michigan, Part 3

Author: Durant, Samuel W. cn
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia : D.W. Ensign & Co.
Number of Pages: 772

USA > Michigan > Eaton County > History of Ingham and Eaton counties, Michigan > Part 3
USA > Michigan > Ingham County > History of Ingham and Eaton counties, Michigan > Part 3

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The celebrated " Pictured Rocks" of the southern coast of Lake Superior are of this formation. Its outerop ex- tends along the southern side of the lake from the Sault Ste. Marie to within less than twenty miles of Keweenaw Point, with the exception of a few miles about Marquette and near Huron Bay. A subdivision of it also trends to the southward from the neighborhood of Marquette to the Menominee River. Throughout its whole extent, its margin, overlapping the Laurentian, follows the shore-line of the

ancient Silurian sea, in whose waters its extensive beds were slowly deposited from the erosions of the earlier rocks. Its maximum thickness is several thousand feet. The various strata are made up of conglomerates, thick-bedded and fine- grained sandstone, and mixed varieties, showing different textures and colors. Its total area in the State is about 3500 square miles. It affords fossils but sparingly. Its dip is slightly towards the centre of Lake Superior. This formation affords vast quantities of excellent building-stone, and it is extensively quarried and shipped to the Western cities.t

Lying next above this, and conformable to it, is the CAL- CIFEROUS SAND-ROCK, or siliceous limestone, which is also found in the St. Lawrence region of Northern New York. It forms the surface roek in the upper peninsula of Michi- gan, extending in a long, narrow belt, lying parallel to the Potsdam stone, from the St. Mary's River in a curving dircetion around to the Menominee River, on the Wiscon- sin line. Its average breadth is not far from five miles, and its area is about 1000 square miles. Its thickness is nowhere over 100 feet, so far as is known. It is gen- erally a coarse-grained sandstone, alternating with calea- reous cement and dolomitie and öolitie limestone beds. It affords characteristic fossils sparingly.

Lying next above and overlapping this upon the south is the TRENTON LIMESTONE, so extensively distributed in the lime-impregnated waters of Silurian days. Its thick- ness is much less than in the valley of the St. Lawrence, reaching probably about 100 feet.}

This formation stretches in a broad belt, parallel with the other Silurian rocks, from St. Mary's River to the Menomi- nee, being in its broadest portions seventy-five miles in width, and covering an estimated area of 3000 square miles, though the line of demarkation between it and the Hudson River shales is not well defined, being generally deeply buried under the northern drift. It outerops in a few isolated instances outside these limits. In the State Survey the following general description of this formation is given :

" The lowest beds of this limestone formation are prevalently arenaceo-calcarcous shales, of a dusky-green or bluish color, and containing numerous fossils.

" The middle strata are thin-bedded, nodular limestones, with shaly intercalations, also of darkish color, like the strata below, and equally ahounding in fossils.

" The upper strata are light-colored, brittle limestones, splitting in uneven, wedge-shaped slabs by exposure or under the stroke of the hammer. They are likewise well stocked with fossils."

The more compaet parts of this formation answer well for heavy, rough stone work,-foundations and the like.

Overlying the Trenton formations comes the HUDSON RIVER SHALE, equivalent to the Cincinnati group of Ohio. It outcrops in a narrow belt extending from the river St. Mary to the point of the peninsula lying between Great and Little Bay de Noquette. It probably covers an area of

* The trap formation is called Pre-Silurian by Prof. Rominger for the reason that it is older than the Potsdam sandstone, which lics un- conformably upon it. It was evidently thrust up through the crys- talline rocks before the deposition of the sandstone. It is of much earlier origin than the trap formations of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

+ Professor Rominger divides it into two formations,-the upper consisting of light-colored, almost white, friable sandstone; while the lower section is composed of very red-colored, thick-bedded, and com- pact strata, from whence is obtained the best building -material.

# The Trenton series are 1000 feet thick in some parts of Canada and New York, and in Pennsylvania are estimated by Lesley at 2000 feet. South of Pennsylvania they are still thicker.

PIIYSICAL FEATURES.

some 700 or 800 square miles, though, as before remarked, the division-line between it and the Trenton limestone is somewhat obscure. It is made up in Michigan of thin limestone beds interstratified with arenaceous shales, and abounds in fossils. Its thickness is supposed to be sixty feet or more, and it has a slight declination towards the southeast.

Next in the order of sequence comes the NIAGARA GROUP, which in the State of New York is divided into three parts: first, at the bottom, shalcs, sandstones, and conglomerates of the Medina Epoch ; second, next above, limestones and shales of the Clinton Epoch ; and above these the solid dolomitic limestone of the Niagara period. These various subdivisions are not well defined in the Michigan formation, and the State geologist hardly deems it necessary to show subdivisions. The thickness in Mich- igan is estimated at 100 feet, and it abounds in fossils. Portions of the rock are used for building purposes, and the thinner layers for fluxing in iron furnaces. In the neighborhood of Chicago it is heavily charged with bitumen. This formation extends in form corresponding with the other Silurian rocks from Drummond's Island, in Lake Huron, to the peninsula lying between Big Bay de Noquet and Lake Michigan, and has an average width of about twenty miles. The area covered is something more than 2000 square miles.

The ONONDAGA SALT GROUP overlies the Niagara, and outcrops over a small area in the little peninsula about St. Ignace, on Mackinac Island, and on the islands in St. Mar- tin's Bay. Altogether it covers an area of sixty or seventy square miles. On the island of Mackinac it underlics the Helderberg limestone. This is the formation which fur- nishes the salt brines of Onondaga Co., N. Y., and also abounds in gypsum and marls. It must not be confounded with the Michigan salt group proper, for it lies (geologi- cally) several hundred feet below the latter. In the lower strata of this formation would probably be found solid rock- salt.

Next above this comes the HELDERBERG LIMESTONE, which in New York is divided into upper and lower beds, between which are found the Oriskany sandstone and the Shawangunk and Schoharie grits. It is possible that the sandstones and grits are both wanting in Michigan.

This formation occurs in both the upper and lower penin- sulas, and appears to form the first of the concentric geo- logic circles which so curiously surround the lower peninsula, and which, years ago, were likened by Professor Winchell to a nest of wooden bowls, one within another.

The area occupied by the Helderberg around the straits of Mackinac, and including Bois Blanc Island, is about 300 square miles. The same formation also comes to the surface in a curving band in the counties of Wayne, Mon- roe, and Lenawee, in the southeastern part of the State, where it covers 1000 or 1200 square miles, making a total of from 1300 to 1500 square miles in the State. Its total thickness is about 250 feet. The beautiful scenery of Mackinac Island is among the brecciated rocks of this for- mation, which have become so eroded and disintegrated through the lapse of ages as to form numerous caverns and curious openings and arches. From this region also have

come the beautiful specimen bowlders of conglomerate for- mations which bestrew the lower peninsula, and which we often see on the lawns of our residences or in public and private collections of mineral curiosities. This rock also abounds in chert and hornstone nodules. It is not valuable for common lime, but produces water-lime, or cement, to a considerable cxtent. Some of its thicker beds afford stone suitable for window and door caps, sills, etc.

This rock is remarkable for the great number of troughs and " sink-holes" which abound in its surface in the south- eastern part of the State and in the adjoining region of Ohio. It is fossiliferous to a considerable extent, abounding especially in corals .*

The HAMILTON GROUP next occurs, stretching in a broad band, curving elliptically from Thunder Bay, Lake Huron, to Sleeping Bear Point, on Lake Michigan. It does not appear in its proper place between the Helderberg and black shale formations in the southern portion of the pc- ninsula. Its width varies from one to thirty miles, and its area may be estimated at about 2000 square miles. It forms the surface rock of the Maniton Islands, in Lake Michigan, and of the smaller islands about Thunder Bay, in Lake Huron. Its average thickness is estimated at 500 feet, though borings at Thunder Bay indicate as many as 650 feet. Its component parts in Michigan are largely of limestone, with a subordinate proportion of shales. Borings in this rock at Alpena and Thunder Bay passed through brine, and at a depth of 1025 feet reached a bed of rock- salt. It is probable that the salt is in the Onondaga for- mation, and that the borings penetrated both the Hamilton and Helderberg series. In places eighty feet of black shale is found. The formation is rich in fossils.

Lying conformably upon the Hamilton is the BLACK SHALE, generally considered to be the same as the Genesee shales of New York. The formation is named by Professor Winchell the HURON SHALES. It extends in another par- allel band from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan, underlying Grand Traverse Bay, and having an average width of twenty- five miles. Another band reaches through the southern part of the peninsula from about the river and Lake St. Clair, through the counties of St. Clair, Macomb, Wayne, Monroe, Lenawee, and the south part of Hillsdale into Indiana, and a narrow portion extends into the southern part of Berrien County, and passes under Lake Michigan, but does not appear west of the lake. The whole area in the State approximates 4000 square miles.t

The next formation, and the one of the greatest econ- omic importance in the lower peninsula, is the WAVERLY GROUP of sandstones and shales. Its outcrop includes a broad band extending in the form of a circle around the peninsula immediately below the Carboniferous formations, and covering an area of probably not less than 20,000 square miles, or fully one-half the peninsula. Its total

# The line between the upper and lower Helderberg formation is generally considered as the division between the Devonian and Silur- ian systems.

t The hlack shale is remarkable for its oil-producing qualities under distillation, and it is sometimes considered the source of the mineral oils of Pennsylvania. On account of this property, it contains but few fossils.

HISTORY OF INGHAM AND EATON COUNTIES, MICHIGAN.

thickness is not less than 1200 feet, and in this vast accu- mulation is found the inexhaustible brine from which is manufactured the celebrated Saginaw salt. This, of itself, constitutes a never-failing income to the State, which will increase with the rapid increase of population in the United States.

It has already monopolized the Western market on ac- count of the abundance of wood-fuel in the vicinity of the wells now in operation, and the consequent cheaper pro- duction than that of the Onondaga salt. This formation is also very valuable as being the source from which is ob- tained nearly all the good building-stone of the lower pe- ninsula, and from the fact that it affords inexhaustible quantities of the best quality of material for grindstones. Important quarries have been opened in Huron County, and the products are widely known.

The outerop of this rock, like that of many other forma- tions in Michigan, is mostly hidden by drift. . The most favorable localities for studying its surface-layers are along the beach of Lake Huron, in Huron County, about Port Austin, where there are extensive grindstone-quarries. The formation comes to the surface in the counties of Jackson, Hillsdale, Branch, Calhoun, Berrien, and Ottawa in the. southern portion of the peninsula, and in the county of Antrim in the north.

So far as explored, between the vein of outcrop indicated in the south and the Traverse Bay region it does not ap- pear above the drift, though more thorough research may develop it. The western portion of the city of Battle Creek stands directly upon this formation, though in the eastern part of the same city it is buried under seventy feet of drift accumulations. Borings at this place passed through forty-three feet of sandstone and 326 feet of bine shale. We append tables of borings at various points :

AT PORT HOPE, HURON CO.

Drift .. Feet.

Greenish mieaceous sandstone.

Blue arenaceous shale with sand-rock seams. 510

Stratum of hard gray roek. 1

Dark-blue shales 154

Arenaceons shales. 29

Coarse, whitish sandstone 71

Total 787

AT TAWAS, IOSCO CO.

Feet.

Drift. § Sand Yellow Clay ..

Whitish sandstone.

Red sandstone. 15

Gray sandstone.

Red sandstone ..

Light-colored shale

Redl arenaecons shale.

Light-colored shale .. 5

Red arenaccous shale.

Blue shale.

Red sandstone

Light-colored shale

Red sandstone.

White shale.

Red sandstone ...

Light-colored hard shale.

40 5

White shale ..

Light-colored shale ...

White, hard shale, with brine.

16.4

Gray sandstone. 195

Blue shale. 10

Total 883

At Muskegon borings have penetrated to a depth of

2627 feet,-the deepest in the State. The character of the strata is partly indicated by the following figures :

Feet.

Drift 235

Light and dark shales. 450

Blue shales with hard seams .. 775

Soft blue shale. 150

Red shale .. 150

Lime-rock with shaly seams 300

Salt-bearing sand-rock. 50

Gypsum beds and limestone ... 195

It will be observed that the salt-bearing rock is much less in thickness than that in the eastern part of the State.

At Hillsdale two artesian wells of 1350 and 1550 feet, respectively, corroborate the results in Huron County. The mineral well at Lansing reaches a depth of 1400 feet, and also passes through the brine-bearing stratum .*

In the Hillsdale borings, at a depth of about 1200 feet, a white limestone, fifty feet in thickness, was found, and below this a soft calcareous rock. At this point evidently the black shales are wanting, and the Waverly would seem to rest immediately upon the Helderberg lime- stone.

The Waverly formations are supposed to be thickest in their northern and central portions. The upper division is generally a sand-rock, mixed with inferior beds of shale to a depth of 300 or 350 feet. The lower strata are mostly com- posed of shales, and are more abundant in fossils than the upper measures. They are permeated, more or less, through- out, with brine, but it is generally stronger in the lower beds, though this order is sometimes reversed, as at Sagi- naw, where the upper portions afford the strongest article.

This formation would probably be found, in its upper portions, in the vicinity of Lansing, at a depth of 500 feet, the drift and the Carboniferous and Sub-Carboniferous formations lying above it.

Overlying the Waverly formation next in place is the CARBONIFEROUS, with its various divisions and variety of formations. The lower measures are designated as SUB- CARBONIFEROUS, and consist of various descriptions of limestone containing, in several localities, immense beds of gypsum or, as it is more familiarly known, plaster. This formation is developed in a narrow marginal band around the Carboniferous system proper, and is exposed about Jackson and at Grand Rapids, where the most celebrated gypsum-quarries in the United States are situated. There are also extensive deposits of gypsum about Saginaw Bay, at Alabaster City, and other points. At Bay City and Kawkawlin it is found at depths varying from 400 to 700 fcet below the surface. The Grand River beds, in Kent County, cover an area of seven or eight square miles, and are extensively worked.

Gypsum consists of sulphurie acid, lime, and water, in the proportions, respectively, of 46.51, 32.56, and 20.93.

An analysis of the non-fossiliferous rock of this forma- tion at Grand Rapids gives the following result :

Carbonate of lime. 48

Carbouate of magnesia. 27

Hydrate of iron, oxide, and alumina .. 4

Argillaceous residue ... 18

* For further account of this well and an analysis of the water, sce farther on.

Red sandstone.

PIIYSICAL FEATURES.

Analyses in other localities give the following :

Carbonate of lime 96,

Carbonate of magnesia ..

Ilydrate of iron oxide

0,5

Insolublo residue ... 1.5

99.

Carbonate of lime ......... ................. 56,

Carbonate of magnesia 23.

Iron oxide, hydrate, and alumina. 5.5

Siliceous residue 9.

93.5

These show a great variation in chemical qualities. The total thickness of the Sub-Carboniferous measures is found by borings to be 160 feet.

Overlying the Sub-Carboniferous and constituting the latest rock formation of the State is the true CARBONIFER- ous, which contains the coal measures. This complex for- mation, made up of shales and sandstones and intermediate seams of coal, clay, etc., comprehends a total thickness of more than 300 feet, and covers an area generally estimated at about 8000 square miles, though what proportion con- tains workable coal veins is not satisfactorily determined. It belongs probably to the upper system of the great coal measures of the country, lying west of the Appalachian Mountains, though it may be an independent or isolated field, having a different epoch for its formation.

LOCAL GEOLOGY.

The following paragraphs relating to the local geology of Eaton and Ingham Counties are compiled from Pro- fessor Rominger's report upon the geology of the lower peninsula. We have in most instances employed the lan- guage of the report, omitting the more unimportant por- tions.

At Bellevue, in Eaton County, the Carboniferous lime- stone outcrops, or is covered only by a shallow drift, over a space of six square miles. In a railway-cutting near the place the lowest beds expose a greenish-white sand-rock of tolerably fine grain, partly soft and friable, partly hard, and sometimes firmly cemented by abundance of sparry calcareous material. Its constitutional elements are, quartz, sixty-nine per cent. ; carbonate of lime, thirty per cent.

The composition of the higher beds is nearly pure lime- stone, as the appended analysis shows :

Carbonate of lime 96.

Carbonate of magnesia 1.

Hydrate of iron oxide.

0.5

Insoluble residue. 1,5

99.

The formation is sometimes in a brecciated condition, and shows abundant fossils. The higher strata are of a purer, light-colored stone breaking with a conchoidal fracture, in beds of variable thickness interlaminated with concretionary seams of limestone. Fossils are not generally abundant in these beds, but certain seams abound with them. Above these lighter-colored beds is a stratum of brown ferruginous dolomite, or magnesian limestone, about two feet in thick- ness, and next above is a bed of light-colored limestone, three to four feet thick, and identical with some of the lower beds. Above this again is a belt of brown, ferru- ginous dolomite, a foot in thickness, either in continuous 3

layers, wedge-shaped at both ends, or in seams of irregu- larly-shaped septaria surrounded by calcareous shale. The uppermost layers are thin-bedded, light-colored limestone.

The composition of the brown dolomite is,-

Carbonate of lime. 56.

Carbonate of magnesia 23. Iron oxide hydrate, with alumina ... 5.5 Siliceous residue. 9.

The total thiekness of rock at Bellevue is stated by Pro- fessor Rominger at from fifty to sixty feet. The trend of the formation is to the southeast.

In both Eaton and Ingham Counties coal has been found by artesian boring, as at Mason, but not of sufficient thiek- ness to pay for working. One mile south of Masou a thin seam is exposed in the creek channel. When boring the well in the court-house square at Mason, the drill pene- trated the same seam.

A mass of coal surrounded by and mixed with shales and sandstones, and standing in a vertical position, was found some years since four miles to the north of Mason. It was firmly believed by inexperienced people that this was the outcropping of a valuable vein of coal, and one enthusiastic individual purchased the land, but soon came to a realizing sense of his error when he found it was only a mass of drift. It is said that he suddenly left the vicinity, forgetting to call on several friends who were also pecuniarily interested.

At Eaton Rapids, Mr. Frost's well penetrates a thin coal seam at the depth of 120 feet. In the banks of Grand River, two miles above Eaton Rapids, are roek eliffs, twelve to fifteen feet in height, composed of darkish-blue colored shale and sand-rock, interstratified. A mile and a half above Lansing, on the river, the upper coal sandstone eomes near the surface, and has been quarried on a small scale.

In a boring at Charlotte of 730 feet, a thin sand-rock of the coal measures was penetrated at a depth of fifty feet under drift, and immediately below thin seams of coal were found. In the township of Chester, Eaton Co., a seam three feet in thickness outcrops on Little Thornapple Creek under black shale beds. The coal in this locality is close to the surface, and has been eroded and swept off by drift action.

Record of boring in Chester : Drift, eight feet; hard, black shales, slate-like, and inelosing thin seams of coal, six to eight feet ; whitish, fine-grained sand-rock, containing fossil coal-plants, seven feet ; whitish, plastic fire clay, thirty feet ;* black shales with pyrites, thirty feet ; white fire-clay, with hard ferruginous bands at bottom of bore.

GRAND LEDGE.+

" The most instructive natural section through the eoal formations which we have in the State is seen at Grand Ledge, in tho valley of Grand River, ten miles below Lansing. The river has earved its bed to the depth of about sixty fect below the general surface-level of the country. The upper part of the hills bordering the valley is formed of drift; the lower presents a section through the rock-beds of the eoal measures. The village of Grand Ledge is located in the centre of the outerop, which continues up and down the river for about a

# This statement is probably an error in type, as the fire-elay is seldom over four feet in thickness in this region.

+ Undoubtedly named from the lofty sandstone eliffs that line tho river-bank for a milo or more, and presenting some of the finest rock seenery to be found iu the lower peninsula.

HISTORY OF INGHAM AND EATON COUNTIES, MICHIGAN.

mile. The strata rise and sink io undulations, which bring the higher and lower beds to repeated outerops on the same level. . . .

"The upper part of the formation is n coarse-grained sand-rock from twenty-five to thirty feet in thickness. . . . The sand-rock ledges form n compact body, with only insignificant intermediate seaus of shale or an ocensional coal senm of a few inches' thickness wedged in. Calamites and other vegetable imprints, besides concretions of kidney ore and seams of iron pyrites and conglomerate, are usually found inclosed within the rock mass. In grain and hardness it fully re- sembles the upper sandstones of Jackson ; its color, however, is a somewhat darker yellowish shade. A part of the brown rock is coarsely conglomerate.

"Next below thissand-rock, which overlies the river in vertical cliffs for nearly a mile, we find blue shales of arenaccous character inter- laminated with other Inyers of sand-rock, all nmounting to a thick- ness of nbout fifteen or twenty feet. Under these is a coal seam two nnd one-half feet in thickness, and of n very good bituminous quality. It wedges out in places or changes into a black, carbonaceous shale. This scam is worked nt times by single workmen as a temporary oc- cupation when they have little else to do. The coal scam rests on a gray, argillneeous, laminated sand-rock, with softer, shaly senius which inclose a Inrge quantity of coaly vegetable remains. The thickness of the beds is about five feet.

" Lower comes a fine-grained, whitish sand-rock, in even, compact beds eight feet in thickness. Directly under this sand-roek is a fifteen- inch bed of good bituminous coal. Lowest in the outerop are about twenty-five feet of additional strata, principally sand-rock ledges, with some intermediate shale seams. In the bed of the river at this spot large, hard, sand-rock slabs of very even bedding, and from two to three inches in thickness, are laid open, which would make excel- lent flagstones for walks.

"The aggregate thickness of the given section is about ninety feet. It begins with the centre of the syncliual depression, and is followed downward with the stream. Up-stream a rise of the strata is seen, but the next lower strata to the upper sand-rock deposits are not un- covered as plainly as at the lower end of the depression. After pass- ing a covered interval of about sixty steps in going up-stream, the following descending section is observed :

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History of Ingham and Eaton counties, Michigan, Part 3

Author: Durant, Samuel W. cn Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia : D.W. Ensign & Co. Number of Pages: 772

Author: Durant, Samuel W. cn
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia : D.W. Ensign & Co.
Number of Pages: 772