USA > Michigan > Monroe County > History of Monroe County, Michigan > Part 49
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" As an illustration, I give one of the records of a drill-hole sunk in the court house square of Monroe to a depth of one hundred and forty feet. It reads :
Clay and sand. 6 feet.
Gray limestone
3
Blue
0.5
Dark gray limestone 3
Blue limestone
1.5
66
Gray
14
Blue
2
Gray
66
39
Blue
5
Gray 66
2
66
Blue
66
32
Blue shale
39
66
" We see here a number of limestone beds, varying in color and compactness, amounting to over one hundred feet in depth, and below a deposit of calcareous shale, which could perhaps be taken as representing a part of the Onondaga formation ; but the information we receive by this record is insufficient to enable us to form a clear idea of the special qualities of the rock-beds, or to distinguish positively certain horizons. From another boring made in the same place, I received through the kind- ness of Judge Christiancy specimens of the rock brought up by the pump, by which I can see that to a depth of three hundred feet below the surface, limestone beds are almost ex- clusively following each other in continued superposition ; but these limestones, of a dolomitic character, sometimes light-colored, sometimes dark, partly laminated, or other specimens of a cellulose structure, full of irregular cavities, clothed with spar crystals, or pieces pervaded with acicular spar crystals,
are all without prominent peculiarities by which one can tell whether the boring has passed the water-lime and entered the Onon- daga or Niagara group or not. Rocks exactly similar to those brought up from the deepest portions of the drill-hole are found in the superficial beds of the quarries near by, and acicular limestones, not distinguishable from those next to the upper brecciated limestones, come up from a depth of over two hundred feet.
" We learn by the borings that no gypsiferous shales are found in the strata underlying Monroe, and that for several hundred feet downward limestones of dolomitic character alternately follow cach other; but we have no guiding rule by which to learn exactly where we are.
" Among the exposures of the water-lime group, the quarries of Gibraltar, situated about four miles south of the Trenton quarries, are the most northern. There this lower rock series comes to the surface in the bed of the creek where it enters the lake near Gibraltar, and west of the village at the point crossed by the Michigan Southern Railroad. The surface of the upper ledges is polished by drift action ; about eight fect of the rock-beds are denuded in the quarry ; no fossils were observed in this place.
" West of this locality, near Flat Rock, Huron River runs in rapids over ledges which belong to the water lime horizon, a drab- colored, crystalline, somewhat porous, but hard dolomite, with flinty concretions. Of fossils, I noticed casts of crinoid joints, vegetable stems, and a small elongated body with email surface, serrated on the edges, which can only be the remains of a fish or crustacean. Similar cor- puscles I found in the brecciated limestones of Point-aux Paux, a locality which will sub- sequently be described. At New- port, on Swan Creek, the water-lime strata are found everywhere close under the surface of the level country, polished by drift action. The rock is a light drab-colored, fine-grained, absorbent dolomite ; the surface of the bed is rugose, pitted, as if the strata in soft condition had at one time emerged from the water and been exposed to rain drops. Seams of black carbonaceous shales separate the ledges and cover their surface with a shining thin coat. Stylolitic segregations are very common ; they evidently are a peculiar sort of shrinkage
289
THE GEOLOGY OF MONROE COUNTY.
cracks, formed by the contracting of the mud mass during its consolidation into rock ; their striated surface is likewise blackened with this shaly coating. In the quarries, only abont eight feet of the strata are uncovered ; the upper superficial ones are the best; some of them break in good-sized blocks about a foot in thickness, which are used as a building stone. However, most of the rock is quarried for lime burning. The lower beds in the quarries are thin, uneven slabs interstratified with seams of black shale. Fissures and druse cavities in the rock-mass are filled with fine crystals of celestine and of ealespar.
" Three miles southeast of the Newport quarries, we find along the shore of Point-aux- Paux a very good natural exposure of the same rock-beds, which here are in brecciated condition, while the beds in the Newport quarries are undisturbed. The rock-beds pro- ject only about four feet above the water level, but by undulations of the strata about fifteen feet of successive ledges become exposed. The breecia is formed of angular rock fragments; sometimes larger masses, composed of several consecutive layers, retaining their regular stratified position to each other, lie enclosed in it; often also a regular unbroken seam of lime- stone alternates with the brecciated layers.
" The principal part of the ledges resembles in all particulars the rock of the Newport quarries ; the same fossils are found in it, only in greater abundance and variety. Meristella lævis, Leptocælia concava, Megambonia avicu- loidea, easts of several forms of bivalves and gasteropods, and a small spirorbis-like shell, are the usual forms met with, besides a profusion of the above mentioned vegetable remains pervading the rock-beds. Druses of cælestine and calespar, and veins of these minerals, filling the fissures of the rock, are very abundant.
" Of the emailed corpuscles with serrated edges, which I found in the dolomite of Flat Rock, and suggested might be the remains of fishes or crustaceans, I found several at Point- aux-Paux. South of Point-aux-Paux, toward Monroe, we find the same roek-beds every- where elose under the surface, with only a few feet of drift on them. The quarries alongside of River Raisin, up to Dundee, are all opened in beds of this horizon. In the quarries of Plum Creek, a short distance south of Monroe, by the
undulations in which the strata rise and sink, about twenty feet of rock-beds come to an ex- posure. Uppermost are fine-grained, light- colored dolomitic limestone in beds of a few inches thiek, and in the aggregate reach six feet. Next below is a compact stratum of oolith from eighteen inches to two feet in thick- ness, which makes a good building material. Lower are thin, rugose ledges of limestone, with intervening narrow seams of a black shale mass ; these are succeeded by about two feet of a gray and blue mottled dolomite rock, after which are again thinly laminated limestone slabs, with intermediate black shale seams. The surface of these limestone slabs is covered by ramified relief forms, apparently of vege- table origin. The lowest beds in the quarry are bluish gray dolomite in moderately thick ledges, opened to the depth of about eight feet, and representing the principal quarry-stone used for ordinary building purposes. In the whole series of rock-beds, fossils are rarely seen, but in nests or in a thin seam, locally, they may be found in abundance. Among the rocks which came out in excavating the cellar of a brewery situated within the quarry, eer- tain blocks are crowded with easts of Meris- tella lævis, Retzia globosa, Leptocælia concava, Megambonia aviculoidea and several other bivalves, several gasteropods, great numbers of a spirorbis-like shell, besides the vegetable stems found elsewhere in the same strata.
" In the southwest corner of LaSalle town, about six miles west of the lake shore, the brecciated limestones, which in Monroe are in a position on a line with the lake level, are found in the quarries at an elevation of about one hundred feet above the lake.
" In the quarries near Little Lake, in Bed- ford township, similar strata to those of the Plum Creek quarries are uncovered. In the upper part of the quarry we find an oolith stratum identical with the other locality. The lower part is formed of brecciated limestone, seams of which are fossiliferous; besides the already mentioned forms, a eyrtoceras and some gasteropod casts are found there, which I have not noticed in the other localities.
" Two miles west of Ida Village, close to the railroad track, extensive quarries are opened, and lime-kilns erected. Close under the surface, light-colored, almost white dolomites, of finely crystalline grain, and of absorbent, porous
290
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
structure are found ; they are much intersected by veins of calespar, and enclose druse cavities lined with the same material. Certain layers are completely filled with small acicular spar crystals, or the crystals have been dissolved by a partial weathering of the rock, and the places formerly occupied by them are now found as open, narrow slits pervading the rock in all directions. By the same process of weathering, the rock, which originally was a hard mass, composed of dolomite spar crystals, cemented together by calcspar, the more sol- uble calcspar being dissolved by the percolat- ing waters, is left, according to the degree of weathering, either a porous but yet hard mass of minute dolomite spar crystals, or a mealy, crystalline substance friable between the fingers.
" Prof. A. Winchell identified the dolomites of the Ida quarries with the Onondaga group, but the position of these beds is not lower than that of the other quarries considered to represent the water-lime group, and no differ- ence in lithological characters of the strata ex- ists, which would justify a distinction. In the deep boring made in the court house yard of Monroe for a depth of three hundred feet, no particular change in the nature of the rock was observed ; nearly all this thickness was made up by dolomites, some of which, by their cellu- lose character, with cavities once filled with crys- tals, are similar to beds found in the Onondaga group, but no gypsum beds nor shale deposits, which are significant in this group, were noticed.
" The gypsiferous rock-beds have been found in the State of Ohio at Sylvania, but in Michi- gan no positive evidences of the development of this formation have been discovered in the southeastern end of the State. Remarkable in this region are the numerous sink-holes found over it. Some of them are small, abrupt, fun- nel-shaped depressions ; others are larger and sink more gradually. Many of them are filled with water and form respectable lakes, as Ottawa Lake and Little Lake, while others are dry or filled only for a part of the year. The water in all these lakes is subject to consider- able fluctuations during the different seasons. Ottawa Lake, which covers about a square mile of surface, has in the spring of the year a depth of fifty feet; towards the fall it has low- ered its level about twenty- five feet below high-
water mark, and its shallowest parts are per- fectly dry. The water usually disappears rap- idly when it begins to sink, which is not the effect of evaporation. It escapes by subter- ranean crevices, which become visible after the water has run off. The steep embank- ments of the northeast end of the lake are formed by the brecciated limestones of the water-lime group, which are quarried there and burned into lime.
" Little Lake, in the town of Bedford, sec- tion fifteen, is another sink-hole of large di- mensions. It sometimes becomes perfectly dry, which never happens with Ottawa Lake. The rock crevices through which the water disap- pears were quite conspicuous in the emptied lake bottom at the time of my visit. Four miles north of Ottawa Lake, on the land of Mr. Cummins, in the town of Whiteford, between sections one and two, another large sink-hole is observable, which, during the summer and fall time, is perfectly dry and partly over- grown with grass. The center of this depres- sion is about eighteen feet below the level of the surrounding country ; a part of its bottom is formed of naked rock ledges fissured by deep, vertical crevices. The owner of the place informs me that during the spring this depres- sion is filled with water which contains large fish, although I saw not a drop of water in it at the time of my visit. When the water be- . gins to sink it escapes quickly, and at the spot where the crevices arc, a whirlpool draws them in with a distinctly andible, rushing noise. The larger fish being unable to get off with the water, are left on the dry bottom to die. From the fact of the appearance in these periodical water basins of full-grown fish of the kind usually found in Lake Erie, it has become the general belief of the inhabitants that a direct connection exists between these sink-holes and that lake, which suggestion has in it much of probability. All limestone formations are apt to be undermined and eaten out by the water flowing through their crevices, which is more or less charged with carbonic acid, and thus rendered a powerful solvent for the lime- stone. The old sandy beach lines encircling this district bear clear testimony to the fact that all this part of the country was, at a period not very remote, a part of the bottom of Lake Erie, whose waters leached out the softer, more sol- uble ledges of the lime rock, and left the harder
291
THE GEOLOGY OF MONROE COUNTY.
layers as roofs over the eroded cavities. After the receding of the water from this ground, leaving behind a deep, muddy sediment, which forms the present rich soil, the roofs of these subterranean cavities broke down, in some cases forming sink-holes that remain in con- nection with the intricate subterraneous chan- nels which doubtless lead into the lake.
" The connection of the Helderberg group with the superincumbent younger formations is in this part of the State entirely hidden by drift deposits. At Blissfield, Deerfield and Petersburgh, localities which are only a short distance from the actual outcrop of the Hel- derberg strata, in ordinary wells dug to a depth of seventy and eighty feet, through drift deposits, no rock ledges have yet been touched, and at Detroit, one hundred and thirty feet have to be sunk through before the lime rock is reached."
Prof. Rominger's observations were made in 1873-6, and some of the names he gives are no longer the possessors of the land, but the local- ities are easily distinguishable. The dip of the Helderberg strata, noted in the last quoted paragraph, becomes still more distinguishable further west. At the western edge of Lenawee county, in the village of Hudson, recent bor- ing, in exploration for natural gas, reached a distance of eight hundred feet or over before coming in contact with rock formations.
The recent attempts to find natural gas in Monroe county strikingly bear out many of Prof. Rominger's conclusions. In the city of Monroe three several attempts have been made. The first well was sunk at no great distance from the marshy shores of the lake. The same general result, as to consecutive layers of various colored limestones, was observed as in sinking the artesian well near the court house. Whether or not the well was a successful one will never be known, as it was effectually ruined and plugged. A vein of clear pure water was struck which spouted nearly a dozen feet above the surface. The second well was nearly a mile further west, and the same arrangement of strata was found. This well produced a steady flow of gas, but under too light a pres- sure to be available, and this well was ruined in an attempt to " shoot it." A third well was bored in the western part of the city, which also produced a steady flow of gas, but met with the same fate as No. 2, and showed the
same arrangement in stratification. In each of these experimental borings the gas-bearing rock, the Trenton limestones, was found at nearly the same level; the three wells, how- ever, showing the fact that the dip of the Tren- ton was to the eastward ; it being found nearcr the surface the farther west the experiment was made.
Another experimental boring was put down on Macon Creek, in the old " Christiancy " quar- ries, referred to in Prof. Rominger's notes. The result has been kept a secret At the village of Dundee an experimental well was sunk, but without favorable results. The claim is made, however, by those professing to be experts in determining the habitat of natural gas, that Mon- roe county contains several promising fields.
Dr. T. Dwight Ingersoll, an amateur scientist of much research and study, who lived in Mon- roe county from 1851 to 1871, furnishes an in- teresting monograph upon geological history at this end of Lake Erie, which is reproduced below :
HISTORICAL GEOLOGY OF MONROE COUNTY AND THE WESTERN PORTION OF LAKE ERIE.
The soil of Monroe county consists princi- pally of gravel, sand and clay, which was doubtless deposited during the glacial era, the surface having been more or less changed by the action of rain, the atmosphere, the in- dustry of the farmer and other natural causes.
The underlying rock is of the limestone for- mation, sloping slightly downward toward the east. In some places it is porous, and appears to have been fractured by some geological dis- turbance.
The limestone of Monroe county is fossilif- erons, and dips gently under the waters of Lake Erie and forms its bed to a point a few miles east of Kelley's Island, where it is buried under shale of the Devonian age, sinking deeper and deeper for a distance of a hundred miles perhaps, and then rises slowly from under the shale and becomes the bed of the lower portion of the lake, cropping out on both north and south shores. This wide belt of limestone was at a former age of the world forced up here and there into waves, one at Buffalo, New York, one at Sandusky, Ohio, and one west of the head of the lake. This formation and the changes it has undergone affects the geological history of Monroe county, and also
292
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
the history of the upper portion of the lake. One of the more powerful agents in the produc- tion of changes referred to was the mechanical action of glacier icc. During the glacial era Monroe county was under a stupendous glacier, hundreds of feet in thickness, which came, it is said, from the northwest, and forme l a junc- tion with another glacier coming from the northeast through the Lake Erie basin. When the two great rivers of ice joined their forces in planing down and leveling the country, both changed their course and moved in a southerly direction across the State of Ohio. Between this county and the wave or high ridge of limestone at Sandusky, Ohio, there was a broad depressed plain (now covered by the lake), which was occupied by the moving glacier, and every living thing, as well as a vast amount of rocks, was swept from the surface. The glacier did the same destructive work in this connty and also on the great uplifted ridge which extended from Sandusky to Point Pellec, Canada, before Lake Erie came into ex- istence. When the ridge was thrown up it was greatly fractured by the uplifting forces and the fissures were exposed a long time to the erod- ing action of the atmosphere, rain, frost and other disintegrating agents, which made the crevices so wide that the ridge of shattered limestone was an easy prey to the great north- ern glaciers, for (according to astronomical calculations) ten thousand years. During that long period the ice was moving slowly over the ridge and among the divided parts, grinding away the softer portions, and leaving the harder ones to remain as islands when the lake basin would be filled with water, after the disappear- ance of the glacier. While the ice was destroy- ing the ridge it was deepening the valley-like plain between the ridge and the rocks in this county, and it was also plowing and scraping out a deeper valley, which extended from the Sandusky ridge to a point a little cast of Long Point, Canada, where it made a bend north- ward in Canada several miles, and then re- sumed a more casterly course along the present Lake Ontario basin. Through that valley a great river flowed to the Atlantic Ocean. The most peculiar feature of that grand old valley was the contracted sides at the north ward bend. So near did they approach each other that they presented the appearance of a canon in comparison with the breadth of the fifty-mile
valley between that and Sandusky. This high- walled water-way has a history with an import- ant bearing on the history of the eastern boundary line of this county. At the close of the ice age that canon was completely filled with sand, clay, gravel and glacial bowlders. A dam was thus made so that the great river could not pass, and the broad valley was filled with water -- transformed into a lake - setting back westward between the remaining por- tions of the ridge and across the low plain to the present castern border of Monroe county, while at the same time it flowed eastward and broke over the bank near Buffalo, New York, giving birth to the Niagara River.
Had not the canon been gorged with glacial drift no lake would have been formed, because the rainfall of the region would have passed through the canon as it had previously done; for before the ice age there had been no Lake Erie.
Had not the ridge been fractured by up- heaval, the glacier would have planed and smoothed it more equally, and it would have remained a ridge with the upper portion worn away instead of being divided and carved into islands. After the glacier had preyed upon the limestone barrier for thousands of years noth- ing remained but the harder portion, which at the close of the ice age, and after the lake basin was filled with water, remained as veri. table islands, the water flowing between them and over the western plain as far as the eastern limits of Monroe county, making an extensive addition to Lake Erie.
The theory here presented is based on per- sonal observation and discoveries made in the lake region by geologists. That a continental glacier passed over this country is evident from the glacial phenomena which still exist in many places. At Sandusky the limestone rises from the water at an angle of two or three de- grees, passes under the city and is covered with long parallel glacial grooves and scratches; and the islands between Sandusky and Point Pellee, Canada, are covered with glacial marks. The Ohio State geologist, Prof. Newberry, says :
" Here we find evidence that the ice not only passed over every portion of the islands, but moulded itself to their sides in such a way as to scar and furrow them quite as distinctly as the level surfaces. In one instance a perpen-
293
THE GEOLOGY OF MONROE COUNTY.
dicular wall, composed of layers of unequal hardness, has been fluted or beaded like a cor- nice, and even cut under so as to present an overhanging shelf planed on its under side as well as its upper side. Such examples afford positive proof that the cutting away of the limestone was effected by glacial and not by iceberg action; and it is impossible that any one should study the surfaces of these islands without becoming a convert to the glacial theory, for every phase of the excavations effected in these rocks over which glaciers have moved, is repeated here in all its most striking details."
At Stony Point, this county, the effect of glacier action is still visible, the rocks being ground in such a manner as to appear like wagon tracks.
This kind of limestone contains a great variety of fossils - fossil corals, coiled shells and the shells of bivalves, fossil plants and fishes, besides some valuable minerals. Strontia has been found at Stony Point, and cavities in the rocks are sometimes seen filled with crystals like geodes. Prof. Newberry has called attention to the minerals on the islands.
" On North Bass Island there were obtained," he says, "from a well sunk for water some unusually fine masses crystallized cœlestine ; and on Rattlesnake Island I procured a large quantity of fluor spar in brown crystals. Green Island also deserves special notice, as it has furnished nearly all the fine specimens of crystallized cœlestine which have been obtained in this county - much finer, indeed, than are known to exist anywhere else in the world. The cœlestine (crystallized strontia) occurs here in masses of many tons weight.
The splendid crystals of celestine obtained from Green and Strontian Islands are found studding the walls of cavities. They are some- times met with as large as one's hand, and almost perfectly transparent throughout."
Under the head of geology, the seismic disturbances which have affected this portion of Michigan may appropriately be noted. While marks of upheaval in Michigan are extremely rare, though Dr. Ingersoll is a believer in their existence, still no locality is entirely exempt from the action of a seismic wave, possibly having its origin at some remote
point, and traveling along the crust of the earth. The portion of Michigan under consideration has been remarkably free from such dis- turbances, however. The account of an early one, from the pen of one of the State's most distinguished jurists, written in a letter to a friend, is appended, taken from the volumes of the Michigan Pioneer Society.
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