USA > Michigan > Oakland County > History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests Volume I > Part 6
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ern portion the snowfall is less and is apt to be melted by warm or rainy weather, so that during most years the ground is bare during part of the winter season
The southern tier of townships is mostly a plain, without even ridges, and has only one of the four hundred and fifty lakes of the county with- in its borders. In several localities are found extensive tracts of level land, such as those around Orion and Oxford villages, the Sash-a-baw plain in Independence, the Drayton plains in Waterford, and the White Lake plains lying in the townships of Springfield, White Lake, Highland and Rose.
The general surface of Oakland county is elevated from three to four hundred feet above the water-level of the great lakes.
The climate is substantially that which prevails over southern Mich- igan-a climate whose temperature is lowered by the pronounced eleva- tion of its surface, as well as by its proximity to the deep, cool waters of Lake Huron; but it is neither as warm in summer nor as cold in winter as in regions adjacent to Lake Michigan. The average summer temper- ature for Pontiac is seventy-two degrees, and is nearly the same as that of southern Ohio, the districts around the lower end of Lake Michigan and at Ottawa (Illinois), one hundred and fifty miles south of Saginaw.
The winter temperature of Pontiac is about twenty degrees, which is somewhat colder than other places in the same latitude in Michigan, being the same as Mackinaw in the extreme north of the lower peninsula. All the climatic conditions, like those of elevation and drainage, are firm guarantees of health and physical vigor, and form another practical rea- son why Oakland county is so admirably adapted to the founding of homes and the prolonged life and happiness of the individual.
As to vegetation, owing to the comparatively cool temperature it is somewhat backward, but as the soil of the county is generally of a sandy loam, the heat of the summer months is rapidly absorbed and the advance is rapid. The autumn is usually agreeable and frosts are uncommon be- fore October. Both the climate and the soil of the county are particularly favorable for the growth of wheat, and for all small grains; it goes with- out saying that most of the fruits are readily raised. But the agricultural interests have been mostly crowded out by the developments which have brought the county into the front rank of Michigan's residential districts. One exception must be made to this statement. Her dairy interests are still large and growing, particularly in the southern plain districts, with Farmington as their center.
THE SURFACE GEOLOGY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
By Aaron Perry.
The most interesting as well as the most obvious feature of the sur- face geology of Oakland county is the great body of glacial drift over- lying the bed rock of the whole county. This drift is mostly unstratified, or only locally and discordantly stratified. It is from one hundred to five hundred feet or more deep, depending on the locality. It consists of clay, sand and gravel, mixed with rounded and water-worn pebbles, and boulders of all sizes, from sand grains to six feet or more in diameter.
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
This sketch would not be complete without some mention of the origin of this drift.
It is now the accepted theory of geologists that this great body of drift has been ground up, worn and deposited in its present situation and condition by glaciers and moving waters; and geologists are now able to satisfactorily account for its origin. I cannot take space to give the various theories that have been advanced to account for the changes of climate which were necessary to produce and melt away those monstrous glaciers. It is sufficient here to assume as a fact that former great changes in the climate of North America took place, and that within a comparatively recent period in its geological history this county was covered with glacial ice such as is now found on the high table lands of Greenland and on the Antarctic continent at the south pole. The exist- ence of vast coal beds and tropical fossils (petrifications), in the Arctic regions is one of the evidences of such great differences in the climate between former and recent times. Neither was the glacial age continu- ous and uninterrupted, but there were interglacial colder and warmer periods when the glaciers advanced or melted away and retreated only to advance again. A great part of Oakland county is now, except as modified by snows, rains, streams and ponds, in substantially the same condition in which it was left by the last glaciers. Wherever the reader has seen hills or banks of clay, sand, and boulders entirely unstratified he can assume that they are now just as they were left by the glaciers. Perhaps nowhere can be seen better exhibits of recent glacial drift than are found in Waterford and White Lake, west of Mace Day lake. Many of the bowls and hollows are today without outlets and substantially as left by the ice sheet. Similar illustrations can be seen in many other places in the northerly and westerly parts of the county. Heaven Hill, in White Lake, the Bald Mountain ridge, the Grampian Hills of Addison, and, in fact, most of the hills of this county are substantially as they were left by the glaciers. Oakland county's four hundred lakes are due to the hollows and depressions left by the last glaciers. They show that, geologically speaking, this is a new country. In time all these hills will be rounded down and all the lakes filled with earth or emptied of their water, by the wearing down of their outlets. In the water-washed south- easterly part of the county there are no lakes left ; all have been filled and obliterated by the action of the waves.
To account for these glaciers it is not necessary to imagine any very great elevation of the lands northerly of us. Centuries of snow piled up farther north and, unmelted and accumulated until they had become thousands of feet thick, was sufficient to furnish all the elevation neces- sary to force the glaciers. southward across this county. The great weight of such a body of snow would suffice not only to change it into ice but would from pressure alone, convert it into a semiliquid state. In such a condition a glacier will flow, slowly of course, down a declivity little above a dead level and even force itself uphill over a ridge. They may not have moved at a velocity as great as fifty feet in a year, but they did their grinding, crushing work just as effectually, and their under- lying and lateral streams of water helped to wear, assort and round the pebbles, gravel and boulders brought by the ice lobe.
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
Later, I will speak of the melting back of these glaciers, but here I want to help the reader to account for the irregular and discordant strat- ification that all have noticed so often in sand and gravel banks in this county. It can largely be accounted for by recalling that the glaciers in receding, and perhaps in advancing, with their burden of ground up rock and debris would leave depressions, pools, hollows and dammed up val- leys, and that the rains, winds and waves, and the streams of water flow- ing in and out of such depressions would assort and stratify the sands, clays and gravels the same as they do now in like situations. Often the rims of these hollows were worn away slowly by the gradual deepening and wearing down of their outlets, or quickly by floods or other causes ; and then the stratification would begin anew under different circum- stances and in a different situation. Is there any wonder then that in a small gravel pit the stratification may be so discordant, tipped and varied that we are puzzled to account for it in detail?
The soil of Oakland county has been transported very largely from the northeast. This is established both by the detached fossils and minerals, as well as the fossiliferous boulders we find scattered over the county. Pieces of iron ore, copper and other minerals, as well as corals, brachiopods and other fossils, are often found. The corals are some- times called by the finders petrified "wasp nests" or "honeycomb," and are very common in our drift. All the above are still found northerly of us in Canada, in places in solid bed rock.
These glaciers swept over all Michigan and to, and in some places beyond, the Ohio river. The last great ones that crossed this county ended in northern Ohio and Indiana, and left there and in southern Mich- igan a great terminal moraine of earth, rock and debris, which accounts for the hilly country of Hillsdale county in Michigan, and in some of the counties in northern Indiana and Ohio.
Glacier streams or lobes, like other streams, generally follow depres- sions and valleys, although ultimately they may leave a hill where a valley existed before. Geologists are now agreed that a number of great glacial sheets swept down from the north, covering the northern states east of Minnesota and north of the Ohio river. These glacial sheets succeeded each other at different periods far apart. To distinguish them geologists have differentiated and named those known, as the Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin Glacial Sheets, and have determined that they came in the order in which they are above mentioned. The Wisconsin, the last of those great glacial sheets, passed over Michigan, including this county. This great ice sheet included numerous subordinate glacial lobes, two of which concern this county and largely shaped its present surface condi- tions. Both came from the northeast and in all probability originated in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay, in Canada. They traveled over this county in a southwesterly direction.
One of them, known as the Saginaw ice lobe, or glacier, came down Saginaw bay and swept south across our state. Its left bank or moraine, as the geologists call it, passed down the "Thumb" and across Huron, , Sanilac, Tuscola, Lapeer, Genesee and Oakland counties, and farther south to and beyond Hillsdale and western Lenawee. The right or west- ern moraine of the other, the Maumee ice lobe or glacier, which termin-
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
ated in the Maumee valley in Indiana, passed across the southerly part of Oakland county and thence southwesterly into Ohio and Indiana and, in its course commingling in this county with the eastern moraine of the Saginaw glacier, greatly complicated the surface geology of this locality.
The numerous lakes of Oakland county are only a fraction of the number that must have existed at the time of the final melting away and retreating of the last glaciers. Some of these, extinct lakes must have been quite large, for otherwise it is hard to account for the existence of such broad, sandy, gravelly plains as Sashabaw Plains and those found in the township of Commerce, and in Orion and other parts of the county. Those level, sandy, gravelly stretches of land, so common here, clearly show that they have been leveled and the soil assorted and laid down in shallow wave-washed lakes and ponds.
But a still greater force leveled and planed down the southeasterly part of this county, including the townships of Troy and Royal Oak and parts of Farmington, Southfield and Bloomfield. That force was the great glacial lakes known as Lake Maumee, Lake Whittlesey and Lake Warren. Those lakes all disappeared many thousands of years ago. Probably no human eye ever saw any of them, but to distinguish them, after generally conceding the evidence of their former existence to be conclusive, geologists have given them the above names.
As the Maumee glacier began to melt back from its southerly end in the Maumee valley the lands southwest of the terminus, in Indiana, being higher than the land under the glacier, a lake was formed at the foot of the retreating glacier, which is known as Lake Maumee, the outlet of which was at first at Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the drainage from the lake passed thence into the Wabash and Ohio rivers. When the glacier had melted back as far north as Imlay City, in Lapeer county, another outlet was formed at that place through which the waters of Lake Maumee passed across, near North branch, into the Cass river, thence across Gen- esee, Shiawassee and Clinton counties into the Grand river, and thence by way of the present site of Chicago to the Mississippi river. Lake Maumee is supposed to have kept both outlets for a time and until the Imlay outlet had lowered so as to carry off all its flood waters, when the outlet at Fort Wayne ceased. The glaciers continued to melt back far- ther until a still lower outlet was formed across the "Thumb" in Huron county at Ubly, to Cass river, known as the Ubly Outlet ; and as this out- let deepened the lake quickly lowered and shrank on its southerly and westerly sides and continued to extend northerly with the retreating glacier. Lake Maumee, after the close of the Fort Wayne and Imlay outlets and while its outlet was across the "Thumb" at Ubly, has been given the name of Lake Whittlesey.
The glaciers continued to retreat farther north until finally a still lower outlet for Lake Whittlesey was formed around the end of the "Thumb" or across the north part of it and by way of the Saginaw valley and along Maple river, in Shiawassee and Clinton counties, to the Grand river at Pewamo, a short distance east of Ionia. That last stage of Lake Maumee, the one when its outlet was at the last mentioned place, has been given the name, Lake Warren. This lake continued to exist until
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
the glaciers had melted back far enough to allow an outlet down the St. Lawrence valley, when the lake retreated from Michigan.
Lake Maumee washed the easterly side of the high lands in Oakland county caused by the westerly moraine of the Maumee ice lobe, or glacier, and left its raised beaches as a record of its shore line through this county. The leveling and planing down of the parts of Oakland county easterly of that shore line and the assorting of the surface soil in those parts into sands, gravels and clays was all done by the great glacial Lake Maumee during the various stages of its height above ex- plained.
The surface of Detroit river at the foot of Woodward avenue is five hundred and seventy-five feet above the ocean. Lake Maumee when its outlet was at Fort Wayne only, was two hundred and eighteen feet higher than Detroit river at the foot of Woodward avenue. And when it had two outlets at the same time, one at Fort Wayne and one at Imlay City, it had fallen ten feet. When its outlet was at Ubly, and it was known as Lake Whittlesey, it had fallen forty feet more. And when it had be- come Lake Warren and had its outlet across or across the northerly part of the "Thumb" it had fallen eighty-five feet more, and was then only eighty-three feet higher than Detroit river at the above mentioned place. The above figures as to the height of these shore lines are taken from the report of W. H. Sherzer on the geology of Monroe county, published in Volume VII of the Geological Survey of Michigan, page 143, and it will appear later in this sketch that the first shore line of Lake Maumee in some parts of Oakland county has materially risen since it was origin- ally formed.
Leverett, in Monograph 41 of the United States Geological Survey, page 721, described the shores of Lake Maumee where they pass across this county in the following language: "The beach enters Oakland county near the southwest corner of Farmington township and takes a somewhat direct course across that township, passing through the north- western part of Farmington village and leaving the township in the north- eastern part of Section 12. It usually forms a definite gravel ridge three to six feet high, and thirty to fifty yards or more in width. It lies along the inner border of a sharply morainic tract. To the east of it there is a rapid descent to the Belmore Beach but the surface is remarkably smooth." The Belmore Beach is the highest shore line of Lake Whitt- lesey.
Leverett continues : "Immediately northeast of the point where the beach leaves Farmington township there was a bay-like extension up to and beyond the village of Franklin, and in this the beach is not clearly defined. East of Franklin the shore follows the inner border of the moraine, and is usually in the form of a cut bank, as far east as the meridian of Birmingham. The second beach (the one when the lake had the two outlets), runs parallel with it, scarcely one-half mile distant and presents usually a gravel ridge.
"Near Birmingham there is considerable complexity caused by a till ridge and moraine hills which appear along the borders of East Rouge river. The till ridge at Birmingham is barely high enough to catch the second beach on its crest. Northeastward along the till ridge, however,
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
it soon rises to the level of the upper beach. The lowering of the lake to the level of the second beach seems to have followed closely the with- drawal of the ice from this till ridge and the opening of the Imlay out- let. Indeed, it is probable that the opening of this outlet is the main cause for the lowering of the lake.
"The second beach from Birmingham northward to the Imlay out- let is usually a gravelly ridge. It is exceptionally strong at Romeo and in the vicinity of Almont. It lies along the inner face of the till ridge, just noted, from near Birmingham to Romeo."
A peculiar feature of this upper Maumee beach is the fact that as it extends north it rises. At Birmingham, Leverett says, it is nineteen feet higher than at Ypsilanti, and that it is eleven feet higher at Rochester than at Birmingham. That may be due to the gradual tilting of the sur-
VIEW ON NEELY'S FLATS NEAR ROCHESTER
face of this state. The very eminent United States Geologist, Gilbert, claims to have determined that the north part of the state is now very slowly rising and the southern part as slowly settling.
Leverett says that at Birmingham the second Maumee beach is twenty-nine feet lower than the upper one. He also traces the shore of Lake Whittlesey (the Belmore Beach), through this county as follows : "From two miles northeast of Romeo it swings southward and leads through Washington township to Clinton river, just below Rochester. The village of Rochester stands upon a delta which was formed in con- nection with this beach. The beach continues in a course west of south for about twelve miles from Rochester, passing one and one-half miles southeast of Birmingham. It there curves abruptly westward, forming an interesting series of hooks, in its curving portion, and crosses to the west side of East Rouge river, about two miles southwest of Birming-
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
ham. From this point its course is southwestward through Farmington to Plymouth where it crosses West Rouge river."
While I have not personally traced this beach I think the chances are very great that the well marked low, gravelly ridge crossing the south end of the Beekman farm south of Birmingham is the Belmore Beach. At Rochester one can easily imagine the Paint creek and Clinton river emptying into Lake Whittlesey at substantially the same place and to- gether forming the delta plain on which that beautiful village stands.
I have no accurate information as to the altitude of the highest shore of Lake Warren, but it was about fifty feet lower than the shore of Lake Whittlesey and entered Oakland county from the northeast about straight east of Troy Corners and passed southwesterly through the vicinity of Big Beaver and Royal Oak village until it reached a point near the south line of Royal Oak township where it turned abruptly west and kept that main direction until it approached to or near the Belmore Beach, at which place it passed southwesterly with it into Wayne county. Wide, low, sandy ridges are stated by the geologists to be characteristic of this beach for much of its length, and probably for a part, at least, of the portion thereof in this county.
Beneath the drift in this county is the bed-rock extending, as far as geologists know, to the melted interior of the earth. In all probability all of Oakland county had risen above the ocean before the close of the Carboniferous age, and no rocks more recent than the Carboniferous appear beneath the drift here. The first rock underlying the drift in the southeast corner of the county and under the township of Royal Oak and parts of Southfield and Troy is of the Devonian age, while under all the remainder of the county the first rock is of the next later age, the Carboniferous. The coal basin of the state, which covers the central part of the lower peninsula, only touches the extreme northwest corner of Oakland county if at all, and no coal is likely to be found in the county. It is quite possible that oil may exist in the Trenton rock, but to reach that stratum wells would have to be bored several thousand feet deep. Salt-bearing strata probably underlie all of the county at con- siderable depths below the first bed-rock, as well as strata impregnated with sulphur and other minerals. Where the sloping shores of Lake Maumee dip and trend away from the westerly Maumee glacial moraine crossing the southeast part of the county porous strata overlaid by im- pervious strata having been occasionally so deposited and formed by the waters of Lake Maumee as to make artesian wells possible. They are found in Avon, Troy, Bloomfield, Southfield and Farmington townships. Artesian wells are also found in the vicinity of Ortonville and in some other parts of the county, and natural springs are quite common.
Most of the county lies on the easterly slope of the easterly moraine of the Saginaw glacier, but a small part of the county is drained westerly. The relative elevation of different parts of the county is a matter of some interest. As stated above, Detroit river at the foot of Woodward avenue is 575 feet above the level of the ocean. Lake Huron is five feet higher and Lake Erie is two feet lower than the surface of Detroit river at that point. Passing from the river at the foot of Woodward avenue north- westerly along the Detroit and Pontiac electric railway the elevations Vol. I-2
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
increase as follows: The elevation has increased at Highland Park and at the south line of Oakland county about 65 feet, and at Royal Oak about 19 feet more, Royal Oak village being about 84 feet above Detroit river. The south part of Birmingham is 191 feet and the northern part about 209 feet above Detroit river. At the Cranbrook road, Bloomfield Hills, the height above Detroit river is 290 feet. At Kimble's Corners the height is 363 feet, and at the United State bench mark on the north- east corner of the courthouse, Pontiac, the height above Detroit river is 369 feet.
The following elevations in feet of various other villages in the county may be of interest, viz : Big Beaver, 90; Troy Corners, 175; Amy, 298; Rochester, 185 to 225; Goodison, 282; Orion, 419; Eames, 437; Oxford, 486; Thomas Station, 518; Leonard, 435; Andersonville, 472; Drayton Plains, 385; Waterford, 418; Clarkston, 425; Davisburgh, 383; Holly, 362; Southfield, 103; Franklin, 212; Orchard Lake, 372; Farmington, about 175; Novi, 337; Walled Lake, 368; Commerce, 367; Wixom, 358; South Lyon, 365; New Hudson, 356; Milford, 371 ; Highland, 435 ; Clyde, 455; Rose Centre, 405 ; and White Lake, 466. Thomas Station, 518 feet, is therefore the highest village in the county.
The heights in feet of the following hills above Detroit river are: Bald Mountain, in Pontiac township, 618; hills in south part of Spring- field township, 585; Mt. Judah, Orion township, 575; Waterford hill, 574; Heaven hill, White Lake township, 525; hills west of Mace Day Lake, 525. I have no data for the height of the hills in the northern tier of townships of the county but some of them must be nearly if not quite as high as Bald mountain.
Cass lake is 356 feet above Detroit river, and very many lakes in the county are over four hundred feet above that river. All are filled with pure water. While, because of its glacial origin, a large part of Oakland county is rolling and somewhat hilly, very few of the hills are too steep to be profitably farmed, and the whole county lies at such an elevation that there is very little of it that cannot be successfully drained. As would naturally be inferred from its geological history, the soil of the county is so constituted that it is eminently fitted for agriculture.
CHAPTER III INDIAN AND PRIMITIVE RECORD
ORCHARD LAKE AND THE GREAT CHIEF PONTIAC-THE LEGEND OF ME- NAH-SA-GOR-ING-PRIMITIVE TILLAGE AND INDUSTRIES-CONTACT WITH KNOWN TRIBES-SCARS OF BATTLE-C. Z. HORTON'S CONTRI- BUTIONS-INDIAN CAMPING GROUND AND CEMETERY-QUEER CUS- TOMS-THE PASSING OF WE-SE-GAH.
The legitimate history of Oakland county, so far as it relates to the settlement and civilization of the whites, commences with the abandon- ment of the siege of Detroit by the great Indian chief, Pontiac, in 1764. With this portentous danger removed, the interior of southern Mich- igan became a field of investigation to adventurers and those seeking homes ; so that in 1815 the surveyor general of the state commenced to run his lines south from Detroit toward the Ohio boundary.
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