History of Addison county Vermont, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 3

Author: Smith, H. P. (Henry Perry), 1839-1925. 1n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y., D. Mason & co.
Number of Pages: 988

USA > Vermont > Addison County > History of Addison county Vermont, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 3

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4. Age of Coal Plants, or Carboniferous Age .- Vast quantities of plants grew in swamps in this age, and these when buried and compressed became coal. The highest forms of animal life were frog-like in structure.

5. Age of Reptiles, or Reptilian Age .- Reptiles of strange forms and great size inhabited now the water, the earth and the air.

6. Age of Mammals, or Mammalian Age .- Water and land mammals of vast bulk and numbers existed in this age.

7. Age of Man, or Recent Age .- This is an age for which all the former ages were preparatory, fitting the world for man. Of the rocks included in

NATURAL CHARACTERISTICS.

the above ages, only a part exists in any one country ; for some had been lifted out of the sea while others were still forming. The rocks of the Champlain Valley belong chiefly to those laid down in the early part of the Silurian Age, which is properly denominated the Lower Silurian. The Lower Silurian rocks, numbering from below upwards, may be called: I, Potsdam; 2, Calciferous ; 3, Chazy ; 4, Black River ; 5, Trenton ; 6, Utica.

The second division, Calciferous, is named for the character of the rock, while the others take their names from localities in New York, where the rocks were early studied.

These divisions may be briefly characterized here preparatory to a more extended mention hereafter.

The rocks of the Potsdam division are chiefly sandstones. Snake Mountain and the range of hills north and south; the rocks of Monkton, etc., and the loose red stones called bowlders, found in many of the fields of this county, are examples of Potsdam rocks.

The rocks of the Calciferous are made up both of lime and quartz, and are found in many places in the county. Mount Independence, in Orwell, is a conspicuous example.

The rocks of the Chazy are largely pure limestones, and in them are situ- ated the most valuable quarries. These rocks are especially noticeable in Fer- risburgh and Cornwall.

The Black River rocks are mostly a dark limestone. This has been quar- ried as a black marble. Breaking, as it does, often with natural joints, it gives a plain face, which needs no dressing, and is used in building. Larrabee's Point, Panton, Ferrisburgh, Bay Island, furnish such stone.

The Trenton rocks are chiefly slaty limestones and are often used as a rough flagging stone, as well as for building purposes. The hill west of Middlebury village furnishes an example of the stone.

The Utica rock is a slate. In Rutland county it is quarried as a roofing slate, but neither in Cornwall nor in Weybridge, nor in the towns along the lake shore, is the texture of the rock suitable for this purpose. The black glaz- ing which it often has, not unfrequently has led to the false hope of finding coal among the strata. Some sandstone and sandy limestone may have, at some time, overlaid the rocks of our valley.

Observing persons will have noticed at least three facts connected with the rocks of the county : first, they are not usually in their original horizontal po- sition ; second, that when newly uncovered the surface rock is found plowed down and polished ; third, that in most cases they are covered with a coating of clay, above which is the soil.

To account for the first named fact and the attendant phenomena, it is sug- gested that, after the Lower Silurian rocks were laid down, there came an era of great disturbance among the rocks all along this part of the county, and

HISTORY OF ADDISON COUNTY.

thousands of square miles of horizontal rocks, before in the ocean, were folded, or broken, and shoved up upon each other. It seems as though some force, as a thrust from the east, had done this work. The shove was accompanied with heat-that from friction or from the center of the earth, or from both. The rocks most heated became, not melted, but plastic, and, yielding to the force, were thrown into folds mountain high, and what is left of them we know as the Green Mountains. Other rocks not so highly heated, and therefore not so yielding, were a good deal crumpled, and in many cases broken and shoved upon each other, like cakes of ice crowded over each other upon a shore. The dip or inclination is towards the east, while the abrupt break is in the other direction.

The softened folded rocks were so metamorphized that their original con- dition cannot be well made out. They have become mostly crystalline in texture, and the fossil forms have disappeared from them. The heat also in- fluenced the adjacent rocks, metarmorphizing them, obliterating partly or com- pletely the fossils, changing the color and texture, as may be observed in the conversion of fossiliferous-colored fragmental limestone into white crystalline marble.

Going west from the mountain to the lake the metamorphism becomes less noticeable and the fossils plainer. But breaks and foldings of the rock still occur. Many steep western slopes are passed, each indicating usually a break and an uplift in the strata. The most remarkable one is seen in the Snake Mountain Range, where a great uplift has occurred; where even the Potsdam sandstone has been thrust up and over previously incumbent rocks. This break is a portion of a great series of faults which run southward from Que- bec, Canada, through Western Vermont and Eastern New York.

At the foot of the precipice of Snake Mountain the other Lower Silurian rocks are found in their descending order, Utica slate, Trenton, Black River, Chazy, with their fossils, and a little farther away the Calciferous.

The rocks uplifted from the ocean stood out of the water with atmospheric and other agencies operating upon them through uncounted time, while the ocean was still forming the upper rocks of the geologic series. Nearer the time man was to come upon the earth, and near the close of the age called Mammalian, another great change came, as is indicated by the grooved and polished surface of the rocks. The effects are just such as are now seen in Alpine and arctic regions where glaciers are at work. Like effect suggests like cause, and the phenomena are best explained on the theory that a great glacier passed over this whole northern country, going south beyond the border of New York.

It is difficult to conceive how a great ice overflow could have been pro- duced and how it could have moved over the land. But the suggestion of a time of intense cold, associated with an uplift of the land in northern regions,

NATURAL CHARACTERISTICS.

will help to make the theory one that can be accepted. No person can con- ceive what force other than moving ice could have done such tremendous work, breaking the cliffs, planing the rocks, pulverizing the stones, and dis- tributing the débris, coarse and fine, over the land.

This time of rock-grinding and soil-making, this long winter, apparently came to an end by the return of warmer seasons, and especially by a sinking of the land. The ice melted and the lower lands were flooded. Lake Cham- plain at this overflow was probably vastly larger than now, its eastern border being the foot of the mountain, while, as indicated by the fossil whale, its northern part connected with the St. Lawrence, and so with the ocean.

The muddy waters of this great lake deposited their sediment as clay over the bottom. At length a gradual uprise brought the rocks with their covering of clay to the present level of the land. Then vegetation slowly came back and covered the land. This at its decay mingled with the material from ice and lake and formed the soil. Then the frosts and storms, the air and streams, must have acted as they are acting now, sculpturing the hills and shaping the face of the land, and finally giving to Addison county the geologic features it bears to-day.

Some of the facts here glanced at will now be treated at length.

Beaches or Terraces .- A gradual rise of the continent would show beaches of then existing waters, at lower levels, while over the lower hills icebergs would still be grating and scouring. By this time we suppose the land to have risen so much that the great valleys are seen in outline; but small tributaries would bring their deposits of gravel and sand into these larger valleys, driving them from the drift and beaches, greatly modifying their character, and consti- tuting the higher terraces. As the continent continued to rise, the lower ter- races would be formed from the ruins of drift, beaches and older terraces. But in consequence of the equable rise, the terraces are found at various levels-not even being of the same height on both sides of the same valley-and the lower ones exceedingly variable in number. The action of tributaries upon the great terraces of the large streams would form numerous small terraces from them, in many localities from six to ten or more in number. In other words, the general drainage of the continent has produced all the multiplied and various phenomena of surface geology, mostly from the materials broken off from the ledges by icebergs, glaciers, etc.

In the towns of Ripton and Hancock, near the road which crosses the mountains to Rochester, are finely marked glacial striæ and moraines. The moraine in front of the glacier often fills the valley to the height of one hun- dred or two hundred feet, and the lateral moraines are scattered along the sides of the valley. Good examples of striation are found in many different local- ities in Middlebury, in Whiting, at Chimney Point, foot of Snake Mountain, and other parts of Addison, about a mile south of Frost's Landing in Bridport,

HISTORY OF ADDISON COUNTY.

in Weybridge, in many localities in New Haven, especially near a school-house on the west line of the town, in Monkton, in Waltham near Vergennes, and in a valley of Vergennes, which is twenty feet wide and twenty-five feet deep. The striæ we have mentioned differ in size from the finest scratch visible up to a furrow a foot deep. The largest occurs in Whiting, a few miles south of Middlebury, on the west side of the main road. This furrow is several feet in length.

Clay Deposits .- Leaving these beach, glacial and drift markings, we will turn to the clay deposits of the county, which afford indubitable evidence that they once formed the bed of an ocean-indeed, were deposited by the ocean itself. This celebrated deposit, known as the Champlain clays, is a part of a great deposit covering nearly the whole of Champlain valley. It consists usually of alternate layers or strata of brown clay, fine sand, loose gravel and blue clay. That the deposit is sedimentary is beyond controversy ; while the extensive prevalence of marine shells and fossils proves that the sediment could only have been deposited by the ocean. In Addison county these clays cover nearly all of the territory west of the Green Mountains. The lowest division, or blue clay, contains only shells that inhabit deep water, while the upper division, or the brown clay and the sands, contain littoral shells, etc., showing that the deposits were made under quite different circumstances-the one in deep and the other in shallow water. The first, the blue clay, is usually found in the lowest grounds near the lake. Sometimes its texture is very fine, and it forms then excellent material for the manufacture of bricks. Its fossils are Leda Portlandica and Lucina flexuosa. A peculiar formation occurs in a large deposit of this clay in Cornwall and Shoreham, on the Lemon Fair River, where blue clay is overlaid with muck, which is succeeded by blue clay and then by another deposit of muck. Some of the blue clay contains a consider- able percentage of carbonate of lime, and is admirably adapted for a heavy dressing for light soil.

The upper portion, or the brown clay, is not so constant in its lithological character as the lower, as silt, sand and gravel are found associated with it, or take its place entirely. A specimen taken from Middlebury has been analyzed, giving the following result :

Silica .

. 49.70

Alumina.

31.20

Peroxide of Iron, with traces of Manganese 6.60

Carbonate of Lime.

3.47

Carbonate of Magnesia 2.30

Water.

6.73

100.00

This clay is extensively distributed through the county, nearly the whole of its area to an altitude of 300 feet above Lake Champlain being covered with it. It lies directly upon the drift, over blue clay, on the lower Silurian

NATURAL CHARACTERISTICS.

rocks. Its fossils are Beluga Vermontana, the fossil Grampus, a few remains of seals and fishes, several shells such as Sanguinolaria fusca, Saxicava rugosa, Mya arenaria, and Mytilus edulis, and sponge. The following list gives the - localities, and heights above the present level of the ocean, where these marine fossils have been found in the county :

Feet.

Chipman's mill, Middlebury .

793

Eddy of Otter Creek, Middlebury village 323

The Prof. Adams house, in Middlebury 393

Hill west of Middlebury College 470

The next valley west, near the line of Middlebury and Cornwall. 356

Valley half a mile west of Middlebury village, Cornwall. .359

Hill one mile further west, Cornwall. 453

A valley in the east part of Bridport, a little west of the Cornwall line. 159

Hill next west, near the geographical center of Bridport 343

Hill northwest of Bridport village. 338

168

Lemon Fair River, near the Cornwall line, Bridport.

Hill in the southwest part of Cornwall, near the Four Corners 433

Hill near Shoreham village 403

" Oven," Monkton. 756

Vergennes 225

Hill east of Middlebury 434

Addison Center 445

Elgin Spring, Panton

320

West side of Buck Mountain, Waltham. 383

It is owing to these clay deposits, also, that the streams of the county have such a serpentine channel, for it is a fact that all sluggish streams passing through fine materials are characterized by meandering course. The fine meadows and beautiful natural terraces on many of these streams cannot fail to attract the observer's admiring glance.

There are two terraces upon Leicester River, the outlet of Lake Dunmore, reaching as far as the village of Salisbury. The meadow of Otter Creek, which has been spoken of on a previous page, is wider at the mouth of this stream than at any other place in the creek's course, and much of it on the west side is almost worthless from its marshy condition. An unusually wide meadow runs up Leicester River from the creek, but is soon narrowed. Two pretty ter- races, also, pass up Middlebury River to the east part of the town ; and at the village of East Middlebury the meadow becomes an extensive plain. Above the second terrace on the west side, the clays rise gradually until they reach the top of a low hill east of Middlebury court-house. The north branch of New Haven River rises in the southern part of Starksboro, and unites with the south branch from Lincoln in the east part of Bristol. Upon so much of the north branch as flows through Bristol there is an immense terrace, besides the meadow, on both sides of the valley. The south branch may have a few ter- races upon its banks in Lincoln, but between the village and its union with the north branch the banks are rocky, and the narrow valley is filled with enormous

HISTORY OF ADDISON COUNTY.

bowlders of quartz rock. The same is the character of New Haven River as far as the village of Bristol. There it has emerged from the mountains, and has deposited its detritus in the form of terraces. The village is situated upon a high, extensive terrace, composed of sand and gravel, underlaid by tertiary de- posits. This terrace extends quite a distance towards Monkton. Half a mile west of the village four terraces show themselves upon the north side of the river in regular succession. Between this point and the mouth of New Haven River there are in general only two terraces. The Lemon Fair, Dead Creek and its tributaries, and Little Otter Creek, have done little else than excavate a passage for their first terraces. In ascending Lewis Creek, until we reach the mills east of the village of North Ferrisburgh, it will be found that the stream is so sluggish as to have only cut a channel for itself through the clays; but at the mills it has formed four terraces on the north side, and then four upon the south side, for here it emerges from a somewhat rocky bed. In North Starks- boro, near the source of the creek, there is a high terrace of great length, suc- ceeded southerly by a wide meadow.

Rocks .- The rocks of the county, as we have previously stated, are dis- posed in parallel ranges extending north and south. Beginning on the west at the lake shore, and passing east, they are as follows: Utica slate, Trenton lime- stone, Chazy, Birdseye and Black River limestone, calciferous sandrock, Hud- son River slate and Hudson River limestone, red sandrock, eolian limestone, hydromica slate, pliocene tertiary deposit, quartz rock, talcose conglomerate, hydromica schist, and gneiss. In the following description of these several ranges, however, we shall speak of them in the order of their preponderance.

The most extensive, as well as the most important range, is that of the cel- ebrated eolian limestone or marble.1 It extends from the southern line of the county, where it enters from Rutland county, north to Monkton, having an av- erage width of about seven miles, and underlying most of the towns of Leices- ter, Whiting, Salisbury, Cornwall, Middlebury, Weybridge and New Haven, and the western part of Bristol and eastern parts of Orwell and Shoreham. Strictly speaking, any limestone that may be quarried in large blocks, destitute of fissures and sufficiently compact and uniform in structure to receive a good polish, is marble. But in the limestone of this group, as it extends through the State, there is more variety than in almost any other formation in Vermont; yet the variations are slight in themselves chemically, but considerable so far as external appearances are concerned, producing the numerous shades of varie- gated marble, each surpassing the other in beauty. The coloring matters which produce these varieties are usually derived from minute particles of slaty mat- ter disseminated through them, and, hence, they never fade or disappear, nor change their position in the slabs after they have been quarried. The occa-

1 What is here called " eolian limestone," from the Vermont State reports, is now known to be made up of the following formations : (1) calciferous; (2) Chazy ; (3) Black River ; (4) Trenton. The eolian marble results from the metamorphoses of these rocks, particularly from the Chazy.

NATURAL CHARACTERISTICS.

sional stains which appear upon marble are produced by a small portion of pyrites, giving a dirty, brownish hue, while most of the iron rust stain upon the blocks of marble at the mills is temporarily produced by particles of iron worn from the saws.

To speak more in detail of this group: In Leicester the limestone is usually impure, containing both silex and magnesia. The strata are highly inclined to the east at the eastern border of the deposit, or along the western part of Lake Dunmore. Near Whiting railroad station there is a small ridge of limestone and marble, extending into Leicester. In Whiting, east of the slate, the lime- stone is generally slaty, obscure, and is but slightly inclined to the east. In Salisbury the limestone is like that described in Leicester. Half a mile south of the village there is a belt of impure talcose schist. In Middlebury marble is found over an unusually wide area-in the line of strike with that of Whiting station, which is due to the fact that the limestone is quite variable in its posi- tion in consequence of the general small inclination of its strata. In the north- west part of the town the limestone is dark-colored and contains obscure fossils. In passing north from the village to Belden's Falls, the pedestrian will pass over many interesting marble quarries and beds of limestone, all thoroughly metamorphic. At a quarry near the falls the marble is excellent, but the great number of joints crossing it renders it unfit for use. Otter Creek has worn a gorge through the limestone adjacent, thereby displaying its lithological char- acters to good advantage. Other ledges of marble are found in the northern and eastern parts of the town. In New Haven and Bristol the range is divided in the middle by a bed of sandstones and shales, joining the red sandrock in Monkton. In Weybridge the rock is more or less developed, though clay slate is abundant in it in the southern part of the town, and as it is north of similar ledges in Cornwall it may belong to the same range with them. In the south- west part of the town the rock is a gray, siliceous, thick-bedded limestone, resembling that at Snake Mountain. There is sparry limestone at Cornwall, and also in the west part of the town. The quarry from which the stone was obtained for the building of Middlebury College is in this town, and obscure fossils are found in it resembling fragments of crinoids, this section being the principal source of the fossils which have been of service in conjecturing the age of the limestone. From Bristol a valley runs north between Hogback Mountain on the east, and the hills of Monkton on the west, along a branch of Lewis Creek. Though very narrow in some places, it is barely possible that the limestone may extend along this valley and connect with the eolian lime- stone deposit in Chittenden county. Near the north line of Addison county this deposit appears in several large ledges, or rather ferruginous impure lime- stone, probably magnesian. As such it is found for two or three miles upon the east side of the semi-vitreous quartz rock in Starksboro; and there is an- other belt of limestone in the quartz rock in Starksboro and Bristol, parallel to

HISTORY OF ADDISON COUNTY.

the west border of the quartz rock. Part of its course is along the north branch of New Haven River, in Bristol.

Marble was quarried to considerable extent in the county as early as 1805- 1808, many years before the famous Rutland quarries were first opened. This industry, as far as it pertains to Addison county, is treated in the subsequent history of the town of Middlebury, and need not be further followed here.

In Leicester and Whiting the limestone is extensively used in the manufac- ture of lime, the celebrated Whiting lime having a national reputation. In other localities, also, quarries and kilns have been opened, which will be spoken of in connection with the history of the several towns.

Chazy Limestone is the name given to a large range of rock underlying a great portion of the towns of Bridport, Addison, Panton and Ferrisburgh, where it crosses under; Lake Champlain, having an average width of about five miles. Its name is derived from the village of Chazy, in Clinton county, N. Y., where the formation is finely developed. The general character of the rock is that of a dark-colored, irregular, thick-bedded limestone. It contains many fossils, and is valuable as a building material, and, like all other limestones, as an enricher of the soil. The thickness of the range is estimated at about 300 feet.

The Red Sandrock Group extends from the southern part of Shoreham, through the eastern parts of Bridport, Addison, Panton and Ferrisburgh, and western parts of Cornwall, Weybridge and New Haven into Monkton, whence it passes into Chittenden county. From Shoreham to Monkton the range is only about a mile and a half in width, but here it suddenly widens, underlying nearly the whole of that township, while a triangular spur runs down to nearly the southeastern part of New Haven. This formation embraces a great variety of rocks, and there is some difficulty experienced in associating them together, because of the general absence of fossils. The first and most extensive variety is a reddish-brown or chocolate-colored sandstone. The grains of sand com- posing the rock are often transparent, sometimes mixed with minute fragments of feldspar, while a slight metamorphic action has sometimes rendered the grains nearly invisible, and made the whole rock compact. Some beds pass insensibly into a semi-vitreous sandstone, not distinguishable from the quartz rock at the western base of the Green Mountains. These beds may be seen at Monkton, where it is difficult to draw the line between the red sandrock series and the quartz rock. Upon the east line of the town of Bridport appears a great ledge of rocks, the continuation of the calcareous gray sandstone of Shore- ham, which no one can doubt belongs to the red sandrock series, as it possesses the characteristic color and composition of the red sandstone. It is, moreover, the south end of the hill which gradually rises into Snake Mountain in Addi- son, the highest summit in the range from Bridport to Burlington. As one stands upon the top of Snake Mountain and views one after another the peaks

NATURAL CHARACTERISTICS.

with their sharp points and steep western mural faces, he sees most distinctly their geological character. Snake Mountain, Buck Mountain, Mars Hill, Shell House Mountain, Mount Fuller, Mount Philo, Glebe Hill, Pease Hill and Mut- ton Hill, all belong to one geological sheet. The thickness of the red sandrock range is estimated at about 500 feet. It contains a few fossils and a number of minerals.

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History of Addison county Vermont, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 3

Author: Smith, H. P. (Henry Perry), 1839-1925. 1n Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y., D. Mason & co. Number of Pages: 988

Author: Smith, H. P. (Henry Perry), 1839-1925. 1n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y., D. Mason & co.
Number of Pages: 988