USA > Wisconsin > Grant County > History of Grant County Wisconsin, including its civil, political, geological, mineralogical archaeological and military history > Part 19
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phuretted gases, and thus forming sulphurets of lead and zinc. It is obvious that the currents and the sources of the sulphuretted gases must have been unusually favorable in the Lead Region.
The zinc deposits are mostly in the Trenton, consequently they are deep in southwestern Grant County, but as the strata slope upward toward the Military Ridge, the zinc deposits come almost to the sur- face near Montfort.
THE HUDSON SHALES AND THE NIAGARA LIMESTONE.
At the close of the Galena Period occurred a long period of deposi- tion of varied matters washed down from the land-limestones, sand- stones, clays, and slates intermingled-called the Hudson Shales. Thick as this deposit was, it was very soft and was all worn away in the long ages that southwestern Wisconsin has since lain above the sea. That underlying the "Mounds" is about all of it that is left in Grant County.
Yet once again the sea encroached upon the land in southern, east- ern, and western Wisconsin, and there was deposited a formation, in places 250 feet thick, of hard, siliceous (sandy) limestone, called the Niagara. Then the sea retired again and has never since rolled over southwestern Wisconsin and in the long ages that followed the Niag- ara, hard and thick as it was, was almost wholly eroded in this re- gion, being disintegrated by the water, air, and frost and washed away by the rain. In northeastern Iowa, where the land was long afterward submerged and other deposits, both marine and glacial (which I shall mention hereafter), were piled upon the Niagara, that rock is well preserved, as are also the shales below, there called the Maquoketa Shales.
WISCONSIN DURING THE PALEOZOIC AGE.
The time during which mollusks were the highest type of life is called the Silurian time or age. To these mollusks belong snails, which were the first animal inhabitants of Wisconsin land. Then came a higher type-the vertebrates or animals with backbones. Man is the highest form of the vertebrates, but the lowest form, the fish, was the first to come into existence. There is no record in the rock tablets that fish inhabited Wisconsin seas for many centuries after their existence elsewhere, even as near as Ohio. Why the fish didn't "go West" sooner I have never seen explained. The time when fish were the highest type of life is called the Devonian Age. Both the Devonian and the Silurian are parts of the Paleozoic Age.
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The Silurian Age was for southern Wisconsin on the whole one of deposition, formation, and construction. The following Devon- ian Age was, on the contrary, one of constant erosion and destruction of the land surface, which, during all that age and all the succeeding ages, lay entirely out of the water. This period of erosion has been enormously, inconceivable long. Although during the greater part of that period southern Wisconsin lay low and flat and little subject to wash, and during the latter part of the period the surface was pro- tected by a dense vegetation, yet the effect of the erosion was pro- digious. The whole of the great, hard, thick Niagara Limestone and the Hudson Shales, with an aggregate depth of about 700 feet, were totally carried away. All that is left of them in Grant County is Sin- sinawa Mound, the capping of which is Niagara and the body Hud- son. It owes its preservation to the especial hardness of its cap of Niagara and to the fact that it stood on an ancient watershed. On the highest parts of the Military Ridge and other elevations even the great thickness of the Galena and Trenton Limestones were worn away, exposing in some spots the sandstone beneath, and the same is the case in the large stream-courses.
The northern part of the State, the old Archaan core, must have been rising all this time, as places where the earth's crust was first broken formed "lines of ancient weakness" where the crust continued to heave up as the earth cooled and shrank during the succeeding ages. But this rising was probably intermittent and very slow, slower even than the erosion which it suffered, so that this land is now only a low watershed about 1,500 feet above the sea.
The Devonian Age was for many parts of America an age of ac- tive creative history, but of this history-making Wisconsin was a pas- sive spectator. She was a grass-widow divorced from the Sea King and living in retirement, living on through innumerable centuries till her face was deeply furrowed with the wrinkles of age. The Sea King was a donor of many and rich gifts, and how many of these (coal, petroleum, natural gas. phosphates, etc.) Wisconsin lost by being di- vorced thus early and forever I shall tell hereafter.
THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.
During most of the Devonian and all the preceeding ages plant life was of a low order and not very great in quantity. But toward the close of the Devonian some cosmic developments set free an enormous amount of carbonic acid gas, which is the bread of plant life, and this,
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together with other favorable conditions, caused an immense increase in vegetable growth. The climate of the globe was still of more than tropical warmth, and great humidity still prevailed, and so vegeta- tion was still of a low order, without flowers, fruit, or seed, for the higher orders of plant life require bright sunshine, dry soil, changes of temperature, and other conditions which were not found at the time of which I speak.
The plants that throve in the hot climate and eternal mists of the Carboniferous Age were of the class called acrogens-furns, rushes, etc .- but they grew to enormous size. In the great coal beds of to- day are found the carbonized remains of ferns that were 80 feet tall and rushes 30 feet high and two feet in diameter.
A large portion of what is now the United States, a belt beginning at Rhode Island and sweeping through the whole Appalachian region and southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and a large belt about the Ozark region of Missouri and Arkansas, lay, during the Carboniferous Age, about the level of the sea, sometimes above and sometimes below the surface of the water. Thus there were immense marshes filled with the giant plants I have just mentioned and doubtless an immensity of humbler grassy or moss-like vegetation. The roots of these plants and the bodies of the mosses and grasses filled the swamps with vege- table matter, to which were added the leaves shed from the great fern forest and the dead bodies of these giants themselves, all preserved from decay by falling into the salt water of the marshes in which they grew. The flatness of the country and its dense vegetation prevented for the most part the inwashing of mud and sand, so that the accumu- lation was almost entirely vegetal.
After an immense deposit of vegetal matter had thus been formed the land sank far enough under the sea to be covered with a deposit of mud and silt which in time hardened into slates and shales; or, if the water was deeper, sandstones or even limestones formed, and the layer of vegetal matter thus lying between the much thicker strata of earthy sediment was compressed and underwent slow chemical changes and became bituminous coal. In some parts of the Alleghany region still greater pressure and great heat still further decomposed the vegetal matter into anthracite or stone coal.
The land thus oscillated, first just above and then below the sea, until several of these coal beds had been formed and between them strata of slates, shales, sandstones, and limestones, in some places
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making an aggregate depth of more than 900 feet. These are called the Coal Measures.
But during all this time Wisconsin stood entirely out of the water, the Carboniferous sea not reaching its southern line by a hundred miles; consequently Wisconsin has no coal beds worth mentioning, nor has northern Illinois.
At a still later time called the Cretaceous Period most of what is now Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, eastern Colorado and New Mexico, and western Texas, was at or just below the level of the sea and there were formed other coal beds called the Cretaceous Coal Meas- ures. But the Cretaceous sea did not encroach upon Wisconsin. Indeed, during the whole Devonian Period the coast of the " Minnesota Gulf," it is thought, coincided with the present course of the upper Mississippi.
The conditions which caused the formation of the Coal Measures were also favorable to the formation of iron deposits, in the manner mentioned in connection with the Huronian Period, and thus we find in many of the coal localities heavy deposits of iron made during the Carboniferous Period. It was a very fortunate combination, and has done much for the prosperity of the regions where such com- bined deposits have been found and developed.
NATURAL GAS AND PETROLEUM.
It is the popular supposition that both petroleum and natural gas are the products of coal; but it is the present opinion of scientists that they are both usually of origin independent of coal. Indeed, natural gas is often found in regions where there are no coal deposits. It is also the present opinion of the best authorities that natural gas and petroleum, especially the former, are not always, nor even gener- ally, of vegetable origin, as coal is. The fact that these products, especially gas, contain considerable nitrogen is one of the several reasons for considering them of animal origin.
The great formations of limestone and chalk, as I have before said, are the remains of the shells of mollusks and corals and the bones of fishes. By far the greater number of the animals (or rather animalcules) were exceedingly minute, and their number in each generation was so great that no combination of figures can express it nor no mind conceive it, nor the number of generations that have lived and died. The surface of the globe, on land and under sea, is a charnel house on a scale inconceivable vast. While the shells and
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bones of these little beings were mostly of lime, their bodies were com- pounds of nitrogen with hydrocarbons. When their bodies were buried in the strata formed by their shells and slowly decomposed, most of the nitrogen escaped and the remaining hydrocarbons were distilled into petroleum and gas. Thus all the limestones, chalks and shales, all the formations (except the sandstones) that have been formed since life became prolific on the globe, are the abundant source of these hydrocarbons.
The greatest source and reservoir of natural gas is the Trenton Limestone, in which the gas is not only formed but stored in its cavities and its porous upper portion, like water in a sponge. But in most localities the gas thus formed escaped as fast as it was formed. To retain it there must be an overlying stratum of impervious material. In the gas region of Indiana and Ohio this impervious cover is the "Utica Shales." In order that any great quantity may be collected this cover must have the form of an inverted bowl or trough. Such a formation is the great "Cincinnati Arch" and several parallel smaller arches in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and numerous still smaller ones in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Such an arch there is also in Wisconsin, extending from north to south through the central part of the state with a southwestern offshoot, the Military Ridge. The State has in its southern part a great thickness of Trenton and Galena Limestones. Then why has it no natural gas or petroleum ? Simply because the Hudson Shales, which might have formed the necessary cover to retain the gases,, were all washed away, and although the gas has been forming for countless centuries since the Trenton and Galena were laid down, it has all escaped into the air. The northern part of the State never had either the gas- forming limestones or the covering shales.
An old proverb characterizes the unlucky man as the one whose platter is always bottom side up when it rains porridge. Grant County's platter was all right when it rained lead and zinc, but all wrong when it rained iron and coal. Her platter was right side up (which was bottom side up) to catch gas and oil, but unfortunately for her to-day, it has been there exposed to the weather so long that the bottom is all worn out and the gas and oil have all escaped.
THE MESOZOIC AGE.
At the close of the Carboniferous Period, (which was also the close of the Paleozoic Age) there was a great change upon the continent.
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In ancient fable Atlas bore the earth upon his shoulders and on one occasion let it down to go and gather the golden apple of Hesperides. As we have seen, Atlas let down his burden many times-several times during the Carboniferous Period. But now he rose refreshed and reared the whole Appalachian region not only out of the water but high in the air. The Sierra Nevada and Cordilleran ranges were also raised. Most of the region between the Alleghanies and the Missis- sippi was raised permanently out of the water Defeated Neptune, driven back from the last of his many conquests of this continent, fell upon the enfeebled ancient continent in the rear, and Atlantis was no more forever.
Let it not be thought that this change took place with the sudden- ness of an earthquake. It was a slow and measured flexure of the strata by a pressure steady and powerful, but not violent, working through very long time.
This increase of land surface and these mountain ranges thrown athwart thecurrents of air and ocean caused marked climatic changes. Also, after the enormous vegetation of the Carboniferous Period had cleared the air of its excess of carbonic acid the conditions of both air and earth became more favorable for life on land and amphibious life than it had ever before been. These favorable conditions caused the sudden and enormous development of a new kind of animal life, the reptilian. This development was sudden in the geologic sense, although it may have been thousands of years in occurring.
THE GLACIAL EPOCHS.
We come now to a very modern time in geological history, al- though it was probably nearly two thousand centuries ago. The gigantic race of reptiles had disappeared, leaving behind them only comparatively small and feeble descendants. But a gigantic race of mammals had developed and were now lords of the land. In the great forests of oak, elm, and birch (modern trees, you see) that covered the upper Mississippi region roved the mastodon, mammoth, and the giant elk. The tropical climate of the Mesozoic Age had passed away in Wisconsin, and was soon to change to more than arctic cold.
Although there is abundant evidence that there were two great ice invasions, separated by a long period of time, geologists have no means of knowing how long ago in years they occurred, nor what could have caused this extraordinarily great cold and snow-fall. But the astronomers have come to the aid of the geologists in this matter.
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It has been calculated that the earth's orbit has periods of great eccen- tricity, during which the northern hemisphere is subject to just such intense cold and great snow-fall as would be required to make the vast continental glaciers to which I have just referred. One such period of great eccentricity occurred something more than two hun- dred thousand years ago and another not quite so great, a little less than one hundred thousand years ago. Such a period will return upon the earth in about ten thousand years. Although this is a very short time in the geologic ages, it is so vast a time in the history of human life that we need not worry about the time when the sea of ice shall flow over the cities and prairies, the farms and factories of the great Northwest.
The first ice invasion was much the greatest. It has left its record up among the mountain peaks, telling that it had a depth of more than four thousand feet. The weight of this enormous mass of ice actually caused the crust of the earth to sink somewhat.
We are accustomed to think of ice as an unyielding solid, so that to speak of its "flow" seems nonsense; and yet the glaciers of to-day show ice flowing in real rivers, though very slowly.
This great sea of ice moved on over the land across the whole con- tinent till its southern border reached about the lower part of the Ohio River on the east and the Missouri River on the west. But, curiously enough, there was a small area which this glacial sea did not cover. This area includes Jo Daviess County in Illinois, the whole of Grant, LaFayette, Iowa, Richland, Crawford, Vernon, Juneau, Monroe, La Crosse, Trempealeau, Buffalo, and parts of Green, Dane, Sauk, Wood, and Jackson Counties in Wisconsin, with a narrow strip west of the Mississippi in Iowa and Minnesota. This is called the Driftless Area and is a region of intense interest to geologists, as it enables them, by the sharp contrast it affords with the region covered by the glaciers, to see what effect the glacial epoch had upon the land.
The causes of this split in the glacial flow, that left southwestern Wisconsin an island in a sea of ice, are rather obscure, and the more curious because the Driftless Area was then, as now, considerably lower than much of the region which was overwhelmed by the ice. It is probable, however, that, although the ice-flow climbed the Archæan highland of northern Wisconsin and descended its south- ern slope, it was by doing this so much retarded and weakened that before it could get farther on its course the cold period passed away.
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As it was, the great glacier from Superior and the one from Michigan came together down about Clinton, Iowa, and dammed up the Missis- sippi River, so that the waters backed up over most of the Driftless Area till they found a new way over the low plains of lowa into the Missouri. Meanwhile the Michigan glacier discharged its waters in a broad sheet over the still lower and more level plains of Illinois.
The ice invasion found the country covered with a great forest inhabited by mammoth beasts. The great trees were covered deep by the débris borne along by the ice, and their remains still exist in a thick stratum called "the forest bed."
The ice invasions found the country drained by valleys cut deep into the ancient formations, very much as you now see them in Grant and Crawford Counties, and elsewhere in the Driftless Area.
Stand on one of those high divides in Grant County, and contem- plate the intricate and yet regular and complete system of drainage which characterizes that region. Notice how the smallest "hollows," each starting up near the crest of the ridge in a faint depression, gradually increases in size as it descends until it unites with one like itself to form a larger "hollow," or embouches into a larger one, and this larger one goes on down increasing in size and uniting with others till it embouches into a creek valley, and this into a small river valley, and this into the valley of the great river. All is regular, systematic and perfect. I once thought all the world was drained just that way, little knowing that outside of this narrow Driftless Area this perfect drainage system has been all destroyed.
But as the mighty glaciers crept over the surface of the land they wiped out all this perfect work of innumerable thousands of years, this "dendritic" system of drainage. The deep valleys were all filled by the tremendous loads of debris that the glaciers plowed up from their beds and bore along with them. When they began to melt, about their southern ends great lakes were formed and the mud from the melting ice borne into these lakes formed thick deposits of clays, especially the "gumbo" clay of southern Iowa and northern Missouri. When the glaciers finally retreated they left the debris they had borne either piled up at their termini in heaps or long ridges called "moraines," or spread and scattered over the plain formed above the filled-up valleys of the ante-glacial time. Much of this débris was rock torn from the Archæan ledges of the far North and deposited on these more southern plains, in fragments of all sizes, from boulders like
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haystacks and houses to minute pebbles, but all worn smooth and rounded by the friction they encountered in their long and very slow journey.
I have spoken of the ice retreating at the end of this glacial epoch, but it is not to be supposed that it actually flowed back northward. It still kept on its southward flow, but its extremeties melted more rapidly than it came down, and so in fact it retreated northward.
As I have said before, there were two of these ice invasions, sepa- rated by a long period of time. During this time the country again became covered with forests inhabited by animals.
The second ice flow was far lighter and of somewhat less extent than the first. It covered only a small corner of Illinois, about half of Iowa and three-fourths of Wisconsin. Its depth was only a few hun- dred feet, while that of the first was more than four thousand feet.
When the sea of ice retreated from the land it left a vast plain half covered with numerous lakes, many of them caused by morainic dams, in northern Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota, and a part of these lakes remain to this day, for the many thousand years since the re- treat of the ice have not been sufficient for the cutting of a new and perfect drainage system like that of the Driftless Area or of the whole country before the the glacial epochs.
There is comparatively little of the geological history of Wisconsin. after the last glacial epoch, for, although the time since then covers nearly the whole period of human existence on the globe, in geology it is a matter of only a few uneventful days. It remains only to point out some of the bearings which the facts of geological history I have mentioned have upon the political history and economy of Wisconsin and particularly Grant County.
RELATIONS OF GEOLOGY TO POLITICAL ECONOMY.
Let us see if we can trace any connection between the geological history outlined in the preceding chapters and the political history of Wisconsin. That this history is somewhat peculiar is shown by the fact that in the legislature of 1838 Grant County had four of the twenty-five members of the assembly, or one-sixth of the whole, while in the present legislature she has two out of one hundred, or one- fiftieth of the whole. On the population map of the State published by the census bureau in 1890 the counties of Grant, LaFayette, and Iowa (including the Lead Region) are colored yellow to indicate de- crease of population, while the State as a whole has considerably in-
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creased in population and many other States have increased much more than Wisconsin. This decrease of population in the southwest- ern part of Wisconsin has been going on for the last three decades up to 1890.
What is the matter? Can geology tell and can it give any hope for the future of this region ? It is not a bad part of our great and glorious country. I havetraveled through more than half of the States of the Union and four or five Mexican States, and I have found that in many natural advantages and attractions the Lead Region of Wis- consin is incomparable. Two of these advantages, which no doubt had much to do with attracting settlers here in an early day, are its beautiful scenery and excellent and abundant running water. The rain which falls upon it soon sinks to a stratum of limestone impervi- ous to water and which slopes downward and outcrops in some little valley, and the water is poured out in the form of a spring of cold, clear water, and these springs unite into rills and creeks. It is not so where the glacial drift covered the sloping strata deep beneath its débris, for although in those regions there may be many lakes (owing to the imperfect drainage mentioned on page 206) there is little running water. And the same may be said of the level prairies and alluvial plains farther south and west that were not covered with the glacial drift. Also, in the drift region much of the well water is im- pure and unpleasant from the decayed wood of the "forest bed."
Then, a soil formed from decomposed limestones is much more favorable for grass and foliage than a soil formed from outcropping sandstones, or the Archaan debris of the glacial drift ; consequently, nowhere else have I ever seen such vivid verdure as glorifies the woods and fields, the hills and vales of the Lead Region of Wisconsin in the prime of summer. But greenbacks are better than green leaves and green grass, and so many thousands of the former citizens of this verdant region have gone at the call of the almighty dollar to work out prosperity for other regions.
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