History of Grant County, Wisconsin, Part 47

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 1044

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Cincinnati or Hudson River shale followed the deposition of Galena limestone, a thickness of 200 feet having resulted ; but the clayey bed has not become hardened to such an extent as to resist weathering wherever an exposure has occurred, and, in consequence, that layer is, in many localities, conspicuous by its absence. Some parts of the sediment have hardened well, becoming shale or limestone, according to the preponderance of the elements deposited. Many of the vertical cliffs of Green Bay are beautifully colored shales of this foundation, their hues being almost as varied, though less brilliant than those of the rainbow. The eastern side of the Green Bay-Rock River Valley-shows how easily and completely this formation can be

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1 HISTORY OF THE LEAD REGION.

eroded, the less yielding Niagara limestone, which overlies the shale, being left as a kind of pent-house roof over the rapidly receding bed beneath. This phenomenon has procured for the principal feature in the cliff the name of the Ledge. The mounds in Southwestern Wisconsin owe their prominence to the rapid erosion of the shale, by which, at one time, they were sur- rounded. Corals and other fossils are numerous in this composite formation, and a little intel- ligent attention to the conditions of life under which they were deposited might have saved much time, labor and capital, uselessly expended in the search for coal. This formation, which marks the close of the Lower Silurian age, underlies the mounds in the lead region, forming only a narrow belt on the eastern margin of the valley above mentioned. Other conditions of life were now to write their history on the rocks.

Clinton iron ore, sometimes known as "seed ore," elsewhere known as "shot ore," is found deposited on the beds of shale at detached spots, probably at points that were once pro- tected basins. It is a peculiar lenticular deposit, which might well give rise to all the variations of nomenclature which invite our attention. In this State, the prominence of this mineral aggregation at one point has led to its being denominated "Iron Ridge ore." The beds are quarried as easily as limestone, the soft ore being arranged in horizontal layers, which, at the point just indicated, have a thickness of twenty-five feet. Like deposits, in much smaller quan- tities, are found at Depere, and at Hartford and at Depere smelting works are in operation, besides which, this ore is shipped to markets more and less remote, to be sold for reduction. The greatest era of limestone formation in the history of our island followed this deposit of iron ore, and we may well devote some attention to the vast aggregate of about eight hundred feet, which was deposited in the beds of Niagara limestone. The old processes were repeated in all essentials, but the operation was long continued, and the conditions were favorable to marine life in that shallow sea, dotted with large islands, having a temperature almost, if not entirely, tropical. The Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies protected this plateau from the intrusion of cold currents, if there were any such, which might have been fatal, prematurely, to the tiny artificers which were giving their lives and substance to build up this continent, as other and greater beings have since given their lives and substance-a more intelligent and volitional sac- rifice-to build up and maintain its inestimable liberties. Reefs, not unlike the coral forma- tions that prevail in the Pacific Ocean, appeared toward the close of this era of deposition, and there is no reason to doubt that the same agencies that are now at work in the Polynesian group, converting islands into continents, were then employed in the more than fairy transformation to which we are beholden for a home on this favored spot of earth-the haven for the afflicted peo- ples of all lands-which, ere this century comes to an end, will probably carry a Caucasian population of 300,000,000 souls.

Among the animal life of the time, we find unquestionable records of corals; mollusks, that have been called the oyster of those seas ; stone lilies, or crinoids, having the appearance of a plant converted into stone, and still animal ; trilobites, in great number and never-ending variety ; and gigantic cephalopods, which seem to have been monarchs in that domain. The reef-rocks were very irregular, and near them were extensive beds of sandstone, largely cal- careous, beyond which is found a pure, compact dolomite, formed from a deposition of fine cal- careous mud. The Niagara limestone lies in a broad belt, adjacent to Lake Michigan. It is all more or less magnesian, contains much pure dolomite, but is varied in composition, some beds being coarse and heavy, other layers being even-hedded and close-grained, while yet others are impure, cherty and irregular. There is a thin-bedded, slaty limestone on Mud Creek, near Milwaukee, which is commonly, and perhaps rightly, attributed to this formation ; but the fos- sils found therein are few and equivocal, as, indeed, are all the evidences that might be expected to determine its period of deposit. A similar formation, somewhat more rich in fossils, is found near Waubeka, in Ozaukee County, and the greater weight of evidence thus procured favors the era of the great limestone deposit; but the area covered is small, and the two beds are of little practical value. The Silurian age in Wisconsin was now ended. The island was large, almost continental in proportions. Sandstone, limestone and shale contributed each their

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concentric belt, and the sea retired, save when, at rare intervals, it was stirred to its depths with a vain desire to reassert its old dominion.

The Devonian age marked one of those oscillations when there was an invasion of the east- ern margin of the island by the sea, and the Hamilton cement rock was the chief result of that advance, its hydraulic properties being due to a happy admixture of magnesian limestone with silicious and aluminous materials. There was now a new dawn of life, the vertebrate animals appeared by their lowest type, the fish, but even that was a great ascension in the scale of being from protozoans, radiates, mollusks and articulates. The early types of life did not disappear but the process which Darwin has named " the survival of the fittest " was affording its advan- tages to the better forms of the lower orders. We cannot estimate the extent to which erosion operated on the deposit, but beyond doubt it was considerable. An area, not large, on the lake shore, north of Milwaukee, with a landward stretch of about six miles, marks the size of the bed which has been found, and the cement rock which is highest in repute is found on Milwaukee River, near the city. Thus endeth the record of the ocean on our island, although there may have been subsequent visits, too brief for Neptune to leave his monograph.

The imagination of the reader may conjure up the progressive changes of our island from the crystalline heart as leaf after leaf was added to the structure by the myriads of lives that built themselves into the simple yet wonderful development, until the insular state was lost, and many islands had become a mighty continent, inviting other and better forms of life than those that we have seen in the limestone and other deposits ; but, while the several belts are being called to their position, we must not lose sight of that unceasing erosion which bears so large a part in the phenomena of deposit. The continent was lifted to its place, and aerial denudation began, or rather continued, the work long since initiated, of bringing the softer formations from their sev- eral altitudes to clothe the valleys with a mantle soon to become vernal under some law of pro- gression which it is not permitted to us to comprehend. The Carboniferous age, marked else- where by carboniferous phenomena, the Mesozoic era and the earlier Tertiary period is beyond the point indicated a blank in Wisconsin. The time for the deposition of vegetal matter, which has given us rich coal measures elsewhere, was not so improved in Wisconsin.

The Glacial period has not left its record in all parts of Wisconsin, but the story is widely told by the drift and by many other signs just as certain. The country was invaded by masses of ice in broad sheets that acted like a mighty planing instrument upon the surface, over which it glided with a slow motion, which even to this day is a puzzle to the scientist. Men eminent as Tyndall and Forbes have bent their mighty intellects to solve the mystery in the Alps, where the glacier is perpetually advancing, by night as well as by day, in winter as surely though more slowly than in summer, and still we cannot determine certainly how the frozen, semi-elastic mass moves in its course, accommodating itself to all the sinuosities in the channel, varying its momentum in different parts of the stream, with a regularity that admits of accurate forecast, and still progres- sing even on great declivities with a speed hardly exceeding twenty inches in twenty-four hours.

Our ice-stream came down from the north, having but small declivities to favor its progres- sion, sometimes even forcing its way over heights that might have been supposed effectual barriers, bringing in its lower surface, and sometimes-perhaps though rarely-on its upper face also, masses of rock and gravel to us from their normal resting-places as the inexorable force moved on, and ultimately scattered or deposited en masse miles away from the points of departure. The polished and grooved strata upon which the ice-plane has plowed its stric may be found by careful search in all parts of the globe that have been subjected to glaciation, and, consulting such marks, we find that one prodigious tongue of ice scooped its way through the bed of Lake Michigan, a smaller tongue meanwhile traversing the valley of Green Bay and Rock River, and through what is now the region of Lake Superior another mass of ice moved to the southwest upon Minnesota. These channels, affording outlets for the ice, appear to have diverted the invading force from the southwestern portion of Wisconsin, where a considerable region is found quite free from morainic drift and from the strice that attend the movements of glaciers.

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When a time of greater warmth asserted its power, the extremities of the glaciers were melted, sometimes more rapidly than the mass moved forward, and thus the drift remained wher- ever the process of liquefaction dropped it, unless some later march of the ice stream, under the favoring winds of winter, once more pushed its vanguard to the point from which it had been driven, heaping up the drift that had been scattered through its channel in a great moraine at its terminus. The retreats and advances of this stream of ice have, in many parts of this con- tinent, quite changed its normal aspect, and nowhere can we find more striking manifestations of the power that was thus exerted than in Wisconsin. The remarkable chain of hills known as the Kettle Range is entirely a drift formation, and the curious winding line thus presented to eyes in search of novel scenery suggests a battlement defending the furthest line marked by the glacier. At a secondary stage of advancement, when the temperature permanently changed and the frozen mass must needs return to its former condition of fluidity, there was a torrent in some regions, and there were lakes in others according to the configuration of the surface, and a depression of the land toward the north ascribed to this era is considered as one of the deter- mining causes of the former extension of the great lakes where the ice-plow had found grooves best suited to its operations. The red clay that borders Lakes Michigan and Superior, and that may be found as far up as Fond du Lac, in the Green Bay Valley, marks a time when these waters covered a much wider area than they now fill, but whether the diminution still continues this deponent saith not. The wealth of lakes and tiny lakelets, for which Wisconsin is famous, is probably due to the waters of the glaciers filling the strange undulations which the morainic drift had caused, sometimes damming a narrow valley, as at Devil's Lake, at others presenting only shallow depressions.

The Kettle Range has been made the subject of a special disquisition by Prof. Chamberlin, the brochure being published in Paris during his attendance at the Geological Convention in that city in 1878, which the Exposition Universelle was the great event in the scientific as well as in the fashionable world. The conclusions reached by the chief geologist embody the main facts known as to the Kettle moraine so completely and, withal, so skillfully woven into his nar- rative, that we feel bound to summarize that production. The moraine known as the Potash Kettle Range, since abbreviated in name, resembles the Kames, Eskers, Asar and Raer, of Scot- land, Ireland, Sweden and Norway, respectively, and is also similar in formation to more recent deposits in Switzerland. It is an extensive belt of drift hills and ridges, peculiar and distinctive, traversing the quaternary deposits, and disposed in vast loops about the great lakes, challeng- ing the attention of mankind to the mode of their deposit. The belt is certainly not less, and is presumably much more, than two thousand miles in length, with a breadth varying from one mile to thirty miles in different parts of its extent. Seldom more than three hundred feet in height, it occasionally may be found exceeding four hundred feet above its base, but is generally much less ; so that it is the continuity of the formation, rather than any other feature, as a rule, that commands attention ; still, there are points where the range is conspicuous for its abrupt- ness and irregularity.

Dr. Lapham, in his " Antiquities of Wisconsin," briefly described the belt as seen by him in the eastern part of the State, prior to 1855, calling attention to the peculiar depressions which first suggested the name of the Potash Kettle, as descriptive; and attributed the feature in question to the solvent, erosive action of under-drainage, forming " sinks." Col. Whittlesey, several years later, published through the same medium, the Smithsonian Institution, his obser- vations on "Moraine Cavities " in Wisconsin, Ohio and Minnesota, attributing their presence to the building-in of ice-masses with the debris when the range was formed, the ice naturally leaving a depression when subsequently thawed. There were other suggestions not material to this issue in the same paper, which need not be further noticed. Dr. Andrews described the Kettle Range, in Eastern Wisconsin, with which he associated contiguous gravel deposits, claim- ing for the formation a length of two hundred miles, and a breadth of twenty miles, terminating in the bowlder clay of Illinois, but he ascribed its formation to a vast and violent current of water sweeping down from the north. Other and minor observations and speculations on this

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interesting subject left the matter practically at the point indicated until 1873, when the geo- logical survey, since completed, was commenced by order of the Legislature of Wisconsin. The gentlemen surveying in Ohio under circumstances similar to our own, gave attention to the range in that State, but they were much divided in opinion as to its origin, some inclining to the view that it was a moraine, while others favored ideas of grounding ice and the escaping waters of the great lake passing over the water-shed where the range is located.

Dr. Lapham, chief of the geological corps in this State in 1873, returning to the ques- tion with interest unabated, and with much better facilities for investigation, assigned the Kettle Range as a subject for study to Prof. Chamberlin, suggesting that the ridge might have marked an ancient shore line. The line of investigation pursued by Mr. Chamberlin, now Chief Geologist, soon convinced him that the shore-line theory was as untenable as the Andrews idea of violent currents of water from the north. The investigation was not entirely confined to this State, although, of course, this was the main field of observation. Forked tongues of ice had left their limits so clearly marked by drift deposits, about twenty miles north of the State line, that our friend was placed at once on the track, which he has since pursued and verified. In the year 1875, at the session of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, the main results arrived at in this inquiry were presented with maps and drawings, showing the determin- ation of general drift movements, and that the range is a moraine formed by glaciers occupying the troughs of Lake Michigan and Green Bay, skirted on the west by a like deposit. The sug- gestion then thrown out has been verified by Prof. Irving, together with later conjectures as to the extension in Northern Wisconsin. The conclusions reached in this way threw light upon two questions : determining how the range had been deposited, and, also, why a certain large area in this State, and in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, is driftless. Profs. Winchell, Irving and Chamberlin are agreed that the area in question is driftless, because the ice streams were deflected by the easier exit offered through the valleys of the great lakes and through Green Bay. The several eminent authorities quoted, arrived at the same conclusion on the facts observed, without previous concert, prior to publication ; consequently, we may well consider the solution as a demonstration.

Outwardly, the formation presents an irregular, intricate series of hills and ridges, rapidly but often gracefully undulating, having well-rounded domes, conical peaks, winding ridges, some- times geniculated, short, sharp spurs, mounds, knolls and hummocks in a variety of combina- tions, and corresponding with depressions just as remarkable, or even still more striking. These depressions have given their name to the range ; many are circular in outline, hence the title "potash kettles ;" but the major part are not nearly so symmetrical. Some of the cavities resemble a bell inverted; others are shallow saucers ; and others are rudely trough-like, oblong, oval, elliptical, or even winding; but to describe their various configurations would demand a volume. Their depths vary from mere indentations to sixty feet, or even more in the symmet- rical forms, while the irregular sinks show a depth often exceeding one hundred feet. Occa- sionally the sides of the kettles are about as steep as the material will lie, an angle of from thirty to thirty-five degrees with the horizon, but usually the slope is much less declivitous. The kettles seldom exceed five hundred feet in diameter, but it is not easy to define their limits. Numerous small lakes dot the course of the range, having neither inlet nor outlet, and suggest- ing the process by which, under favoring circumstances as to drainage, the depressions may have been formed. In the base of some kettles there are yet ponds of water, arrested in their escape, and waiting the slow process of evaporation ; and some of the lakes range from two to three miles in diameter, the increase proceeding by degrees hardly perceptible. Many of the hills in what is called the "Knobby Drift," resemble inverted kettles ; and trough-like, winding hol- lows are offset by sharp serpentine ridges, giving to this range a distinctive character, notwith- standing its lack of altitude ; but the features indicated are subordinate to the characteristics of the main range, being most abundant on its more abrupt face, though to be found on every side, and in all varieties of situation, sometimes even on areas level by comparison, adjacent to the main range, and again in the valleys, the ridges being free; or on the ridges, the valleys show- ing no trace of like action ; or distributed indifferently over each.

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The range is composite, being made up of rudely parallel ridges, that unite at some points, interlock at others, and appear to have advanced and retreated in the mazes of their morainic dance, until suddenly stricken with fixity in their most eccentric combinations. The ridge within the ridge is sometimes clearly traceable between component ridges, and the depressions resultant from such divergences, are often the areas filled by the larger lakes on the range. Some ridges cross the trend of the main range, and transverse spurs may be called common. The component ridges are frequently broken and irregular in height and breadth as in all else, just as we might have predicted would be the case, could we have seen the terminal moraines of certain Alpine glaciers understandingly, and then have been called upon to forecast the operation of similar forces, on a scale immensely greater, in this country, with variations for the widely dif- fering contour. Most of the Swiss glaciers of our time terminate in narrow valleys with steep, sloping sides, hence their debris takes the form of lateral ridges, like a torrent-washed valley deposit. Some of them, in their recently advanced state, are found in more open valleys, with a gentle inclination, and, in such cases, terminal moraines have been formed from the ground moraines of the glacier, differing only from our Quaternary formations, in the presence of medial and lateral morainic matter, which, in the very nature of things, cannot be found in our more open country. The Rhone glacier has left three ridges, which, except that they are diminutive, might be studied as models of the topographical eccentricities which we have endeavored to describe. The two outer ridges are now covered with grass and shrubs, but the inner and later ridge is still bare, graduating into the ground moraine of the retreating glacier, which by some new advance may yet heap all their scattered material to magnify the last ridge of the trio, or to establish a quartette. The glaciers of the Grindelwald have left similar moraines in part, pre- senting a perfect analogy with our range; such as may also be found near the Glacier du Bois, the Argentine, and the Findelen ; though less strikingly in the case last named. Terminal moraines alone must be relied on for analogies with our ranges. The formations have been pretty thor- oughly interrogated as to their materials, as well as for their arrangement, to assist in determining their origin. The Kettle Range, in its typical development, consists mainly of clay, sand, gravel and bowlders, gravel being most conspicuously exposed. The belt at many points exhib- its two formations, perfectly distinguishable ; that which is uppermost, but not constituting the heights of the range, being sand or gravel, which covers the lower stratum like a sheet, over large and diverse areas, and, in many cases, suggests a much greater quantity in the superficial coating than is actually present. The coating of gravel tends to level and mask the irregulari- ties of the main formation, hut the aspects presented by the mass are still billowy and undulatory, a margin often being found on the flank of a ridge stretching away into a sand-flat, or gravel plain. Gravel is a large constituent in the Kettle Range, and wherever the forms are most symmetrical, the presence of gravel in increasing proportions may be assumed. Some minor knolls and hills are almost entirely composed of sand and gravel, including bowlders occasionally. The core of the range is, however, a confused commingling of clay, sand, gravel and bowlders, the latter sometimes many feet in diameter, and grading down to the very finest rock flour; some- times without an angle abraded, and again thoroughly rounded by the rolling and planing proc- ess they have undergone. The cobble-stones are found spherically rounded, unlike beach gravel, which has been subjected to a sliding motion, and is thereby flattened.

There is no stratification in the heart of the range, but immediately thereupon stratification commences, partly simultaneous with the first deposition, and the rest by subsequent modifica- tion. The local overlying beds are stratified, but often inclined, rather than horizontal, and frequently discordant, undulatory or irregular, but the main point of the glacier theory is to establish non-stratification at the heart. The source whence the material was obtained to form the range in this State, cannot be doubted. Coarse rock is present in large quantities, so that identification is easy, and the distances that have been traversed can be estimated with measur- able certainty, from the marks of abrasion. Many details establish the main proposition, but a single case must be relied on for illustration, premising merely that the instance cited is in per- fect accord with the mass from which it is selected. The rock formations below the range, in

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History of Grant County, Wisconsin, Part 47

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899 Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Co. Number of Pages: 1044

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 1044