USA > Wisconsin > Lafayette County > History of Lafayette county, Wisconsin > Part 46
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'iszi
58,171
6.
Managna.
10,00)
Uruguay ..
300,000
1871
66,722
6.5
Monte Video.
4-1.500
Honduras
350,000
1871
47.092
7.4
Comayagua
12.000
San Domingo.
136,000
17,827
7.6
San Domingo.
21,000
Costa Rica
165.000
1870
21,505
7.7
San Jose.
Hawaii.
62.950
7.633
80.
Honolulu
7.633
Illinois
55,410 2,539,891
5,904
Indiana
33,809 1,680,637
3.529
Kansas.
81,318
361,399
528,349 1,760
37,600 1,321,011
1,123
Territories.
Colorado ..
104,500
39.864
Massachusetts ..
7,800 1.457,351 1,651,912
1,606
Dist. of Columbia.
60
131,700
Michigan*
56,451 1,184,059 1,334,031
2,235
New Mexico
121,201
91,874
Nevada.
112,090
42,491
52,540
593
Washington.
69,944
23.955
New York
47.000 4,382,759 4,705,208
4,470
North Carolina ..
50,704 1,071,361
1,190
1,300,000
218,928
5.9
70,000
Ecuador.
Quito ..
Asuncion.
Port au Prince.
20.000
Nicaragua ..
350,000
10,205
56.
1,075,000
Mexico.
9,173,000
1869
761,526
20.
290.9
166.9
241.4
Copenhagen.
1871
1871
POPULATION.
Miles
1870.
1875.
States.
Alabama .
Aggregate of U. S .. 2,915,203 38,555,983 60,85.2
Louisiana
1,612
828
R. H, Champion,
DECEASED )
NEW DIGGINGS.
HISTORY OF THE LEAD REGION.
GEOLOGY, MINERALOGY AND SETTLEMENT OF THE LEAD REGION, WITH A GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND MENTION OF THE DRIFTLESS AREA.
AMONG THE ROCKS.
The narration, for which we are indebted to Plato, of part of the experiences of Solon the Athenian law-giver in Egypt, was for many centuries considered fabulous in its relation of the dis- appearance of the vast Island of Atlantis beneath the ocean. We respect the noble character of the Athenian sage too much to suspect him of misrepresentation, but the Egyptian hierarch, with whom we are less acquainted, might be supposed capable of disseminating travelers' stories, in regard to which, moreover, the priesthood were possibly themselves deceived. Modern think- ers are inclined to believe that the supposed fable carries with it some elements of truth. It is not easy to follow the almost shadowy story of a lost land with such precision as to establish its identity with this continent, but the position assigned to Atlantis by the Egyptians favors the idea, to which modern investigation is inclined, that our own America must have been known to the ancients way back in remote antiquity, and that its submersion beneath the waves had been recorded in curiously preserved traditions ; but we cannot pretend to determine what era in the upbuilding of this continent may have been indicated by that semi-apocryphal story.
Geology tells us of upheavals from the depths of the sea, to which we are able to trace an island now known to science as the Island of Wisconsin, which appeared at about the same time with several other islands, comprising parts of the Appallachian Ranges, and of New York, as well as probably other parts of the land now being covered with a population of millions, governed and to be governed by the United States of America.
The cooling and contraction of the globe is credited with having diminished its diameter by about 180 miles, and a diminution so great might easily account for the fatal depression of Atlantis ; but that shrinkage occurred at a time when human life was not possible. The popular reader will not so readily perceive how the inevitable continuance of the same process would account at a later date for the resurrection of the land which we now inhabit. The chief geologist of Wisconsin, Mr. T. C. Chamberlin, tells with a simple eloquence, which science advanced as his cannot always command, the story of the rocks upon which the greatness of this nation is securely builded; and, in trying to embody the main facts of the earth's revelation in this history, we shall endeavor to follow in the footsteps of the eminent Professor, though with the modesty and diffidence of a learner, venturing to deal with presentations which have tasked the powers of masters whose dictum is accepted by the world of learning.
The first cooling, whose catastrophe may have been attended by the submergence of Atlantis, if we may imagine a race of Salamanders rejoicing in extremes of temperature, was a comparatively general reduction of warmth and bulk, in which the earth's surface was sufficiently ductile or elastic to participate without fracture ; but later, when the superficial coating of our molten globe had become more rigid, nature was constrained to work by other methods ; the granite rocks, incapable of contraction, otherwise, in such a degree as would meet the changing conditions of the body which they enfolded, and subjected to pressures, compared with which, the vastest
310
HISTORY OF THE LEAD REGION.
applications of mechanic force by human agency, sink into insignificance, bent under the ocean until the outer shell touched the shrunken kernel ; and then the semi-rigid envelope, heated in every particle by the compression, changed and wrinkled its mighty form, projecting its peaks above the surface of the ocean as a series of granitic islands, whose shores sloped more or less declivitously toward the depths of the sea. There are folds in the strata, observable to-day, which indicate the long-continued application of a power capable of creasing and bending adamant just as irresistibly as the hand of man may crumple paper.
Could we suppose an Alexander Selkirk possible on our inhospitable Island of Wisconsin, he would look abroad upon a limitless but comparatively shallow sea, in which, possibly, was yet no sign of life, vegetal or animal, and his island home would necessarily present to him a bleak and desolate rock, without shrub, grass, soil or insect, if we may assume that the uplifted crystal- line mass had not commenced its process of disintegration.
The phenomena of building anew the Western IIemisphere can be studied in Wisconsin as advantageously as on any part of this continent, and the writing on the wall of rock is so clear and precise that the wayfarer, even though a fool, may not err if he will patiently unravel the legend which the globe offers for our acceptance. Strong winds, dashing waves, evaporation and precipitation, with some chemical conditions of the atmosphere that helped to disintegrate the exposed surface of rock more rapidly than would be possible now, acting upon stone similarly compacted, gave back to the ocean a vast aggregate of detritus worn from peak and precipice by those unceasing forces, to form the vast deposit of sandstone now known as the Potsdam, which ranges according to the convolutions of the sub-oceanic surface upon which it lodged, in thickness from a few feet to more than one thousand feet. The superimposed layers have each their own revelation to make clear; some of them in fossils which the human eye can readily decipher ; others in forms so minute that the microscope is needed to unlock its mysterious message from a world possibly pre-Adamite.
Suppose the State cut through to the level of Lake Michigan. east from the Mississippi River in Grant County, we find the formations which prevail throughout Wisconsin, and tar be- yond its borders, always attesting the regularity with which Dame Nature prosecutes her designs. The Lower Magnesian limestone gives us the first record of life found in this region, hitherto, after the disintegrated gneiss or granite had in some degree solidified beneath the waters as sand- stone, and the thickness of that stratum is remarkably even throughout our imagined cutting; the limestone following the form of the underlying rock, and having suffered but little from abrasion, protected as it must have been by its coverlet and base of supplies, the sea. Elsewhere this formation is much less regular in depth, as it follows the contour line preceding its deposit, and lies irregularly. Grant River has cut down into this bed of limestone at about 350 feet above the level of Lake Michigan, but the banks of the Father of Waters reveal the same form- ation at an elevation of about 200 feet. Our supposititious section runs cast and west through the county of Grant about seven miles north of Lancaster, crossing the head-waters of Platte River.
Next above the Lower Magnesian limestone, we find St. Peters sandstone, so called from one of its best exposures, which has evidently suffered from abrasion in many parts of its sur- face, and is found cropping out on the Mississippi banks as well as on the sides of Grant River, though still far below the Platte. Trenton limestone, moderately rich in fossils, attests an era in which life had risen to more various formations, beautiful as though some cunning and skilled artist, with an unbounded wealth of resource, had fashioned and imbedded them to minister in after ages to the æsthetic sense in man. The head-waters of the Platte cut through and into this formation, which reaches an elevation little more than 300 feet on the Mississippi at our imagined line, but is found at an altitude of nearly 500 feet on Grant River, our base line being always the level of Lake Michigan. Galena limestone follows next in order, and the name is significant at once as to its place of first identification, and as to the valued mineral with which it was charged. The stratum has been abraded in many localities until it fails even to put in an ap- pearance ; as for instance, at our imagined line bisecting the bank of the Mississippi, but east of that point the stratum asserts itself, cut through with greater or less pertinacity by streams
311
HISTORY OF THE LEAD REGION.
that have long since found a grander channel. That deposit caps the ranges in the vicinity of Grant River, and further east along the head-waters of the Platte, rising east of that point to an elevation of about 700 feet on the eastern boundary line of the county.
The fact that this region did not suffer from glacial denudation and was not enriched by morainie drift, gives to our line of bisection special value in ascertaining readily the surface con- tour of the land before that era of refrigeration, allowing always for erosion by the atmosphere and rains and rivers. For that reason, we will follow another imagined bisection of the county due north and south, near the eastern boundary. North of the center of the line, the Potsdam sandstone rises above the level of Michigan Lake, and gradually ascends to an elevation of about four hundred feet, not far from the northern limit of the county, descending thence by denuda- tion to about three hundred feet at the boundary. Although this sandstone is not rich in fos- sils, it would be folly to assume that life was not plentiful on this planet while this vast stratum was being deposited ; the more sensible conclusion is that the stratum was not well adapted to the preservation of the forms of life which passed into its keeping. The Laurentian rocks, upper and lower, which constituted the first Island of Wisconsin, were sedimentary, and their formation must have preceded the sandstone mentioned by a term which human investigation has never yet defined; yet the Laurentian rocks hold within their embrace many evidences which are satisfactory to men of scientific attainments, that vitality of a low order preceded their deposi- tion, and some fossils have been found in America and in Europe, which, it is claimed, set that question forever at rest. Some careful investigators doubt the organic character of the alleged fossils, and we are not prepared to decide, where doctors disagree ; but, inasmuch as our supposed section of Grant County does not reveal the systems of rocks named from their great develop- ments in the valley of the St. Lawrence, we will proceed with our brief disquisition on the strata actually found in that region, which we endeavor to describe. Wisconsin River has cut its course through the Potsdam sandstone, and numerous streams of less dimensions have left their marks in unmistakable characters, hewn out of the same body, which is entirely denuded of all such overlying strata as may elsewhere be found. The same order of succession as has been noted in the line east and west-Lower Magnesian limestone, St. Peters sandstone, Trenton limestone and Galena limestone in the same relative position-is still observable, but superim- posed upon these we find preserved in the Platte Mounds, at an elevation not less than seven hundred feet above the level of Lake Michigan, the formation known as Cincinnati or Hudson River shale, capped by a remnant of Niagara limestone. Blue River has its course bottomed on St. Peters sandstone, while Trenton and Galena limestones form the superincumbent layers, and this regularity in the movements of natural forces enables the student to apply himself, with much economy of resource, to unfold the wealth of mineral possessions, which, in our own time and in the near future, will become the heritage of the human family.
From the writings and tracings of Prof. Chamberlin, we are permitted to supplement our scanty delineation of the State, as represented in the geological features of this region, by adding a general though brief description of the State as a whole, and of the uphcaval and formations that have contributed the material bases of our national wealth.
We have delineated the shallow sea that cbbed and flowed, obeying the impulses of the moon, where the State of Wisconsin now reposes in beauty and excellence, the loved home of a thrifty and prosperous people, but we will return to that point in our narrative, the better to present the picture of that upheaval to the popular mind. The sediment to which we are indebted for the Laurentian rock, is estimated to have been much more rapid in deposition than similar processes to-day, and a thickness of 30,000 feet is claimed by scientists as only a small remainder of a more vast formation, contributing its quota to the crust of the earth. Bencath the sea, this sediment accumulated in horizontal strata under circumstances that favored metamorphic action, the results of which are still visible. The time came when heat and lateral pressure, such as we have already mentioned, re-arranged the folds of the earth's mantle and began to pre- pare a dwelling-place for man. That nucleus of a nation may be called, for our own conven- ience, the Island of Wisconsin. The character as well as the position and form of that rock,
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HISTORY OF THE LEAD REGION
was probably changed in the act of upheaval, so mighty were the forces therein engaged. The sediment had been changed into crystalline rocks, widely dissimilar from the later sandstone, although compacted of the same elements. Thus we stand, as it were, in the presence of the Archæan or ancient rocks, otherwise known as the Azoic. The wonderous changes through which this metamorphic rock passed in attaining the eminence of an island in those seas, might well be supposed capable of obliterating all signs of vital organization, but, in other rocks which seem to be identified with this formation, it is asserted, with some authority, that fossils have certainly been found, and our investigations have hitherto been too narrow and restricted to entitle us to say with authority that there are no fossils in the Laurentian formation here. It is not possible to define accurately the extent of that island won from the domain of Neptune, but it is assumed to have filled a large area in the northern central part of our State, stretching beyond into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This was the primeval base upon which was to be erected an empire of the people, sacred to liberty and right. Other islands, at remote distances, were per- haps upheaved at the same instant with our own, to be banded together in one vast continent, for the noblest ends possible on earth, when the Laurentian era should have taken its place away back in the remotest antiquity with which life has been identified. We have no data whereby we can determine the altitude of these islands, upon which the rain descended and the floods came, beating with tempestuous violence ; but, apart from the strata forced into positions almost approaching the perpendicular, and from which the cap or connecting fold has been abraded, we have the deep and wide-spread deposits of the Huronian period to tell us of the mountainous elevations from which that sandy detritus must have been torn away by wind-storms, rain, the beat of countless waves, and the never-ceasing disintegrating power of the chemic constituents of the atmosphere. We have, thus, our island lifting its head toward heaven, and the elements tearing down the inaccessible mountain peaks, to bridge the chasms and convert that island, with others widely scattered, into the broad expanse of prairie, mountain, valley, cataract, lake and river, which is to-day the world's wonder. Science may yet enable us to read this exquisite story of the earth as the home prepared for man, with fuller appreciation. It is not easy to imagine that, on an island thus builded, there could have been any form of vegetable life at the outset ; but, in the sea around its base, if we may judge from the carbonaceous matter incorporated with the deposits, there must have been an abundant marine flora, and, in the limestone accretions we find evidence of higher organizations. Life was in the waters surrounding our island, and the Great Artificer of the Universe was, through His laws, compelling the least of His animate creatures to prepare the way for their superiors in the army of being. Perhaps this statement of the case may savor of dogmatism, but we argue the presence of life in the waters from the limestone deposits left in testimony, as well as from the fact that the Laurentian rocks, which antedated this era by unnumbered centuries, are not certainly and entirely barren of fossils. The shales, sandstones and limestones of this period of deposition, aggregated many thousand feet in depth ; and, in due time, these also were upheaved and metamorphosed in that process, as the Laurentian had been, into crystalline and semi-crystalline rocks, known to us by various names and innumerable uses in the civilization by which we are surrounded. The Huronian rocks are compacted of quartzites, crystalline limestones, slates, schists, diorites, quartz-porphyries and other forms of metamorphic sediment. Graphite is the resultant from carbonaceous deposits, and magnetite, hematite and specular ores tell of the forms of life by which such means of wealth are brought within our ken ; the last-named deposits are so great as to give the name of the iron- bearing series to this upheaval. These several strata, contorted and folded by pressure and · heat, added largely to the circumference of the island, from whose shores and heights they had been gathered, and the ceaseless activities of nature paused not one instant in preparing new formations. The nearest approach to a mountain in our State, is the upturned edge of the Huronian upheaval, which stretches for sixty miles, crossing Ashland County, bearing within its rampart a belt of magnetic schist through nearly the whole length of Penokee Range. The Menominee iron-bearing series, which extends into the northern part of Oconto County, is another important topographical and mineralogical feature in the Huronian formation. Barron
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HISTORY OF THE LEAD REGION.
County owes its deposits of pipestone to the same source, and they cover a large area. The Baraboo quartzite ranges in Sauk and Columbia, with detached outliers northeasterly through other counties, are conspicuous contributions from that formation, which has its most southerly exposure near Lake Mills, in the county of Jefferson.
Before the Huronian strata were upraised, it is assumed that the crust of the earth was fissured in the Lake Superior region, and that a vast outflow of molten rock spread itself by successive eruptions at various intervals over an area more than 300 miles long by 100 miles wide, forming a series of trappean beds. Sometimes there were intervals between these molten streams, during which the ocean ransacked from the superimposed rock, the materials for beds of sand, gravel and clay, which are now present as sandstone, conglomerate and shale; and, as though tenacious of the credit that belonged to its handiwork, the waves of the perturbed sea have left their ripple-marks in the stone to tell us that the forces of the central fire were not allowed to assert themselves unchallenged by the ocean. When eruptions ceased entirely in that region, the sedimentary process went on accumulating until the series achieved a thickness which is stated in miles. The rocks which have been named as thrown up from within the earth's crust have undergone changes so great that their igneous character is almost obliterated; the mineral ingredients have been metamorphosed by chemical action, so that we find iron chlorite and feldspar associated with quartz, prenite, calcite, laumontite, analcite, datolite, magnetite, native copper, silver, and occasionally other minerals, the rock being known as a melaphyr. Usually we find the upper portion of each bed composed of cells about the size of an almond filled with the minerals that have been indicated, so that the rock is amygdaloidal. After the beds were deposited, the native copper was placed in the receptacles, where it is found to-day, by chemical action after changes in the rock had been initiated by similar means, and the silver found in that series is due to the same agency. Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas and Polk Counties, in the northern section of the State, are remarkable for the presence of copper and silver bearing rocks, the metals being most plentiful in the amygdaloids and some conglomerates, but being found in the melaphyrs, sandstones and shales also. The Huronian rocks carried the copper-bearing series with them in their upheaval, and they are found with the same folds and flexures. The Keweenaw Point range extends from the part of Michigan to which its name is lue southwesterly through Ashland, Burnett and Polk Counties, in this State, the beds dipping toward Lake Superior northwesterly; but, in a parallel range, which is found in Bayfield and Douglas Counties, the beds dip at a less angle in the opposite direction. There was a "lost interval " after the upheaval of the Archaan rocks, the Laurentide hills of the early French explorers, the Laurentian of our time, which even now, after ages of erosion, can be traced on the north side of the St. Lawrence, from Labrador to Lake Superior, and still to the north a (listance yet undetermined. The hills of this formation are seen 4,000 feet in height, and where the Saguenay makes its course toward the St. Lawrence there are cliffs that lift their heads fully 1,500 feet sheer from the water's edge. South of the range through which the Saguenay runs, the Adirondack Hills stand an isolated mass 6,000 feet in altitude, a sentinel rock of the Lau- rentian system, rivaled by the newer formation-the White Mountains. The Lower Laurentian has no exposure in our State, but it is found in Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and, rarely, in Massachusetts and Maryland. Beyond the Atlantic the same rocks are identified in Norway, Sweden, the Hebrides and Bohemia, bearing with slight differences the same alleged but debatable fossils, the Eozoon Canadense, Bavaricum, etc., of a type still said to be extant. The Lougroynd groups of rocks in Shropshire and in Wales, with their equivalents in the Wick- low Mountains in Ireland, are probably Huronian rather than Laurentian. The exact equiva- lency of our Laurentian system with that of Canada and the provinces is not determined, but strong likelihoods point in that direction with increasing force. The "lost interval " indicates no idleness in nature, but a failure on the part of the geologist to follow her operations. We have elsewhere glanced at the wondrous activities that laid down the vast beds now known as Potsdam sandstone, and then upheaved them to their present and to still greater elevations. We can trace the formation here lying on the foot of an eminence which is gradually succumbing to
5
314
HISTORY OF THE LEAD REGION.
" the tooth and razure of oblivion," except as its remains are preserved as particles of quartz in the new stratum. Again we see some harder projection of the old rock detached from the main island, which yet lifted its head in solemn self-assertion, and breasted the angry billows, impa- tient of their endeavor to reduce its elevations to the common level ; and yet again we meet some great bowlders, typical of the empire foretold in Scripture, compacted of brass and of clay ; there the harder components remain, dismounted from their eminences by the erosion of feet of clay in the softer material upon which they depended, and the sands of the sea shore reverently surrounded them with their legions of defenders, to retain them where they are found in our era, still distinguishable as mementoes of the age of giant rocks, which built for man a temple not made with hands.
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