USA > Wisconsin > Lafayette County > History of Lafayette county, Wisconsin > Part 47
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Life was an ever-present element in this formation, but the earlier sandstones are not rich in well-defined fossils, although they give us lithographie illustrations and actual casts of the shells in which living beings built themselves in from the elements. Limestones and shales, interstratifying the sandstone, mark where some sheltered spot temporarily favored the establish- ment of a cemetery, upon which the sands once more advanced, burying the dead out of the sight of generations that had never dreamed of the mysteries of existence. The red sandstone of Lake Superior is due to the action of the sea upon the iron and copper-bearing series of rocks of whose qualities we have spoken ; away from that region we find a broad, irregular belt reach- ing almost around the Archæan island, a rude crescent of light-colored sandstone, won by the waves and winds and rains from porphyries, quartzites and granite, either of which would, in our more conservative age, be able to hold its own against oxygen for centuries unless frost came in to help the demolition.
There was no great upheaval after the Potsdam sandstone had been deposited, hence it lies horizontally upon the abraded bed of the underlying crystalline stratum, neither crumpled nor metamorphosed by heat and pressure, only slightly arched toward the center of the State. The weight of superincumbent beds, and the cementing action of waters carrying lime and iron in solution, which have percolated through this formation, have largely increased its density; but the ripple marks, cross-laminations, worm burrows, and other indications of action and life on a sandy beach are clearly traceable, and its thickness varies from the fine line which defined its limit on the shore of the island down into the depths where it formed an aggregate of perhaps a thousand feet. All the later formations take their place above the Potsdam sandstone, which may be reached by boring in any part of the State, beyond the bounds of the Archæan core. This is a fact of vital importance, because a water-bearing rock can be calculated upon with absolute certainty, and the layers of limestone and shale which interstratify the mass are of great value in arresting the flow of water and turning it surfaceward. The formation of lime- stone, never arrested while life endures, comes now once more within our region of observation, and the deposit ranges from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet in thickness. The horizontality of the sandstone was not perfect, and the irregularities of the foundation were filled by the limestone as it settled down and solidified under oceanic pressure. There were places where the substratum showed a rise and fall of nearly one hundred feet within quite a limited area, but the limestone itself is remarkable for an appearance aptly described as follows: The lime- stone and the interstratified beds mentioned earlier were magnesian or dolomitic, containing carbonate of magnesia in great quantity. There were quantities of silica in the deposit which sometimes are found as nodules of chert, and in other instances as quartz crystals ; this beautiful form of matter lines cavities which never saw the light until man quarried in the rock, and yet the exquisite loveliness of each crystal is perfected according to its law, as though the handi- work therein concealed had been one of the most costly adornments of a palace. Some metals appear in the mass, but they are of little value, and evidences of life herein are very seanty. Sea weeds, mollusks and a few other forms of being are scattered sparsely, save at intervals, where circumstances favored a more liberal contribution to our knowledge of the organisms that obtained in the earlier seas. Erosion has removed a large proportion of this rock, so that it is now jagged and irregular in the last degree, but, originally, it must have been a broad and regular band, contributing its quota toward increasing the island to the dimensions of a continent.
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We cannot tell why the deposit of magnesian limestone ceased, but the sandstone known as St. Peters comes next in order of succession, probably after an interval. This is a fine sili- cious sand, mach desiderated in the manufacture of glass ; but it is deposited in small quanti- ties, sometimes not enough to cover the inequalities of the limestone. The greatest thickness of St. Peters sandstone yet discovered does not exceed two hundred and twelve feet, and the average is less than one hundred. It is not a firm stone, having been imperfectly cemented, so that it disintegrates readily. Some organic remains have recently been found in this deposit, but they are few and far between, just sufficient to attest the presence of marine life and the agency of the ocean in triturating these fine grains of quartz. This belt, probably much reduced from its original dimensions, fringes the lower magnesian bed on the south, and covers but a small area. The absence of fossils may be accounted for in two ways: First, in the cut- ting and crushing action of the sandy particles, and next in their porosity-a quality to which we are indebted for the supply of many of our finest artesian wells, and from which numberless other such living fountains may be procured, as the flow of water is practically inexhaustible.
Trenton limestone deposits follow, indicating some changes in oceanic conditions, local or general, and, at the same time, a great deal of clay-like matter was being placed in position to be converted into shale, shells, corals and other organic debris, or their signs manual in the rock give positive evidence as to the origin of this limestone in the myriad lives that were capa- ble of converting the particles held in solution by the seas into the osseous environments of their own being. The limestone now deposited was very pure, not largely magnesian ; but, when the clay predominated, a bed of shale, greater or less in extent, resulted. Sometimes these beds were so highly charged with carbonaceous matter that they burn readily, and no small portion of our petroleum comes from such formations. In the lead region, this deposit has sometimes been found rich in metals, but of course that condition is the outcome of chemi- cal action and infiltration-not a characteristic found in the pure limestone stratum. The fos- sils in the Trenton limestone are abundant, and the stone, being susceptible of a very high pol- ish, is valuable in an economic sense, as well as deeply interesting to the scientist on account of its archæological revelations, as all the animal sub-kingdoms, except the vertebrates, are therein represented. This rock borders the St. Peters sandstone, and its greatest thickness hitherto observed is about one hundred and twenty feet.
The next formation is the highly magnesian Galena limestone, buff or light gray in color, attaining a maximum thickness of about two hundred and fifty feet, and having a sub-crystalline structure. In the northeastern part of the State, the presence of shaly matter changes the color to a bluish or greenish gray ; but, in the southerly deposits, the bed is not affected in that way. The presence of galena, or sulphide of lead, in this layer, in the southwestern part of the State more especially, has given its name and commercial value to this limestone. Zinc ore is abundant, as well as lead, in the region indicated, and in other districts the same metals can be traced, but not in paying quantities. In other sections of the country, the production of lead is a necessary part of the process of mining for the precious metals, and, for that rea- son, pure lead mining is comparatively at a discount for a time ; but, whenever the best product of lead is demanded, the mines in our State and in Illinois will not fail to be largely called upon. Our Island of Wisconsin, growing from its Archæan core by concentric additions, is already much larger than the area of the State within which it took its rise, and still the aggre- gation continues.
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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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-bedded 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 carlier 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 stric 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 inelted, 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.
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