Cass County, Illinois - Physical Characteristics, 1915

Physical Characteristics

GEOGRAPH Y - GEOLOG Y - NATURAL VEGETATION - FORESTS AND PRAIRIES - PICTURESQUE SCENERY - WATER COURSES - SANGAMON COUNTY - ORIGIN OF NAME - SANGAMON RIVER - EARLY ATTEMPTS AT NAVIGATION.

Geography

Cass County is not one of the large counties of Illinois, nor yet is it one of the smallest. Its greatest extent is from east to west and is thirty-one miles long on the southern border, or southern tier of townships. Its greatest width is seventeen miles, from north to south. It comprises 390 square miles, or about 250,000 acres. Its northern boundary line is the Sangamon River, which crosses a middle line of range 8, west, which is the eastern boundary of the county, in section 16, township 19, north, range 8, west. After running in a very crooked, meandering way, the river empties its waters into the Illinois River in section 8, township 19, range 12, west. From that point on to the southwest, the Illinois River forms the western boundary of Cass County to the south line of township 17, north, range 10, west. These two rivers give to Cass County a river frontage of about forty-five miles.

Cass County prairie lands and practically all timber or "barren" lands lie about 630 feet above the ocean level, forty-five feet above the level of Lake Michigan; and 340 feet above low water at Cairo, at the mouth of the Ohio River.

from the compilation of facts concerning the geological formation of Cass County, by J. Henry Shaw: "The soil of this county is the same as that in the whole of this portion of the state, a dark-colored loam with a lighter colored clay sub-soil. On the ridges and bluffs which skirt the streams, we find this sub-soil everywhere, except upon the Loess formation, exposed at the surface of the ground, and generally bearing a heavy growth of timber. On the bottom land the soil is an alluvial arenaceous loam, and excepting in localities where the sand too greatly predominates, is an excellent productive soil."

Geology

The geological formations in this county von. sist of the Quaternay deposits, the Loess and Drift, afd the Coal Measures, which alone of the older formations underlie the surface beds of clay, gravel, ete. The Loess forms the bluffs along the Illinois and Sangamon bottoms. Its general features here are the same as in many river counties, and it forms the same bold bluffs that are seen in other localities along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The material here is an ash or buff-colored marly sand, containing fresh water shells of existing species. The thickness of the formation is considerable, some 60 or 70 feet immediately at the bluffs, but it rapidly thins out in the back country, in many places disappearing entirely within a very short distance. It appears to extend further inland along the Sangamon Valley bluffs north of Virginia, and several good sections of this deposit may be seen in the cuts made for the road bed on the right of way of the Peoria, Pekin & Jacksonville Railroad (now the Chicago, Peoria & St. Louis Railroad) between Virginia and Chandlerville. Deposits of Drift consist of brown, yellow and blue clay, with boulders, while sand and gravel seams are of frequent occurrence amid the mass. The thickness can hardly be estimated, but from such experiments as have been made, it appears to 'be between 40 and 100 feet.

Coal Measures as far as developed, comprise a thickness of over 300 feet of the middle and lower portion of the series, which contains two or three seams of coal of workable thickness. The principal exposures, commencing with the lowest, are as follows:

In the southwest part of section 21, township 18, range 11, at the edge of the bluffs along the Illinois Valley, and also along the bluffs of the Sangamon Valley in sections 10 and 11, township 18, north, range 11, west, are old coal mines, and one new one now in operation, but not producing a great amount of coal. It probably would do better if more attention were given to it. These are reported to have the following sections: 1, soil (Loess), 15 feet; 2, brownish sandstone containing many vegetable impressions, 13 feet; 8, limestone (Blue Rock), 2 feet; 4, clay shale (Soapstone), 12 feet; 5, coal (No. 1 of Illinois River section), 3 feet; G, fire clay, very hard, 4 feet. No. 2 of this section crops out along the bluff road at the edge of the bluffs and a few rods further west, in ledges several feet in vertical exposure. It is soft micaceous sandstone, of a light or whitish brown color. About a quarter of a mile further north the coal seam No. 4 is reached by digging into the foot of the bluff and. worked by stripping. Above the north line of section 21, the bluffs for about two miles, are mostly of Loess, and it is necessary to follow up the side ravines in order to see the exposure of rock, and following up the various ravines along the Sangamon Valley bluffs, the investigator will find much the same condition of rock, sand and soil, Drift and shale, and, occasionally, some black slate. A shallow coal shaft in the southeast quarter of section 6, township 18, range 9, near Panther Creek, affords the following sections: No. 1, surface soil, 4 feet; 2, gravel (Blue Bind), 2 feet; 3, black slate, 2 feet; 4, clay shale (Soapstone), 13 feet; coal, 2 feet, 6 inches; fire clay, passing downward into nodular limestone, 2 feet; 7, clay penetrated, 2 feet.

All parts of Cass County appear to be underlaid by coal measures which here include the horizon of four or five different seams of coal. It seems highly probable that there is no portion of Cass County outside of the river bottom

A coal shaft was sunk at Virginia in 1882 by the Virginia Coal & Water Company and was worked with more or less success for a number of years and then abandoned. The coal mined was of a good quality, and was used mostly by local consumers. A mine was also operated at Ashland for a number of years until it was no longer profitable, by reason of competition by other mines in central Illinois with better facilities for shipping. What has been said of the geological formation gives the reader a general idea of the surface conditions of Cass County, and its possibilities for mining.

Natural Vegetation

Often the grass grew so high that before the wild fires started and consumed it, a man on horseback could scarcely be seen within it; and traveling through it was very difficult, even on horseback, and alinost impossible with a team and wagon. 'The movers and settlers kept close to the path that was once broken. Wonder is sometimes expressed hy those who have seen these same prairies under cultivation, with deep rustling fields of corn and golden grain, or in meadow and pasture of tame grasses, why the early settlers passed by such valuable lands and made their homes in the edge of the timber on much inferior soil. The reason is very apparent to those who know the conditions that confronted the pioneer. It was absolutely necessary to have firewood, and some kind of material with which to construct houses. Many pioneers came from Kentucky, Tennessee and old Virginia, where they had lived in log cabins, and knew how to construct them. In the timber along the ereeks they found abundant tall, straight trees which they knew could be readily felled, hewed and shaped into logs for the walls of their cabins, and the task of preparing a field for first crops was much less formidable in the timber along the edges of the prairies. On account of the forest fires, the timber was kept pretty clear of underbrush and smaller trees, or saplings as they are called, leaving only the larger trees and they were not very close together. <A corn field was often prepared by simply "girdling" the larger trees, this being done by cutting a band around the tree out of its bark, near the ground, thus causing the tree to die. It then bore no leaves to shade the ground, and its roots drew no sustenance from the soil. The farmer could plow close up around the tree with almost as little difficulty as he could around a stump.

Then again the timber settlers had material in hand for fencing their fields and lots. Many of the first fences were, however, but brush fences, constructed by piling the brush and smaller limbs cut from the fallen trees in such a way as to form a barrier to keep the stock from wandering away. These fences answered the purpose for which they were made for several years better than might be supposed. There was also in the timber, protection for the stock and for the people from the fierce winds and storms of winter, which they could not have withstood in the open prairies. The prairies did not present a very inviting prospect for agriculture in those days, even when they were burned off by fires, as there was revealed a wide stretch of uneven, boggy and sometimes miry land that had every appearance of requiring years of laborious toil to put it in condition to yield passable crops of the cereals with which the early settler was acquainted. Indeed they were more than half right about it. It has required time. labor and ingenuity to work the miracle. Where once was a houseless, roadless, even pathless wilderness, the habitude of howling, roaring wild animals, and a fiercer, wilder, saynge human element, there is now a veritable Garden of Eden.

Forests And Prairies

A large portion of the surface of Cass County consists of prairie; and the county also has a large extent of bottom lands in the valleys of the Sangamon and Illinois rivers. The Sangamon Valley varies in width from two to eight miles, its widest portion being about where the bluff line turns south, forming the eastern highland border of the Illinois Valley, in section 9, township 18. range 12. The Illinois Valley in Cass County is of wider extent than the Sangamon, but does not have an equal proportion of as valuable, fertile soil, on account of n number of sand ridges extending through parts of it. Yet this Illinois bottom, if it were not for the lakes and sloughs that cover a portion

The prairie lands are now broken and placed under cultivation, and are perhaps as fertile as is known in any agricultural district. They extend from the south line of the county northward east of the village of Arenzville; their northwestern border being nearly a diagonal line to the northeast corner of the county. The soil is of a rich, dark color, having the general characteristics of the other prairie soil in Illinois. Between the prairies and the Illinois and Sangamon valleys are the timbered lands, beginning at the edge of the prairies and extending towithin a short distance of the valleys where they end in high and sometimes very abrupt bluffs, having little or no vegetation upon them. Others of these bluffs slope more gently to the valleys beyond, and are covered with wild grasses that furnish grazing for stock a large portion of the year. These timber or forest lands are what are called the "barrens," pronounced by the early settlers "barns." This name was given to these lands because their fertility was supposed to have been very much exhausted and nonproductive by reason of the variety of trees growing on them, and also on account of the fires running through them from the prairies, which it was believed cooked the soil. The very fact that these lands were covered with the excellent growth of timber found there, indicated the productiveness of the soil, and the settlers soon learned that the land known as the barrens when cleared and put under cultivation, produced magnificent crops of cereals, especially winter wheat. Indeed many of the so-called barren farms have become equally productive of as great a variety of vegetables, cereals and tame grasses as the prairie farms. The soil of the timber regions is generally of a light grey colored clay. On this land was a heavy growth of black, white and red oak, pin oak, laurel oak, walnut, butternut, white and red elm, hickory, iron wood, sassafras, redbud, hackberry, soft and sugar maple, swamp white oak, chinquapin, sycamore, pawpaw, the last four varieties being found along the streams. Many cottonwood trees were to be found standing alone on the prairies. Wild cherry and locust were also found in great abundance, while among the smaller trees were the black and red haws. On the lower bottom lands were found great groves of shellbark hickory, and pecan, as well as many of the varieties men- tioned as growing upon the uplands. Many acres of these lands have of late yéars been denuded of the greater part of the timber, it liaving been cut and floated to the rivers in times of high water, and then rafted to the portable saw mills. Really the best of board timber has been taken out of Cass County and black walnut is becoming very scarce.

Picturesque Scenery

The topography of the county presents some attractive and picturesque scenery. Emerging from the timber and stepping out upon any of the bare points of the tall rugged bluffs that border the Sangamon Valley on the south an entrancing scene of rare beauty greets the vision. Extending from as far east as the sight will carry for miles westward to the Illinois River, and following the winding course of the Sangamon River spread out from river to bluff the wonderfully productive Sangamon bottom lands; while far beyond enveloped in an atmosphere of pearly greys and distant blues are the receding hills and jagged bluffs along the western banks of the Illinois. Singularly beautiful in its primitive state, it is a hundred fold more beautiful under cultivation, especially at the time of wheat harvest when this expansive garden is tesselated with the great fields of golden grain, square miles of dark green corn, the ripening clover and oat fields blending their more delieate coloring, and over all is cast the shimmering light of a cloudiess summer day.

The beautiful, undulating prairies, stretching for miles and bordered on the northwest by a splendid growth of magnificent timber, was unusually attractive to the eye of the traveler and early settler, and makes the words of a writer speaking of a visit of the poet Bryant to Illinois, aS applicable to Cass County as to any part of the great Prairie State.

"To anyone who possessed a scrap of poetic fire in his nature, Illinois offered one attraction that never failed to inspire a song of tribute to those far-reaching stretches of yerdure set with myriad gems of wild flowers in spring; waving in blue green, sinuous billows beneath a fervent summer sky; writhing and roaring in the clutch of an autumn prairie fire; or lying cold and white under the pitiless light of the winter moon, silent except for the quivering howl] of some prowling wolf.

"These are the gardens of the desert; these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name - The Prairie.

Thus sung William Cullen Bryant after his first visit to Illinois prairies. In the earlier days of travel in Illinois, there was necessarily much stage-coaching which gave the traveler an opportunity of enjoying the beauties of nature, always providing the condition of the roads left him in a proper frame of mind to do so, and that the valley of the Sangamon in its early summer garment of leaf and flower must have been a rarely beautiful sight, is evidenced by Bryant's little poem,

Thh Painted Cep

"The fresh savannas of the Sangamon, Here rise in gentle swells, and the long grass Is mixed with rustling hazels; searlet tufts Are glowing in the green, like flakes of fire. The wanderers of the prairie know them well, And call that flower, the Painted Cup."

Water Courses

As is but natural the most beautiful scenery is along the water courses. In the northwestern part of what is now Champaign County, near the line which separates it from Ford County, and about seventy miles north and east of the geographical center of Illinois, rises a small stream. Its course is from there on extremely varied ; it running in every direction that might be indicated by the magnetic needle, yet ever bearing westward. It is the crookedest stream in all Illinois, and runs a course of nearly 240 miles to reach its terminus, where it pours its wandering waters into the Illinois River; when if it had had no other purpose in life than to reach a certain goal, it might have saved a distance of 100 miles or more. This stream is the far famed Sangamon River, and like famed personages it must be permitted to do some things as it sees fit without question or criticism. No more fertile region may be found upon the earth than is traversed by the Sangamon River,

From a photograph taken at Beardstown. TMlinois, in August. SoS.) The negative was by Felix Nesler. The weather was warm and Mr. Lincoln wore a linen coat.

Thomas Beard Sangamo Country

As far back as 200 years the Sangamo Country was known for its beauty of location. Its very name signifies "Land of Plenty." Its rolling prairies and its beautiful, stately forest trees that bordered its sparkling streams, made it indeed a happy hunting ground for the primitive natives. No wonder they fought to keep it from the intruding whites, and wept in yielding it to the inevitable, advancing civilization. At the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the white men first began to inspect this region and report their discoveries, the news spread even as far as France, Germany and England. In the older states and colonies of this hemisphere the fame of the Sangamo Country was stirring the souls of that peculiar and distinctive type of pioneer American citizen, the frontierman, the advance guard of the American nation. Soon settlers' cabins began to appear along the banks of streams and the edge of the timber bordering the prairies.

Origin Of Name

The Indians, long before the white men saw the Sangamo Country, were well aware of its fertility and the richness of its products. The origin and exact meaning of the word Sangamon are not absolutely and definitely known, but from a perusal of the writings of those who have given the matter some thought, such as Governor Reynolds, and John G. Henderson of Scott County, and other early writers of Illinois, it is evident that the word is of Indian origin and belongs to the language of the Pottawatomie tribe, who spoke a dialect of the Algonquin tongue. In that language the word, spelled "Sangamien,' means the country where there is plenty to eat. Father Charlevoix, who passed down the Illinois River in 1771, mentions the river as the "Saquimont,"' and as the "t'' is silent, it is pronounced "Sa-qui-mon." Henderson, in his early history of Scott County, says: "The Indian word was probably 'Sau-kie-min,' from 'auki, earth, and 'min,' good,' and it is highly probable that this is the correct derivation of the word. There are two other sources from which the word might possibly have been derived, namely, '"Saukie,'"' from the tribe of that name, and "ong," a termination signifying place. By the use of a connective consonant, which was often done, we would have "Saukie-mong," or "River of the Sauks." Or it might have been derived from "Sagie," a lake, and "mong," a loon, which would be rendered 'Loon Lake River." The etymology first given is the most probable. Certain it is that at a very early date this river bore the name Sangemont and was pronounced Sangamon. Many early travelers who necessarily used the streams as the only highways by which they could reach the interior of the country, mention the Sangamon as among the smaller navigable waters they encountered in the Illinois country. This river is worthy of its place on the scroll of fame, and it is there never to be erased, along with the famous rivers of the old world; the Ganges and Euphrates, the Tiber and the Po, the Seine and the Thames, the storied and legendary Rhine, and the overflowing Nile; for upon its borders and fertile fields in the valleys and prairies adjacent, irrigated by its waters and those of smaller tributaries, there are produced thousands upon thousands of bushels of wheat, corn, oats and other cereals that furnish food for the millions of inhabitants of the great commonwealth of Illinois. Upon its banks and nearby sites, beautifully situated, are builded flourishing cities and towns and peaceful villages, peopled by as noble a race of men as ever trod the streets of the most imperial cities of the old world. Nor will it ever be forgotten that it was upon the banks of this stream, in a primitive village, every vestige of which has long since disappeared from the face of the earth, the most noted character of modern times, Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, spent the earlier days of his life; and whose body now lies under a magnificent monument in the capital city of the state, overlooking the placid waters of this humble, but justly famous stream, the Sangamon River.

This river by its natural course and situation was evidently destined to become a county boundary line, and did so in a very early day after Illinois became a state. After working westward past the third principal meridian until it reached the center of range 8, west, it then became the northern boundary line of Cass County. From there on it runs in its extremely

622 HISTORY OF erooked course until it reaches the Illinois River. The Illinois River, which forms the western boundary of Cass County, Menard County being on the east, and Morgan County on the south, with Indian and Prairie creeks, form a very fine natural drainage, and the soil is correspondingly fertile, and well adapted for agricultural purposes.

There are several tributaries to the Sangamon and Illinois rivers that assist greatly in both irrigating and draining the land. In the east and northeast parts of the county are Cleary's Creek and Middle Creek, and a little farther west are Panther and Job's creeks, all of which rise in the prairie and running quietly for a distance, enter the timber lands and then cut through the bluffs, or follow the washings of the valleys in the bluffs by former flood periods, and then down through alluvial soil in the bottom land, and empty into the Sangamon River. Clear Creek, Lost Creek, Prairie Creek, Mud Creek and Indian Creek all flow towards the west and run through a slightly undulating country until they reach the valley of the Illinois. They have no high bluffs to evade, but find their hindrance to an early voyage to their goal in the sand ridges in the Illinois bottom. Indian Creek does not wholly belong to Cass County, a large part of it being in Morgan County. It enters Cass County in section 31, township 17 north, range 11 west, just south of the village of Arenzville, and runs in a northwesterly direction to section 14, township 17, range 18, where it empties into the Illinois River. None of the above named streams except the Illinois, though carrying an abundance of water, are navigable. The legislature of Illinois, in 1822, declared the Sangamon River to be a navigable stream as far as the third principal meridian, east of Springfield, which forms the eastern boundary of Sangamon County, but it was easier to float a bill through the legislature than a steamboat up the Sangamon River. Although one small steamer did get as far as Springfield at one time, it experienced such difficulty in getting out, that the experiment was never repeated. In fact the vessel had to back down stream for a long way, not being able to turn around.

However, much interest was manifested by the citizens of Springfield, and of Beardstown, and intermediate points. The Sangamon Journal published at Springfield, in the issue dated January 26, 1832, announced that '"Virand A. Bogue will navigate the Sangamon River if he can find a suitable boat." In the same journal under date of February 16, 1832, appeared an article copied from the Cincinnati Gazette, or more properly an advertisement in the said Gazette of the 19th of that month.

"The splendid upper cabin steamer, Talisman, J. M. Polley, master, will leave Portland, Springfield, on the Sangamon River, and all intermediate points and landings, Beardstown, Naples, St. Louis, Louisville, on Thursday, February 2nd."

This was the same steamer that went up the river and could not turn around. From the tone of the advertisement it was certainly expected that the vessel would make a successful voyage from Springfield to Cincinnati. It would have been a fortunate thing if it could have done so for the inhabitants and hundreds of emigrants pouring into the Sangamon country, as there were no other modes of travel at that time than on foot, horseback or in a "prairie schooner." It is said that when the steamer left Beardstown, a large number of citizens accompanied it until they were satisfied that the voyage would be successful. So hopeful were the people of the ultimate success of the navigation of the Sangamon that a corporation was formed to dig a canal from a point on the Sangamon east of Beardstown, directly to the city and thus save from fifteen to twenty miles travel by the future passenger and freight vessels. The improvement of this stream adyrocated by Abraham Lincoln as a part of his platform, when he made his first canvass for the legislature, in 1882. Indeed this was not all a chimerical scheme, for, by the expenditure of a reasonable amount of money, the Sangamon might have been made navigable for small transports for a long distance up stream, if not entirely to Springfield, and have been of great service to the farmers along the route for shipping their produce to market.