Kendall County, Illinois - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 49 of those read), 1877

Our Natural Possessions

OME OF the natural possessions of Kendall county have already been alluded to. Here they are grouped together. We have no wide forests or deep mines ; all that nature has given us that need be noticed are modifications of those two indispensable elements - water and soil. And we are content. Blessed water ! Praises to the old chemical symbol, HO, 9 ! We have it here, and that which is good. Not the drainino; of the slou2:hs, but the filterings of the rocks is our drink. And we have the ornamental as well as the more generally useful.

The Magnetic Springs

are at Mr. Piatt's, in Plattville. There are a dozen different sorts of mineral springs, according to the nature of the rock through which they percolate, and each sort is useful for a corresponding class of disorders. Piatt's springs being somewhat electrical, are helpful in rheumatism and nervous disorders. A knife blade rubbed on the iron tubing becomes magnetized, and may be raised by a door key. The water is unusually bland and pleas- ant, and horses and cattle drink immoderate quantities of it. These springs belong to the class of Sulphated Chalybeate waters, viz : impregnated with iron and sulphur. Four miles further down as water runs are the true on J. W. House's land. The first, in front of his house, is not so valuable, but the larger one in the grove emits a strong aroma of sulphur. This water is beneficial in scrofulous and skin diseases, and is as^good for the well as for the sick. There are many sulphur springs in every country, and they are among the most valuable of nature's gifts to us.

Grateful soil ! Not the tough clay of the woodland is ours, nor the porous sand that scours the plow but cheats the harvest. No, no, Kendall county crops have for their support the black humus, the slow product of sixty centuries of vegetation. Soils are formed by the disintegration of rocks and the decay of vegetable matter, and are named after the sort of rock from which their mineral elements have come. Sandstone makes a sandy soil, and limestone a loamy soil. Ours is mostly the latter. And Avith groves every few miles, which promote moisture and draw the rain, we are not subject to the long droughts of surrounding counties, whose flat plains are almost treeless.

Peat And Coal

north side of the river, near Wing's mill, where a deposit one hundred acres broad and six feet thick awaits the dav when wood shall be scarce and coal shall be dear, in order that it may be utilized. Peat is of the nature of coal, and is formed by the decomposition of reeds or grass, as coal is formed from the decomposition of softwood. Coal, too, has been pressed together by the weight of overlying earth and rock, while peat is near the surface and is not pressed. Coal that has not been through the " press" is called lignite. Peat is formed in bogs, which differ from slouojhs in that the latter is simply black mire, while the former is a spongy mass held together by the rootlets of plants. Sloughs, too, are usually covered by an even coat of grass, while bogs are varied with grassy hillocks rising above the rest and having a firmer soil. Sloughs, when drained, will raise good crops, but bogs are comparatively worthless. There are two varieties of peat, viz : black and brown, the former being the more perfect ; but that found in this vicinity is generally brown. The deposit along the river, by Wing's mill, is by far the largest in the county. Two public roads run over it. Pieces of driftwood and well preserved logs are found in it. The entire vicinity was once a lake, and has been'filling up with preserved vegetation and the debris of annual freshets. To obtain the peat, remove about eighteen inches of the surface soil, when a substance is reached looking like buried sods, which can be cut into firm cakes with a spade. Thoroughly dried in the sun, it makes good fuel, and a hot fire.

Sand

we have enough in this county for plastering purposes, and further we crave not. It does not desolate our fields nor fill the air when the wind blows, but stays quietly in its own beds until it is fetched, - it may be at fifty cents a load, besides the hauling. But it is better to buy what one wants than to have more than he wants for nothing. We also have a good quality of a kind that is comparatively rare. Indeed, it is properly an earth, or rather a mixture of clay and sand. It is used by moulders in making castings. Pure sand does not pack close enough, and pure earth packs too close, and does not allow the gases to escape. A fine deposit of moulding sand is found near Montgomery, and another south of Wing's mill, opposite the peat bed. But our most valuable sand property is the Millington quarry of in the ancient formation known in geology as the St. Peter's sandstone. It comes to the surface in spots in nearly all the Western States. It forms a large part of the Illinois and Fox river bluffs. The fiimous Starved Rock is wholly composed of it. It is found deepest on Rock river, above the village of Oregon, but is so stained with oxide of iron, or drippings of iron, as to be useless, except for scenery. It looks at a distance like masses of painted rock. The mineral spring of Ottawa, though coming from a depth, as is supposed, of four hundred feet, has its source in this sand rock. The "Pictured Rocks" and copper mines of Lake Superior are of the same age. The usual gray color of the rock is owing to the red iron stains being removed by organic matter. It is the most remarkable formation in the State, and is the oldest in this part, with the exception of the hydraulic limestone at LaSalle and Utica, from which the well known cement is made.

The value of the Millington quarry arises from the fact that it has never been colored by oxide of iron or other mineral salts, and is, therefore, perfectly pure. It is in reality a river bluff, but is a third of a mile back from the river, on the edge of the valley.

The face of the quarry is about twenty -five rods long, and thirty feet high in the centre, and where not fresh quarried is browned by the weather and discolored by the rain trickling down from above. The sand rock lies in oblique layers four or five feet thick, inclined most to the west : each laver stratified in thin sheets. At the east side the layers are horizontal, and the hill is finished off by a deposit of clay and gravel, which also covers the entire rock to the depth of three feet. This east end was therefore deposited first, at the bottom of a lake or shallow sea, which afterwards began to dry up : or the shores were elevated, and each portion of the western part of the hill became successively the sloping beach of the receding sea. In a subsequent age the east end was partially carried away by a river or torrent, and the clay and gravel piled up as a bandage to the amputated rock.

reddened with iron, or made gray by the dye being washed out. Broad sheets and long lines of purest white wherever the low flats and sand beaches protruded themselves above the water. Yet it is hardly correct to speak of the world as being white, for this peculiar formation covered only what is now the lead region of the northwest, and is found nowhere else on the continent. The whole subject of its origin is shrouded in mystery. It comes very useful, however, and we can see now that the resources of our inland States would have been incomplete without it - a fact the Creator saw from the begin ning.

Over the face of the quarry run veins that seem to have been glued together, and stand out in sheets as thick as sole leather; in some places an inch from the surface. These are supposed to have been caused by thin crusts of sandstone having been impregnated with a strong solution of oxyde of iron, or rust of iron, while the rock was deposited by the water.

^ The sand itself is pure silica, nearly as white as snow. It is composed of rounded, transparent grains of crystalline quartz, and is found in such inexhaustible quantities in Kendall and LaSalle counties, that we might manufacture all the glass for the United States. It underlies Fox River above Millington, and juts out on the other side in a tongue of white sandrock, between two limestone quarries.

White Sand Quarries

as firm mortar as common sand, the grains being too smooth. Teams came from Aurora, Naperville, Plainfield, and even from still more distant points. The land in which the present quarry is worked was first entered by Charles Koyal, more than forty years ago, except a piece on the east end, which was entered by Chris. Misner. Both parties afterwards sold to Thomas Serrine.

The quarry is now^ worked by a Chicago company. They ship several car loads a week - mostly to Ohio glass factories. The price is eight dollars a car load, of ten or twelve tons, the purchaser paying freight. One man can fill a car in half a day, if he can get sand. It is in a rocky mass, and is blasted with powder to bring it down. The men are careful to get in no earth, or pieces of the metallic veins, or yellow sand - though the latter is only colored by rain and will wash white. The deposit is supposed to be about fifty feet thick, and extends along the face of the hill by the railroad for a considerable distance. In this hill, a quarter of a mile east of the quarry, a spring of cool water gushes out of a large crevice in the rock, and flows away over a bed of sparkling white sand. Close by, in a ravine, another spring issues from a tiny cavern in the sandrock, and one can hear the musical trickling of the water inside, as it falls on the stones. Between those springs and the quarry is a romantic looking waterfall, half hidden by wild grapes and ivy. No stream runs over it, but a deep channel is worn in the rock, showing that it has been in use sometime. And perhaps in the forgotten past more than one Indian Minnehaha met her dusky lover there and exchanged vows to the music of the tinkling waterfall.

But to-day, reality instead of romance rules the hour. The tiny cataract, affrighted, shrinks back and perishes, and we dig down the hills of primordial sand that have been crystallized once in Nature's fire, and crystallize them again in our own.

Limestone

carbonate of lime the chemists call it, and in all the various styles, from the sediment in the tea kettle to the deposit in the quarry. Natural limestone is the product of shells and corals, and is a mute witness of that far off time when the deep sea rolled its billows where prairie flowers now bloom. Without that time of watery desolation our possessions would have been very incomplete, for what could we have done without limestone ? It is among rocks what iron is among metals. Bridge builders say the crushing weight of limestone is four hundred and ninety tons to the square foot, while sandstone is but two hundred tons, and brickwork thirty tons. Therefore its value as building stone. There are some dozen quarries in the county.

Brick Clay

There either are or have been brick yards near each one of our older villages, and by the same token there could be again, so far as the supply of clay is concerned. Most of the ancient bricks were sun dried, and on the alluvial plains of Egypt and Babylon were mixed with straw, as they had none of our tenacious clays. Bricks

It was tried by Isaac Grover, in his " juggery," forty years ago, and proved a success ; and probably the mound builders used it before him for those bowls of which the pieces are being found and saved to-day.

Wood

at our doors. On our two hundred thousand acres of land we have twenty-five thousand acres of timber ; not in a dense body, but in generous strips along the streams and in those beautiful upland groves which charmed our early settlers.