Peoria County, Illinois - Chapter 1: Geology of Peoria County, 1880

Chapter 1: Geology of Peoria County

[The author of this chapter, Mr. William Gifford, of Radnor township, has been a resident of Peoria county for nearly half a century. Mr. Gifford began the study of geology in early life, and the cultivation of his innate scientific taste developed the desire for research and investigation almost to a passion ; and though he is far advanced in years his thirst for knowledge is unabated. While searching out the hidden mysteries and unlocking the secrets of the hills and rocks in Peoria and other counties. Mr. G. has surrounded himself with the best works of the ablest authors on his favorite science, and hence comes to the task fully prepared to speak authoritatively, and to instruct and edify. "The article will be found concise, able and accurate, and well worth a careful perusal." - Ed.1

Area

Peoria county contains an area of about six hundred and thirty square miles. As an agricultural region it takes rank with the best counties in the State.

The cretaceous and tertiary periods are not represented in this or adjacent counties. They were probably lost by denudation, together with some of the upper coal veins, during the long and turbulent ice period.

npper carboniferous, a coal measure. The alluvial deposits are confined chiefly to the right Ifiink of the Illinois river, forminfr a terrace of about twenty-four square miles, called LaSalle prairie, one of the best corn-producing sections of Illinois.

The great geological feature of Peoria county consists in its coal measures, which are co-extensive with its bordere. Only two veins (four and six) are worked to any extent. Coal from vein four is brought to the surface by horizontal tunnels at an expense of one cent per bushel, and half a cent in localities where it can be stripped. At no place in Illinois, or perhaps in the world, can coal be mined and brought to market so cheaply as in this county. It is now delivered to consumers in the city of Peoria for one dollar and fifty cents per ton. The thickness of this vein is from three feet ten to four feet eight inches, and is generally covered with a ferruginous shale, and concretions of bi-sulphuret of iron, richly stored with marine fossils, which are eagerly sought for by scientists. Its horizon is thirty-two feet above low water of the Illinois river.

Coal vein six is also worked with little labor, by horizontal tunnels. It is sixty-two feet above coal vein four, and is a good hlacktmith coal, makes a hard vitreous coke, and is exclusively used in Peoria and contiguous cities for making gas. It contains but little pyrite, and in most localities has a good limestone covering. One distinctive mark of this vein is a clay seam, or parting, from one to two inches thick, dividing the coal horizontally into two equal sections. The fossils overlying this vein are well preserved and species numerous ; among the most common are Ni/alena ant^ulata, Plcurotomania carbonana, Solenomia radiata, and Productus prattenittus.

Coal vein five has no reliable outcrop in this county, but its horizon is well defined in the towns of Limestone, Jubilee, and Kickapoo l)v its characteristic fossils - Fusalina ventrircom. Bciiipuuites crasa, Vhonctas messeloba, etc. The horizon of tliis vein has furnished a number of fossil coal plants, which have been figured and described by Leo Lesquereux, and are now being published by the State of Pennsylvania.

Coal veins seven, eight and nine are the ojily other veins represented in this county above the Illinois river, and tiiey are too thin for mining and not easily stripped coal.

The horizon of coal vein nine in tiiis county has given to paleontologists the most perfect coal-measure fossils found in this State, if not in the world. Coal vein three lies one hundred and thirty-three feet below four, consequently about one hundred and twenty feet below the Illinois river. It is about three feet thick, and is considered a good coal. It is not worked in this county. One hundred and twelve feet below three, a coal vein was reached in Voris' boring - opposite to Peoria - three feet thick, which is considered coal vein one of the Illinois coal field, and the base of the coal measure resting on the conglomerate, twenty feet above the St. Louis limesUme. Coal vein two has not been explored in Peoria county, but crops out on Spoon river in the southwest part of Fulton county.

Progee8Siok

It is within the memory of many now living, this writer not excepted, when the churcli, tlie lialU and even the district sciiool house, wiuf refused by those in authority to the lecturer on geology. The able and cflicient .lames Hull. A. M., has been indignantly refused the use of a district school hi>use in the Knipire State - New York - to stjirt a geological class. They feared - they knew not what. During the last fifty years public opinion has been more tolerant and the geologist now walks side by side with those who love the creative God and study I'is works. Let us go back in the history of this planet, not to its creation, for that is beyond mortal wisdom, but to the commencement of the carboniferous period when the surface of the earth was hidden from the sun by the carbon and noxious gases, extending a greater distance than our atmosphere ; a single breath of which would have been fatal to any air-breathing animals. " Darkness reigned supreme." It was the commencement of a new area, a time when the Almighty scattered the seeds of the coal plants with His bountiful hand. The ferns, lepidondrons, stigmanes, sigelaries, calmites and thousands of others, flowering plants and mosses to be harvested into His crucible to form coal.

Every year the mingled mass of vegetation was deposited, on the bog or marsh, to be by and by transformed into hard combustible matter, by the slow process of decomposition. The internal heat of the earth kept the surface continually warm : vegetation grew profusely night and day until enough had been harvested by the cycle of time to form a vein of coal ; then by the oscillation of the earth's surface it was thrown down and the ocean breaking through its barriers washed imjjetuously into the sunken basin covering up the coal plants with sand, mud and gravel, which in time, became rock as the coal field sunk to a greater depth beneath the ocean. That rock serves as a protection to the miner as he now digs the coal from beneath it.

The decomposition of fibrous plants in contact with atmospheric air absorbed carbonic acid ; the internal heat of the earth and the pressure of the ocean drove off the carbonic acid gas, but left a large percentage of fixed carbon, which, combining with other chemical agencies, completed coal vein one.

Time passed on, and the surface was again exposed. The ocean receded, vegetation for another vein of coal started, and in like manner was submerged. Again and again was the same formula carried on, until twelve or more veins of coal had been formed and safely covered up for the future use of man, constituting a vertical section of fifteen hundred feet, called the coal measure, and the carboniferous period was closed and the making of mineral coal on this planet was finished ; the materials used up, the process abandoned.

As the carbon in the coal was chiefly taken from the atmosphere, it became purer; air-breathing animals were placed on the earth ; serpents and reptiles of enormous size had undisputed sway over land and sea ; but they gave place to other forms of life at the close of the Urasic oi Reptilion period. The Cretaceous and Tertiary periods had their allotted time, and then followed a long and turbulent ice period, finishing up the surface for what the earth was created, the abode of man. Not alone in Peoria county nor in North America, but in all parts of the earth, in her hidden and capacious chambers was stored the product of coal gleaned from all vegetable matter for thousands of years, and and thousands of years again passed before those hidden chambers were revealed to man. Simultaneous with the invention of the steam engine came the discovery of those hidden coal fields ; and who, but those so blinded by ignorance and unbelief, but can trace the hand of Omnipotence in treasuring up fuel for the use of man when he most needed it ? It was reserved for " the fool to say in his heart there is no God. "

In naming the horizon of a coal vein the geologist can not depend entirely upon the resemblance of its outcrop, or even its analysis to a similar vein in some other location. It is not unfrequenth' the case that a chemical anah'sis from different parts of the same vein gives a diiferent result. As a reason it may be said that small annual coal plants in one localit}- would contain an excess of volatile matter, and the woody fibre of large plants and trunks of trees in another more fixed carbon. Neither must we rely implicitly on the overlying fossils, for some, the spirifer comeratus, athyris suhtility and others accompany each vein in the coal measure ; but the underlying fire clay and the shale, rock or limestone covering furnish other proof of identification and the observant student is not often misled. In all large bodies of water, lime, magnesia, soda and silica are held in solution mostly, as carbonates and sulphates. The carbonates are more readily preci[ itated in warm water, the sulphates in cold. Hence the diversity of sedimentary rocks on the same horizon may in part, be attributed to that.

Archaeology

Peoria county contains ample evidence of two distinct races of pre-historic men. The first were the Mound Builders, the latter were cave dwellers, and both appear to have passed away before the advent of the more recent American Indians. Of the former history is silent, and of tradition there is none ; but they have left evidence that this country was inhabited durinij or at the close of the Miocene period ; a time so far back that no one presumes to compute it.

The evidence of the great antiijuity of man is cumulative, and comes from all parts of the inhabited world. The Mound Builders were sun worshipers, ainl from the peculiar arrangement of their earth works, some believe the}' also invoked a Triune god. On the left bank of the Illinois river, opposite to Peoria county, there are two groups of mounds. They are on both sides of Black Patridge creek, where it empties into the Illinois river. In both groups, standing on the highest point overlooking the river, are three mounds, fifty-four feet fi-ora center to center, equilateral, subtending an angle of one hundred and twenty degrees, with one angle pointing to the east. Back of them, and further from the river, are fortifications and burial mounds. . On the right bank of the Illinois river, nine miles north, are two other groups similar in all respects, the measurement of the latter filled the measurement of the former, with one angle pointing to the rising sun. Back of these are also earth works and burial mounds. In front of the triangular mounds, and between them and the lilinois river, there has evidently been a fearful Ijattle between two large l)odies of contestants. On an area of not more than ten acres over two bushels of stone arrows and spear points have been picked up, and about five hundred battle axes, many of the latter broken, showing a hand-to-hand encounter, and that " man's inhumanity to man " has had early precedents.

In other parts of the country, at Kingston, Kickapoo and Jubilee, the tillers of the soil will point to the field where the i)low turns up with every furrow the spear, arrow and battle ax.

A half mile below Chillicothe, and thirty rods from the Illinois river, a mound was opened which proved to be a sacrificial mound. It was circular, sixty-six feet in diameter, and six feet high. At the base, twenty inches below the surface of adjoining prairie and resting on the terrace drift, was the altar tablet, formed of water-worn igneous boulders of from four to six pounds, placed compactly side by side on a smooth and level surface. On this tablet was what appeared to be indurated ashes. Tiie amount was estimated at eighty or one hundred tons. In this mass, which the pick would remove no more than the same blow would of solid ice, was found, by the aid of a strong lens, minute crystal of prussiate of jiotash, fragments of carbonized bones, charcoal, gravel and oxide of iron. (For chemical analysis see appendix marked A.) In the center of the mound, three feet below the surface, were two skeletons, one an adult, the other an infant, presumably, mother and child, the latter resting on tlie lap of the former, a covering of clay two inches thick, which had been indurated, covered the skeletons. A rude silver buckle on the upturned forehead, and a perforated steel shuttle on the left side of the head, were all the relics obtained. From the materials which encompassed the bones outside of the clay casket, it is supposed to be an intrusive burial; tliey were coarse sand and gravel, and fragments of fresh water shells, mostly unias. Three other mounds have been opened, one at Peoria and two at Mossville, in tiiis county, each with an infant skeleton lying in the lap of a female. Was the mother sacrifited for her child, or the child for the mother ?

Some idea of the antiquity of this last burial may be formed from the fact that the whole surface of the mound and the adjoining prairie was covered to the depth of twenty inches, with a line black lacustrine deposit ; and like undrifted snow, resting comfortable on the teirace drift.

Other evidences of the antiquity of man was found by Doctor Ziller, of Spring Bay. Sixty-three feet below the surface was discovered, by a land slide, several stone implements. Thirty feet of the upper section was loose and thirty-three feet terrace drift. At the base of the latter, and resting on the boulder drift, was found those singular implements. They are made of chert, four inches long, two inches broad and seveutenths of an inch thick ; pointed at each end ; the sides slightly curved outward, with a rough serrated edge. They must have been left there at the close of the M3'ocene period. Were they transported by ice, the upsetting of a canoe, or by man ? Seven of them are preserved.

Other evidence of the antiquity of the Mound Builders is found in the surface markings of their pottery. The writer has a piece in his cabinet that represents a species of Lepidodeudson simplex, a fern that grew in the upper carboniferous period. It is no accidental resemblance, but line after line is traced with unerring accurac}'.

Of the cave-dwellers but little is known. On section eight in Jubilee township, near a perpetual spring, a large number of subterranean chambers have been explored - most of them have fallen in. That these were the abode of men is proven by the implements found in and about them, consisting of pottery of various patterns, stone spear points, arrows, and battle axes. When the writer surveyed- them as many as twenty of the underground caves were seen. Four miles southeast of this group of earth-houses, on land owned by Mr. Joseph Stewart, a large number are to be seen. They are near a never-fi-eezing spring. The outer chambers in the last group have all fallen in, and they now resemble a long disused coal shaft. On the right bank of the Illinois river, three miles below Rome, a great number of these caves can be found at this time, some of which are stoned up and arched over with water-worn drift boulders of unequal size. Most of these have fallen in, disclosing to the casual observer nothing but a sudden depression of the surface, and a portion of the stone wall. These are also near never-failing springs. On a small terrace-drift prairie four miles above Peoria, one of these caves was opened, and in it was found a skeleton, in a recumbent position, as if he had lain down from exhaustion or disease, to die. Beside the skeleton were the broken bones of some animal, from which the marrow had been scraped by some pointed instrument ; some pieces were scraped from the inside to half their thickness. Arrow jjoints, stone beads, pipes, cooking utensils, made from clay, and pulverized shells were found in this subterranean chamber, with stalies and charred wood. In summing up what little evidence we have brought to light in this country, the cave-dwellers appear to have been an indolent race, with little or no energy, content to live like brutes, and most likely nocturnal in their haVjits.

Origin Of The Prairies

Peoria county is largely prairie. The timber is confined to the bluffs, ravines and river bottoms. Of the origin of prairies nearlj^ as many theories have been advanced as there are writers on the subject. One is, " that a dew drop assuming the form of a lens sets on fire the grass of the prairie." But a dew drop does not assume the form of a lens. The nearest approach is hemispherical, which would have no more burning propertj- than a bubble on the ocean. As well might it be said that the sun shining through the rain drops of a retreating thunder storm produces the lightning. Again, as the grass must necessarily l)e wet when the dew drops are on it, there would be danger of that kind of fire communicating to brooks, streams and rivers, and as a sequence set the ocean on fire, sapping the foundation of dews. If the sun by any means could set the prairie on fire, why are not our grain fields and meadows burned over every year ?

Prairies were made bj' the same creative God that made our coal fields, our stone quarries and our forest grounds; and they were made for the use of man. The lessons that geologists have failed to teach, the husbandman has been swift to learn. Although prairies are of aqueous origin, they are not perfectly level, but have a gentle rolling or undulating surface, on which no surplus water can remain. That tliey are not adapted to the growth of trees, every farmer who has planted an orchard knows ; a larger per cent, dying the first year, and in a few years his orchard is decimated. But although trees grow reluctantly on the prairies, they are and always will he the garden of the world for all other vegetation the climate will peraiit to grow.

Economical Geology

Coal veins four and six, with an aggregate thickness of nine ft-et underlying the entire area of the county, and are above the horizon of tlie Illinois river ; the banks of the Kickapoo and its tributaries, and the bluffs of the Illinois, afford facilities for mining by horizon tunnels.

Building stone of an inferior quality is found in great abundance on the right bank of the Kickapoo. It is a soft ferruginous sandstone, which has been used in building cellars, curbing wells and abutments for bridges ; but it is not reliable on account of the unequal hardness in different parts of the same quarry. Oi limestone there is an inexhaustible amount ; and when burnt it makes a cement, which for strength and durability can not be surpassed in the State. There is also in the town of Rosefield a freshwater limestone that makes an excellent building material, sj)litting out in slabs of an equal thickness, as smooth as if sawed. Where exposed to frost and rain for twenty years and upwards it has stood a better test than the Joliet or silurian limestone. On the south-east of section three, in Logan township, there is a quarry of variegated limestone, which, on being polished, presents a handsomer surface than any of the Vermont marble.

Private Collections

Besides the collections of the Scientific Association noted elsewhere in this work, there are several interesting private collections in Peoria county. The largest of these is that of William Gifford, whose cabinet embraces the following, with other classified fossils :

Lower Silurian, 215 specimens ; Upper Silurian, 115 ; sub-carboniferous, 150 ; coal measure, 290 ; Devonian. 135 ; Cretaceous, 300 ; Tertiary, 210 ; making an aggregate of 1,415 specimens. In addition to these he has an extensive cabinet of minerals and marine and fresh water shells, collected from all part* of the world.

Tlie cabinet of Dr. W. H. Chapman ranks next to iiis in magnitude. The Doctor is a gentleman of superior education, and having a taste for scientific study, has spared neither pains nor money to make his collection perfect.

Miss Emma Smith also has a fine private collection : and is making a .speciality of the study of geology, in which she already ranks high among siientists. Siie has l)een solicited by an Eastern publishing liouse to prepare a prinuiry work on geology, with the hope tliat sucii a work may soon find a place in tiie puliiic sdiools.

Miss Mary E. Stringer, of Kickapoo township, has the nucleus of a ciioice collection; and di.splays remarkable zeal in her pursuit of scientific knowledge.