Vermilion County, Illinois - Chapter 13: Physical Features of Vermilion County, 1911

Topography Drainage Relief Prairies Ridges Valleys Geology

Vermilion County is located on the eastern border of Illinois about half way between the northern and southern boundary of the state. It is rectangular in shape being 22 miles in width, and 42 miles in length, embracing 880 square miles, or 562,200 acres of land. It lies between the parallels of latitude 40° to 41° north and in longitude 87° to 88° west.

The most of it lies within the so-called "Danville Quadrangle" which extends but one and one half miles beyond the eastern boundary of the county. Vermilion County is drained by tributaries of the Wabash river, which in turn drain into the Ohio river, and thence into the Mississippi river. The Vermilion river drains the entire territory of Vermilion County, with the exception of a small part in the south and east borders. When it is said that the Vermilion river drains the entire county, no account is made of the separate forks, but it is assumed that the Vermilion river includes all the North Fork, the Middle Fork, and the Salt Fork.

The Salt Fork of the Big Vermilion river runs through the center of the county, while the Middle Fork, which runs more to the northwest, joins it and forms the Big Vermilion proper. The North Fork runs from the north and northeast and empties into the main stream at where Danville is located. The Little Vermilion flows easterly through the southern part of the county. In its beginning this stream is little more than a prairie drain, but as it flows on down, it grows of more importance. When the early settlers first came they found from one to three miles of timber lining the bank. Both Middle and South Forks had much timber along their banks for a dozen miles above their union in the Big Vermilion, but toward their source there were never more than scattering groves. There are high banks and bluffs along the streams after they enter the timber, with bottoms wider where they have cut through the softer beds of rock, and narrower where they have encountered the harder sandstone. The surface of the county is quite diversified.

The prairies or level surface of the county is relieved by ridges which rise above the general level and river valleys cut into the plain. Prairies are prominent south and west of the Vermilion river, and east as far north as Danville A small area of prairie is to be found in the vicinity of Batestown and Hillery, and to the north and west of there the surface extends into a broad expanse of prairie.

'A low, broad ridge crosses the prairie from the northeast to the southwest. The elevation is ninety degrees above the prairie in the vicinity of Danville. As seen from the south this ridge is prominent, but from the north it appears nearly on prairie level. The valleys, carved by the Vermilion river and its forks cross both prairie and ridge. These valleys have destroyed valuable farming lands and prove barriers to transportation, but on the other hand have opened excellent geological sections in which are shown beds of coal which makes this region important economically. These valleys are generally broad, but as observed above, sometimes swell into broad amphitheaters a mile or more in width where they have cut through the softer beds of rock. These valleys vary in depth from 50 ft. to 100 ft. with steep walls sometimes precipitous. The prairies have a black, dense, mucky soil, of variable depth, underlaid in some case by a tough brown-clay subsoil. It is admirably adapted to cultivation and is but little affected by wet weather, or drought. Good supplies of water are obtained at from fifteen to fifty feet. The northwest part of the county is included in the famous artesian region of Eastern Illinois, and wells sunk in this part of Vermilion County yield a never-failing supply of water at a depth of thirty to one hundred feet.

Rocks in the soil seldom appear at the surface. They are generally so deeply covered with clay and sand that their presence is not appreciated. Only drilling will reveal them. South of the latitude of Danville, rocks may be seen in bluffs along streams, in almost perpendicular cliffs of shale or shaly sandstone. These perpendicular cliffs often reveal coal beds. The entire rock series belong to a portion of the geologic column known as Carboniferous system. Beneath the coal bearing rocks are the heavy beds of limestone. The coal bearing rocks occupy a broad, shallow, syncline, the center of which is some distance southwest of Danville. The Rock formation have a very gentle dip southwesterly toward the center of the basin.

The history of this rock formation is easily read in these bluffs. After the carboniferous rocks were deposited in some body of water, the crust of the earth was raised in the Appalachian region, and this area became dry land. In this condition it was subjected to the varying vicissitudes of a land surface for many geological periods, but there is little to show the changes through which it passes. Before the advent of the great ice sheet this section was reduced to a gently rolling country with a relief of less than 200 ft. with broad valleys and gentle slopes, whose typography resembled that of southern Indiana beyond the limit of glacial ice. That there was not one ice advance but several is proven in the presence of Moraines, or massive ridges of drift built up by the ice at its margin. These ridges recur at frequent intervals as in passing north from extreme edge of given sheets of drift, and marks places of halting, and perhaps of readvance which interrupted the melting away of the ice field.

The Morainic ridges have in some cases been formed in rapid succession and constitute a Morainic system. In Illinois there is a decided tendency to such grouping of Morainic ridges. The sheet of drift formed by each of the ice invasions, the soils and weathered zones, formed between the drift sheets and the Moraines, and morainic systems, of each drift sheet, have received geographic names from the locations where they are well displayed, in conformity with the prevailing custom of naming the indurated rock formation. Vermilion County belongs to the Illinoian drift sheet which extends, apparently to the glacial boundary in western Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois and forms the eastern border of the driftless area in southern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois. This area extends but a few miles west of the Mississippi river. In this region it apparently composes the basal portion of the drift. Beside its geological location in the Illinois glacial lobe, Vermilion County is also known as a part of the Champaign Morianic system. This system includes a series of small drift ridges that are ill defined the nearer they approach the Danville Quadrangle. It is doubtful if the oscillations of the ice front were of great consequence in this region. It is believed that several systems did not have rhythmic development, the halts seem to have been irregular.

All the rocks at the surface in this region belong to coal measures. Vermilion County is but a very small port of the famous Indiana and Illinois coal field and it does not, in its entirety, belong to this coal field. It is but the extreme northwest border of the coal field. The coal production of Vermilion County will receive due attention in another chapter of this volume.

In about 1886 a notion became popular that oil could be found in the vicinity of Danville, and two attempts were made to discover that source of wealth. Two wells were sunk, and although no oil was discovered these two occasions of deep drilling furnished information upon which to base an idea of the geologic formation of this region. Records were kept, and have been preserved, as follows :

Bridge Across The Vermilion River Near Danville Highest Bridge In Illinois

Some years ago the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History at Champaign, Illinois, issued a bulletin giving a list of altitudes in the state. From this publication a correct idea of almost every point in Vermilion County can be obtained. This result of a complete and careful survey of Vermilion County can be had as follows :

Bixby, at elevation of 730, Blount at one of 75, Blue Grass at 703, Charity at 760, Glenburn at 600, Henrietta at 690, Higginsville at 630, Hope at 740. Mis- sion Fields at 607, Pilot at 730, Snider at 680, and Vernal at 670, were all observed by I. J. Stoddard, the other observations made by him were as follows :

By the above record it is seen that the highest point in Vermilion County is at Sec. 32, T. 23N., R. I3\V., and the lowest is at Grape Creek, where it is but 538 feet above the level of the sea while at Danville it is but 59 feet higher. At Charity the elevation but 10 feet lower than at the highest point and at Hope it is not much less since it is 740 feet.

Vermilion County is not subject to extremes of weather as is found in some sections. There are some instances on record, however, of extremes which bear notice. One of these is the deep snow of the winter of 1830-31, which gave this season the reputation of being one of great severity, and occasioned much suffering. This snow, however, did not all fall at once but was the accumulation of many falling the one on top of the preceding one. These were repeated over and over again without any melting of the snow until the ground was so completely hidden that there was great suffering in consequence. The cattle could not receive the care needed and hundreds died in consequence. This was the winter in which the elder Partlow died and his sons became so discouraged that they went back to Kentucky. The deer were driven away to seek food or were starved in such great numbers that they were never so plenty in this region. Another extreme of weather is recorded in the "cold Tuesday" of December 16, 1836. Enoch Kingsbury wrote a letter, sometime in the fifties, telling his remembrance of that day which has been preserved and is hereby given entire.

"The weather on Monday, December 16, 1836, was quite warm and fast softening the heavy snow. On Tuesday it began to rain before day and continued until four in the afternoon, at which time the ground was covered with water and melting snow. All the small streams were very full and the large ones rapidly rising.

"At this crisis there arose a large and tumultuous looking cloud in the west, with a rumbling noise. On its approach everything congealed. In less than five minutes it changed a warm atmosphere to one of intense cold, and flowing water to ice. One says that he started his horse into a gallop in the mud and water and on going a quarter of a mile, he was bounding over ice and frozen ground. Another says that in an hour after the change he passed over a stream of two feet deep on ice, which actually froze solid to the bottom and remained so until Spring. The North Fork where it was rapid and so full of water as to overflow its bottoms, froze over so solid that night that horses crossed the next morning, and it was thus with all the streams.

"Mr. Alvin Gilbert, with his men, was crossing the prairie from Bicknells (about where Rossville is located now) to Sugar Creek, with a large drove of hogs. Before the cloud came over them the hogs and horses showed the greatest alarm and an apprehension of danger. As it actually came upon them, the hogs refusing to go any further, began to pile themselves in one vast heap as their best defense on the open prairie. During the night half a dozen of them perished, and those on the outside were so frozen they had to be cut loose. About twelve others died on their way to Chicago in consequence of their being badly frozen, while many others lost large pieces of their flesh.

"Mr. Gilbert and his men rode five or six miles distant, all of them having fingers, toes or ears frozen, and the harness so frozen that it could not be unhitched from the wagon, and scarcely from the horses.

"Two men riding across the same prairie a little further to the west, came to a stream so wide and deep they could not cross it. The dreary night came on, and after exercising in vain, they killed one horse, rolled his back to the wind, took out his entrails, and thrust in their hands and feet, while they lay upon them. And so they would have used the other horse, but for the loss of their knife. Mr. Frame, the younger and more thinly clad, froze to death, before morning. The other mounted the other horse and rode over the ice for five miles but was badly frozen before he reached a house.

"How general the change was is not known, but the Illinois river, as two men in a boat were crossing it, froze in and they exercised to save their lives until the ice was thick enough to bear them up. The dog that was with them froze to death. Another evidence of unusual weather is recorded in about the same year, as the time the trees were all killed by unexpected extreme cold in the spring. The same thing occurred in 1910, seventy-five years afterward. It is, of course, only a ^coincident that it is at the date of the return of the Halley's comet. Another extreme of cold was in the sixties at the first of January.