Cass County, Indiana - Chapter 2: Geography, 1913

Cass county is situated in the north central part of the. state and lies between the 40th and 41st parallel of north latitude. It is bounded on the east by Miami county, on the north by Fulton and Pulaski, on the west by White and Carroll, and on the south by Carroll and Howard. It is twenty-four miles long on the east side by twenty-two miles wide on the north end. On the west side and south end the boundary line follows an irregular course; commencing at the northwest corner of the county it runs south twelve miles ; thence east three miles ; thence south three miles; thence east eight miles; thence south nine miles; thence east eleven miles and includes within its limits 420 square miles or 268,- 800 acres, of which 256,174 acres are reported for taxation, leaving 12,- 624 acres included in lakes, rivers, and non-taxable area.

Cass county is watered and drained by the Wabash and Eel rivers, both of considerable size and constant streams, together with numerous creeks and rivulets.

The Wabash river runs from east to west through the center of the county, while Eel river runs from northeast to southwest, and empties into the Wabash at, Logansport near the center of the county. Twelve Mile, Spring creek. Tick creek, and Horney creek flow from the north into Eel river ; Cottonwood and Crooked creeks flow from the north into the Wabash river; Blue Grass and Indian creeks in the northern part of the county flow northwest into the Tippecanoe river. South of the rivers we have Pipe creek in the eastern part of the county, flowing northwest into the Wabash.

Also Minnow creek. Keeps creek, and Prairie branch flow north into the Wabash river in the central and western part of the county, while Kock creek and Deer creek flow from east to west in the southern part of the county and empty into the Wabash in Carroll county.

Lake Cicott, Cass county's only lake, is situated in the western portion of the county and is about a mile in length and one-fourth mile wide and is beautifully situated, being surrounded by high sand banks on all sides except to the east, its natural putlet into an adjoining marsh. It thus appears like a sparkling gem in the sand hills of Jefferson township. The lake has a depth of about 65 feet and sun, eat, pike, and other species of fish are found in its waters.

In the early settlement of the county there was quite a body of water known as Twin lake, situated in sections 28 and 33, Bethlehem township, consisting of two lakes connected by a narrow strait. The length of the two lakes was nearly a mile and about one-quarter of a mile in width and was supplied with several species of fish, but the contiguous land owners thought more of fertile lands than lakes of water, and in the drainage of the surrounding county the lake gave up its waters to advancing civilization, was completely drained, and now what was once the bed of this little lake is converted into a beautiful meadow.

Cass county is divided into fourteen civil townships, to wit : Adams, Bethlehem, Harrison, Boone, Jefferson, Noble, and Clay townships lying north of the rivers, Miami township between the rivers. Eel township, including the city of Logansport, lies between and on both sides of the Wabash and Eel rivers at their junction, and Clinton, Deer Creek, Jackson, Tipton, and Washington townships lie south of the Wabash river.

Cass county was originally covered with heavy timber of oak, walnut, poplar, beech, hickory, ash, elm, sycamore, and other woods, but these primeval forests have given way to the ax of the pioneer, and today only here and there may be seen small groves of original forest trees.

The writer well remembers when such valuable woods as black walnut and yellow poplar were ruthlessly cut down, rolled into log heaps and burned up in order to clear and prepare the land for the farmer's plow. If those giant trees had been left standing until this day and age, they could be sold for many times the value of the land which they occupied, even at the present high price of farms in Cass county which range from $100.00 to $250.00 per acre. The bottom land along the river has a rich loamy, alluvial soil and is very productive. The townships south of the river are generally level with a black alluvial soil well adapted to com, oats, and hay. That section lying north of the Wabash, as a rule, is more undulating and hilly, and the soil is a sandy loam better adapted to wheat The principal products are com, wheat, oats, timothy, clover, and potatoes, with all kinds of fruits and vegetables adapted to a temperate climate.

Large numbers of sheep, hogs, cattle, and horses are also raised by our prosperous farmers. Of recent years, the increased demand for poultry, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables have prompted many of our farmers to devote their entire time and attention to these productions.

According to a recent report the average com crop of Cass county was 55 bushels per acre, which is larger than any other county in the state.

Geologists divide the time that has been earth to its present state of perfection into eye is known by certain kinds of rocks containing f< each geologic age can be known and definitely asce rocks out-crop or can be examined.

The rocks out-cropping in Cass county belong to and lower Devonian age as shown by the fossil remains quarries and out-cropping ledges along our rivers and enumerate the various fossil remains in these rocks would place in a work of this character.

Cass county and all Indiana was once an inland sea in the ages of the past and the rocW underlying this county were formed the bottom of this sea. These solid beds of limestone underlie the of Cass county, but covered over with drift from a few feet to tw« hundred and fifty feet deep, deposited thereon during the Glacial period of geologic history. Far northward, the mountains of Canada were covered with snow -and year by year a boreal temperature was creeping southward on account of the withdrawal of the deep seas and. great changes in the climatic controlling currents. These great glaciers moved southward bearing sand, gravel, boulders, clay and deposited the same all over the state. The advancing anjd receding of these glaciers with their burdens of conglomerated till or drift at diflferent periods of geologic time completely covered the underlying strata of limestone, and giving us the varied soil and strata of sand, gravel and boulders found in different parts of our county.

Moraines consist of large masses of debris shoved forward by the glacier or melted out of it along its front, thus forming the hills and ridges found in Jefferson, Noble, Clay, Adams and Miami townships.

After the melting of the glaciers and the deposit of the drift the water washed channels in it, thus forming our rivers and leaving the underlying rocks out-cropping along their banks.

In the vicinity of Logansport and west, including the quarries at Georgetown, the rocks belong to the Upper Helderberg group of the Devonian age. The lowest member of this group, the Schoharie grit, is only seen on Deer creek in Jackson township. The next member in descending order of the geological scale is the Waterlime formation of the Lower Helderberg, which out-crops in the bed of Pipe creek at Pipe Creek falls, in Tipton township. Below the Waterlime strata comes the Niagara limestone in the channel of Pipe creek in the bed of the Wabash river, east of Cass, at Cedar island, immediately south of the old Keeport lime kilns in Miami township, and at Miller's falls, west of Lewisburg. Because of the general dip to the west, the Niagara stone disappears under the bed of the Wabash before it reaches Logansport.

All the rocky strata of the county lie as they were deposited at the bottom of the ocean, other than the changes wrought by continental upheavals that made the interior of North America dry land.

The general dip is to the west, a few degrees south. This is true of the entire Wabash valley, and in fact of the whole state. Some sections in different parts of the county are given below.

The concretions seen in the quarry vary in size from that of a hulled walnut to that of one's fist, and are cemented together by a greenishwhite material that weathers black.

Sections of Wm. Talbott 's quarry, three miles west of Logansport on the south side of the state line division of the Pennsylvania railroad in Eel township:

The bottom of this quarry shows an arenacious limestone stratum. No fossils, except some obscure casts were seen here, in fact, this is true of all equivalent exposures of this rock in the county. This stone lies horizontally bedded in every out-crop, except one, that at Georgetown, where it has a slight dip to the west. A few rods south of this quarry in a gravel pit, limestone boulders were seen corresponding lithologically with the stone at Talbott and Parker's limekiln quarries and these boulders, no doubt, were derived from stone that capped the quarry before the glacial action removed it.

Below the farm house and just west of Fitch's Glen the dove colored stone has thinned to fifteen feet as shown in the perpendicular face of the bluflf; but the buflf stone, owing to its softness, was covered in the greater part by soil of the slope. The thickness of the latter is here estimated at thirty feet. Fitch's Glen, one of the most romantic views in the county shows the cutting and wearing processes of the water or the geologic forces making a narrow gorge in the limestone as well as the glacial drift above, through which runs a small rivulet.

This so far as seen is the best building stone in the county. The iron contained in it being thoroughly oxidized, it is not aflEected by atmospheric changes.

On the bank of Pipe creek in the rear of the schoolhouse there is a twenty foot exposure of unstratified buflf stone with sand holes and miniature caves in it.

Sections at Miller *s falls, one mile west of Lewisburg, Miami township: Rough-bedded gray limestone, containing Stromatopora and Favosites 12 feet 0 inches

This little stream occupies a preglacial channel that starts north from the Wabash river opposite the mouth of the Mississinewa, above Peru and rans in a western direction to about a mile west of Waverly, then turns south and intersects the Wabash river a half mile west of Lewisburg.

This stone is referred to the Niagara group on lithological grounds, alone, as no fossils could be found. The dip is five degrees west and the strata seems to thicken rapidly in the same direction. At Keeports limekiln a mile or so to the north this stone underlies the Devonian and can be traced one half mile east along the Wabash railroad where it disappears dipping to the east. West from Keeports it dips at about the same rate along the river until it finally disappears under the bed of the Wabash.

This stone is very hard. At the bottom of the bore, colored slate was struck which was probably the Niagara shale which is often found underlying the Upper Helderberg Group of Devonian Age. Crinoidal remains and many coral were found in the upper members of this section but too poorly preserved to be identified.

This bed of gravel outcrops for two miles along the bank of Big Indian creek, in the northern part of the township. Section of well in Royal Center, Boone township :

The south half of Boone and the northeastern parts of Jefferson townships are traversed by parallel sand ridges varying in height from ten to thirty feet. The sand is yellow and the ridges have a general trend from northeast to southwest and are evidently the remains of the great glacial moraines.

Ten feet of gravel was exposed here but' it evidently extends much deeper. In Clay township the soil has a depth of from one to ten feet under which lies ten to twenty feet of gray hard pan clay with sand partings. Along the hills are numerous springs where the sand partings of the hard pan come to the surface.

David Englin in digging a well at Walton reports that at a depth of seven feet the earth sounded hollow and on breaking through the crust a never failing supply of water was found.

The general level of the water in Cass county has been gradually lowered during the past 40 years owing to the general drainage of the land. Formerly surface wells were dug to a depth of only 10 to 30 feet and an abundance of water was found, but since the county has been so thoroughly drained the water rapidly flows off after each rain, instead of settling into the earth and former, old wells, are drying up and our farmers have to sink wells to a depth of 50 to 150 feet into the deep glacial gravels.

Puring the natural gas excitement in 1887 to '90 several wells were sunk in different parts of Cass county but no gas was obtained. The gas, according to the best geologists, is generated in the Trenton limestone which is a porous rock of the Lower Silurian age. It is supposed to be formed from animal remains that were enmeshed in the formation of the Trenton limestone many millions of years ago, and where there was impervious super-strata of rocks the gas remained and could be tapped by boring, but where the rocks above were cracked by geological upheavals or seismic disturbances, the gas escaped and none would be found by sinking wells into the Trenton limestone, as was the case in Cass county.

No gas was found but a flow of water was obtained which has some medicinal virtues. All the other wells struck salt water in the Trenton limestone.

Wells were drilled on Toledo street, near the Pennsylvania railroad shops, near Morgan hill, Washington township, at Galveston, Walton and Royal Center, but all were failures. The wells at Royal Center produced a good quality of mineral oil but not in sufficient quantity to pay for the expense of drilling although two or three barrels of oil flowed daily from the wells for sometime.

Metea, Bethlehem township, highest point in the county over 800 feet. This is the highest point in the county and the waters flow northwest through Blue Grass into the Tippecanoe river, southeast into Twelve Mile and Spring Creeks thence into Eel river and southwest to Crooked Creek and the Wabash river.