Clinton County, Indiana - Chapter 2: Description' of the County, 1913

The General Features Streams Climate, Etc., Etc

The county which is the subject of this history lies a little north and west of the geographical center of the state of Indiana, in latitude 40 degrees and 18 minutes north and 86 degrees and 30 minutes west from Greenwich, from which all longitude is reckoned. If you divide the state into three sections by extending horizontal lines through it east and west Clinton county would be found on the northern border of the middle section, thus placing it a little north of the line which would divide the state into a northern and southern portion. It is important to bear in mind the relative position of the county m the state, for this has an important bearing and influence as to the people who first settled the county and composed its early population.

In all the history of civilization and the peopling of new lands from older states or nations, immigration generally has moved 011 parallel ea>t and west lines. Hitherto the movement has been westward; beginning at that spot in the Central Asia table lands, the generally acknowledged cradle of the race, immigration has ever been westward, thence on and on, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, settling first the Atlantic coast at the principal and most desirable points thereon, then crossing the Alleghenies, coming into the great Mississippi Valley, moving on in the same w estward direction, each group of immigrants on its own original line of latitude. There are some exceptions to this law of migration, but as in all such cases the exception proves the rule, being due to special causes.

The people living in the northern tier of counties in Indiana differ as much in stock, character and social qualities from the people of Clinton county, as do the people in the state of Michigan from those in Indiana. The people of the northern part of Indiana and Ohio, came from the New England states, mostly from Connecticut or from northern New York state, a few from

Canada. These generally moving on their own lines of latitude coming from the northern part of the above named states. They imparted their own social, industrial, economic and even racial characteristics to their posterity and the communities of which they form a part.

With regard to immigrants into the southern part of the state the rule here noted is not quite so strongly marked. In this case there was a cross migration; the southern Indiana imigrants coming not only from southern Ohio and the south counties of Pennsylvania and of the eastern states, but there was a prominent movement of population from Virginia, Kentucky and some other states of the south.

The situation of Clinton county, in the central part of the state is mainly the cause of the superior quality of the migration thither, which character, social qualities, aptitudes, traditions, modes of thought and action, thus brought in, contributed and still contributes to make the people of Clinton county, a superior class of American citizens, of which they and their descendants may well be proud. As the state of Indiana is situated about in the center of the Great Middle West, it thereby becomes the dominant state of the widely extended Mississippi Valley, so Clinton county, near the center of the Hoosier state, from the elements of which it is composed, its immigrants, its pioneers, constitute a superior class of people whose qualities were transmitted to the second and third generation, and today, mark the superior character of the people here in Clinton county. Hither came the chivalric Virginian, some of them of Huguenot stock, or of noble ancestry in English families, who could trace their lineage back to William the Conqueror: or it may be, they are decended from the generous, big-hearted, ever kindly disposed Kentuckian, bringing with him his exalted ideas of the true social heritage and cult: or it may be the staid dignified Xew Englander carrying hither the genius of the proverbial wide-awake ubiquitous "Yankee." or the astute, shrewd and vivacious denizen of Connecticut, last but not least, comes the industrious, frugal and generous Pennsylvanian, speaking bis German patois: it may be he is from Lehigh countv from "behind Allentown." or some other vicinage in the Keystone state, none the less renowned for the emigrants it has sent forth: all these came here making up the original stock' of our cosmopolitan population. who brought with them their best social, familv and economic conditions from their former homes as well as their peaceful, industrious characteristics, coalescing and forming a social community or group of settlements and neighborhoods, producing upon the whole, an American citizenship unequaled in all those qualities most needed in the best conditions of social life.

As put in form and given a name and geographical location by an act of the Legislature, Clinton county embraced an extent of 420 square miles, being 24 miles east and west and 17^2 miles north and south. By the concurrent acts of the county commissioners of Clinton county and Howard county, twelve and one-half sections were taken from what was Warren township in Clinton county, and attached to Howard county, forming Honey- Creek township in that county. As local politics had to do with this some what shady transaction, it may be referred to elsewhere in this history. The actual area of Clinton county, is now 40734 square miles. The county is bounded on the north by Carroll and Howard counties; on the east by Howard, Tipton and Hamilton; on the south by Boone county; on the west by Montgomery and Tippecanoe.

Clinton county is bisected into two almost equal parts by the second Principal Meridian. It is from this meridian and a base-line 120 miles south of the south line of the county that all land measurement in the county is taken. That baseline is in the south part of the state, passing through the counties of Knox, Gibson, Pike, Dubois, Crawford, Washington, Floyd and Clark. Both the principal meridian and the base line were established by government surveys. The unit of a government survey in the congressional township and its division into sections; the township is 6 miles square, thus theoretically containing 36 square miles or sections. Owing to the rotundity of the earth, in most townships the sections on the west side thereof are fractional. Parallel with the principal meridian and at 6 mile intervals are range lines, six miles apart, as there are east and west township lines between each tier of townships.

By this plan adopted by the government, Clinton county consists of four ranges : Range 1 west ; 2 west ; 1 east and 2 east. As to the congressional townships, township 20 on the south is fractional, then you have townships 21 and 22 and fractional townships 23. In all legal description of lands, the section is noted, then the tow nships and the range.

The surface of Clinton county may be said to be level, slightlv inclining to the west. Accustomed as we are to the plain, even level of the countv. one can hardly realize that the height of land surface here averages 851 feet above the sea level. Beginning at Scircleville, near the eastern edge of the county, the barometer there shows an elevation of 928 feet, coming west at the city of Frankfort, the elevation is 855 feet. At the western countv boundary line, near the town of Mulberry, it is 775 feet. The land is sufficiently rolling to afford good drainage. There is good outlet drainage for every acre of land in the county, and it is being put to most excellent use. But few counties in the state are more amply supplied with better drains and ditches, or are better drained. From the slope of the land surface westward, the flow of the stream is all in that direction. Of the numerous depressions caused by these streams, but few are very deep, and they are some along the western reaches of the county, in Washington and Madison townships, and a small portion of Ross.

Aiiddle and Killmore Forks of Wild Cat Creek, in the central and northern part of the county; Sugar Creek, in the southern part. All these streams rise in the eastern part of the county. It is evident that at one time, a period not remote, after the glacial age, all the eastern portion of Clinton county was a vast shallow lake, the land all covered with water, which seeking outlets and following the line of least resistance, the streams before mentioned took their rise. From them came Sugar Creek, the South Fork, Middle Fork and Killmore Fork of Wild Cat Creek, and the several affluents which flow into them. These streams named were for a time the principal, or only outlet for the waters of that lake; of these, Killmore Creek was the chief, its head being beyond the eastern county line. All these streams, a lot of smaller rivulets and brooks, all had their origin in that shallow lake which gradually disappeared, that portion drained by Swamp Creek in Forest township, was the last of this lake to disappear. The prolonged existence of that lake, which in its last -tages was broken up into a series of small lakelets, which were afterwards, during the historic period, known simply as swamps, is the cause of the superior fertility of the soil in all the eastern part of the county, which since its proper drainage, is the richest and most fertile land in the county, rivaling the production and fertility of the famous Twelve Mile Prairie, which is considered the best farm land in the state of Indiana.

In former Years, or until quite recently, the streams of the county all afforded water power which generally utilized. Saw mills and grist mills were in use in more than half the townships of the county and did good work. Killmore Creek was thus used at several points. Out northwest of Tefferson the Pence mill did dutv until quite recentlv and its flour and cornmeal had a good name all over the county; on the affluent of the South Fork of Wild Cat for several vears Seagers woolen mill did dutv in the early To's and nearly even- citizen of Frankfort can well remember Bogh's mill on the Rossville road. The almost universal use of steam for power to propel machinery, this reinforced by electric power, has temporarily done away with the water power, but there will again be a revival of that power which distilled in the clouds, supplies water in many of the streams which will again be utilized ; if in no other way, it will be used to develop electricity which is the coming power for all uses. A stock companv already exists in the county ready to develop water power to create electricity, when the demand appears.

In the springs and wells, whose supply of good water lies in the upper strata just below the surface, the water has been abundant and has but seldom failed. But the people have found something better than the water from the shallow wells. The entire county overlies a vast subterranean lake which, when reached by boring and drilling from 80 to ioo feet on an average, affords a most excellent supply of water, differing mainly from that procured from springs and ordinary wells, in that it contains less lime in solution but more magnesia and some iron as well as some other harmless ingredients. The Frankfort W ater Works Company supplies the people of the city from this abundant source. The people think they have the best water in the world; this water drunk from the public fountains around the public square, is always cool, pure and refreshing. As all the underlying strata here dip to the west, the source whence this water in the under lying lake comes is easily determined, The stratum which contains this water in the underground lake dipping to the west, as you go east from here, at a distance of from 40 to 60 miles, that stratum crops out. comes to the surface, where it receives the rain fall, the water following the downward slope of the stratum and percolating through limestone and other rocks, finally comes here spreads out in a vast underground reservoir and at depths as stated can be reached, as it has been by the Water Works Company, and others who bore therefore drilling sufficiently deep. One fact in this connection; not only the surface wells, but those from this underground lake seem to be failing; the water in them standing now at a much lower level than formerly. In many of these once flow ing wells where the water flow ed out on the surface, now the water level is 20 feet or more below the surface. For a time the W^ater Works Company received the water at the surface and pumped it thence out into the mains. Now, new wells have been bored out of which the water is pumped up into a hugh reservoir and thence forced out into the mains. Many wells in the county once flowing are so no longer. Why is this? Three principal reasons explain it. The lands of Clinton county, are now so thoroughly drained that the rain water falling, is at once carried off and not allowed to sink into the ground ; the level of the u'ater in the ground and reservoir below is kept at a lower depth because of the largely increased demand made upon it both by the Water Works Company in the city, and generallv all over the county. Then as a third cause for this subsidence of the water level all over the county, it is thought that but for the rainfall which is yet normal, portions of the land in the Mississippi Valley may in time become semi-arid or even arid.

In Clinton county can be found all the varieties of most excellent soil from the deep rich loam found in the creek bottoms the highly productive black soil rich in humus ; the pliable, easily cultivated clay found on the uplands ; the thinner clay on the knobs ; to that valuable rick, dark soil found on that portion of the county known as the Twelve Mile Prairie, so named because the distance between the eastern boundary and its western boundary was about twelve miles. More than one part of the county is covered by this rich prairie black soil, which after a use of from 75 to 80 years, has as yet required but little fertilizer. W herever you may go in this county, however thin the soil ma}- seem to be on the surface, you will find a stratum of humus or decayed vegetable matter, the one essential ingredient in all soils, sufficient to produce abundant crops for years yet to come. To say nothing of the loams and deep black soils to be found here, which speak for themselves, Clinton county has some of the best clay soils to be found in the state. All this soil needs in order to keep it up to its present high grade of fertility is the use ami application of an agricultural scientific system of rotation of crops, soiling, stock-raising thereon and first class farming processes combined therewith. The soils of the county are adapted to all the grains, grasses, fruits and vegetables known in the temperate zone on the continent.

Outside of the Twelve Mile Prairie and a few other similar tracts, the county was originally well timbered, and here grew poplar, black and white walnut, oak. maple, ash, hickory, elm, and all the trees known in an American native forest, except the non-deciduous trees, none of which naturally grew here except some of the inferior species of cedar. Such was the prodigal, the actually wasteful use of black walnut, that logs which would now be w orth $50.00 each or even more, were split up into fence rails. In some portions of the county there yet remains a fair growth of timber, logs of which find their way to the saw-mills in Frankfort and elsewhere in the county, but few orchards of sugar maple are left. The poplars, from which a very desirable grade of lumber is sawed, have now almost the value of black walnut, but few of them are left, if any. Some land owners, more wise than their neighbors, are permitting a second grow th of timber to grow up, w hich in time will lie very valuable.

As to climate, while the situation of Clinton county is in the central part of the state, there is more than a mere average difference between the climates, especially the average annual temperature of the extreme northern part of the state and the extreme southern part. The average annual temperature in Clinton county, is higher than in the northern tier of counties, and, though subject to frequent sudden changes and a species of semi-tropical weather, in mid-summer the seasons in this county are more equable than in the counties bordering on the Ohio river. The people here are not often subject to the Arctic blast of a rigid New England winter, nor the enervating heat of the Gulf States; in mid-winter a cold, almost polar wave, comes down from the far-famed Medicine Hat, in Canada, occasionally, but its rigidity continues but for a day or two or but a very few days at the most. The average temperature, as shown by the records kept by observers in this vicinity for fifty years past, during the winter months was 32 degrees, Fahrenheit, or exactly at the freezing point. The average number of days in which it rains or snows is but 130; the annual depth of rainfall, now more than formerly, from 41 to 48 inches. March and June are the months of the most rains. The prevailing winds are from the southwest to the northwest, the coldest coming from a point north of northwest. The spring is usually ushered in by a series of south winds. The climate is more of latitude than of elevation above the sea level. The waters of the great northern lakes have much more influence on the climate of Clinton county than do the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Mountain ranges have but little effect upon the climate here; the rainfall is mostly the result of moisture rising in the Gulf of Mexico and passing over this section of the continent into a colder stratum of air; when this moisture becomes condensed it falls as rain. As to climate which is strictly continental and not at all oceanic, Clinton county is fortunate in its position, not subject to extremes existing elsewhere: the climate is in no sense extreme, and is decidedly healthful and invigorating.

In the now more than three-quarters of a century since the earlv settlement of the county perhaps climatic conditions have become somewhat modified. The changes of the seasons have become more sharply defined, the autumn more prolonged as well as the winter season more protracted. The great and wide-spread removal of the immense forest tracts, the actual and unwarranted denudation of our native forests has much to do with this. Unless some reforesting is soon done, we may expect other unwelcome climatic (local) changes.

As to the geology of Clinton county, the opinion might naturally prevail that the geology of the county, all a level plain, is very tame. No great geologic upheavals such as have visited other lands, no convulsions of nature or anything of the kind ever occurred here, and this would lead one to think the subject of Clinton county's geology could quickly be disposed of. But the fact is, not an acre of land in the county exists which has not been subjected to the action of geologic forces in the composition of its soil and subsoil ingredients, its texture and surface indications, not one of the larger creeks or purling brooks that exist today, but was the result of action wrought by geologic forces. Every knoll and other elevation or depression are the result of these same causes. There is scarcely a farm in the county upon some of whose fields a few of those large boulders - the old settlers called them "nigger-heads'' - cannot be seen or could not be found. The appearance of those unsightly rocks here was caused by geologic changes occurring through a long interval which took place ages and ages ago. Those boulders are foreigners, they do not belong here, they are an importation. Whence came they? The geologist can tell you.

Geology informs us that the rocks of the Carboniferous, Reptilian and lower Mammalian ages, which came above the Devonian in the geologic succession, do not underlie Clinton county, except some of the lower Carboniferous in the western part of the county. The reason is that most of these geologic formations are deposits from a widespread ocean, as it is evident from the fossils of fishes and other marine animals found in them. As upheavals of the earth's surface occurred, existing strata would be lifted above the surface of the water and the deposits on them would cease. The Allegheny mountain system was presumably formed by successive upheavals which increased tlte slope of the strata west of it, gradually lifting above the ocean level, and the strata under Clinton county came above the surface at the close of the Devonian age. Hence, the formation above the rocks of that period belong to the surface action of the glacial and succeeding periods. When, in this county, a wTell or hole is drilled below the upper soil, the first rocks struck by the drill are the Devonian, divided as the geologists divide them into four groups of the old red sandstone formation. When this formation is reached we find the first fossiliferous strata underlying the surface of this county. Below that the drill will strike and pass through the various limestone formations which do not crop out here but do at Delphi, Logansport and all along the Wabash river. The Carboniferous strata and the strata just above it, in which the fossils of the Reptilian geologic period are found, are entirely missing in the underlying strata of Clinton county.

But the absence of these stratas is amply recompensed, except the loss of the Carboniferous - the coal measures - by the upper series of the Tertiary and the Quarternary. Of the last named we have underlying the top soil, the Glacial, the Champlain, and the recent formations which constitute the great wealth of the soil immediately above them. All the soil except the surface soil is formed by the disintegration, the breaking up and crumbling of rocks. The sand we find in many places in the county is but crushed or ground sandstone. No stratified rocks appear here as in other parts of the state where the valuable Niagara limestone and the Trenton limestone appears. In some of the streams, even in Prairie Creek, where the hard, tough clay crops out, you can see the beginning of the process of stratification, but this beginning is yet too soft to show more than the rudiments of the work of rock stratification. For this, you must look elsewhere. No fossils are found in this county except such as are imported or brought down in the drift, and no metallic strata can be found here. There can be seen, however, some specimens of bog iron ore in low wet grounds, all a modern formation, even going on now where the conditions are favorable for the deposits of ferreous particles which exist in waters charged therewith. On some low lands north of Jefferson, you can find the best specimens of bog iron ore in the county. Some can also be seen in some of the low lands about the swamps and creeks of Forest and Johnson townships. It is of little or no value, as bog iron ore. even when found in abundance, can be used only as a sort of flux to mix with more solid and harder ores in smelting.

Geologists name all land surface after the principal unlerlying formations. The surface of this country is thus named. Conceive a line to be drawn commencing at the north boundarv of the county, at a point just north of Sedalia, imagine that line to extend slightly east by south, mainly south till it intersects the Boone county line near Scotland church, on Sugar Creek; all land territory east of that line embracing Ivirklin, Sugar Creek, Johnson, Forest, Warren and nearly all of Michigan townships, is in what is known as the Devonian geologic formation, so named because this stratum system is very conspicuous in the county of Devonshire, England. All west of that line belongs to the lower Carboniferous group, which underlies a portion of the west part of the county and crops out in the counties west of Clinton. This series underlies the coal measures. Hence, there can be no coal in Clinton county; if there were, or if there ever was any, it would have to be 75 or 100 feet above us, up in the air. We know then that the east portion of the country is geologically speaking, Devonian and the western part Subcarboniferous. As you go west from the county, you first enter a shallow stratum of sandstone in Montgomery county, then the Carboniferous or coal fields. The strata here all dip toward the west, or rather the southwest. If coal ever did exist in Clinton county, it was all swept away and lost by denudation. The strata we are now on are all geologically below the coal measures.

Then entire county is all underlaid by a tenacious clay; this is overlaid in many places by what is known as the drift, sand, gravel, pebbles, small water worn rocks, all brought down in this drift. But generally, immediately above the clay is the soil overtopped by the rich humus which is composed of decayed vegetable matter, the result of hundreds of years of vegetation growing in successive years, falling down, decaying and so changed in texture and form as to become a dark rich mould, this is the rich surface soil of the Twelve Mile Prairie, giving the soil its peculiar rich color and is the source of its great fertility.

The drift referred to, is so conspicuous here, and having wrought such important changes in the surface, contour of the land, its soil, the creeks and other streams that it is worthy of special mention. The drift, or more properly the Glacial Drift, Geological Epoch, the period immediately preceding the advent of man on the globe, thousands of years ago, possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago, forms a most interesting branch of geologic study. At the beginning of the epoch, under the name of the glacial period or ice age, a remarkable climatic change temporarily occurred, followed by a distinguished geological episode in the history of the northern hemisphere. This change of temperature affected all higher latitudes on this continent. All North America was buried under snow and ice extending south to 40 degrees north latitude. A vast ice sheet or huge glacier was formed, which was the origin, the home of the drift. This immense ice sheet not only gathered up rocks, pebbles, stones, gravel and sand where formed, but in its movement south, which was slow but regular, it gathered up whatever it caught on the earth's surface, so that the materials in this drift were foreign to the place where the glacier dropped them. The glacial deposits increase in thickness, number and variety as you go north. Possibly the roughest deposit left by glacial action found in the United States is to be seen north and west of Lake Superior. As you come south from that point the debris left is finer and less grand or forbidding in appearance. This ice-sheet overspread all northern Indiana and w as pushed on down to about the 39th degree of north latitude. Bv that time it had all melted and had spent its force as a debris-carrying power. As it passed over Clinton county it eroded the existing hills, scraped the lesser elevations, pushed farther south before it great masses of rock materials which it had gathered up in its progress; but most of all was dropped out of its slowly melting mass, not only the boulders you now see here, but vast masses of pebbles, gravel, sand, broken rock, nearly all of w hich do not naturally belong here. The history of this huge glacier and its action may be told in short. It was formed in the icy north, a region much colder then than now, was pushed down from the north by its own growth at its upper end or head, till, coming so far south, by the action of the semi-tropical sun's heat, the icy mass melted, thus releasing the sand, gravel, rocks big and little and other materials embraced in its icy grasp. The southern limit of this line south of which the ice-sheet did not go or pass, though somewhat irregular in shape, runs south of a tier of counties in which Owen, Monroe, Brown and Bartholomew are located. The boulders alluded to were brought down by this glacial action. Most of them you see here had their home north and west of Lake Superior. In some localities the rocks and other debris was left by the ice melting, dropping its burden in some apparent order or line of rocks. This line can be distinctly seen and is known as a moraine.

As a striking feature of glacial action, something must now be said of these moraines, of which there is one striking example to be seen in the western part of the county, mainly in Washington township and a part of Madison. There you can see a ridge of foreign granitoid, metamorphic and conglomerate rocks, sometimes in a succession of scattered piles covering acres of ground. This spot is known as Stony Prairie.

Moraine, as a geologic term, means a line of rocks and gravel both deposited by a glacial action. There are two kinds of these rock deposits or scattered moraines, known as lateral and terminal moraines. If the rocks were left along the edge of a descending glacier, melting as it passed slowly south in its course, that is a lateral moraine. As the glacier proceeds on its course, rocks and other debris are thrown oft" from its sides, leaving a disjointed row of rocks, as can be plainly seen in various parts of the state and in Clinton county, that is a lateral moraine. If one glacier or two meeting together, melt at the terminus, dropping a part of its rocky burden here and there, always at the terminal point of the glacier, or of two or more glaciers, that is a terminal moraine. Stony Prairie is a terminal moraine which extends somewhat northwest from Clinton county into Tippecanoe. Glaciers approaching Indiana came from two directions, north and west. This moraine in Washington township comes from the northwest. Manv rocks of different kinds were dropped in this particular spot, which is well known not only by the early settlers, but by every one in the western part of the county. Stony Prairie and its ridges of rock piles are known by all.

This drift is not likely to furnish any precious metals, but it has a great value to our people in furnishing gravel for road making, and clav which could be used with advantage in potteries and brick making; also, it is the principal supply of drinking and potable water, as nearly all the surface wells and springs are in the drift. In Clinton county the drift varies in thickness from 70 to 95 feet. In sinking wells and digging and boring through the drift, the various strata are found to be built up of alternate beds of sand, gravel and compact clay, generally in the following order :

First, the humus or top soil ; then sub-soil, clay and gravel ; next sand with water. The first water seam is usually in sand. Formerly nearly all the wells were in this stratum ; now most wells go down farther through compact blue clay into gravel and sand, where the second water seam is struck. Beyond this the driven well borers go on down through gravel and sand again into the third water seam. By this time they have struck the Devonian stone strata which underlies all the county.

While the land surface of Clinton county appears to present but few evidences of former geologic phenomena, yet it does present a wide and varied field for a certain class of geologic, static and active operation, which at one epoch of this planet's history was predominant and wrought great changes in the earth's surface in Clinton county. Not only were the numerous deposits of sand and gravel to be seen the result of glacial action, but the beds of the principal streams were formed by the same action, as were the elevations and depressions. In fact, the entire land surface of the county as you now see it was left as it now is by glacial action.

We have seen why no coal could be found in Clinton county - because the land surface of the county is far below, geologically, the carboniferous strata. For a different reason there are no gold bearing rocks or gold bearing sand or gravel in riv er beds. Xo quartz gold can be found here because there is no quartz. Gold found in sand and gravel is the result of glacial or hydraulic action. If by the latter, gold may be found in some streams where gold has been deposited or where rock bearing gold has been disintegrated, the dissolved rock washed away leaving the gold. If by glacial action deposits of sand and gravel have been brought down from a gold bearing region in a glacier. In such cases gold is found only in terminal moraines, where the ice melting dropped its load in which particle*? of gold had been originallv caught in the regions whence the glacier started. Gold found in gravel or sand deposits is known as placer gold. Such is the gold found in Brown county, this state, because there the south or progressing end of the glacier melted away, the gold having been caught up and held from a gold bearing region and pushed down in the debris in which it was caught and carried down and finally released as the terminal of the glacier melted away. Xo such condition existed here. Should the ice cap passing over this region have contained gold, which would not likely be in nuggets but in flakes, it

Natural gas being classed as a mineral, a history of the county would not be complete as to geology without some reference thereto. Though not exactly in the gas belt, but barely in the edge of it, natural gas was obtained and utilized in a portion of the southeastern part of the county. Beginning at a point about midway in the eastern county line, starting a curve line, then dropping first west, thence south to the Boone county line, near Kirklin, all the territory included in that arc of a circle was natural gas territory; the gas therefrom for a time was used for domestic purposes. Of course, there is no natural gas in use in the countv today.

The soil in the creek bottoms is richer than elsewhere, not merely because the vegetation growing there was more rank, but because much of the top soil and humus it contained was washed down from the higher lands, which, mixing with the sand of the river bottoms, produces a loam capable of producing abundant crops for a number of years without the use of any fertilizer. Should the waters of spring freshets overflow these bottoms year after year, as thev do some of the Wabash bottoms, so much the better. That soil's fertilitv is inexhaustible. Why are the apparent beds of most streams or bottom lands here far less wide than thev evidentlv were formerlv? For this, go back to the final melting away of the ice cap of the glacial epoch, when an immense spread or mass of water was released. At the close of that period, all the northern hemisphere of this continent was an immense inland sea. Following the law of seeking the line of lea^t resistance, the water naturally sought the lower levels. The beds of all the lakes and many river beds had been scooped out bv glacial action. The latter became the principal streams, into which the tributaries and laterals flowed, the water always seeking the lowest level. These streams, becoming the drainage of the great mass of water then to be removed, were very large, carrying away a vast amount of water, washing out and lowering their channels, which then became much wider than they are now. At one point in Tippecanoe county, where the least of the Wild Cat branches flows, the now small stream passes through a half-mile cut in the land, which rises up to exactly the same level on either side, showing that once the Middle Fork was a raging torrent, a huge river cutting its own way through a level plain. The same condition exists all over Clinton county. Once the creeks were rivers ; the branches and brooks, large creeks.

Along with this brief sketch of the geological features of Clinton county, in allusion to the great ice age, the glacial epoch, of which we have been speaking. it might be well to inquire if that great cataclysm, for such it was, was productive of ill or good. The Creator of the Universe was fitting up the planet for the abode of man. All these great changes, geological, climatic or otherwise wrought upon the earth's surface, have been greatly productive of good, of beneficent helpfulness to the human race and all living things thereon for whom the earth was fitted as man's abode.

Of many features of the ice age, the placing here of the drift and the changes wrought by and in that epoch, but one will be alluded to, because it is practical and is closely connected with an important question. All over this country, in every state of the Union, the question of good roads is now before the public as it never was before. Previous to the ice age, probably the state of Indiana was a level plain just as Illinois was. Now it so happens that the glacial drift coming down from the north and that portion of it which was dropped down in Clinton county contained much (along with the poor) most excellent gravel for roads.

All gravel is found in the drift of which mention has been made - the deeper the drift the better the gravel: that is. the greater the depth of this drift, the more likely there is good gravel in it. At the highest elevation in Clinton county, near the southeast corner, the drift is 300 feet deep. In many heaps of earth, soil or clay, along with the rest will be found good gravel for the making of roads. Such is the case in this county. The principal gravel deposits in this county are found in the bluffs, terraces, banks and flood plains of Killmore and Wild Cat creeks, the flood plains of Campbells Run, Potato and Sugar creek. Nearly all these have gravel pits. Some gravel has been found on the upper portions of Prairie creek, where no one ever thought of gravel. Some gravel pits are found in small mound-like elevations: in fact, wherever you see an elevation on a plain conspicuous above the surrounding ground, there you will be apt to find a gravel bed, and it may turn out to be a good one.

Good sand for plastering and other purposes can he found in abundance. For road building purposes the gravel in Clinton county in amount is not quite up to the average of that in the other counties in the state, though it is better than that in Tipton county. In quality it averages by analysis 6 clay. 15G fine medium sand, 18% medium sand, 20 % coarse sand, 26 U good roofing, 13 gravel and ij4% gravel and boulders. The rock averages 78% limestone, 11% crystalline rock gravel, 7% shale, 1.5% chert and 1% sandstone.

Speaking of limestone gravel, in the early settlement of the county gravel was taken- from the pit, the stones sifted out and roasted on a log heap; thereby fair lime for plastering and other purposes was procured.

These gravel deposits seem to be pretty well distributed all over the county. Taking the north half of the county, embracing the full congressional townships of 22 north and part of township 23, in ranges 1 and 2 east and 1 and 2 west, embracing the civil townships of Ross, Owen, Warren, Forest and the north parts of Madison, Union, Michigan and Johnson, in that part of the county there are numerous deposits, some of which are superior gravel for road purposes. The numerous low bluffs and beaches on Campbell's Run, the principal affluent of Middle Fork, in the northwest part of the county, all seem to contain these gravel deposits.

The only trouble is that the deposits are often lying adjacent to the beds of the creek and subject to overflow every spring. The western parts of Ross and Madison townships are rich in gravel beds, accessible at all times. In Madison township, in section 3, is a fine bed of gravel. In Michigan township, on Killmore, are some fine pits already opened; one in Warren; a region of considerable size in Forest, and in Union, north of Frankfort, are several fine workable beds far above the water level. In the south part of the county, in Washington, Center, Perry and Kirklin townships, there are open gravel pits. In Jackson and Sugar Creek there are several places that have good gravel underlying them. Such indications in Perry appear in every section, besides open pits on Potato creek. South Jackson has a lot of undeveloped gravel territory: more than half the sections show this good gravel land as yet undeveloped. All northern parts of Kirklin and Sugar Creek are good gravel territory, undisturbed as yet by pick or spade. No roads were built and improved until the year 1S80. Of the public roads in the county - about 1,000 miles - 900 miles, or 90 O. are well improved, all with gravel, few as yet with crushed stone, though it is contemplated as soon as the railroad rate is reduced to justify it.

The average original cost per mile of good graveled roads in this county is a little more than $1,200 a mile. The total original cost of the improved roads in the county exceeds $i,ooo.oco. After new roads become somewhat settled, the annual cost of repairs is about $55 a mile. The principal extended lines of gravel roads were built under the law by which the owner of real estate benefited paid the cost. Under the easy provisions of the "three mile law," as it is called, many of the short crossroads connecting main lines have recently been well improved, the expense thereof defrayed by tax on the property of the township in which the short line of road is situated.