Madison County, Indiana - Chapter 1: Physical Features, Geology, Etc, 1914

Location, Boundaries and Area op the County - Principal Water- Courses - General Character op the Surface - Underlying Rocks of the Upper Silurian and Devonian Periods - Pendleton Sand- Stone - Niagara Limestone - Quarries - The Glacial Drift - The¬ ory of Glaciers - Moraines - Gravel Beds - Natural Gas - Petro¬ leum - The Alexandria Oil Field - The Primitive Forests - Mineral Spring.

Madison county is situated a little northeast of the center of the state, being bounded on the north by Grant county; on the east by Delaware and Henry; on the south by Hancock, and on the west by Tipton and Hamilton. The fortieth parallel of latitude crosses the county about two and a half miles north of the southern boundary and the eighty-sixth meridian of longitude lies six miles west of the western boundary. The county contains four miles of Range 6, all of Range 7, and five miles of Range 8, east; one mile of Township 17, all of Town¬ ships 18, 19, 20 and 21, and five miles of Township 22, north. This gives it a width of fifteen miles from east to west, a length of thirty miles from north to south and an area of 450 square miles.

White river, the most important stream in the county, crosses the eastern boundary about one and a half miles northeast of Chesterfield, follows a general westerly direction and crosses the western boundary not far from the village of Perkinsville. Its length in the county is not far from twenty miles.

Fall creek enters the county from the east, about five miles north of the southeast corner, flows a southwesterly course through the town¬ ships of Adams, Fall Creek and Green, and enters Hamilton county near the southwest corner of the last named township. Its principal tributary in Madison county is Lick creek, which rises in Henry county and runs westwardly through the southern part of Madison, emptying into Fall creek near the Hamilton county line. Sly Fork, another tributary, has its source in Union township. After flowing southward for about four miles it turns west and finally discharges its waters into Fall creek some two miles east of Ovid. Prairie creek, a little stream about eight miles in length, flows southwest through Anderson and

Fall Creek townships, deriving its name from the fact that it drains the prairie lying between the cities of Anderson and Pendleton. It empties into Pall creek a short distance above the falls.

Next in importance after Fall creek is Pipe creek, which rises in Delaware county, crosses the eastern boundary of Madison about three miles south of the northeast corner, then flows a southwesterly direction past Alexandria and Frankton and enters Hamilton county about one mile north of Perkinsville. It takes its name from the Indian chief known as ' 4 Captain Pipe." Its principal tributaries are Little Pipe, Mud and Lilly creeks. Little Pipe creek has its source in the southern part of Section 28, Township 21, Range 6, in Monroe township. Its course is northwest for its entire length (about four miles), until it empties into the main stream just south of Alexandria. Mud creek, whose name indicates its character, rises in Grant county, follows a general southwesterly course through Van Buren township, past Summitville, touches the southeast corner of Boone township, then turns more toward the south and continues its course through Monroe township, emptying into Pipe creek about a mile west of Alexandria. Lilly creek rises in Boone township and follows a course a little west of south until its waters fall into Pipe creek, about four miles northeast of Frankton. Its total length is about eight miles.

Duck creek rises in Boone township, about two miles from the Grant county line, and flows west into Duck Creek township, where it turns toward the southwest, running past Elwood and entering Tipton county not far from the Hamilton county line. Little Duck creek, about six miles in length, rises in the northern part of Pipe Creek township and flows southwest, uniting with the main stream two miles south of Elwood.

Killbuck creek (sometimes written Kill Buck), so called for a noted chief of the Delaware tribe, rises in Delaware county, enters Madison near the northeast corner of Richland township, then flows southwest until it empties into the White river near the northern limit of the city of Anderson. Little Killbuck begins in Monroe township, unites with the old canal in Section 18, Township 20, Range 8, not far from the old village of Prosperity, and from this point runs south, emptying into the Big Killbuck near the southern line of Richland township.

Mill creek rises in Union township, not far from the source of Sly Fork, but flows in an opposite direction and empties into the White river near Chesterfield. It is only about two miles long.

Stony creek rises in Jackson township, flows southwest past Fishersburg and enters Hamilton county a short distance south of that village. It is about ten miles in length and takes its name from the stones abounding in its bed. The lower portion of its course is through Stony Creek township, which derives its name from the stream.

Indian creek rises near the northeast corner of La Fayette town¬ ship, flows west and empties into the White river in Jackson township, near the village of Halford.

Sand creek, formerly called Mud branch, rises in the southern part of Stony Creek township, flows southwest across the corner of Green township and enters Hamilton county about a mile south of the Pendle¬ ton and Noblesville pike. It is about seven miles long.

Other streams are WinselUs branch, which is about four miles long and empties into Fall creek near Huntsville; Foster's branch, which rises in Jackson township, flows across the northwest corner of Fall Creek township, thence south through Green township and falls into Fall creek three miles below Pendleton; and Green's branch, which empties into the White river near the city of Anderson. Winsell's branch derives its name from Adam Winsell, a blacksmith, who was a member of the first court of Madison county, serving as associate judge from 1823 to 1830, while Judges Wick and Eggleston occupied the bench of the circuit court.

These water-courses provide reasonably good natural drainage for all parts of the county and this natural drainage has been supple¬ mented by a system of ditches which has done much to bring the land under cultivation and render the soil more productive.

That portion of the county lying south of the Big Four railroad, and drained by Fall creek and its tributaries, has an undulating sur¬ face, with hills of moderate size along Fall creek and the White river. These elevations generally consist of beds of bowlders and gravel and bear unmistakable evidence of glacial action. This is especially true of a belt ranging from three to four miles in width, extending from the Lick creek valley, three miles southwest of Pendleton, in a north¬ easterly direction along the south side of the tract called the prairie, crossing the White river near Anderson and following the valley of the Killbuck creek to the Delaware county line. The northern portion of the county is more level and it is in this section that artificial drainage by means of ditches has been resorted to most extensively.

State Geologist Collett, in his report for the year 1884, says: ''The greater part of Madison county is covered with a deep deposit of glacial drift, but the few streams which cut through it and reveal the rock in place, indicate that the eastern and northern parts of the county rest on rocks of the Upper* Silurian age, but in the southwestern corner, embracing Green, and parts of Fall Creek and Stony Creek townships, the underlying rock is Devonian. The falls of Fall creek, at Pendleton, furnish the boldest and most remarkable outcrop of rock in the county. The ledge forming the cataract is composed of heavily stratified sandstone of a peculiar structure. It consists entirely of quartz crystals of pretty uniform size and but feebly held together, sometimes by a cement of peroxide of iron, but more frequently by no visible force, and therefore much disposed to crumble; yet it has a wonderful power to resist the action of w r ater. The ledge over which the water falls at Pendleton has scarcely undergone any change since the white man first became acquainted with it, sixty years ago.''

Six years before Professor Collett made this report, E. T. Cox, at that time the state geologist, took measurements at Pendleton, concern¬ ing which he says: "We have the following section extending from the bed of Fall creek to the top of the drift, all belonging to the Corniferous epoch:

The Pendleton sandstone may be had in blocks five feet in thickness. When first quarried it is soft, but hardens upon exposure to the atmos¬ phere and "has a good reputation as a building stone, both for beauty and durability." W r hen the Indianapolis Glass Works first started the deposits at Pendleton furnished the sand and proved to be well adapted to the manufacture of glass, but the stone has never been extensively used for that purpose. Geologists seem to differ with regard to the place this sandstone occupies in the geologic scale. Specimens were sent to James Hall, state geologist of New York, who says: "My own con¬ victions are that it is the equivalent of our own Schoharie Grit, being the western prolongation of beds that are generally well developed in Canada West, but making no conspicuous figure in the geology. Sev¬ eral of the fossils are identical with those of our own Schoharie Grit," etc. Dana and other eastern geologists have located the Oriskany sand¬ stone in exactly the position occupied by the Pendleton deposits, and Collett was inclined to the opinion that the sandstone at the falls of Fall creek belongs to that formation.

W. S. Blatchley, who was state geologist for several years in the early part of the present century, appears to have devoted more atten¬ tion to the geology of Madison county than any of his predecessors. In his report for 1905 he says: "Three geologic periods are represented in the surface rocks of this county - the Niagara limestone of the Silurian, the Pendleton sandstone of the Devonian, and the glacial drift of the Pleistocene."

After a thorough investigation of the subject, Mr. Blatchley reached the conclusion that for limestone the county ranks among the first in the state, both in quantity and quality. The Niagara limestone outcrops at numerous places in the beds of the water-courses. It shows at three points on the south bank of Fall creek in the town of Pendleton - at the lower edge of the town, at the foot of the falls, and on a knoll about two hundred yards below the fall. On Foster's branch, four miles below Pendleton, is an outcrop of Niagara limestone of the hard, gray variety. Collett noticed this outcrop in 1884 and classed the stone as Corniferous. He described it as a "compact, crystalline limestone, which will prove a durable material for foundations, cellar walls, etc." One and a half miles northeast of Ingalls sixty acres on the farm of David Y. Miller were found to be underlain with limestone and a stone crushing plant was erected there in 1905 to prepare material for road building. In his report for 1878 Cox mentions a quarry on the farm of William Crim, located on the bank of the White river, about two miles west of the courthouse in Anderson. Upon examining this quarry he found "as many as eleven workable layers of stone, varying from four to twelve inches in thickness." ,

In the western part of the city of Alexandria is a macadam plant erected for the purpose of utilizing a deposit of some fifteen acres, the stone having all the essential qualities of good road material. Another quarry is that known as Daniel Abbott's, located in Section 33, Town¬ ship 21, Range 7, near the southeast corner of Pipe Creek township. Other places where the Niagara limestone is quarried are near Frankton, on Pipe creek, and in the vicinity of Pendleton.

Probably no phenomena have proven more perplexing to students of geology than those which brought about the destruction of vast beds of rock and the distribution of their fragmentary remains over large areas of territory far from their original location. For example, the large bowlders found all over Indiana, commonly called " niggerheads/ ' are of a granitoid character, belonging to beds that are nowhere represented in the state, and must have come from some place beyond her borders. Various theories have been advanced to account for these conditions, the most prominent of which, and the one most generally accepted by scientists, is the glacial theory. The glacial epoch, or Pleistocene period of geologic time, sometimes called the "Ice Age," comprises the earliest part of the Quaternary * period. During the latter part of the Tertiary period, preceding, there was a gradual lower¬ ing of temperature throughout the north temperate zone until the entire surface was covered with large bodies of ice, called glaciers. These glaciers were formed by periodical or intermittent snows. During the period of rest between those falls of snow, that which had already fallen became compacted by pressure until the whole mass was converted into one solid body.

The pressure upon the yielding mass of snow imparted motion to the glacier, which carried with it rocks and other mineral matter. This grinding and equalizing work of the glaciers in time effected a material change in the topography and meteorological conditions of the earth. Not only were mountain peaks worn down and the general leveling of the land brought about, but vast quantities of earth and sand were carried forward by the streams of water formed by the melting ice and flowing beneath the glaciers and deposited in the ocean. In this way the shores of the continent were pushed forward during a period of several centuries and the superficial area of the land was materially increased.

In general, the course of the North American glaciers was toward the south. One of them extended over Canada and the northeastern part of the United States, reaching from the Atlantic ocean on the east to the Missouri river on the west, covering the entire basin of the Great Lakes. When the ice melted, the rocks and other debris carried along by the glacier were left to form what is known as the glacial drift, also called till, bowlder clay and older diluvium.

The accumulation of earth and stone carried by the glacier was sometimes heaped up along the margin, where it formed a ridge or deposit called a lateral moraine. When two glaciers came together, the deposit formed at the point of conjunction is called a medial moraine; the more level deposit under the body of the glacier is known as the ground moraine, and that at the edge of the glacier is called a terminal moraine. The valley of the Ohio river was the terminus of the glacier that once covered Madison county and the channel of that stream owes its origin to the melting of the ice and the flow of water which always underlies the bed of a glacier. As the melting process proceeded, the terminal margin withdrew to the north, and wherever there remained undestroyed rock barriers or dams they gave direction to the waters of the terminal moraines. In this way the course of the Wabash river and the two forks of the White river were determined, or modified, centuries before Columbus discovered the New World.

The rate at which the glaciers moved rarely exceeded one foot per day. As it glided along the bowlders at the bottom left marks or scratches on the bed rock, and from these marks or striae the geologist has been able to determine with reasonable accuracy the course of the glacier, by noting the direction of the striae.

In some portions of North America the lateral moraines rise to a height of from 500 to 1,000 feet. The terminal moraine in northern Indiana, that marks the southern boundary of the Great Lake basin, contains several mounds that are from 150 to 200 feet in height. In Madison county the drift has been more uniformly deposited, though there are abundant evidences of glacial action. Collett, in the report al¬ ready alluded to, says:

4 'The ice age has left distinct foot-prints on the southeastern sec¬ tion of Madison county. A line drawn from near the northeast corner of Richland township to Anderson and continued in the same direc¬ tion down the valley of Prairie creek by Pendleton to the southern line of the county, will traverse a region of valleys of erosion between hills of washed gravel deposited by currents from beneath the dissolving glacier, while the finer and lighter materials were carried forward to form the clay surface of the counties south. The most distinct remains of a lateral moraine that I have seen anywhere is in the piles of gravel and bowlders that skirt the southeastern side of the glacial river bed which stretches from White river to Fall creek in what is now known as the Prairie. This valley of erosion has an average width of about a mile and is some thirty feet below the general level of the country, while the gravel along the southeast side is piled up from forty to fifty feet high. The valley crosses Fall creek and continues somewhat nar¬ rowed to Lick creek near the Hancock county line. At the point of crossing Fall creek bowlders of granite, gneiss and trap rock are pro¬ fusely distributed over several hundred acres of land .''

Southeast of this eroded valley are gravel hills and the soil in that section is usually of a sandy loam. North and west of it the gravel beds are rare and near the northern boundary of the county entirely disappear, though gravel is sometimes found where there is nothing on the surface to indicate its presence. In his report for 1905 the state geologist devotes considerable space to the road building materials of the state and on a map of Madison county shows the deposits of gravel that have been developed. Two of these are in the western part of Duck Creek township; one in the northwestern part of Boone; one near Alexandria, and one two miles farther west, in Monroe township; three in the southeastern part of Pipe Creek; two in the northeastern and two in the southwestern part of Richland; one near White river, in Jackson township, and another on Pipe creek, four miles farther north; five in Union township; four in Anderson, not far from the city and three farther south; three in Green; five in Fall Creek and five in Adams. The map also shows the location of several gravel beds that at that time had not been opened.

No account of the geology of the county would be complete without some mention of oil and natural gas, both of which have been found within the county limits. Natural gas is described as "a member of the paraffin series (hydrocarbons), a combination of carbon and hydro¬ gen, about 60 per cent as heavy as air and highly inflammable." It is composed chiefly of marsh gas, or methane, the gas fields in Ohio and Indiana having been formed by the decomposition of animal matter, while the Pennsylvania field is composed of decayed vegetation. The decomposition, or chemical change, that generated the gas is believed to have taken place at comparatively low temperatures within the por¬ ous rocks of the Lower Silurian formation, the rocks serving as reser¬ voirs for the gas.

Natural gas was probably first used in connection with the Delphic oracles, about 1000 B. C., and it has been used for centuries by the Chinese in the evaporation of salt water. It was first used in the United States in 1821, when a well one and a half inches in diameter and twenty-seven feet deep was drilled near a 4 'gas spring" at Fredonia, New York, and the gas used for lighting the streets. In 1838 its presence was noticed at Findlay, Ohio, and three years later it was found in a well at Charleston, West Virginia. While developing the oil fields of Pennsylvania, in 1860, the gas was used under the boilers instead of coal, but the first systematic use of it as a fuel was at Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1868. On March 14, 1886, the first gas well in Indiana "blew in" at Portland, where it was struck in the Trenton limestone. The second well was opened at Eaton, Delaware county, in September, 1886, and the third was sunk at Kokomo, gas being struck in October of that year.

Little was known of the Trenton limestone prior to 1884, except from the outcrops in Canada and some parts of the United States. In that year gas was struck at Findlay, Ohio, which marked the beginning of an era of prosperity for that city and led to the investigations in Indiana, with the results above mentioned.

In Madison county, the first gas well was sunk on the farm of Samuel Cassell, at Alexandria, early in 1887. On the evening of Janu¬ ary 25, 1887, a meeting was held at the courthouse in Anderson for the purpose of organizing a natural gas company. Some work had been done about a week before that time and the names of forty of the rep¬ resentative citizens had been signed to articles of association for a stock company with a capital of $20,000, the organization of which was completed at the meeting of the 25th. Drilling was soon after¬ ward commenced on a piece of land donated by John Hickey, imme¬ diately south of the Midland railroad station and not far from Meridian street, where gas was struck in the Trenton limestone at a depth of 847 feet on the morning of March 31, 1887. This was the second well in the county and the first at or near the city of Anderson. A further account of the development of the natural gas field of the county will be found in the chapter on Finance and Industries.

The original rock pressure throughout the Indiana gas field was from 300 to 325 pounds to the square inch and the supply appeared to be inexhaustible. This belief was so prevalent that the gas was used in the most wasteful and extravagant manner. In 1893 the Indiana legislature passed an act prohibiting the waste of gas and oil, but it was a case of locking the door after the horse had been stolen. So much had already been wasted that it was evident a few years more would witness the failure of the accumulated supply and that centuries would probably have to elapse before another could be formed in the porous rock, if indeed a new Supply could ever be generated by natural processes.

Petroleum, kerosene, or coal oil, is a natural rock oil, composed of hydrocarbons and classed with asphalt and natural gas as a bitumen. It was known to the ancients and during the days of the Roman empire was obtained from Sicily and burned in lamps. 'The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company was organized in 1854, but it was not until five years later that oil was struck in paying quantities in the western part of the state. Then fortunes were made in a comparatively short time and the excitement became widespread. Prospecting for oil was car¬ ried on in various parts of the country, but most of them ended in fail¬ ure and the few wells yielding oil were poor payers and were soon abandoned. In 1885 the Lima, Ohio, field was developed and in that year the production in the United States was about twenty-two million barrels.

The first successful attempt to develop an oil field in high pressure gas territory was near Alexandria, Madison county, in the spring of 1897. About the beginning of that year the Northern Ohio Oil Com¬ pany secured a lease upon the farm of Nimrod Carver, about two miles northeast of the city of Alexandria, and on April 20, 1897, the first oil well in the county came in with a flow of eight hundred barrels daily. Oil operators flocked to the new field and high prices were paid for leases upon lands in the vicinity of the Carver farm. Between that time and March 4,1898, seventy-five wells were drilled in the Alexandria field. Of these, forty yielded both oil and gas, thirty-three proved to be gas wells only, and two were dry. In 1900 the output from this field was about sixty thousand barrels. During the next year a number of new wells were drilled, but most of them were light producers - about thirty barrels each per day. Of ninety-four wells drilled in Monroe township, thirty-nine were dry; one on section 3 produced forty bar¬ rels daily at the start, and one on section 7 had an initial flow of one hundred barrels. Two wells on the J. M. Hughes farm in section 10 showed ninety and one hundred and fifty barrels respectively at the be¬ ginning, but this yield soon fell off. Of the ten wells drilled in Richland township only four were producers. One started at seventy-five barrels and one on the Fuller farm in section 6 yielded one hundred barrels. At the close of the year the wells on the Hughes and Fuller farms were the only ones in operation. From this time on interest in the Alex- andria waned and in 1908 operations were practically at a standstill. Only two wells were sunk in that year, both on section 22, in Monroe township, and they yielded but five and ten barrels respectively. The total shipment of oil from the field in 1908 was only one hundred and eight barrels.

When the first white men came to what is now Madison county they found a large part of the surface covered with a heavy growth of tim¬ ber. The principal varieties of forest trees were yellow and white poplar; white, burr, red and black oak; black and white walnut; wild cherry; white, red and slippery elm; white, blue and black ash; shellbark and pignut hickory; sycamore; several varieties of maple; honey locust; beech, sassafras and basswood. Some cottonwood grew along the courses of the streams and there were g, few minor species, such as hackberry, mulberry, ironwood, buckeye, etc. At that time the soil was of more value for cultivation than the timber, and many trees were cut down and burned that, if they were standing today, would be worth more than the land upon which they grew. Then no thought of a timber famine entered the minds of the pioneers. Far away to the westward stretched the boundless forest and to the frontiersman it seemed, if he gave it a thought, that there would be timber for the use of the people for generations to come. Now, though less than a century has passed, the conservation of American forests is an engrossing subject. Possibly much of the timber might have been saved, but would the people of the present day act differently under the same conditions? Perhaps not.

While making his investigations in Madison county in 1878, State Geologist Cox noticed several * 4 bold, running springs of chalybeate water '' at the base of the bluff near what is now Mounds Park, about three miles above Anderson, on the White river. In his report for that year he gives the following analysis of the water from this spring:

* 4 Bold running spring; cold and clear; strong inky taste; bubbles up through sand; no appearance of escaping gases; decidedly alkaline reaction.

The analysis further disclosed the fact that the amount of gas in an imperial gallon was 13.580 per cent, and the amount of free carbonic acid was 6.473 per cent. Concerning the results of the analysis, Mr. Cox says: 4 ' This is a very, pure calcic chalybeate water, a fine tonic and alterative, and is admirable for persons laboring under general debility and dyspepsia. The location is all that could be desired for a watering-place and resort."

From the foregoing it may be seen that while Madison county has no peculiar or startling geological formations, it is well supplied with mineral resources in the way of stone and road building materials; that during the era of natural gas and oil it was one of the largest pro¬ ducing counties in the state; that the glacial drift has given to the county a fertile soil; that it has one of the finest mineral springs in central Indiana, and that its streams and ditches afford ample drain¬ age to render the county one of the most productive and healthful in the state.