Lincoln County, Missouri - Chapter 1: Location, Topography, Geology, Etc, 1888

Chapter 1: Location, Topography, Geology, Etc

Lincoln County, Mo., is located in the east central part of the State, and occupies portions of Townships 48, 49, 50 and 51 north, and Ranges 1, 2 and 3 east and west of the fifth principal meridian. It is bounded on the north by Pike County, on the east by the Mississippi River which separates it from Calhoun County in Illinois, on the south by St. Charles and Warren Counties, and on the west by Montgomery County, and has an area of 620 square miles or 396,148 acres. The 39th degree of north latitude passes through its center, and its isothermal line is 56, which passes through the mouth of the Potomac River, giving the same mean degree of temperature as that point on the Atlantic coast, which is intersected by the 38th degree of latitude.

The topography presents some striking features. Along the Mississippi River is a bottom prairie averaging about three miles, or perhaps a little more, in width. This is bounded on the west by rock bluffs which vary from 50 to 200 feet in elevation. In some places the bluffs are marked for considerable distances with a perpendicular wall of limestone rock varying from a few feet to 100 feet in height. These bluffs are cut in several places by narrow valleys through which flow the streams that lie east of the dividing ridge. This main ridge is nearly parallel with the Mississippi River, and from eight to twelve miles distant and from three to ten miles from the *Cuivre River on its west. The eastern half of the county has an uneven surface with ridges rising in places more than a hundred feet above the adjacent valleys, generally parallel to the dividing ridge, and in the northeast is a ridge of knobs running north and south, and from 300 to 400 feet high. From many points the landscape scenery is very beautiful. The western half of the county is mostly high rolling prairie, cut through in several places with the streams tributary to the Cuivre. The prairie land comprises from one-fourth to one-third of the area of the county, the balance being timbered. To the lover of romance and beautiful and changeable scenery the eastern portion of the county is preferable, but for agricultural purposes and good roads for driving, the western portion far surpasses. One may travel from Auburn to Whiteside, thence to Louisville, thence to Olney, and thence by way of Millwood to Silex, and be all the way in an excellent agricultural country with a gently rolling surface, with the exception of a few valleys on the route with some broken land along their margins. There is also some quite level country lying between Troy and the western boundary of the county.

The county is drained on the east by the Mississippi and s6me of its tributaries, the principal ones being Bryant's, Big Sandy, McLean's and Bob's Creeks, and the Cuivre River, which forms a portion of the southern boundary of the county. All that part of the county lying west of the dividing ridge before mentioned is drained by the Cuivre and its tributaries. This river is formed by the flowing together of Sulphur Fork, Sandy Fork, and other small streams in the northwestern corner of the county, in Waverly Township. It then flows in a southerly direction to the mouth of Big Creek at the southern boundary of the county, and thence north of east on a very tortuous line on the county boundary to the Mississippi. The tributaries of the Cuivre on the east, or rather the northeast side, are Mill Creek, Fork Branch, Sugar Creek and other small streams, and the principal tributaries on the opposite side are Null Creek, Lead Creek, West Cuivre, Spring, Crooked and Big Creeks. The latter has many tributaries and is the principal drainage for Clark Township. From the point where it crosses the fifth principal meridian to its confluence with the Cuivre it forms the southern boundary of the county. Upon the whole the county is well drained, especially the uplands, but the river bottoms are subject to frequent overflows. In June last the Mississippi bottom previously described was overflowed in some places all the way from the river to the bluffs, and in other places from the river to points from a quarter to a half mile from the bluffs. From all of this overflowed territory the cattle grazing thereon had to be driven to the uplands for safety and allowed to consume the grass in the meadows, thus occasioning a scarcity of hay for the season in that part of the county. The bottoms along the Cuivre were also overflowed, and thousands of acres of corn along this and the Mississippi were "scalded out" by the long standing of the water.

The smaller streams are not subject to much overflow, and the bottom lands along the Mississippi and Cuivre can be saved from overflow by proper levees which, in the course of time, will be constructed. By observing the course of the water courses it will be seen that the county has a general trend toward the south and southeast. There are many valuable springs of water adjacent to the streams, the most noted one of which is the "public spring " in the city of Troy. By these springs the irst settlers built their cabins, but as the country developed they abandoned the springs in many instances, built their new residences on the arid uplands, where they made cisterns to hold rain-water for family use. There are also many wells in the county, as water is easily obtained at a convenient depth by digging, but cistern water is almost universally preferred for family use. Stock water in abundance is obtained from the streams and artificial ponds, which are supplied with water by the rain fall.

Before the settlement of the county, and for a number of years afterward, the water in nearly all of the streams flowed constantly throughout the year, and in several places grist and saw mills were erected on sites where the water power was sufficient to run them. Since the face of the country has been changed by clearing and cultivating it the constant supply of water, especially in the smaller streams, has ceased, and during the summer season they become dry with the exception of standing pools of water here and there, while in the wet seasons they frequently overflow their banks. In many places on the high prairies, before the land was cultivated, and while it was covered with the native grasses, there were beautiful pools or ponds of clear water which never went dry, and which were stocked with fish; but after the original sods were broken, and the tall native grasses became extinct, these pools became dry, and their beds are now under cultivation. The Cuivre River was first navigated by steamboats in the summer of 1844, when the "Bee," a small stern-wheel boat of seventy-five tons burthen, went up as far as the mouth of Big Creek. Soon after, during the high water in June, the "Pearl," of 125 tons, passed over the dam half a mile beyond Moscow, and returned. During that summer the back water from the Mississippi extended over the mill-dam at Moscow. Since that time and before the building of the St. Louis, Keokuk & Northwestern Bailway, steamboats, for several months nearly every summer, plied up the Cuivre to the mouth of Big Creek.

Timber

Tire timbers comprise all the serviceable woods except pine and poplar. Lincoln is the best timbered county in North Missouri. In it are found oak, walnut, cherry, ash, maple, birch, hickory, linden, cottonwood, sycamore, locust, elm, pecan, hackberry, mulberry, willow, coffeetree, cedar, catalpa, ironwood, dogwood, hornbeam, box-elder, sassafras, persimmon and some others, showing an excellent variety for domestic, farm and manufacturing purposes. Of the eighteen species of oak found in this State more than a dozen are here; of hickory, six; locust, maple, sycamore and elm, three each; walnut, two, and so on. This list embraces all that is required in nearly the whole range of manufactures, including, as it does, an admirable variety of hard, soft and finishing woods, and the supply may be said to be practically inexhaustible.

The walnut, however, of large size, has been mostly exhausted. The sycamore, elm, soft maple, linden, hackberry, birch and willow grow principally on the bottoms along the streams. The walnuts, cherry, ash, hickory, cottonwood, locust, cedar, dogwood, hornbeam and some other varieties grow principally on the hill bides bordering the valleys, and some of the more level uplands are covered mostly with oak and hickory. The oak in some variety is found in all places where the timber grows. All the timber of the county, though some of it attains to a great thickness, has a short and more or less scrubby growth. In length it will not compare with that of the Eastern States.

The great bulk of timber suitable for lumber that has been cut from the forests of Lincoln county, has been shipped out of it in the shape of "saw logs," instead of in the shape of lumber. Thousands upon thousands of walnut, sycamore, oak and other valuable timbers have been floated from the Cuivre and its tributaries to the Mississippi, and thence rafted to market in the cities below. The first raft of logs taken out of the Cuivre was by Lewis Castleman and Harrison Munday, in 1828, started half a mile above Chain of Rock. This afterward grew to be a great industry and is still continued, and yet the supply is not exhausted, except as to walnut.

When the county was first settled there was no underbrush or small timber such as now exists. The timbered lands were open, the trees standing so far apart that the hunters could see the deer at distances from one to five hundred yards. The entire surface of the cguntry was then covered with a rank growth of vegetation, consisting of the native grasses and wild flowers, which gave to the landscape, especially in the timbered lands, a much more beautiful appearance than it now has. Annually, after this rank growth of vegetation became frosted, dead and dry, the Indians set fire to it, and burned it from the entire surface of the country. This they did to destroy the places of concealment for the wild game, the better to enable them to secure their prey. This burning of the decaying vegetation destroyed the germs or sprouts, and thus prevented the growth of young timber. This practice was continued a few years after the first settlers located, and it was sometimes with the greatest difficulty that they saved their buildings and fences from being consumed. When the grasses were set on fire the long line of blaze, the flames of which encircled the tree tops, swept over the country with great rapidity and produced a sound like the roaring of distant thunder. When this annual burning ceased, the germs of underbrush and young timber began to grow, and the surface of the timbered lands, where they have not been cleared, are now covered with a dense growth of young timber and bushes. The supply of this young or " second growth timber, "as it is sometimes called, is so abundant that it is believed that there is as much wood in the country as when first settled, though the acreage of timbered land is much less. The young timber is scarcely yet large enough for lumber, but much of it will do for rails.

Economical Geology

The minerals of Lincoln County are almost entirely undeveloped. In the southwest part of the county coal is found to the thickness of twenty-seven feet, the layers containing cannel, bituminous and block coals. An analysis of cannel coal from this mine by the chemist of the State Geological Board, exhibits : water 1.15, volatile matter 41.25, fixed carbon 49.60, ash 8. Several shafts have been sunk, but owing to want of transportation facilities, only enough coal has been mined to supply local demand. A good quality of coal is also found in the southeastern part of the county. Iron ore, mostly the red hematite, exists in many places, though no attempt has been made to utilize it, and its supply is a matter of conjecture. It is of excellent quality, as its analysis shows: insoluble siliceous matter 4.10, peroxide of iron 92.32, and the per cent of metallic iron 66.72. Abundant and excellent building stone is obtained in nearly every neighborhood of the county. Over a large area of the northern and northeastern parts Trenton limestone is found in layers from ten to twenty-five inches thick. It is light yellowish gray or drab in color, fine crystalline, very hard and compact, with smooth conchoidal fracture and susceptible of a fine polish, in many cases resembling a marble. In the southeast is the St. Louis limestone, hard, fine crystalline, and of a light blue and drab color. Over the remainder of the county are the Eucrinital and Archimides limestones. The latter is fine crystalline, firm in texture, and bluish-gray in color. The sills and cap-stones of the county jail are of this kind. Of the Eucrinital the coarse gray and buff colored is well adapted for ordinary masonry, an seen in the basement story of the Planters Hotel in Troy, while the purer white crystalline makes a handsomfc and durable ornamental building stone. Fire rock is plentifully obtained from the impure magnesian beds of the Hudson limestone in the northeastern parts of the county. Superior lime can be made in every section of the county. There are many beds of nearly pure carbonate of lime in the varieties of limestone mentioned above. In several places is found a hydraulic limestone of from four to six feet thick. It is capable of making a fair article of hydraulic cement, as its analysis shows : silica 21.35, peroxide of iron 1.79, lime 42.14, magnesia 0.66, carbonic acid 34.14. These limestones are not used except to supply local demand. Good fire clay is found with most of the coal beds. Good potter's clay exists in several places ; also white clay suitable for whitewash. None of these clays are utilized. For several years a potter's kiln was run, turning out excellent ware, but its owner went off during the war, and no one conversant with the business has since visited the spot. In several places are immense deposits of the very finest glass sand. The analysis is : silica 99.55r alumina 0.33, iron, a trace, lime 0.08, water 0.015. Want of facilities for transportation prevents the working of the beds.

There are several small caves in the county occurring in the upper beds of the Trenton limestone, which are often very cavernous. On Sulphur Fork of Cuivre, in Waverly Township, there is a cave and Natural Bridge, to which parties often resort for pleasure. This is among the most interesting features of Lincoln County. It is situated on the old J. S. Wilson farm - Section 15, Township 51, Range 2, west. At this point the right bank of Sandy Fork, with a north and south trend, raises an abrupt limestone cliff, and then slopes westward to a hollow. The Natural Bridge, as it is called, connects this hollow and the creek. This archway is in length about 125 feet, and has an average width of some twelve feet, though its walls are quite irregular. Toward the center the walls, all at once, contract, thus cutting the bridge into two rooms, leaving just space for a man to pass from one to the other. The ceiling of the rooms is apparently one large, flat rock, extending the entire 125 feet. The first room is entered by a large sink in the hollow, some fifteen feet deep, which brings one to the floor of the room. This part of the opening has a height of twenty-two feet. Passing over this rocky and slightly declining floor to the second room, there is a sudden precipitation of the floor of about sixteen feet, making the height of this department thirty-eight feet. The bridge is inaccessible from the east, as it opens immediately into the creek. On the creek side and some yards below the bridge, is a large hole, 10x12 feet high, in the rocky wall, which may be reached by climbing over stone and washed-out debris. Soon after entering the passage divides. The left hand divide gradually diminishes till it terminates some seventy feet back; the right hand divide, starting with a width of ten feet, and a height of seven feet, reduces its height to about three and one-half feet, when it suddenly expands to its former height and opens into the southeast upper corner of the second room of the bridge, where one may contemplate the pleasure of falling a distance of thirty-five feet.

At the W. B. Sitton place, near Louisville, is a mild chalybeate spring. A brown deposit is found in the adjacent wells. On Bryant's Creek, near the Mississippi River bottoms, are several springs of similar character, and sulphur springs exist along the Cuivre.

Soil

The soil of Lincoln County is varied in kind and quality. In quality it ranges from poor to extremely rich. Yet while none is too rich for careful and thorough cultivation not to pay largely, over slovenly tilling, so none is too poor to make fair return for labor judiciously bestowed. The prairie soil is tolerably uniform; none of it can be called poor. A small proportion of the prairie land is what is called crow-foot land, the best upland prairie soil known. It has sufficient sand for the water to drain off rapidly in wet weather, and enough of clay, lime, magnesia and humus to retain moisture. Four-fifths of the prairie is of the kind known as resin weed land, possessing less sand and more clay than the crow-foot land, and like it based upon siliceous marl, which insures, with proper cultivation, practically unlimited dura- bility. While inferior in quality and scope to the crow-foot land, it is of great fertility, and in favorable seasons and with proper cultivation will produce from fifty to seventy -five bushels of corn, forty to sixty bushels of oats, twenty-five to thirty-five bushels of wheat and two to three tons of grass per acre ; with the average season and the various grades of tillage in vogue among our farmers, good, fair to middling and bad, the general averages will reach about half the above estimates. The bottom prairies have a very rich and inexhaustible soil. Lying mostly on the Mississippi River, by reason of its occasional overflow, which has occurred about every ten years, and of insufficient drainage, most of these lands are yet uncultivated. The difference in the soils of prairie and timbered lands of the same formation in this county has been nearly obliterated in the process of cultivation, and in a few year* the limits of the prairies cannot be told by the characteristics of its soil. The timbered lands in this county comprise the kinds known as hackberry lands, elm lands, hickory lands, white oak lands and post oak lands. The first two are contiguous and interspersed and contain very superior soil, growing in great luxuriance corn, wheat, oats, barley, tobacco and all kin^ of fruit. The hickory lands are next in grade, with a soil more clayey and not so deep, subsoil more impervious and the underlying marls containing less sand and lime and more clay. It responds generously to good culture, and is easily rendered durable. It is adapted to corn, wheat and other cereals, tobacco and the grasses; blue grass, will grow on it spontaneously and luxuriantly. This kind in this county has an area about equal to that of hackberry and elm lands combined. White oak lands occupy a relatively large area in this county. The surface soil is not so rich as that of the hickory lands, but the subsoil is quite as good, and the underlying marls not so clayey and impervious. It produces good corn, fair timothy, very fine sorghum and the best wheat and tobacco in America. It is well adapted to all kinds of fruits, especially peaches and grapes. Post oak lands comprise a smaller area in this county. The soil is similar to that of white oak lands, with rather less lime and sand. Its productions are also similar. Another variety of soil is the magnesian limestone, occupying the slopes, hillsides and nar- row valleys of the northeastern parts of the county. It is rich in lime, magnesia and humus, producing corn, the cereals and all kinds of fruits.

Ages ago, so far in the dim, shadowy past that neither they nor their history can be traced, those mysterious beings called Mound Builders were here and occupied the country for a season, leaving behind them their sepulchral mounds, their fragments of pottery, their stone axes, and their flint arrow points and lance heads. It is out of place to discuss here the mooted question whether or not the Mound Builders were a distinct race ; it is enough to say that their mounds and their relics are here.

At Old Monroe, just north of the railroad bridge across the Cuivre on the level surface of the valley, stood three circular mounds in the form of a triangle, each being from five to six rods in diameter, and from eight to ten feet in height at their centers. One of them was wholly removed in excavating the railroad bed, and the others partially removed. In one of those only partially removed a human skull, a knife and a bracelet or pair of bracelets were found. The latter were made of silver. Xhe two mounds partially removed by the railroad company are astride of the west line of the right of way, and recently the public authorities have hauled away and deposited on the highways all that part of these mounds extending outside of the line of the railroad right of way, leaving a perpendicular wall of earth from the general level to the top of the mounds. From this it plainly appears that the mounds were constructed by some human agency, the earth all being of the same kind, and apparently composed mostly of surface soil from the surrounding country. The centers of these two mounds and the north and south escarpments are still standing. About sixty rods west thereof, on an elevated ridge, stands a larger and higher mound, to the northward of which are a number of smaller mounds at regular intervals along the top of the same ridge. None of these have been explored. These Old Monroe mounds have an appearance clearly distinguishable from that of natural formations. Other mounds supposed to be the work of the Mound Builders are found on the lands of Mr. Lindsey in Township 49 north, Range 2 east. A row of four mounds stands north and south on lands of Alfred Johnson, being the southeast quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 27, Township 51 north, Range 2 west. The largest mound stands at the north end of the row, and from that to the other end they grow less in regular proportion. They are located about 100 yards from a bluff containing the same kind of rock of which they are partially composed. On the field where the mounds are located no rock is exposed, consequently it is presumed that the rock used in their construction was carried from the bluff.

It is the generally accepted belief among archaeologists that the Mound Builders were here before the red or modern Indians, and built the mounds; that the red Indians never made flint arrow and lance points or pottery, and did not build mounds, but that they picked up and employed the arrow-points, and often buried their dead in the mounds which they found ready built when they came into the country. It is certain that two kinds of bones are often found in the mounds - one kind presumably those of the Mound Builders, buried hundreds of years ago, nearly decayed, the other, perhaps those of modern Indian^ buried more recently, and usually well preserved. Who were before the Mound Builders is not known, but after them came the red Indians, who, for years and perhaps centuries, danced and hunted over the surface of this county, fished in its streams, drank from its clear, sweet springs, and wooed their dusky sweethearts in its bosky dells. By-and-by came the white man, stealthily and timidly at first, and profuse in sweet words and fair promises to the original tenants, and after a while with more boldness, assumption and aggression.