210 



The surface of the terrace at the village of Bridgeton stands at 554 feet A. 

 T., but slopes gently upward toward the bluff, where it reaches within 

 25-30 feet of the top. Below Bridgeton the valley widens to 1^ miles and 

 is bounded by bluffs 75 feet high, with many blunt salient and re-entrant 

 angles. (Fig. 33.) In this part of its course the Raccoon has cut in the 

 valley floor a flood plain 5-15 feet below the general level. It is heavily 

 loaded and at low water wanders through a wide belt of sand bars and 

 islands. (Fig. 14). At Kosedale the valley widens to three miles and, 

 continuing to the southwest, opens into the Wabash Valley, as described in 

 another paper. l^.ut the stream, turning abruptly to the northwest, leaves 

 this valley and enters another which narrows at Co.wille to less than one- 

 quarter of a mile. Thence it maintains a width of about a half mile to its 

 emergence through the Wabash bluff at Armiesburg. The lower Raccoon 

 Valley is bounded by bluffs 1-10-1.10 feet high. At Mecca a narrow alluvial 

 terrace on the west side is 40 feet high and one mile long. A little below 

 Mecca a similar terrace liegins on the east side and continues to the mouth 

 of Leatherwood Creek. Tlie gap in the Wabash bluff through which the 

 Raccoon-Leatheiwood stream passes is 1^ miles wide and blocked by the 

 Monteeuma terrace 50 feet higli. Tlie cut through the terrace is only 750 

 feet wide. (Fig. 3C.) 



The abnormalities of the Raccoon present many interesting problems. 

 Obviously, the middle Raccoon Valley once transmitted a stream as large 

 as White River directly to the Wabash below Atherton Island. The course 

 of Its tributaries, Little Raccoon. Iron Greek and les.ser streams are wholly 

 abnormal to the present course of the lower Raccoon and accoi'dant only 

 with a trunk stream flowing southwest to the Wabash. Where did a river 

 of such magnitude come IroiuV The jtrcsent upper Raccoon was only a 

 modest tributary to it. Tbc cul-de-sac aluive Mansfield points to a possible 

 and T think probable answer. The jircglacial Raccoon was a large river 

 with a course of hundre<ls of miles and a basin second in extent to no other 

 tributary of the Wabash. What is lel't of its 'alley begins two miles above 

 Mansfield, where it is filled and obliterated by the Sbelbyville moraine 

 which lies across it, and by the Wisconsiu drift; sheet which stretches away 

 to Canada. No effort to trace the valley east of the Mansfield cul-de-sae 

 has been made. Such an cr('<irt wdiild jirobably be fruitless for lack of 

 well borings. 



The ridge across the valley at .Manslield seems at one iM>int to be 



