TWENTY-THIBD ANNUAL MEETING. 97 



NOTES ON SOME KANSAS SALT MARSHES. 



BY BOBEBT HAY, JUNCTION CITY. 



It is well known that in the ages before settlement, the wild animals of the plains 

 — the deer, the bison, the antelope — had their places where they obtained salt 

 These were known as lick'i, and, joined to the name of some animal, or to some 

 epithet more or less descriptive, this word becomes a proper name. In these licks 

 the saline matter was held in earths of various kinds — clays, and shales, and sandy 

 alluvia; but not infrequently there were connected with them salt springs, from 

 which hunters and early ranchmen obtained salt by evaporation. 



Kansas has a fair proportion of these salt springs of the plains, and the National 

 Government made over to the State sundry sections of land on which they were 

 located, supposing that they were giving title to valuable mineral deposits. Some 

 of these became part of the endowment of the State Normal College, at Emporia, 

 but the prices for which they have been sold have not exceeded that of agricultural 

 lauds in the same regions. 



Some of these licks, with or without springs, are salt marshes of considerable 

 extent, at the lower end of which, streams that pass through them, or originate on 

 them, are more or less saline in character. The Saline river has its name from this 

 circumstance. There are salt marshes — 



1. In Cowley and Sumner counties, at and northwest of Geuda Springs. 



2. In Stafford county, with a salt stream running into Reno county. 



3. On Rattlesnake creek, in the north of Lincoln county. 



4. On Salt creek, in Mitchell county. 

 r>. On Plum creek, northeast of Beloit. 



6. On Marsh creek, and Little Marsh creek, northwest and northeast of James- 

 town, in Cloud county. 



7. On a small tributary of the Republican, in Republic county, northeast of 

 Concordia. 



Besides these, there are the salt pool of Meade county, salt springs in the Saline 

 valley, and the salt plains of the Cimmaron, just outside the State. The first has 

 been described by the present writer in an article published by the State Board of 

 Agriculture. 



No. 7 in the above list of salt marshes is the Tuthill marsh described by Prof. 

 Mudge, as State Geologist, a quarter of a century ago. As a barren salt marsh it 

 is now much less in area than when our old friend was there, the alluvia from the 

 plowed land of the district having washed over it, and allowed vegetation — ty- 

 phacese, and other marsh plants — to obtain a firm hold. 



The geology of the formations which furnish the salt to most of these areas has 

 become plain to the writer through recent investigations. The salt marshes near 

 Geuda Springs are related to shales which are at the top of the PermoCarbonifer- 

 ons deposits of the region, or at the beginning of what I have elsewhere called the 

 saliferous horizon, of which the great salt-rock deposits of Kingman, Reno and 

 Ellsworth counties are the best-known exponents. AVellington is the place nearest 

 to Geuda where the salt rock has been exploited. Near Geuda there is also a fine 

 bed of saccharoidal gypsum. The position of the Cowley county salt marshes, in 

 relation both to the gyissum and the rock salt, suggested that the salt marshes of 

 Republic, Cloud, and Mitchell counties had some such relation to the gypsum of 

 Marshall county and the rock salt of Ellsworth and Kanopolis. Visits to the regions 

 indicated removed all ground for this idea, and revealed the true position of the 

 marshes, showing that they all get their salt from shales of the Dakota period. The 



