TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 227 



ON THE EASTERN EXTENSION OF THE CRETACEOUS 



ROCKS TN KANSAS AND THE FORMATION OF 



CERTAIN SANDHILLS. 



By ROBERT HAY, Junction City, Kan. 



Twenty years ago I obtained from the sandy bed of the creek at St. George, 

 in Pottawatomie county, the cast of an Inoceramus of a Dakota form. I de- 

 cided at the time that it had been brought there by the ice from Nebraska or 

 Dakota. Two years later I obtained, in glacial gravel in Jackson county, 

 cretaceous sharks' teeth and a fragment of an ammonite of the genus Pla- 

 centiceras. This confirmed my previous conclusion as to the Pottawatomie 

 specimen. In 1883 I ascertained that water of Arrington spring came from a 

 highly ferruginous coarse sand, which seemed to be the debris of Dakota 

 sandstones not far removed from its original site. Again, the suggestion of 

 Nebraska was made by the direction of the ice movement; but whether it 

 might not be Kansas was a question. The most easterly outcrop of the 

 Dakota then known in the state was in "he northeast of Washington county. 

 Its full development there, and the fact since ascertained that glacial bould- 

 ers lie on it in that county, suggested the idea that it might have been in 

 force much further east up to the glacial erosion. These facts suggest that 

 outliers of the Dakota, patches of what was once a continuous area, may be 

 found some time in Marshall and Pottawatomie counties, and even in Nemaha 

 or Jackson, perhaps quite to the river. 



In 1887 I found, in the well of the Avaterworks at Junction City, a bed of 

 ferruginous sand, as my note book of the date says "almost sandstone," 

 that shows that its origin was the Dakota, not far away. At the same time, 

 on the top of the hill by the Catholic cemetery (in sec. 14, T. 12, R. 5 E.) I 

 found a small deposit of gravel composed entirely of the hard nodules of 

 the dark ferruginous Dakota sandstones. Again I found fragments of the 

 sandstone itself, turned up by the plow, near the Dickinson county line, seven 

 miles west of Junction City. But still the most eastern outcrop in the region 

 that I know of was just on the west side of the city of Abilene, or 15 miles 

 north on the Clay-Dickinson county line, near Industry. There was no out- 

 crop in Geary county. 



In November of 1893 I was bid to make a closer examination of a district 

 southwest of Junction City, where some accumulations of sand had often 

 puzzled me. I had attributed the sand, at that elevation, 200 to 300 feet above 

 Smoky river, to the prevalence of the south wind. But the condition of the 

 river alluvium in that direction was such as always to make me dissatisfied 

 with the conclusion. Now I obtained a better solution. In a shallow ravine, 

 where the grass is always long, I found an outcrop, or rather outlier of Dakota 

 sandstone, of the softer yellowish red variety, and a quarter of a mile away 

 another patch of the harder ferruginous qualities. I had crossed these de- 

 pressions before, but had not hit the right places, and the grass concealed 

 them from all but close vision. Then, north of these", the sand accumulations, 

 which I had taken to be exceptionally hard packed dunes, showed, by digging 

 at their southern ends, that they were the packed sand, or loose sandstone, 

 that is conspicuous about Industry. It is unmistakably the Dakota, and several 



