230 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



THE RIVER COUNTIES OF KANSAS. 



SOME NOTES ON THEIR GEOLOGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES. 



By Robert Hay. 

 TOPOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 



The counties on the Missouri river are the oldest settled counties in Kansas. 

 In the counties next Avest and south the phrase "to go to the river" meant to 

 go to LeaA'enworth, Quindaro, White Cloud. Atchison, or other places where 

 there was a landing place on the Missouri river. From the steamboats on the 

 river came the immigrants and their supplies. 



By the construction of the acts of Congress settling the boundary of the 

 state of Missouri, the bed of the great river from the fortieth parallel to the 

 mouth of the Kaw is in Kansas. The east bank is the west line of the state 

 of Missouri. 



The windings of the stream make the river front of Kansas of great 

 length. It is not less than 145 miles, of which nearly 20 belong to Wyan- 

 dotte, 23 to Leavenworth, about 21 to Atchison, and over 80 to Doniphan. 

 If the shores of the permanent islands were included this water frontage 

 would be increased. The front to the river mainly consists of high bluffs, 

 and where there is a broad expanse of bottom land, as at Island creek, Kick- 

 apoo, and elsewhere, the bluffs still abruptly bound the river valley, rising 

 steeply from the water or from the fertile alluvia which the water has in 

 time passed deposited against them. 



The bluffs are mostly covered with timber, but there are districts in each 

 county where the rocks rise bare and bold, and where the height is increased 

 by precipices of yellow clay which is 20 to 50 feet deep. 



The precipitous front to the river is broken in many places by narrow 

 openings which allow the discharge of small tributary streams, and in some 

 places by wider ones, as that of Salt creek, near Fort Leavenworth, and 

 Wolf creek, in Doniphan county. Many of the narrower openings become 

 wider behind the bluffs, which there become narrow ridges, and the ravine- 

 like openings is seen to be the outlet of an amphitheatre which extends north 

 and south and some distance west. This topographical form is noticeable 

 at Atchison and Quindaro, and* is more strongly marked at Leavenworth and 

 the Soldiers' Home. 



In many parts of the river front the rocky walls are distinctly terraced. 

 Mostly two terraces are well marked, but in many places five can be traced, 

 and some of them can be followed round into the creek valleys and the amphi- 

 theatres. These terraces indicate a greater depth and a vastly broader ex- 

 panse of the waters of the great river in past ages when it stood at higher 

 levels, while obstructions far to the southeast vv^ere being removed. 



Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties have a frontage also to the Kaw 

 river of 25 and 22 miles respectively, and the southern Wolf creek and the 

 Stranger there discharge from valleys that cut deep into the table-land. 

 This table-land in Wyandotte and eastern Doniphan counties is scarcely 

 recognizable as such, so numerous are the depressions and so round the eleva- 

 tions; but in the western parts of Doniphan, Atchison and Leavenworth the 

 plateau character is distinctly seen, the level top in many parts being floored 

 with persistent beds of limestone, whose flatness gives a marked difference 



