G RURAL MWIIWAN 



It is in the southern section of the southern 

 peninsula that the greatest agricultural development 

 has taken place, while the Tapper Peninsula is tiie 

 seat of an enormous mineral wealth, of past and 

 prospective development. Between these two portions 

 of the State lies a region that once sent to market 

 prodigious quantities of forest products but now 

 lies shorn and largely unproductive, except of brush 

 fires and real estate wild-catting. 



The land surface of Michigan comprises for the 

 most part glacial drift, varied in composition and 

 depth and resting on a foundation of native rock 

 of great geological antiquity. In the southern penin- 

 sula, this foundation stone attains its greatest eleva- 

 tion in the southeastern area in a zone extending from 

 the "Thumb" to Hillsdale County, and its greatest 

 depression near Ludington and Manistee. To the 

 northeast the rock is again elevated, not to the same 

 degree as in the southeastern counties, although the 

 superimposed layer of drift is so deep that the highest 

 elevation of the land surface of the Lower Peninsula 

 is a point near Cadillac. From Saginaw Bay west- 

 ward there is a deep valley in the bed rock and a 

 low elevation of the surface of the land. Indeed, 

 if the drift were removed, the northern section of 

 the peninsula would appear as an island entirely 

 surrounded by water. As it is, the area west of 

 Saginaw Bay has a very low elevation (at St. Charles 

 it is about thirteen feet) above lake level; and in 

 periods of high water, the over-flow from the Maple 

 River (a westward-moving affluent of the Grand 



