TEE INFLUENCE OF SOILS 43 



sandy lal^e-bed west of this clay area adjacent to 

 the shore, into the bowlder clay region of Wash- 

 tenaw and Oakland counties, resulting in the found- 

 ing of Pontiac in 1818 at an elevation of some 350 

 feet above the level of Lake Erie, and at Ann Arbor 

 in 1824, at an elevation of 300 feet above the same 

 datum. Adrian in Lenawee County was established 

 on soil described as that of a sandy lake-bed but 

 with bowlder clay in the vicinity, in 1825, at an 

 elevation of less than 250 feet above Lake Erie. 

 Moving westward from this point, the settlers en- 

 countered a variety of soil conditions : morainic soils 

 predominating in Hillsdale County, bowlder clay in 

 Branch County with some sandy lake-beds; outwash 

 plains in St. Joseph County, found again in Cass 

 County with morainic soils, again terminating in 

 the variegated soils of Berrien County and the dunes 

 of the Lake Michigan shore. In this southern tier 

 of counties, settlement took place at Coldwater, plat- 

 ted as a village in 1832, while Niles, well to the 

 westward but favorably situated on the St. Joseph 

 River, had already come into existence in 1829. In 

 the second tier of counties, settlement reached 

 Jackson in 1829, Battle Creek in 1831, and Kala- 

 mazoo whose site was selected in 1829. In Jackson 

 County there are considerable outwash plains, which 

 soil also predominates in the counties to the west- 

 ward as far as Lake Michigan. As settlement moved 

 westward from Ann Arbor through this second tier 

 of counties, the elevation of the land rose steadily, 

 Jackson standing some 60 feet higher than Ann 



