MOWEK COUNTY. 363 



Drift. Imerglacial peat.) 



seen equally large in various parts of the county, and particularly on the 

 high praries north of Brownsdale, near the county line.* Probably the 

 average thickness of the drift for the county would be between fifty and 

 seventy-five feet. 



Ancient prat. The most interesting development in respect to the drift, 

 in Mower county, is the existence of a bed of peat at various depths below 

 the surface in the eastern and central portions of the county. The discov- 

 ery of "coal'' by Mr. Thomas Smith, S. E. J sec. 12, Windom, led to some 

 exploration of this peat bed. Mr. Smith followed it into the bank of Rose 

 creek a distance of about seventy feet. Its greatest thickness was found 

 to be eighteen inches. It lies at a depth of about fifty feet below the sur- 

 face, having been met with in different places in that immediate vicinity. 

 Above it is a gravelly clay, of a blue color, and the same is below it. On the 

 top of the bed of peat were found pieces of wood, thought to be pine and 

 cedar; but by far the most of the peaty substance consists of comminuted 

 vegetable fiber. 



This peat was met again in a shaft twenty rods further southwest, and was there about a 

 foot thick, and about the same depth below the surface. It was met in wells two and a half or 

 three miles northwest, at thirty-five feet below the surface. This bed of peat seems to be of con- 

 siderable extent superficially. A similar deposit is struck in wells at Le Roy. Mr. J. D. Wilsey, 

 on sec. 31, met it at twenty feet. Mr. Porter, who dug his well, describes the deposit there as 

 largely made up of woody fiber, among which he thought he recognized hemlock bark. Several 

 other instances of striking this buried vegetation are reported in the neighborhood of Le Roy. 

 The clay overlying the peat bed is described as a gravelly yellow clay. Six miles northwest of 

 Le Roy it is fifty feet under the surface, and from six to eight feet thick. It is here brownish 

 black, and burns readily. At A. D. Parker's, near Le Roy, wood was found in digging a well. It 

 appeared to be of ceda*. At Grand Meadow wells strike black clay and muck, containing wood, 

 at twenty-four or twenty-six feet, spoiling the water. Those that only go to the depth of twenty- 

 two or twenty-three feet get good water. One that was fifty feet deep was so permanently bad 

 from this cause that it was filled again. This peat has been met with at a number of places in 

 Bennington township, and in the neighboring towns of Fillmore county. Much wood is found 

 also in the vicinity of Lyle, at a few feet beneath the surface, in digging wells. A peat bed six 

 feet thick was encountered on sec. 13, Pleasant Valley, at a depth of forty-five feet, underlying a 

 compact layer of blue clay, situated in elevated land. Peat moss and sticks two inches in dia- 

 ' meter were taken from a well at Austin, twenty feet below the surface.t 



In the state of Iowa an ancient peat has slso been met with at a num- 

 ber of places. Dr. White describes it at Davenport, at Iowa City and in 

 Adair county,:}: and refers its origin there to marshes that accompanied 

 the valleys of the rivers near which the peats occur, when those rivers 



*One boulder in this region was measured with the following; result: North and south over the top, thirty-six feet; 

 east and west over the top. thirty-two and a half feet: hight above the ground, eight and a halt' feet; with a form indicat- 

 ing that the major part of the stone was below the in face. A small part had been separated from the remainder, caus- 

 ing a tisMire through the mass about ten inches in width. 



tSee a summary of facts respecting vegetation in the drift deposits of the Northwest in the Proceeding* of the Ameri- 

 can Aitocialinn. 1875. B., p. 43. 



JGeology of Iowa, 1870, Vol. I., p. 119. 



