594 THE ILLINOIS GLACIAL LOBE. 



KANE COUNTY. 

 GENERAL STATEMENT. 



Kane County is situated west of Cook and Dupage, and has an area of 

 540 square miles. It includes the thriving cities of Elgin and Aurora, and 

 its county seat is Geneva. Fox River flows in a southerly course through 

 the eastern part of the county and is the line of discharge for most of the 

 drainage. The greater part of the county has such imperfect drainag*e that 

 large areas have been artificially di'ained. It is in the center of the great 

 dairy district of northeastern Illinois, and the greater part of the county is 

 devoted to dairying. Numerous deep wells have been sunk on the farms, 

 some of them reaching depths of over 200 feet before encountering rock, 

 but in the southeastern part of the county rock is exposed extensively 

 in the bluffs of Fox River and is struck at comparatively shallow depths 

 in the wells. The portion of the county north from the latitude of Geneva 

 is, as previously described, largely occupied by a complicated system of 

 morainic belts, but the southern portion of the county has generally a 

 nearly plane surface. These moraines were formed at the Wisconsin stage 

 of glaciation and, like the Valparaiso morainic system to the east, consist 

 largely of a soft blue till. In several of the deep wells a black soil has been 

 found beneath the blue till, and under this soil a hard till is penetrated. 

 This hard till is apparently of much earlier age than the drift, of the Wis- 

 consin stage. 



INDIVIDUAL WELLS. 



In the northwest township records were obtained of several wells near 

 the village of Hampshire which reach a depth of over 100 feet without 

 entering rock. A well at the brick }^ards in Hampshire is 102 feet, and one 

 at the Warner Lock Company factory is 118 feet, each being mainly 

 through blue till. On a farm near Hampshire one well reached a depth of 

 180 feet. On the crest of a moraine east of Hampshire, near Briar Hill 

 Station, at an elevation 975 feet above tide, a Avell 175 feet in depth is 

 entirely through till except one foot of sand at the bottom. On this same 

 moraine records of several wells were obtained which find water in abun- 

 dance at a depth of 20 to 35 feet, and the great majority of wells in the 

 township are less than 40 feet in depth. 





