WELLS OP DOUGLAS COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 731 



DOUGLAS COUNTY. 

 GENERAL STATEMENT. 



Douglas County is situated in the east-central part of the State, with 

 Tuscola as the county seat, and it has an area of 410 square miles. Its 

 western portion is crossed in a southward course by the Kaskaskia River, 

 and the east-central portion by the Embarras River. The surface is gener- 

 ally very level and imperfectly drained, except on the immediate borders 

 of the streams just mentioned. A small drift ridge belonging to the Cham- 

 paign system traverses the northeast part of the county, but it has a general 

 relief of only 20 to 30 feet above the bordering plain. A similar small 

 ridge crosses the southeast corner of the county. The surface of these 

 ridges is nearly as smooth as that of the bordering plains, and is imperfectly 

 drained. 



The thickness of the drift in this county has been ascertained at but 

 one point, Tuscola, where one well entered rock at 174 feet and another 

 at 179 feet. But at Oakland, just across the county line, in Coles County, 

 rock is entered at only 50 feet. The drift, like that of the counties to the 

 west, just discussed, consists mainly of a soft blue till as far as wells have 

 penetrated. In the wells at Tuscola the drift was in the main a blue till. 

 Wells 60 to 75 feet in depth are common in this county, and a few have 

 been sunk to depths of 100 feet or more. 



INDIVIDUAL WELLS. 



At Areola the public water supply is from wells about 50 feet in depth, 

 and records of several wells were obtained in the vicinity of that village 

 which have a similar depth. Two wells a few miles southeast of Areola 

 are reported to have entered a swampy muck below blue till at about 50 

 feet, and beneath this a till was found harder than that above the muck. 

 One well at Morris Bradford's reached a depth of 68 feet and one at 

 E. Bradford's a depth of 75 feet. 



At Tuscola a deep well has been sunk with a view to obtaining artesian 

 water for the waterworks, but at last reports the well was incomplete and 

 waterworks had not been established. 1 The wells in the vicinity of Tuscola 

 are obtained at a depth of about 30 feet, but none are considered of suffi- 

 cient strength to supply the waterworks. 



1 Manual of American Waterworks, 1897. 



