PEE- WISCONSIN DRIFT AND ASSOCIATED DEPOSITS. 71 



A well at Harvey Morris's, near the north end of Chestnut Ridge, reached a depth of 89 

 feet, of which the upper 20 feet was clay, with only a few pebbles, and the remainder fine sand, 

 becoming pebbly near the bottom. A well near by at Jerry Anderson's, 95 feet in depth, pene- 

 trated 52 feet of clay, pebbleless at the top but becoming a stony till below, overlying 38 feet of 

 gray sand, too fine to screen, which in turn overlies gravel in which the well terminates. At 

 Mr. Wieneke's, near the highest point on the ridge and 140 feet above the bordering plain, a 

 well 77 feet deep penetrated 33 feet of sandy loam and loose sand, underlain by 40 feet of red- 

 dish gravel and sand with clay admixture; the well terminates in coarse gravel. E. T. Cox 

 made a well on the low part of the ridge, scarcely 50 feet above the bordering plain, which pene- 

 trated ordinary till, largely yellow, for 50 feet and then passed through 58 feet of sand, which 

 became coarser and somewhat gravelly near the bottom. From these well data it appears that 

 the ridge has a variable structure such as would be expected in a kame moraine. 



Several counties in southeastern Indiana, namely, Franklin, Decatur, Jennings, Ripley; 

 Dearborn, Ohio, Switzerland, Jefferson, Scott, and Clark, received, at the Illinoian stage of 

 glaciation, a sheet of drift estimated to average less than 20 feet in thickness, though much 

 thicker in valleys. The drift is composed mainly of clayey till and is covered to a depth of 

 several feet by a white clay or compact loess. In some of the valleys tributary to Ohio River 

 gravelly knolls appear and along the borders of the Ohio itself there is some gravelly drift of the 

 earlier ice invasion. 



In a few places black muck and driftwood, noted near the bottom of the glacial deposits, 

 suggest, as do features in central and southwestern Indiana (p. 63), some oscillation of the ice 

 border, if not two distinct ice advances. The present writer has not seen exposures of the 

 buried soil or muck and underlying drift in southeastern Indiana and is hardly prepared to 

 express an opinion as to the time relations. Buried soils are noted in several wells in reports 

 ■of the Indiana Geological Survey. 1 



Gold has been found in notable amount in four of these southeastern counties. Haymond 2 



reported its occurrence on Sein Creek and its tributaries and on Little Duck Creek in Franklin 



County. He also noted the discovery in that county of a mass of native copper weighing 6 



pounds. Gold in the Laughery Valley near Hartford, in Ohio and Dearborn counties, was 



reported by Warder 3 and has been panned with profit for many years. A nugget of copper 



that weighed 26 pounds was found in Dearborn County near Weisburg. Borden 4 reports that 



gold has been panned on the south fork of Muscatatuck Creek in Jennings County and is widely 



distributed in that region. 



DRAINAGE. 



The drainage conditions attending the Illinoian ice invasion have not been clearly worked 

 out. As noted above there was an aggradation of valleys in southwestern Indiana during or 

 before the Illinoian stage of glaciation that involved the tributaries of the Ohio and Wabash as 

 well as the main valleys. In the tributaries only fine sandy and clayey material is reported; 

 in the main valleys gravelly material occurs, but does not seem to fill the entire width, for 

 borings at and between Evansville and Mount Vernon penetrate clay and fine sand similar to 

 that in the tributaries. 



In the Ohio Valley, on the border of southeastern Indiana, terraces of gravel derived from 

 the Wisconsin drift show vigorous drainage at that late stage in the glacial epoch but furnish 

 no clear evidence of vigorous drainage and gravel distribution down the valley during the Illi- 

 noian stage. In certain places along the valley at levels above the terraces of Wisconsin drift 

 accumulations of gravelly materials were noted, but more commonly the valley was found to 

 be filled with unassorted or very imperfectly assorted drift. The gravelly portions of this 

 earlier drift are in many places cemented into a conglomerate, not only along the Ohio but also 

 in the tributary valleys. The conglomerate at Split Rock, near Aurora, Ind., has long been 



1 Third Ann. Bept. Indiana Geol. Survey, 1872, pp. 262, 344; Seventh Kept., 1S75, p. 172. 



2 Haymond, Rufns, First Ann. Rept. Indiana Geol. Survey, 1869, p. 190. 



s Warder, R. B., Third Ann. Rept. Indiana Geol. Survey, 1872, p. 420. Also Tenth Ann. Rep.., 1878, pp. 106-107. 

 i Borden, W. W., Seventh Ann. Rept. Indiana Geol. Survey, 1875, p. 178. 



