SAGINAW LOBE. 137 



INTERMORAINIC DISTRICT. 



In the Tippecanoe Valley an extensive sandy plain extends over central and northwestern 

 Fulton County. From Monterey up to Leiters Ford the plain is on the north side of the river, 

 but above Leiters Ford it is on the south side. The plain extends southeastward from 

 Rochester up the valley of Mill Creek past Manitou Lake * and apparently heads in a reentrant 

 angle of the receding ice sheet between the Erie and Saginaw lobes. At the head there is an 

 undulating surface with basins and low swells, such as often characterize outwash aprons. 

 Manitou Lake, now a single body of water with an area of over a square mile, was formed by 

 damming the outlet of a group of lakes that occupied several small basins in the plain. The 

 sand plain has a definite south border in a sand ridge that runs from Mill Creek valley at 

 Rochester westward to Mud Creek valley, descending about 30 feet (from 780 feet to 750 feet) 

 in the 6 miles. On Mud Creek an extensive swamp, standing about 750 feet above sea level, 

 is separated from the Tippecanoe by the sand- plain, which seems to form a dam across the 

 lower end of the Mud Creek valley. Probably for a considerable period the swamp was occupied 

 by a lake, but the creek had cut its outlet sufficiently deep partly to drain it before the country 

 was settled, and a system of ditches has since much reduced the swamp. The sand of the 

 plain is rather light and drifts in places into dunes, of which the sand ridge along the south border 

 is a conspicuous example. Wells, however, are reported to pass into fine gravel a few feet 

 below the surface. 



East of Kewanna, in sees. 24 and 25, T. 30 N., R. 1 E., and sec. 19, T. 30 N., R. 2 E., the 

 plain between the undulating belt and the Mud Creek swamp is traversed by a network of sand 

 ridges, which are 10 to 25 feet high and in places have the form of eskers. Gravel was found, 

 however, on only one single high point at the western end of the system, and it remains to be 

 determined whether the ridges are of esker-like origin or are simply due to wind. Indeed, the 

 localization of the sand in this region is not as yet understood. 



On Tippecanoe River below Warsaw a sandy plain that lies south of the stream appears 

 more closely related to an ice border on that side than to the ridge that comes to Warsaw from 

 the northwest. It may, however, consist of outwash from the reentrant angle at Warsaw, 

 where the trend of the border changes from southeast to southwest. 



BREMEN MORAINE AND INNER BORDER TILL PLAINS. 



The Bremen moraine has its strongest development in the vicinity of Bremen, where 

 it rises 20 to 25 feet above a marshy tract on the north and a gently undulating plain on the 

 south. From Bremen to Hepton it forms a low basement ridge 10 to 15 feet high, bearing 

 swells 10 to 20 feet in height. From Bremen westward to the Maxinkuckee moraine at Lake- 

 ville it is broken by many gaps, and where best developed its knolls reach scarcely 25 feet in 

 height. 



The ridge that sets in south of Hepton and runs southeastward to Warsaw has about the 

 same strength as the ridge that leads to Hepton from Bremen. It consists of a low basement 

 ridge with a relief of 10 to 15 feet, along which knolls 10 to 20 feet high are common. At its 

 southeast end in the bend of Tippecanoe River north of Warsaw it rises into a series of sharp 

 gravel knolls 30 to 50 feet high. 



A sandy plain filling the gap south of Hepton has the appearance of the head of a line 

 of glacial drainage, and sandy land extends from there down South Fork of Yellow River to 

 its junction with North Fork a few miles below Bremen. This sand may be outwash from 

 the small ridge on which Bremen stands, but its identification is uncertain because the valley 

 may have afforded a line of discharge for water from a moraine farther east whose gravel plain 

 extends about to the head of Yellow River. The later discharge, however, seems likely to 

 have covered only a swampy tract about a mile wide along the river, leaving to the south a 

 slightly higher plain, on which the hamlet of Millwood now stands, as a remnant of filling by 

 outwash from the moraine at Bremen. North Fork of Yellow River, which crosses the moraine 



1 This Manitou Lake should be distinguished from the Manitou Lake west of Lake Maxinkuckee. 



