146 PLEISTOCENE OF INDIANA AND MICHIGAN. 



Spring Township (T. 36 N., R. 9 E.), and a strip of gravel 1$ to 2 J miles wide leads westward 

 from these townships down Little Elkhart River. On the north edge next to the Saginaw 

 lobe there are marshy bowlder-strewn depressions, which were probably occupied by the ice 

 while the outwash plain was receiving its coating of gravel. 



In northern Newberry Township and westward to the St. Joseph Valley an outwash plain 

 of sandy gravel about 2 miles wide borders the Lagrange moraine. The western portion in 

 the vicinity of St. Joseph River is somewhat cobbly. It contains several lakes among which 

 Shipshewanna, Mud, Cass, East, and Hunters lakes are sufficiently large to receive names; the 

 largest is Shipshewanna Lake with an area of about 200 acres and a depth of only 8 to 14 feet. 

 In northeastern Elkhart County, between Hunters Lake and the St. Joseph Valley, the plain 

 is trenched by ravines, some of which have been cut down 25 or 30 feet to the underlying till. 

 This part of the plain has an altitude of about 875 feet. It stands nearly 50 feet above a lower 

 plain on the Little Elkhart that leads in from the gravel plain in the reentrant angle southwest 

 of Lagrange. This indicates that the Huron-Erie lobe was furnishing a strong line of drainage 

 down to a time later than that of the most vigorous outwash from the Saginaw lobe. 



On the outer border of the part of this moraine in Cass County, Mich., a gravel plain, indented 

 with small basins and evidently built as an outwash from the ice, slopes rapidly southward 

 toward the St. Joseph Valley, dropping from fully 850 feet at its northern edge to below 800 

 feet within 5 miles south. The conspicuous fosse (p. 144) that lies along its north edge for 

 several miles east from Christian Creek seems to have been occupied by the ice sheet while 

 the outwash plain was forming. Along the south border of the fosse the material is very 

 coarse, with stones several inches in diameter mixed with the gravel, but it changes rapidly 

 to finer material southward. Gravel is found, however, clear down to St. Joseph River opposite 

 Bristol and thence westward about to a group of lakes in the northeast part of T. 38 N., R. 5 E. 

 Farther west and south there is sand. The lakes, some of which are 200 acres or more in extent, 

 are so shallow that cattle can wade all over them. 



INNER BORDER. 



There is but little space between the Lagrange moraine and the gravel plain of Pigeon River 

 in Lagrange County, and that little is filled in part with sandy deposits and in part with a 

 gently undulating loose-textured till interrupted by many marshy tracts that extend back 

 from the river. The topography was probably developed in the course of the northward 

 recession of the ice border. In Elkhart County the moraine is bordered on the north by the 

 great gravel plain of St. Joseph River. In Cass County, Mich., a gently undulating plain of 

 rather compact clayey till on the northeast border covers much of T. 7 S., R. 13 W. Numerous 

 small lakes occur in this till tract. On the north and east the till gives place to sandy drift, 

 probably connected with the next later moraine, the Sturgis. 



STUEGIS MORAINE. 

 COURSE AND DISTRIBUTION. 



The Sturgis, a prominent moraine of the Saginaw lobe and of the reentrant between the 

 Saginaw and Lake Michigan lobes, is named from the village of Sturgis, which stands at its 

 outer edge in southeastern St. Joseph County, Mich. It lies chiefly in southern Michigan but 

 enters Indiana slightly and connects with a morainic belt of corresponding age formed by the 

 Huron-Erie lobe. It is greatly interrupted by lines of glacial drainage which head in later 

 moraines and cut through it, producing gaps 1 to 6 miles in width. 



West of Three Rivers, Mich., the Sturgis moraine runs into a great interlobate tract, 

 which covers much of Fabius and Flowerfield townships, St. Joseph County, and of Newburg 

 and southeastern Marcehus townships, Cass County, and which terminates on the south near 

 the Michigan Central Railroad from Vandalia to Three Rivers. The greater part of this tract 

 is shown by the distribution of outwash aprons to have been fox-med by the Lake Michigan 

 lobe. However, part of it is occupied by a moraine of the Saginaw lobe running southeast 



