152 PLEISTOCENE OF INDIANA AND MICHIGAN. 



The altitude declines markedly westward . across the district, being 1,025 to 1,060 feet 

 above sea level near the border of the Tekonsha moraine, about 980 feet at the bluff of Cold- 

 water River, and about 920 feet on the meridian of Bronson (disregarding the knolls). The 

 drift is largely clayey till with a very few gravelly knolls. Bowlders are everywhere numerous. 



TEKONSHA MORAINE. 



COURSE AND DISTRIBUTION. 



The name Tekonsha is applied to a comparatively strong moraine of the Saginaw lobe 

 which sets in at Quincy, Mich., runs northward rather weakly to the St. Joseph Valley, in 

 which it occupies a great bend, and is thence strongly developed westward to the village of 

 Tekonsha, Calhoun County. Here it crosses the St. Joseph Valley, leads northwestward across 

 the southwestern part of Calhoun County, and comes to the Kalamazoo Valley near the line of 

 Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties. It has a general width of 4 to 5 miles but is in places much 

 narrower. As interpreted, the moraine finds continuation northward from the junction of 

 the Saginaw and Lake Michigan lobes. This spur, however, is developed only from the river 

 northward about 6 miles to the border of a later moraine of the Saginaw lobe that follows the 

 north side of the Kalamazoo Valley. 



The moraine is reduced to a remarkably narrow strip in its passage across the Nottawa 

 Creek valley northwest of Burlington for 3 to 4 miles, being scarcely one-half mile wide. It is 

 similarly reduced along the south bluff of St. Joseph River for 3 miles west from Tekonsha. 

 In each place a gravel outwash apron fits about the southern edge of the moraine and by its 

 contrast helps to give the hummocky, bowldery morainic strip strong expression despite its 

 narrowness. 



Correlative moraines of the Lake Michigan lobe and of the Huron-Erie lobe connect with 

 the Tekonsha moraine at its northwestern and southeastern ends respectively. 



The correlative moraine of the Lake Michigan lobe, which occupies a belt about 3 miles 

 wide on the south side of the Kalamazoo Valley, is well developed for 7 or 8 miles southwest from 

 its junction with the Tekonsha moraine, and is then cut off by a great gravel plain that heads 

 in moraines north of Kalamazoo River and runs southward through central Kalamazoo County. 

 Beyond this plain its continuation is doubtful, though a bowldery strip was traced from the 

 end of the moraine as far as the north end of Long Lake or half way across the gap. The con- 

 nection may be found in a sharply ridged tract that sets in near the south edge of the southwest 

 township of Kalamazoo County about 3 miles southwest of Schoolcraft and runs southward 

 to Rock River at Howardsville, beyond which to the vicinity of Vandalia it overrides or forms 

 the western edge of the sharply morainic tract in eastern Cass and western St. Joseph counties. 

 (See p. 149.) 



The correlative moraine of the Huron-Erie lobe, which connects with the Tekonsha moraine 

 near Quincy, Mich., is rather vaguely developed, but apparently embraces an undulatory belt 

 that leads westward and southward to the State line just east of Orland, Ind. It may also 

 include undulating tracts south of Quincy, in Quincy and Alagansee townships, Branch County, 

 Mich. The portion south of the State line is so closely combined with other moraines of the 

 Huron-Erie lobe that separate description can scarcely be given it and the entire system is 

 considered together in another section. (See pp. 148-149.) 



TOPOGRAPHY. 



ALTITUDE AND RELIEF. 



From Quincy to Tekonsha the altitude of the Tekonsha moraine drops from about 1,100 

 to 1,000 feet. Beyond Tekonsha a small area at the north bluff of the St. Joseph, 2 miles to 

 the west, has an altitude of 1,075 feet, and another small area 2 to 4 miles to the northeast 

 rises above 1,000 feet, but the greater part of the moraine south of Kalamazoo River is between 

 925 and 975 feet. North of the Kalamazoo the interlobate spur is not far from 900 feet in 



