CHAPTER IX. 

 MORAINIC SYSTEMS AT HEADS OF LAKE MICHIGAN AND SAGINAW BASINS. 



By Frank Leverett. 



KALAMAZOO MORAINIC SYSTEM OF LAKE MICHIGAN LOBE. 



ERRONEOUS CORRELATION. 



Investigations pursued since the publication of Monograph XXXVIII have shown that 

 certain moraines in southwestern Michigan which were assigned therein to the Saginaw lobe 

 were really produced by the Lake Michigan lobe. The principal errors of interpretation are 

 found on pages 340 to 342 and Plate XV of that monograph. Certain constituents of the 

 drift and the relation of till plains to moraines in the district immediately east of the Valparaiso 

 morainic system led the writer astray in the interpretation of the border between the Saginaw 

 and the Lake Michigan lobes. Later studies have shown that a prominent morainic system, 

 the Kalamazoo, which lies farther east than the border outlined in Monograph XXXVIII 

 was formed by the Lake Michigan lobe. Under the old interpretation the Kalamazoo morainic 

 system was considered a northward continuation of the Maxinkuckee moraine of the Saginaw 

 lobe, but really it is correlated with a younger morainic system of that lobe, connecting with it 

 a few miles north of Kalamazoo, Mich. The writer regrets that so serious an error was intro- 

 duced in this earlier publication. 



COURSE AND DISTRIBUTION. 



The Kalamazoo morainic system of the Lake Michigan lobe connects with its correlative of the 

 Saginaw lobe in southwestern Barry County, Mich., 15 to 20 miles northeast of the city of Kala- 

 mazoo, the village of Prairie ville being in the head of the reentrant angle between the two lobes. 

 The Kalamazoo system embraces two well-defined ridges separated by a nearly continuous but 

 very narrow gravel plain. Each ridge has a general width of about 2 miles but varies in width 

 from 1 mile or less to 4 miles. The combined width of the two ridges and of the gravel plain 

 which separates them is 5 to 7 nudes. It is this combined belt that constitutes the Kalamazoo 

 morainic system. 



The outer or eastern ridge leads from Prairieville south-southwestward to the Kalamazoo 

 Valley, which it crosses about 5 miles north of the city of Kalamazoo, with an interruption 

 of fully 2 miles. From the west bluff of the river the ridge continues southwestward, passing 

 between Kalamazoo and Brownells station and just west of Oshtemo. It cuts the south- 

 east corner of Van Buren County and passes just west of Marcellus in Cass County and through 

 Cassopolis. It leaves Michigan in the southwest corner of Cass County and extends nearly 

 to the city of South Bend, Ind., where it is interrupted by a broad gravel plain on St. Joseph 

 River. 



In Michigan the inner ridge is nearly parallel with the outer. Its inner or western border 

 from Mattawan to Ndes is followed by the Michigan Central Railroad. It crosses St. Joseph 

 River near Niles and after doubling back into a bend of the river west of that city goes south- 

 ward into Indiana and is distinctly traceable as far as the village of Warren, about 6 mdes 

 west of South Bend. 



Neither of the moraines has been identified with certainty farther south and west. Cer- 

 tain features, however, suggest that the line of continuation is westward past Rolling Prairie 

 to the vicinity of Laporte, beyond which the Kalamazoo is thought to be entirely concealed 

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