616 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



THE CHALK BEDS OF WAKEENEY, KANSAS. 



BY G. C. BROADHEAD. 



It was rather a bleak autumn day on the bare prairie, with the wind howl- 

 ing, rain slowly dropping and slightly freezing. Nevertheless, as dark as the day 

 looked, the white chalk beds attracted my attention. On the hill-top are found 

 occasional outcroppings of a pebbly conglomerate and roughly bedded rock thirty 

 to forty feet thick, which has been referred to the Pliocene Tertiary. In some 

 places this contains moss-agate ; underneath this we find twenty feet of white clay, 

 often used instead of lime. Stone walls are laid up with it, and houses are also 

 plastered with it, but it has only been successfully used in-doors. 



Below this we find the chalk beds of the Niobrara group (cretaceous). At 

 the quarries fragments of Haploscapha are found, indicating a very large-sized 

 shell, sometimes measuring over two feet across. 



The railroad depot and Keeny block, and some other buildings are construct- 

 ed of this white stone. It is very soft, can be easily cut with any tool, and some 

 beds are easily frost-cracked. When first quarried the rock has a delicate dove- 

 color with occasional dark specks which are probably organic. But it is soon 

 bleached. 



At the "Whiting " quarry of Mr. George Pinkham may be observed a one- 

 inch band of brown ochre. Mr. Pinkham grinds this in a puddling mill with two 

 wheels, in a vat eight feet in diameter by three feet high. On the hill-side is a 

 spring of never-failing water from which the water is conveyed to the vat, then 

 passes into a settling vat and further on into another, carrying the ground chalk 

 with it. This is dipped out, dried and sent to market, and is chiefly used at a 

 glucose factory at Leavenworth City. The whiting is worth fifty to sixty cents 

 per one hundred pounds at Wakeeney. 



At Leavenworth it will retail at three cents per pound. It is also used in 

 kalsomining. The business of this amounted to about ninety tons during 1881. 

 This is said to be the only whiting mill in this country. There are many other 

 places in western Kansas where it could be made, for the supply is practically in- 

 exhaustible. 



Pleasant Hill, Mo., December, 1881. 



