OTTAWA COUNTY. 233 



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Below the brown hard-pan there is an unknown thickness of blue 

 hard-pan. This also contains gravel stones of all sizes, and often large 

 bowlders. In the township of Benton, along the northern division of 

 the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, a number of wells, 

 sunk for supplying steam saw-mills with water, have penetrated this 

 blue hard-pan a few feet. It sometimes shows an indistinct stratifica- 

 tion, and in one or two wells near Genoa beds of gravel and sand were 

 met in this deposit, or immediately below it. In a moist state, as thrown 

 out of the well, it has a tough plasticity, and is known as " blue clay." 

 The average thickness of this deposit in the county would probably 

 not fall short of forty feet. Below this, and lying on the rock, there is 

 apt to be a stratum of water-worn gravel and sand, which lies in a very 

 compacted state, often cemented along its upper surface into a rock-like 

 layer, which offers great resistance to the drill. It is sometimes mis- 

 taken for the rock-bed. Below the cemented layer the sand and gravel, 

 when present, is from six inches to ten feet, and usually supplies water. 

 It is plain that the water in such wells, confined before by the impervi- 

 ous 'hard-pan above, will rise immediately with great force to a height 

 equal to that of its head or source, or until it encounters a way of lateral 

 escape through beds of sand or gravel in the hard-pan. The slope of 

 the surface being very gradual toward Lake Erie, such artesian wells 

 rise but few feet above the ground. They are found at Oak Harbor, in 

 Salem township, at a depth of about fifty feet, the water rising but a 

 few inches above the surface. Nearer Lake Erie, along the Toussaint 

 Creek, the water rises in such wells about seven feet above the ground. 

 In connection with the Drift phenomena, the occurrence of stones and 

 bowlders of all kinds in the vicinity of the limestone ridges must be 

 mentioned. They are due to the removal of the finer parts of the Drift 

 by the waves arid currents of Lake Erie, and are left on the bare rock, 

 and in a belt surrounding it, because they could not be so removed. 

 Their place was originally in the glacial hard-pan. * 



Wells and Springs. — The artesian wells of Ernest Frank, Esq., and of 

 Mr. George Momany, of Oak Harbor, have a distinct sulphurous taste. 

 A well of Mr. Messersmith, in section 22, Benton township, is very 

 strongly sulphureted, and the water is used only because of the difficulty 

 of obtaining other water. This water issues from the rock, and as such 

 water is known to rise from the Niagara limestone at various points in, 

 other counties, it is the best evidence we have, in the absence of natural 

 outcrops, of the presence of that formation. There are other wells in 



See page 17 and page 60. 



