432 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



mulation of glacier Drift, mainly hard-pan, and has a width of five or 

 six miles. Its inner margin forms the prominent ridge on which Wil- 

 liams Center is situated, and which runs about a mile west of Hickville 

 and Farmer Center. That on which Hickville and Farmer Center are 

 situated has been styled the Van Wert Ridge. It consists of gravel and 

 sand in oblique stratification, rises from six to twelve feet, and is but a 

 few rods in width. That which deflects the Auglaize and the Tiffin from 

 flowing directly toward Lake Erie has been named the Blanchard Ridge, 

 from the Blanchard River, which flows along its outer periphery for a 

 distance of about thirty miles. It is similar to the St. Mary's Ridge 

 both in width and composition. Its inner margin is very much like 

 that of the St. Mary's Ridge, and very often takes the name of ridge. It 

 passes through Leipsic, in Putnam county. It is followed by the Belmore 

 Ridge, which crosses Highland, Richland, and Adams townships, and is 

 intersected by the Maumee near Independence. At Defiance the rock is 

 struck at fifty feet. 



The following details will be of interest in respect to these ridges in 

 Defiance county. The inner margin of St. Mary's Ridge at Williams 

 Center is prominent as a ridge of hard-pan Drift, rising abruptly on both 

 sides to the height of about forty-four feet above the flat on the east. It 

 has a rolling, diversified contour. The various gullies and channels cut 

 in it by the erosion of natural drainage show stones and bowlders embraced 

 tightly within the clay, some of the latter being two and three feet in 

 diameter. Wells get water at Williams Center in a five-foot bed of gravel 

 eighteen to twenty-five feet below the surface. But when the blue 

 hard-pan is penetrated, the water in the gravel on the rock rises from 

 the depth of eighty or ninety feet quite to the surface, making valuable 

 artesian wells. There is an important area of artesian wells just east of 

 Williams Center. Along the east side of this ridge the Van Wert Ridge 

 can be traced independently. It is about thirty feet lower. Mr. D. Hoff- 

 man lives on this ridge at Williams Center. His cellar is dug in gravel 

 and sand, depth of gravel unknown. A well at his barn, on the south 

 side of this ridge, went through two feet of gravel at ten feet, with abun- 

 dance of water, not artesian. Bowlders are strewn over this ridge at Mr. 

 Huffman's in great abundance. The shallow wells east of Williams Center 

 throw up great quantities of quicksand. . Hundreds of loads are said to have 

 come out of Mr. Ensign's. Wells at Farmer Center are about fifteen feet 

 deep, with abundance of water. Near Williams Center bog ore is found in 

 lumps on the inner side of the St. Mary's Ridge. A short distance south of 

 Williams Center this hard-pan ridge has more the form of shoulders or 

 terraces in the general surface, there being little or no descent toward 



