May, 1904 .] Changes in the Drainage Near Lancaster. 
153 
width, the hills are 1 50 to 200 feet high and rise rather abruptly 
011 either side. It then widens until it enters Clear Creek where 
its width is again about one mile. From a short distance west of 
Dehnont the drainage is to the eastward, emptying into the 
Hocking at Lancaster. Between Dehnont and Lancaster the 
valley is filled to a considerable depth with heavy and irregular 
deposits of drift into which the streams have cut deep trenches. 
From Dehnont a small stream also drains to the westward into 
Muddy Prairie Creek of which more will be said later. The 
divide at Dehnont between the two is very low and scarcely 
noticeable on passing over it on the railroad. Delniont is proba- 
bly the site of an old col. The depth of drift over this col is 
unknown, but less than half a mile to the west, at the school- 
house and also at a point a short distance east of the schoolhouse 
at an elevation about the same as that of Delmont, wells were 
sunk to a depth of about 180 feet and no rock was encountered. 
These wells are not situated in the center of the valley but near 
the north wall. It is possible that, after the blocking b}- the ice 
front of the old outlet of Clear Creek toward the northwest, and 
prior to the cutting down of the old col near the present mouth 
of Clear Creek, the waters of this region had an outlet over a low 
col at Dehnont, and might have eroded it to a considerable depth. 
The ice, advancing farther, might hav’e blocked this outlet and 
caused the cutting down of the col on the lower part of Clear 
Creek. 
Muddy Prairie Creek, as has been mentioned, rises in the 
valley at Dehnont on the western side of a low drift divide. It 
flows southwest ward, in places cutting deepl}' into the drift filling. 
About two miles southeast of Delmont it leaves this broad valley 
and enters a narrow one between high hills, in spite of the fact 
that the drift divide between it and Clear Creek is only a few feet 
higli ; it is so low, in fact, that when it was proposed to drain 
Muddy Prairie, a large peat swamp formerly existing in the 
stream near this point, the engineers advised cutting through this 
divide to Clear Creek. The valley which it follows into the hills 
is only a few hundred feet in width, and an observer standing in 
the broad valley which the stream has just left and facing the 
entrance into the hills would not even suspect that it was any- 
thing but a very short tributary coming in at this point. It is 
bordered by terraces of roughly stratified drift 60 to too feet or 
even more above the present floor. The soil on the flood-plain is 
peaty and the stream very sluggish, in places cutting only a few 
inches below the surface. There are no wells from which the 
depth of drift beneath the valley floor could be obtained. The 
stream continues in this way with no noticeable variation in the 
width of its valley for a distance of a mile, when it widens some- 
what and becomes more rapid, but half a mile beyond is suddenly 
