Cross county. 71 
oxbow shape of the depression and its continuation across the country 
indicate that it is an old river channel and not simply a depression. 
The old channel at Grassy Lake is about 1 mile wide and the level 
of the water is 20 feet or more below the level of the country at 
Crawfordville. 
Most of the soil of the county is composed of sand and silty clay, 
resulting from repeated overflows of Mississippi River. At no place 
is the material suitable for making common bricks unless the yellow- 
ish surface loam that occurs at a few places near the center of the 
county may be used for this purpose. Crawfordville and Earl are 
situated on small ridges which are said to extend in a northeast- 
southwest direction. These ridges contain at the surface a thin 
surface loam which is somewhat similar to the yellow loam in the 
prairie lauds west of Crowleys Ridge. 
At present no bricks are manufactured in the county. 
CROSS COUNTY. 
GENERAL GEOLOGY. 
Crowleys Ridge extends through Cross County near the center in a 
north-south direction. The eastern half of the county is a low bottom 
country traversed by St. Francis River and St. Francis Bayou. Al- 
most the entire area east of the ridge is covered by alluvial deposits. 
St. Francis Bayou hugs the foot of Crowleys Ridge, which forms a 
steep erosion scarp across the county. 
The geology of the county is best studied along the steep eastward- 
facing bluffs of Crowleys Ridge. The lower Tertiary strata outcrop at 
the base of the ridge and extend 65 to 75 feet up its sides; above this 
comes 18 to 20 feet of waterworn pebbles and coarse sand, which cor- 
responds to the Lafayette of Mississippi and Tennessee, and is but 
roughly stratified. This in turn is overlain by loess, with a maximum 
thickness of 50 to 60 feet. 
The following is a section along the creek east of Wynne, at a point 
three-fourths of a mile southeast of the 3-mile post on the railroad: 
Section 3 miles east of Wynne. 
Feet. 
1. Loess capping top of hill; in places stratified and containing 
numerous lime concretions and land shells; lower 5 feet con- 
tains sand and pebbles derived from underlying Lafayette... 18 
Unconformity; top of Tertiary. 
2. Coarse oxidized sands and pebbles, which correspond to the 
Lafayette of Mississippi and Tennessee 18 
3. Gray to lemon-colored sand, with thin layers of pale-graj 
sandy clay I'd 22 
4. Brown lignite and lignitic day I 
5. Clay sand similar to No. 4 s 
6. Landslide, which has covered the rest of the hillside t<> base 
bluff 30 
