43? 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. Wellsget 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’sin 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. Ensifn’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 
