Identifier: historyoffortdod01prat (find matches)
Title: History of Fort Dodge and Webster County, Iowa
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Pratt, Harlow Munson, 1876- Pioneer Publishing Company (Chicago)
Subjects: Webster County (Iowa) -- History Fort Dodge (Iowa) -- History Webster County (Iowa) -- Biography
Publisher: Chicago, The Pioneer Publishing Company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ge from century to century. So we mayknow that centuries and milleniums unnumbered have rolled by since first thegreat continental ice-sheet swept down from its northern home. It has beenestimated from studies of the dififerent drift sheets of the Mississippi valley thatif the time since the retreat of the last ice-sheet be considered as unity the lengthof time since the close of the Kansan invasion must be reckoned as fifteen toseventeen. To this must be added again the length of Kansan time itself aswell as that of the Aftonian interglacial age and of the Nebraskan invasion. Weknow so little of this latter that we are not yet in a position to place any estimateupon its duration or antiquity. The streams and rains and winds had worked for countless years upon therocks and soils of Webster county when again the climate changed and anotherperiod of intense cold ensued. The drift sheets of former invasions seem tohave been very largely worn away during this interval and deep valleys had
Text Appearing After Image:
FIGURE V—OUTCROPPIXG LEDGES OF GYPSUM m^<i m \m^ -s^B HISTORY OF WEBSTER COUNTY 9 been cut in the sandstones and shales and gypsum beds so that wherever the loosemantle rock is removed the surface of these underlying rocks is rough and irregu-lar. When the Wisconsin glacier came into our county it plowed over the rem-nants of old till, gathered up such rock fragments as it found loose on thesurface or could pluck from their parent ledges and mixed and ground all thisload in its mighty mills and finally left it spread out as the rich productive soilswhich make Webster countys farms a veritable treasure-house. All the ele-ments of soil fertility and plant food are found in these glacial clays and,enriched by generations of vegetable growths, they are unexcelled among thesoils of the state. It is a common saying, though none the less a true one, thatour soils are the basis of our wealth and our social welfare. Upon this founda-tion we may rear the superstructure of great manufacture

Note About Images