Oceana County MI Archives History - Books .....Geological 1882
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Jan Cortez http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00020.html#0004939 December 4, 2008, 1:32 am

Book Title: History Of Oceana County

Geology teaches that all that is now dry land was once submerged beneath the 
ocean, which, like the land, its inequalities, its hills, its valleys, its 
mountain ranges.  Islands are but the tops of submerged mountains, and some of 
the sea mountains are steeper and more abrupt than any on the land.  In the 
British channel within ten miles the depth changes from 600 to 10,000 feet.  
at the close of the Carboniferous period, a great upheaval formed a line of 
land across the southern part of Michigan, which extended to the older adn 
wider formation in southern Ohio.  The land now comprising this and the 
adjoining counties was still submerged, but the belt rose higher and higher, 
extending northward and westward until the era of coal deposits, at the close 
of which Oceana and its sister counties formed the highlands of southern 
Michigan.  It is thought that Lake Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario did not 
then exist, their place being supplied by a great river, with here and there 
expansions.

Then began the Mesozoic age, characterized ny immense activity of animal and 
vegetable life, myriads of insects crawling in the rivers.  This era is known 
only by its fossils.  The Tertiary age succeeded with its rank vegetation, and 
mighty mammoths and mastodons roamed over the earth.

Then came a change of scene - the ice age buries animal and vegetable.  
Perhaps thousands of years elapsed before God removed the earth from the 
embrace of the ice king.  At last Spring came, a sea of ice a mile in 
thickness was dissolved, and the rocks which it held dropped down as rocky 
fragments or drift.  The countless currents which sprang into existence and 
formed for themselves channels, were the chief agency in forming the stratum 
as modified drifts.


Prof. Winchell's theory is that at this time the whole state was submerged, 
and one great lake existed from the Falls of Niagara to Chicago.  At all 
events, from Saginaw Bay to Lake Michigan a great valley, deep and wide, 
extended.  South of this line, barriers existed to the flow of waters and 
accumulation of ice and a second ice period resulted in the formation of 
another glacial field not over four feet in thickness.  Millions of cubic feet 
of ice water were added to the lakes, resulting in bursting asunder their 
green coating of ice, carrying with them their tables of limestone, and as the 
waters fell, depositing them where they lie to-day.  As the Niagara rock was 
worn down, the rushing waters made for themselves deeper channels, and the 
inland lakes became proportionately l;ower.  The present river system was then 
laid out by nature.

All Michigan, except an oval formation in the interior, with Lansing as 
center, and a diameter of about 100 miles, is regarded by Prof. Hitchcock, of 
Dartmouth, as belionging to the Devonian, or Lower Carboniferous formation, 
which is the middle stratum of the Paleozoic era.  In fact, all Michigan can 
be classed as Paleozoic, the oldest formation being of the first stratum, or 
Silurian, which is confined to the Upper Peninsula.  The Lower Peninsula, with 
the exception of the portion above mentioned, ranks next below in formation, 
being Devonian, or Lower Carboniferous, and the central portion is still 
later, being the third or highest division of the Carboniferous, or Permo-
carboniferous.

The Devonian, of which Oceana consists, is termed by many American geoligists 
the Erian formation.  In this age there was a great advance over the Silurian; 
terrestrial plants, weeds, rushes and trees made their appearance in great 
numbers; also ganoid fishes, like enormous sharks.  No evidence of vertebrate 
life has been here above that of fishes.  If the Silurian is the age of 
trilobites, the Devonian is that of fishes - not, certainly, those of the 
present, but more nearly resembling our sturgeons, gars, sharks and chimeras.

Oceana County has a singular formation to the west, at Little Point Au Sable, 
by which it extends out thirteen miles further west than the mouth of the 
Grand River, and even in the county itself this point is nearly six miles 
further west than the extreme southwestern portion.  This as we have before 
said, gives it a semi-peninsular position, and affects the climate favorably 
for fruit.  How this came to be formed, is a question for geologists to 
speculate upon.  It may be that this formation has been formed by the 
ceaseless action of the prevailing winds and currents from the south and west, 
meeting the heavy clay formations in Claybanks and being turned sharply out to 
the west, and then being deflected to the northeast again by counter currents 
on the west side; thus causing a formation in the form of a semi=circle.  The 
high ground at Little Point Au Sable is about 180 feet above the lake.

Again, another singular formation of Oceana, in common with all the rest of 
Western Michigan, is the high sand ridges, blown up on shores, sometimes 200 
feet high, - sometimes bare and glistening sand heaps, at other times crowned 
with a growth, chiefly of pine and hemlock.  As at Pentwater, so at Stony 
Creek, Grand Haven, Muskegon, White Lake and other places, the mouths of 
rivers are blocked up, lakes are formed with their first mouths pointing in a 
tortuous course to the northwest.  These have in most cases been straightened 
to channels due west.  These lakes at the mouths of rivers are invaluable as 
town sites, where sawmills can be erected, and logs boomed down the rivers.

Additional Comments:
HISTORY OF OCEANA CO., CHICAGO, H.R. PAGE & COMPANY, 1882

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/oceana/history/1882/historyo/geologic107nms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/mifiles/

File size: 6.2 Kb