Cover title.Host: Fairfield Community High School

Wilson, George M.

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Guide leaflet : Fairfield area, Wayne County, Fairfield and Albion Quadrangles : April 16, 1955

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Ge-oi. s~ S,~ate of Illinois Department of Registrat~ion and Educattcrl STATE GEOLOGICAL SURYEY DIVISION Urbana, Il~inois John C. Fry~, Chief GEOLOGICAL SCIENCE Sponsored by ILLINOIS STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY Wayne County Fairfield and Albion Quadrangles GUIDE LEAFLET 1955A \ \ ( Le.ader George M. Wilson April 16, 1955 FIELD TRI P llltNO\S GEOlOvtCA\. . $URVEY L\8RARY HOST: Fairfield Community High School 0 .o 0.1 .1 0.1 . 2 3.5 3.7 1.5 5.2 FAIRFIELD GEOLOGICA~ SCIENCE FIELD TRIP t ITIN$ARY Assemble at Fairfield Community High School. Head cars east toward Route 45. Stop. Turn right onto Route 45 • CAUTION. Railroad crossing. Slow. Turn left on gravel road. Go east on gravel road. Weather permitting, this side trip will be included: (0.6 0.6) Go south on road to see a small abandoned coal strip mine. 0.5 5.7 During the early 1930's, the coal was stripped and used locally. The coal, shale, underclay, and sandstone are of Penn-sylvanian age. This is one of the few coal outcrops in Wayne County. The coal beds that are mined extensively elsewhere in Illinois are found in Wayne County at depths of more than 1,000 feet. Following is a typical section of the outcrop: Surface soil . . . . . . . Gray shale . . . . . . Coal, impure and shaly. . . Underclay, gray, with plant fossils Sandstone, gray, fine . . . . Go back north to point 5.2 miles • . STOP 1. Till-plain. . . . . . . . . Thickness Ft. In. 1 3 8 10 10 Much of southern Illinois is covered with glacial till - the Illinoian till plain. Physiographers call it the Mt. Vernon Hill Country. Here we see a soil profile in Illinoian till as it has developed in Wayne County. Thousands of years ago much of Illinois was covered by great ice-sheets. We have evidence that at least four great ice-sheets, or glaciers, invaded Illinois. We do not know just why the great ice-sheets developed, but we can be sure that the average annual temperatures were so low for such a long time that great quantities of ice and snow accumulated in the northern part of North America. The great weight of the ice and snow forced the ice to move outward in plastic flow. The rocks and stones frozen into the base of the ice moved with the ice. During the process many rocks were ground to 1'rock flour. 11 The glacier carried a great load of finely ground clay, pebbles, and boulders. ,· 2.0 7.7 1.1 8.8 - 2 -~Vhere the ice-sheet melted, it dropped its load, and its path is marked by an unsorted mixture of clay, sand, pebbles, and boul-ders called alacial drift or till. This is the deposit we see before us. When melting at the edges of the ice balanced the advance of the glacier, the edge of the glacier stayed fairly stationary. But the advancing ice kept bringing more glacial drift, gradually building up a thickened belt or ridge of drift called a moraine. We will see a moraine later on this trip. Some of the glacial drift was washed out by the melt-water and was sorted by the streams that flowed from the glacier. The streams dropped the heaviest and coarsest rocks and boulders nearest the glacier, carried the sand and gravel farther, and carried the finest clay and silt still farther; some of it went all the way to the ocean. Where the outwash material was spread widely in front of the glacier, it forms an outwash-plain; where it was concentrated in a stream valley, it forms a valley-train. During the Wisconsinan glacial stage, later than the Illinoian, sand and gravel deposited in the valley of the Wabash dammed its tributaries. Melt-waters flowing down the Little Wabash River and the Wabash River were ponded. When the melt-waters lost their momentum, they dropped their load of silt and clay which formed a widespread deposit on the floors of the glacial lakes and ponds. We will see such a deposit and study a section of the soil profile (see description of how soil profiles develop). Feet Surface soil 2 Clay, leached and oxidized 3 Till, brown, silty, with black concretions (iron-manganese), and with glacial pebbles 3 Till, silty, brown, medium hard, with glacial pebbles. • • • • • • • • • • • 4 NOTE producing oil well. The oil comes from the Mississippian rocks which lie below the Pennsylvanian rocks (see chart). Proceed on gravel road. Notice the soil profile on the right; it resembles the one described above. Notice the sandstone in the road. Such stone has been quarried at various places in Illinois and used for foundation stone. There is a small quarry not far from this spot. 0.5 9.3 0.8 10.1 0.2 10.3 0.5 10.8 0.8 11.6 0.2 11.8 0.3 12 .. 1 0.3 12.4 - 3 -STOP 2. This soil profile is of special interest because of tHe great quantity of local material incorporated in the till. Feet Surface soil, sandy • • • • • • • 2 Till, brown, gray, sandy, pebbly; lower part weathers to a pebbly band. • • • • 4 Saudstone residium \lith glacial pebbles and till, and with much locally derived sandstone •• . • . •. 3 Notice the sandstone rubble in the till which here lies directly the sandstone bedrock. Proceed on road. Turn right. CAUTION - Dangerous cross-roads. Notice sandstone on right-hand side of road. Turn right. Turn left. STOP 3. Back-water deposit. on As described above, when a river carrying melt-water was dammed, the ponded waters spread into a lake in which the fine sediment was dropped, building a wide flat lake floor. Note on the topographic map that the elevation is about the same over the wide valley flat. Since the lake silts were deposited, other materials from the im• mediate area have been washed over the lake silts. Surface silt, gray • • • Organic soil, gray ••• Silt, tan, light gray. Silt, as above but with Silt, light gray, hard, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 iron" nodules • • sandy ..... .. Inches 8 18 20 10 24 Only a few hundred feet farther along the route, we see a feature somewhat unusual for this section of Illinois - a moraine. This is the thick ridge of glacial drift that accumulated because for a long time the 'glacier melted as fast as it advanced. Examine the soil profile and compare it with the previous soil profiles. Feet Surface soil, sandy 2 Till, reddish-brown, pebbly, sandy, weathered, with coarse bands of weathered pebbles 12 Sand, reddish, clayey, with bands of pebbles 3 • 0.5 0~1 13.0 0.3 13.3 1.9 15.2 0.9 16.1 0.9 17.0 0.8 17.8 6.9 24.7 1.9 26.6 - 4 .. Go ahead on road, turn left. STOP 4., Outwash material. The sand we see here is part of the outwash material from the glacier that deposited the moraine. Gravel, reddish-brown and weathered • Sand, fine, light brown Feet 15 10 From this point to the bottom of the hill, the outcrops indicate that the materials are largely sand. STOP 5. Vantage point with good view of both morainal topography and the valley flat .which shows the level floor of the back-water silt deposit. (Note the many oil wells in the area.) STOP 6. Note the sandstone ledge in the road. This is one of the Pennsylvanian sandstones that the pioneers quarried for foundations for their houses and barns. Continue north. Note the .glacial boulders in the ravine on the left. CAUTION. Railroad crossing. Stop. Turn left on Route 15. Go west to Fairfield, southeast corner of square, turn right (north) and follow cavalcade to city park. LUNCH STOP. Leave park, drive to First Street, turn left and proceed on Elm to 7th Street, turn right and go to small abandoned quarry. STOP 7. The limestone exposed in the abandoned quarry is fossiliferous, especially rich in fusulina (one of the many foraminifera). Such fossils as these are useful in correlating rocks from place to place. This limestone is one of many that occur in the Pennsylvanian rocks. Some of the limestones are only thin streaks, others are as much as 50 feet thick in some areas in the ncoal Measures" rock of Illinois. Beneath the limestone is black shale, and beneath the black shale is a thin coal which was mined when the limestone was quarried. Limestone, black shale, coal, underclay, sandstone. The suc-cession of strata is repeated as many as 50 times through the Pennsyl-vanian rocks. Such a sequence is called a cyclothem (see attached chart). The repeated sequence means that certain changes in condi-tions of sedimentation were repeated many .times back · in Pennsylvanian times. - 5 -tn Pennsylvanian times rivers were bringing sediments from the north and eastt possibly from as far away as the present Atlantic coast. The ocean lay far to the west and south, perhaps as far away as Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. The country in between, now the Middle West, was a low flat swampy area in which the sediments were being deposited. Conditions were unlike any on earth today. The plants and trees grew luxuriantly. When they died and fell into the swampy waters, they were partially preserved, buried by later sediments, and finally converted into coal. Sometimes the sediments were fine silts and clays which later became shales; some-times they were sands which became sandstones. At still other times, the sea covered the area and left in the limy sediments marine fossils which became limestones. End of Trip Reprinted 1962 - 6 -SOIL PROFILES - The Rate of w,athel'ing After the glacial till was deposited, natural weathering began. The rate of weathering is slow, but where till remained undisturbed a soil profile developed in the upper portion of the till. Following the practice established about 30 years ago by the Russian scientist Glinka, soil scientists consider that the soil or weathering profile consists of three zones, designated A, B, and C from the top down. The A zone is the 11Soil" zone, normally black or gray. The B zone is the 11 subsoil11 zone, and the C zone is the unaltered parent material. The zonal effect comes about because the four major weathering pro-cesses progress at different rates, although all of them depend on the downward movement of groundwater. These processes, listed according to their rate of progress and beginning with the most rapid, are: (1) oxidation, (2) leaching of carbonates, (3) decomposition of more resistant minerals, and (4) accumulation of humus. In the A zone, in which humus material from decaying plants has accumu· lated, the rock minerals are oxidized, leached, and decomposed. In the upper part of the B zone, the rock minerals are qnly oxidized (oxidation is shown by reddish or yellowish color caused by oxidation of iron minerals). The leached zone is determined by absence of carbonate rocks, such as limestone, and is re-vealed by tests with a solution of hydrochloric acid. The soil profiles developed on the older drifts - Illinoian, Kansan, and Nebraskan, can be divided into five zones, designated by numbers instead of letters in order to avoid confusion. Horizon 1 is the old 11soil" or humus zone. Horizon 2 is a dense layer, very gummy and plastic when wet, very hard when dry. Horizon 3 is the leached and oxidized zone, and Horizon 4 is the oxidized but calcareous zone. Horizon 5 is the unaltered parent material. Deep weathering has developed the five recognizable zones in the old drifts. Oxidation, leaching, and decomposition of minerals have all progressed deeper. Another process (the downward transfer of clay minerals) has not only left Horizon 1 more silty than it was originally but has also made Horizon 2 much more dense and plastic than it was originally. This dense plastic "gumbo" horizon is known as 11hardpan11 and is widespread in southern Illinois. ERAS GEOLOGICAL COLUMN - Fairfield Area PERIODS EPOCHS Quaternary Pleistocene REMARKS Recent post·glaeial stage Wisconsinan loess Illinoian glacial drift Kansan glacial drift ~ .!: 1--------------+---------+-----------------cu :oi <~ Tertiary Cretaceous Pliocene Miocene Oligocene Eocene Paleocene Not present in Fairfield area Not present in Fairfield area. ~·-----------------r-----------------+----------------------------1.1-1 Q) 0..-4 .... Q),U Jurassic Not p~esent in Illinois ~ Jtt~--------------~---------------+---------------------------f Triassic Not present in Illinois ---------~-~~--------------~------------+-------------------------Permian Not present in Illinois I fi g) .,...u .0 d Pennsylvanian McLeansboro Shale, coal, underclay, sandstone, limestone ... _c_a_r_b __ o_n_d_a_l_e ___ +P_r_e_s_e_n_t _ a_t_d_e_.p,__t_h _______ .. .. -Q) .... O...t .... "' ,C..-4 ~ ~ Tradewater and Present at depth .ct: ~ Casevville .... ~-------------~~~~~~~----+-------------------------""" ~ o "' Chester (Upper cu rz:l Mississionian) ~ "g Mississippian "' Iowa (Lower Mississippian) Sandstones, ltmestones, and shales in deep wells Limestone, shale ·, and sand· stone, in deep wells "S ..:1 """ m N .u o cu Devonian Black shale and limestone g ~ · cu i in deep wells. ~ }l ~--~--~~-----------------~--------·--------~---------------------------1 co Q) Silurian Limestone. ~·-------------------~---------------~---------------------------~ ~ 0..0 cu ~ Shale, limestone, and sand-~ ~ Ordovician stone < ~·----------·-----------+----------------~---------------------------..... Cambrian No data available ---------J------~------------------~----------------;-----~--~~--~-----------·-Proterozoic Archeozoic Referred to as "Pre-Cambrian" Time. No data avai lab 1~ · Shale, gray, sandy at top; contains marine fossils and ironstone concretions especially in lower part. Limestone; contains marine fossils. Shale, black, hard, laminated; contains large spheroidal concre-tions ("Nigger heads") and marine fossils. Limestone; contains marine fossils. Shale, gray; pyritic nodules and ironstone concretions common at base; plant fossils locally common at base; marine fossils rare. Coal ; locally contains clay or shale partings. Underclay, mostly medium to light gray except dark gray at top; upper part noncalcareous, lower part calcareous. Limestone, argillaceous; occurs in nodules or discontinuous beds; usually nonfossiliferous. Shale, gray, sandy. Sandstone, fine-grained, micaceous, and siltstone, argillaceous; variable from massive to thin-bedded; usually with an uneven lower surface. AN IDEALLY COMPLETE CYCLOTHEM (Reprinted from Fig. 42, Bulletin No. 66, Geology and Mineral Resources of the Marseilles, Ottawa, and Streator Quadrangles, by H. B. Willman and J. Norman Payne) (47669-lSM-11-61) ~~ • .Time Table of Pleistocene Glaciation (after M. M. Leighton and H. B. Willman, 1950, J. C. Frye and H. B. Willman, 1960) Staae Substaae Recent 5,000 yrs-Valderan 11,000 yr':.. Twocreekan Nature of Deoosits Soil, youthful profile of weathering,lake and river deposits, dunes, peat Outwash Peat, alluvium Soecial features Glaciation in northe~n Illinois Ice withdrawal, erosion 12,500 yre> ~--~----------------------~----------------------Glaciation, building of many moraines as far south as Shelbyville, ex-tensive valley trains, outwash plains, and lakes c co c: •r-4 (/) c Woodfordian Drift, loess, dunes lake deposits 0 22,000 yre 0 ~--+--------------+----------·-·-U) .... 3: Farmdalian 28,000 yrso Altonian 50,000 to Soil, silt and peat Drift, loess Ice withdrawal, weather-ing, and erosion Glaciation in northern Illinois, valley trains along major rivers, Winnebago drift --------- 70,000 yrs;----t------------+-------------~ Sangamonian Soil, mature profile (3rd interglacial) of weathering, al-luvium, peat Illinoian (3rd Glacial) Yarmouthian (2nd interglacial) Buffalohartan Drift Jacksonvillian Drift Paysonian (terminal) Drift Lovelandian Loess (in advance of (Pro-Illinoian) glaciation) Soil, mature profile of weathering, al-luvium, peat ----------------~------------------------+---------~~-----------------4---~--------------------- -Kansan Drift (2nd glacial) Loess ~--~---------~--------------~-----------------------------------~~----~----------- - -·-· Aftonian Soil, mature profile (lst interglacial) of weathering, al-luvium, peat Drift Nebraskan (1st glacial) ~--~-------------~-----------------~--------------------~----~----------------------· _, _, ;: 0 ..... ~ u ..... "" "" 0 CENTRAl lOWlAND PROVINCE OZARK PlATEAUS PROVINCE-.. . . .. .. , ......... I .... ' "' I INTERIOR LOW PLATEAUS PROVINCE COASTAl PLAIN PROVINCE ILLINOIS SrArl tiiOL(J(JICAL Slllft'lt' (47669-15M-11·61) ~~ PHYSIOGRAPHIC DIVISIONS OF ILLINOIS (Reprinted from Illinois State Geological Survey Report of Investigations 129, "Physiographic Divisions of Illinois," by M. M. Leighton, George E. Ekblaw, and Leland Herberg) Plate COMMON TYPES of ILLINOIS FOSSILS L ithostrotion Cup coral Honeycomb coral GRAPTOLITE CORALS Archimedes CYSTOID Fen estella BRYOZOA CRINOID PENTREMITE Lingula 0 rbiculoidea s piriferoid Productoid Penta meroid BRA.CHIOPODS M -M -C . Plate 2 COMMON TYPES of ILLINOIS FOSSILS "Scallop" Straight cone PELECYPODS Curved cone Coiled cone (Nautilus) CEPHALOPODS . ~•... ~ 0 Ffi ~ OSTRACODS High- spired Bumastus ( g rea t I y en I a rged l Low- spired Flat - spired GASTROPODS Calymene (flat) TRILOBITES Colymene (coiled ) t1 .M.C . 

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Guide leaflet : Fairfield area, Wayne County, Fairfield and Albion Quadrangles : April 16, 1955

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