Physical Properties of Dearborn County, Indiana

Dearborn County is in the extreme southeastern corner of Indiana, being bounded on the east by Ohio and the Ohio River, and on the south by Ohio County. The extreme length of Dearborn County is about twenty-six miles and breadth about sixteen miles, with an area of approximately three hundred and fifteen square miles.

GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY

Dearborn County possesses a very diversified topography and has within its borders an equally diversified soil. The county has some seven miles front on the Ohio River; considerable of its surface is river and creek hills and an extensive portion is upland flats, where originally, in a state of nature, the water stood the most of the year. There are extensive low bottom lands, terraces higher above the rivers and creeks, steep hillsides, broken uplands and upland flats. The county contains some of the richest land in the state, and some that might be classed as thin land. Most of the county, however, is made up of warm limestone soil or river bottoms. The upland flats, it has been found, by proper draining and fertilizing, can be developed into very profitable farming land. Picturesque scenery is to be found along the Ohio and the streams that flow into it and on the uplands there are many pleasant vistas that any artist would hail with joy. It is claimed by many that the Ohio River hills are unsurpassed in beauty anywhere on the globe and the traveler who has girded the earth, when he rests his eyes upon such visions of loveliness as can be surveyed from the top of Ludlow’s Hill, from the residence of Dr. H. H. Sutton, on the hilltop west of Aurora, or from the survey of the Great Miami River from the hilltops at the state line on the lands of Thomas and Joseph Fitch, will readily acknowledge that nowhere in all his travels has he seen anything that equals it in beauty, loveliness or fertility. The roads leading from the river to the higher lands pass along the beds of streams, between the hills, which are often beautifully rounded, while the ridges slope gracefully to the bottoms. The big bottoms of the Great Miami River are on the eastern side of the county and the Whitewater River flows through the northeast part of the county. Tanner’s Creek empties into the Ohio about two miles below Lawrenceburg and heads well back in the county. North and South Hogan unite and flow into the Ohio at Aurora. The beautiful Laughery, winding in and out among the hills, flows south through Ripley County and forms the boundary between Dearborn and Ohio counties. The floods back the water from the Ohio up all these streams, the flood of 1884 reaching to Guilford, in Tanner’s Creek, and to the Ripley County line on Laughery. The streams all have considerable fall and were, in pioneer days, utilized for water power, but as the forests have been cleared away the water supply has become more uncertain and the mills have all been abandoned. The advent of steam and its more certain and more dependable power have also had an effect in driving the water power out of use.

RIVER CHANGES

The Ohio River, with its periodic rising and falling, its great floods and swift current, at such times has caused great changes along its banks, by the washing away of large tracts and in other places, by filling. The state road from Aurora to Lawrenceburg at one time followed the bank of the Ohio, but the river has crumbled the bank until it has all disappeared, all traces of it being gone and the road long since abandoned. At the mouth of the Big Miami, the river has changed very much. The entrance to the Miami has gradually worked up the Ohio and the Great Miami, that at one time made a horseshoe bend and flowed by the once-busy hamlet of Hardinsburg, now has left that place some two miles to the westward of its bed. The higher flood levels of recent years have caused residents along the banks of the Ohio to abandon their property and seek higher elevations.

ALTITUDES

The height or elevation of the land of the county above sea level at different places is about as follows, taken from surveyors’ readings: Lawrenceburg, 500 feet; Guilford, 520 feet; Harmans, 759 feet; Weisburg, 941 feet; Moore’s Hill, 1,000 feet and Dillsboro, 785 feet.

THE ROCKS

The stratified rocks of Dearborn County belong to the series formerly known as the blue limestone or Hudson River group, sometimes now called the Cincinnati group. They belong to the Lower Silurian strata and the Paleozoic age. The strata of the Cincinnati group form the floor of nearly the whole of Dearborn County. The bluish tinge of the rocks is said to be due to the presence of oxide of iron. Exposure to the air changes its color to a stone gray. The rocks of the Dearborn County formation are full of fossils, which can be seen by the most careless observer on the rocks by the wayside. The limestone seldom is found in layers of more than from six to eight inches in thickness. In the old quarries at Lawrenceburg, some was found of greater thickness, but it generally was found to have a clay vein or parting when closely investigated. At the old quarry at St. Leon, earlier writers claimed that the stone would bear hammer dressing on account of its dense nature. On account of the great development of the cement industry, the quarrying of stone has largely ceased, except for construction of highways in surfacing.

This county is very near the center of the Cincinnati dome. The Ohio River has cut a deep gorge through the comparatively soft rocks of this dome—a gorge which in this county averages some three hundred and fifty feet in depth. The smaller streams in this area, then, are compelled to maintain a pretty rapid course by the steepness of their slopes. At the very edge of the river, where the river channel is deepest, the lowest rocks exposed are the Utica shales. These are soft, blue shales, often soft enough to cut readily with a knife; at other places, where freshly exposed, still somewhat hard. These shales contain many thin beds of limestone (mostly impure) interbedded with the shale. This shale formation forms the bottom layer in nearly every creek bottom as one passes back into the hills away from the river. Thus on Tanner’s Creek, these shales can be traced in the creek bottom beyond Guilford, or about eight miles, in direct line, from the river. On Hogan Creek these shales are found at about the same distance from the Ohio; and on Laughery, a larger stream, the shales extend back at least sixteen miles. Down near the river the lower forty feet of the bluffs are made up of this shale.

Next above the Utica shales in these counties comes the Lorraine limestone. In Dearborn County about one-half the surface is underlain with this rock. In this part of the county it is merely a matter of courtesy to call this formation a limestone. A typical section of it shows a good deal more shale than limestone, and what there is of the latter is usually so impure that it is of no practical use, either for building stone or lime. There are occasional thin layers of hard, crystalline limestone which are put to use as road material, but they do not form one per cent of this entire formation. This rock extends up the creek to a distance of sixteen to eighteen miles on Tanner’s and Hogan, and on Laughery beyond this county and twelve miles into Ripley. Between the latter creek and Hogan this rock is the capping layer of all the hills; but between Hogan and Tanner’s Creek the divide is capped with the limestones of the Hudson River group. These, like the Lorraine group, are mostly shale and impure limestone, soft, easily weathered and of little practical use. In the northwest corner of Dearborn County, the surface formation is glacial in origin and conceals the rocks.

The topography of this county is entirely a product of the softness of the rock and the proximity of the river. The latter has a deep gorge, and the creeks from the back country have had to maintain steep courses in cutting down to the river level. Thus Tanner’s Creek in sixteen miles falls four hundred feet; Hogan Creek in the same distance falls four hundred and twenty-five feet, or falls of about twenty-five feet per mile. Even a small stream with such a fall is capable of carrying large loads and of digging out a deep gorge. Then the smaller streams which flow into the creeks named above have even steeper slopes, and of course are able to work with amazing power. It comes as a surprise to see for the first time what enormous blocks of stone one of these hill torrents can carry; but after seeing that, one is not surprised that the country should be so rough.

The general expression of the topography here is of long, high ridges, with deep gorges between. Only the upper third of the ridges, in most places, is gently sloping enough for cultivation, and even that, in many places, is too steep for plowed soil to stick. Near the Ohio, and on the lower courses of the larger creeks, the hills are steeper than in the back country, at least for the lower half of the ridges; and in most places no attempt is made to cultivate these slopes.

MINERALS

No metals, in sufficient quantities to be valuable for mining, have ever been found within the confines of Dearborn County. Occasionally it is claimed there is a thin vein of bog iron found, but the stratum is generally too light and confined to too narrow limits to be of value. Salt was found in pioneer days near the state line on Double Lick Run, and it is said that section 25, township 6, range 1, was at one time set aside as a salt reservation. There is more or less drift on the highlands. Northwest of Manchester the limestone is overlaid with unstratified blue clay, containing pebbles and boulders, many of which bear glacial scratches. It is the impervious nature of this clay that has given to these localities the name of “crawfish” flats. Years ago, below Weisburg, a piece of native copper was found said to weigh twenty-six ounces, which must have been brought in the drift from the copper regions of Lake Superior. The Greendale ridge is composed of gravel, probably brought down from the north during the glacial period.

Along the banks of Laughery, near Hartford, there is a remarkable accumulation of drift. Between the bottoms and the hilltop, the deposit is about two hundred feet high, with a surface divided by narrow dells. An outcrop through the soil shows nothing but cemented gravel. In times past it was thought lead could be found there, but, after time and labor had been given it, the work was abandoned. In regard to gold-bearing drift, we cannot do better than quote a paper by the late George Sutton, M.D., on the “Gold Bearing Drift of Indiana,” read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Cincinnati in August, 1881:

“Along the valley of Laughery Creek, a stream which enters the Ohio River a few miles below the mouth of the Miami, may be seen deposits of this auriferous drift. They are not stratified like the terrace formations seen along our rivers, but lie in irregular accumulations along the valley. At the bottom of the small streams that have cut across this drift are seen deposits of black sand, already alluded to, which principally consist of magnetic iron ore. It is in this sand that gold is found. Seven miles from the mouth of Laughery may be seen a deposit of this drift about a mile and a half in length, nearly a half mile in width, and about a hundred feet in thickness. Some portions of this Laughery drift are so rich in gold that it is seen with the unaided eye and almost pays a fair remuneration for washing for it. My attention was directed a few weeks since, by the owner of the farm on which this drift is found, to a small excavation which had been made in washing for gold. It was by measurement six feet long, five feet broad and about two feet deep. He informed me that from this place eight dollars’ worth of gold had been obtained and that a man had washed from the drift on his farm gold to the value of sixteen dollars and fifty cents. The gold is found in the form of dust, flattened scales and small nuggets. Only that which could be seen with the unaided eye was saved.”

LAND SLIPS

A common phenomenon among the river hills is the land slip, especially on the steeper places. When the frost is coming out of the ground in the early spring the clay underneath generally becomes saturated with water, and from its nature is too slippery to support the weight of the soil above it. Part of the hillside slips by its own weight and a bench is formed upon which material accumulates. On this account, a greater depth of soil is found upon these benches than elsewhere on the side of the hills.

THE SOILS IN DETAIL

In this county there are not many distinct types of soil. In the first place, there is little variety in the underlying rocks and there could, therefore, be little variety in the soils resulting from their decay. In order of area covered, these soils can be classified to follow: (1) Limestone upland, which occupies at least two-thirds of the area of these counties; (2) the Miami clay loam, which occupies nearly one-third the area; (3) Waverley clay loam, the bottom soil along the Ohio River and creeks; (4) Waverley gravel, the terrace soils.

THE LIMESTONE UPLAND SOIL

This soil may be divided into two general groups, depending upon whether the rocks from which it was derived were limestone chiefly or shale. In the first class comes most of the soil mapped as limestone upland. It is the great upland soil in this county, formed by the decay of the Hudson River and Lorraine limestones and shales. It is yellow to brown in color, markedly darker than the Miami soils to the west. It is principally a slope soil, and in nearly every locality is much mixed with flat fragments and plates of limestone. In many places these fragments are so numerous and large as seriously to interfere with plowing. Often they are gathered together and built into fences. Near the Miami areas there is often a mixture of that soil and the limestone soil. Where pure this soil is fertile and loamy. On the steeper slopes it is usually sown to grass, wheat or rye, since these crops assist in holding the soil on the hills. Where the slopes are gentle, or in small bottoms, corn is grown successfully. This soil is excellent for small fruits, berries, etc., and for orchards. It is an excellent soil for most farming purposes. Being shallow, it is, however, subject to drought, with late maturing crops. There is a strong tendency to wash, and every community contains abandoned fields where the forces of erosion overcame the rate of decay of the rock. The small bottoms along the creeks in this region are peculiar in their formation. At least fifty percent of the bottom material consists of flat plates of rock, tilted at an angle of about thirty degrees, with soil between the plates. As a result, the plowing of these small bottoms is almost as difficult as hillside plowing.

The most fertile soils in this county are undoubtedly the shale soils, or the limestone upland soils on the lower portions of the slopes. When freshly cleared, these soils resulting from the decay of the shales have no superior in fertility in the state. They are dark brown or black, from the high percentage of humus which they contain, but after being cropped for three or four years they become somewhat lighter in color. It is often mixed with fragments of limestone from the slopes above. It is a loose soil, from one to four feet in depth, deeper at the foot of the slopes. It is in this soil that the tobacco of Dearborn County is raised—the most profitable crop that can be raised in Indiana soil, but exhausting to the ground. This soil raises excellent corn, or anything else that requires a strong soil. Wherever it is possible to retain this soil, it does not seem to diminish in fertility, but its situation is bad, being subject to erosion, soil creep and freezing and thawing. Unless exceptionally well cared for within five or six years after clearing, practically all of the soil is gone, washed into the creeks and carried down into the river.

THE MIAMI CLAY LOAM

This soil, the second in extent in this county, is similar to the Miami clay loam of Ripley County, of which it is merely an extension. In this county, as in Ripley, this soil lies flat, with poor drainage. It is a compact, yellow clay soil, nearly white when dry. In the subsoil there are mottles, and sometimes a blue till at the base. This soil bears a marsh vegetation, sweet gum, beech, etc. It is a good grass soil, here as elsewhere, and fairly good for wheat when fertilized. It invariably requires tiling and careful rotation of crops to yield profitable results. The town of Dillsboro, in Dearborn County, is on the line separating the Miami clay from the limestone upland. It is a matter of common remark that east of Dillsboro corn is better than west, while the soils on the west produce better wheat and grass.

THE WAVERLEY OR BOTTOM SOILS

The principal development of Waverley soils in this county is in the “bottoms” of the Ohio and the creeks just as they leave the hills for the river plain. In Dearborn County the principal area of Waverley soils has been known for a hundred years as the “Big Bottoms.” This comprises a body of about seventy-two hundred acres of land, lying between the Miami River and the Ohio, crossed by Hogan and Tanner’s Creeks. It is likely that this great alluvial plain is due to deposition of silt from the waters of the Miami, the Ohio and the two creeks in times of high water, when the smaller streams had their currents checked by the back-waters of the Ohio. At any rate, this result follows during every flood, when a thin layer of silt is deposited over the entire plain. From the fact that the lower parts of this soil contain much sand and pebbles foreign to the uplands, it seems certain that a large part of this bottom land was laid down in the period of the ice invasion, and that these Waverley soils are in part due to glacial floods and in part to the annual flood of the Ohio.

This flat-floored valley, with its hills conveniently near, offered an attractive place for settlement to the early emigrants from the East. The first clearing was made in the “Big Bottoms” in 1794, and it has been permanently occupied since then. For a hundred years this land was planted in corn, some portions of the valley having certainly been planted to that crop every year of the century. In late years the bottoms have not been so fertile, or, at any rate, the corn crops have not been so large. This is probably due to lack of rotation and can be mended by some attention to that phase of good farming. In one recent summer, while there was a great deal of corn in this valley, probably one-third of the bottoms were in grass, wheat or oats. Physically, no soil could be better. It is fine, loamy, easily plowed and cultivated, deep enough to withstand drought, and fertile beyond most soil. It is close to a good market, and, indeed, has but one danger—that of overflow. This, however, is in part counterbalanced by the increase in fertility due to the silt left behind, and is the original source of the bottom.

FARMING METHODS

Agriculture is difficult in such a country as that of Dearborn County in the rough portions. The soil when freshly cleared is usually fertile enough, but incessant care is required to keep it from washing away. In many places this can be prevented by growing such crops as require little plowing and loosening of the soil. These slopes have, in the past, been famous for their hay and their small grain, but hay is exhaustive to soil, and the best hay crops are things of the past in this area. Corn is not a good crop, for the looseness of soil necessary for that grain offers too great a chance for the washing of the earth into the valleys. The fact that these hillsides sooner or later become bare has led to a very destructive method of farming in some localities. There is little wonder that the hill country in this county is growing constantly poorer. The worst feature of the case is that there seems to be no remedy, unless the growing of alfalfa will improve matters. In recent summers, however, alfalfa on these hillsides was apparently dying, and if it should turn out impossible to grow successfully here, the case will be desperate. Unless some remedy is found it is only a question of time until these farms will have to be abandoned. Residents are free enough in saying that their farms are losing in value year by year. Perhaps the intensive farming methods of Switzerland and mountainous Germany, with their terracing and stone walls, might be of service here; but such methods are not to be expected in a country of cheap lands.

In the river bottoms, where the soil is, or was, the equal of any in the country, a near-sighted policy of farming very nearly ruined much of the soil. Corn was profitable in this easily-tilled soil, and much of it was practically tilled to death in corn. Only when much of it was practically exhausted did the farmers awake to the necessity of fertilization. Now one sees a reasonable rotation of clover with more exhausting crops, and in course of time these bottoms can be brought to their ancient fertility.

Transportation facilities are poor for a great part of this county, hauls of eight to ten miles to market being not uncommon. Ten miles through these hills are equal to fifteen miles in smoother country. For this reason and for the further reason that such crops need little stirring of the soil, it has been suggested that an attempt be made to grow fruit extensively in this region. Even with the little care now given to fruit trees, exceptionally fine peaches and apples grow here, and it is possible that the fruit crop will one day be the salvation of these hillsides.