Box 15, Folder 6: Geological Survey 1873

-priated shall be used in such manner as shall best promote the purposes of this act.

Section 7. The survey shall commence by the first of June next or as soon thereafter as practicable, beginning with the counties of Ashland and Douglas, and the entire survey shall be completed within four years from and after its commencment.

Section 8. Chapter one hundred and thirty seven of the general laws of 1870 established an act to provide for the survey of the lead district, marking maps and collecting statistics and specimens from the same, and chapter one hundred and thirty six of the general laws of 1872 amending thereof are hereby repealed.

Section 9. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.

H.D. Basson Speaker of the Assembly

M.H. [Pettel?] Approved. President of the senate. G.G. Washburn [illegible] March 19. 1873.

[State Seal in Red with blue ribbon]

STATE OF WISCONSIN, SS SECRETARY'S OFFICE,

The Secretary of State of the State of Wisconsin hereby certifies, that the foregoing has been compared with the original enrolled act now on deposit in this office, and that the same is a true and correct copy thereof, and of the whole of such original.

In Wtiness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the Great Seal of the State, at the Capitol in Madison, this 29th day of March, A. D. 1873

John S. Dean Asst Secretary of State.

[1873]

Geology of Waukesha

In reply to your request for a statement of the geological features to be found at and around Waukesha, and of the character of the rocks out of which at least some of the numerous springs having medicinal virtues issue, I have to say that these rocks are limestones of the Niagara group, (Upper Silurian) so called because they are of the same age or period as those over which the water falls at Niagara No other rocks are found in their natural bed at Waunkesha. They occur in two very distinct varieties; the lower, compact and evenly bedded, is much used for building, and as flag-stones for sidewalks; the upper more irregularly bedded, is quarried chiefly for the manufacture of quick-lime, and corresponds in many particulars with the limestone found at Racine.

The first has been named Waunkesha Limestone and is quite generally known under that name The long, jointed, fossil, so common at Waukesha, often seen in the flagging of the side walks is not a petrified snake as many suppose, but a very old marine chambered shell, like the modern nautilus, except that it is straight instead of coiled.

These like all other limestones are marine deposits as is clearly evidenced by the shells and corals so abundantly found in the quarries. Hence we may come to the strange conclusion that Waukesha was in the old Silurian times the bottom of the sea. Limestones are formed by the deposition of soft calcareous mud upon the sea bottom which cannot be free from the salts contained in the sea water. These salts have [been] remained dormant until the present time, when they are gradually being re-dissolved & carved away by the ever flowing springs.

Visitors will find many curious relics of this old ocean, by an occassional visit to the several stone quarries. The limestones at Waukesha contain a large proportion of magnesial so large that they may properly be called by their minerological name of dolomite, insteas of limestone. Spring waer while percolating through the rocks contains free carbonic acid; which seems to give it the power to soften & dissolve this dolomite, and [from] to this source we must attribute the carbonates of lime and magnesia found in the Waukesha waters; and also the soft white grains found bubbling up from the bottom of the springs.

An examination of any of the quarries will show that the limestones have been

3.

subjected to movements of elevation at some very remote time causing numerous crevices by which they are divided into large squares or irregular cubical blocks. These crevices afford passages through which rain water, falling upon the surface, penetrates to great depths, only to be returned in the form of springs charged with the various mineral substances taken up during its passage through the earth & rocks. The uniformity of temperature of the springs, winter & summer shows that their sources are deep in the ground; being below the level to which the changes of the seasons affect the temperatures of the [ground] earth.

Those who are even slightly posted in modern geological science will know that the Niagara limestones at Waukesha belong far down in the geological scale, and far back in the order of time. When they were deposited no animal of the vertebrate branch had yet appeared upon the Earth, and no plants of higher organization than the humble seaweed; the fishes of the Devonian, the tree=ferns of the coal period, the reptiles of the middle ages had not yet been bought into existence. There were then no Rocky Mountains, no Alleghanies, no Mississippi river. Such facts may give the numerous visitors to your springs some idea of the great age of the rocks around them, whose dissolution is now giving health & strength to their enfeebled constitutions.