Exploring Buried Buxton: Archaeology of an Abandoned Iowa Coal Mining Town with a Large Black Population

3: Buxton's setting: geography,economic geology, and town Dlanning

3: Buxton's setting: geography, economic geology, and town Dlanning LOCATED along Bluff Creek in northern Monroe County, Buxton was situated physiographically in the Southern Iowa Drift Plain landform region (Prior 1976~45-48).The topography of this region consists of steeply rolling hills with occasional level bottomland terraces and some areas of relatively level upland divides. Throughout this region tributaries of the Des Moines River have cut down into deposits of Upper Pleistocene loess, Kansan glacial till, and underlying Carboniferous bedrocks . One of these tributaries, Bluff Creek, was explored partially as early as 1846 by David D. Owen and mentioned in his Geological Sumey of Wisconsin , Iowa, and Minnesota, published in 1852 (Beyer and Young 1903:357). In many respects the dissected hills of the Buxton townsite-Section 4 of Bluff Creek Township-are typical of the general landforms of the Southern Iowa Drift Plain region. On its course to the Des Moines River, Bluff Creek flows through the northwest corner of the section. Bedrock deposits are exposed upstream along the creek and in several spots along two deeply incised drainageways that empty into Bluff Creek within Section 4. The general geomorphology of the townsite can be seen on aerial photographs taken in 1937 and 1977, here reproduced as Figures 16 and 17, respectively. The valley along Bluff Creek is relatively narrow and the surrounding range of elevations is considerable-reflected not only by vestiges of the original dendritic drainage pattern but also by the farm ponds and contour terraces built to check the hillside erosion rampant throughout this region since it was opened up to modern agriculture. The soils in Section 4 are ex~ressive of not only the underlying geological strata but also the native vegetational assemblages. Published surveys of this locality (Orrben and Tharp 1931; Brown et al. 1936) describe the upland soils as Weller silt loam and Grundy silt loam, developed from loess deposits, and as Shelby silt loam and Lindley silt loam, developed from glacial till. These surveys show Dubuque silt loam, developed from residual bedrock , along the hillslopes and Wabash silt loam, derived from alluvium, on the bottomlands. More recent soil descriptions (Oschwald et al. 1965) and the soil survey presently being completed for Monroe County (USDA 1981) provide more precise detail. Predominant in the eastern half of Section 4 are upland soils mapped as Mahaska, Otley, and Taintor, which are derived from loess and reflect a native prairie vegetation . An upland prairie regime is also represented by a small area of Lamoni soil, developed from glacial till, in the 16. Aerial view, Section 4 o f Bluff Creek Township, Monroe County, Iowa, taken in 1937. (Courtesyo f the ISU Archaeological Laboratory) northwest comer of the section. Upland divides in the northern and western parts of Section 4 are mapped as Ladoga and Pershing soils, which are derived from a parent material of loess under a native vegetation of mixed prairie and forest. On the upper hillslopes, developing from shale bedrock residuum, are soils mapped as Gosport and Bauer, which reflect, respectively , forest and prairie plant assemblages . The lower hillslopes and terraces in Section4 consist of soilsdeveloped from alluvium: the Ely and Colo-Ely-Judson complex, which once consisted of prairie, and the Okah soil, which originally supported a forest cover. The bottomlands along Bluff Creek and the large tributary drainageways are mapped as Colo, Lawson, Koszia, and Vesser-soils developed from silty alluvium and reflecting a native prairie vegetation. According to the map of Monroe County in the Andreas atlas, during the 1870swoods covered the northwestern two-thirds of Section 4 except for an "island" of upland prairie that extended into Section 5 (Andreas 1875:70). The Andreas map shows the southeastern 3: BUXTON'S SETTING 19 one-third of Section 4 in prairie. In 1903L. H. Pammel noted that most of the best timber in this area had been removed during the period of early Euro-American settlement, and that much of the secondgrowth of trees had suffered from dry weather and overgrazing during the late nineteenth century (Pammel 1903:423). Previously, scattered groves of cottonwood and willow trees grew along the bottomlands and lower terraces of this region , while the hillslopes and some upland summits supported stands of walnut, hickory, basswood, maple, ash, wild cherry, plum, and some oak. From the standpoint of economic geology if nothing else, Buxton owed its existence to the presence of coal in...