venturing4th: On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away

On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away is the state song of Indiana, written by Terre Haute native Paul Dresser. It was first published in 1897 and adopted as the state song in 1913. Paul Dresser is the brother of noted Hoosier writer Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy). He supposedly was so scandalized by his brother's frank writings that he changed his name from Dreiser to Dresser.

I am not aware, as a Hoosier native, of ever having spent any time on the Wabash River before today. On the banks of the Wabash, about thirty miles from Fort Wayne, is Indiana's geo-site, Hanging Rock Klint, which we visited today. A klint is a fossil reef exhumed by erosion and made into a prominent topographic anomaly. The valley of the Wabash River in Wabash and Huntington counties, Indiana, is home to some of the best-studied fossil reefs in the world. At least forty Silurian-age reefs are exposed.

Reefs are shallow-water, wave-resistant, mound like structures of calcium carbonate built around a rigid framework composed of the skeletal material of calcareous organisms. The fossil reef area of Indiana is part of the central sector of the photo-North American continent that was inundated by seas during the Silurian period, when the continent straddled the equator. Since regional mountain building forces were absent, and shallow, warm, oxygenated water conditions were prevalent, this was an ideal time and place for reef development.

Replicating the picture from the book, Hanging Rock Klint is in the background.

Along the banks of the Wabash River - see it to the left? - with the exposed Hanging Rock.

Mr. Spock getting a close-up view.

Pretty ice crystals formed on the banks of the Wabash.

We were able to scramble our way to the top of the klint. The Wabash River is in the background.

After experiencing Hanging Rock we turned the car to the east and began our journey eastward with West Virginia in our sights. That blank spot on our blog map is soon to be addressed. Unfortunately, there is no direct route over to West Virginia so we are zig-zagging our way from Indiana across Ohio to where we are staying tonight in Jeffersonville, Ohio. It just so happens that the route that we took went right by another Ohio geo-site and we decided to stop in Sidney, Ohio in Shelby County and show Mr. Spock "Big Rock" located in Tawawa Park.

This afternoon, as we were following the route on the GPS display, we could see to the east a town named Jackson Center. Probably no one has even hear of Jackson Center, but to those of us who love Airstreams, Jackson Center is home, the place where every Airstream is built (individually, by hand). We thought of stopping, but we were too late in the day to take a factory tour so we pressed on to Sidney.

Big Rock is a glacial erratic. Rock debris incorporated in the base of a flowing mass of ice during the glacial invasions, sandpaper the bedrock over which it moves, forming striations, thin grooves incised parallel to the direction ice flowed. In addition, ice picks up the mineral character of the bedrock over which it travels and carries this distinctive chemical fingerprint downstream. An upstream plot of both striations and mineral trace will, in theory, lead directly back to the erratic's point of origin. Such a plot indicates Big Rock originated within a portion of the 985-million-year-old (Proterozoic age) Grenville Province of Ontario, some 150 miles north of Toronto.

Quarried from the ancient basement rock of southeastern Canada by glacial ice, transported southwest and south some 700 miles and unceremoniously deposited in Shelby County toward the end of the most recent ice age, Big Rock remains an intriguing and demonstrative evidence of the mile-thick ice sheet that once enveloped the state in its chilling grip.

We found Tawawa Park in Sidney and to our surprise and pleasure noticed this plaque at the entrance to the park. Airstream provides support for a portion of the park.