Geology/Botany/Wildlife of Elk County

[elkgrandkid]

Hi,

I wasn't sure where to post this, but maybe it will get people started.  Some folks from Elk County may not be partial to talking about family/relatives, etc.  So, maybe this will be easier to discuss: 

If I remember correctly, Elk County is quite diverse geologically.  I know 2 relatives who talked about living maybe 5 miles "as the crow flies" from each other.  One grew up loving hills and trees (north of Oak Valley), and the other one grew up more "on the prairie" (maybe around Grenola?). 

There is one gravel road that goes north of Oak Valley that used to go through a pocket of hills that looked like small Ozarks.  Does anyone know if those hills have a name?  I think what are called the "Chataqua Hills" are further west?

Lots of oaks, some cedars, maybe a few sycamores......oaks.....LOL.....can't remember more of the trees' names.  The creek was called "Hickory Creek", if I remember correctly.

Blackberries, small red plums, lots and lots of grasses.......with snakes........."wild" sunflowers.......wild grapes....

Back then, it was rare to see a hawk, but now, at least where I live south of the Kansas border, the hawks are coming back.

COYOTES!!!

Ok, somebody else please take a turn.

[genealogynut]

Yah..........the area you are referring to is the Chautauqua Hills............and they are beautiful!!!!!!! We live just on the east side of them. The georgous landscapes in Elk County and western part of Montgomery County is absolutely one of my favorites in the State of Kansas.

And speaking of coyotes................we've been seeing more of them this year, than we have in the past.  There have been a few that have been hit by automobiles and are lying on the side of the road.

There are deer by the hundreds out there, just waiting to decorate the hood of your car/truck, or put a personalized dent in the side of it.

[W. Gray]

   The Chautauqua Hills along the eastern Elk County border is a mostly ten-mile wide sandstone-capped rolling upland extending northward into the Osage Cuestas from the Oklahoma border. Prime examples of the Chautauqua Hills sandstone exist at "The Hollow," a municipal park in Sedan, and at Ozro Falls on the Caney River southeast of Cedar Vale. The Chautauqua Hills reach up to seventy-five miles into Woodson County.

   Most all of Elk County is in the Osage Cuestas except for an extremely small northwest area in the Flint Hills and the Chautauqua Hills band along the east. The Osage Cuestas terrain occupies all or parts of twenty-four counties in east and southeast Kansas and features, according to the Kansas Geological Survey, a series of east facing ridges between which are flat to rolling plains. At 1,411 feet, the highest named summit in Elk County is also officially labeled as Osage Cuestas. It is about six miles due north from Grenola. One might note that several summits in the Ozark Mountains are shorter than 1,411 feet.

   Except for a small part in northwest Elk County, the Flint Hills are directly west of Elk County occupying part or all of twenty-one counties from Cowley northward almost to Nebraska. The Kansas Geological Survey describes these hills as having cherty soil better suited to ranching than farming with largely native prairie grassland. Chert is a fine-grained rock, easily shaped into arrowheads by primitive people. Another name for the rock is flint, therefore the name Flint Hills.

[Wilma]

My student daughter tells me the chert we are talking about is Florence C.  It is the stone the Indians used for projectile points ( what we used to call arrowheads).  This makes me wonder if Arrowhead Stadium should be called Projectile Point Stadium.

[Janet Harrington]

Do you really think the Indians called them projectile points?  How would you say that in Apache?

By the way, elkgrandkid,

Lois is so right about how beautiful that part of Elk County is.  That road that you talked about used to be open all the way to the west Wilson County line, however; I think some of the road has been legally closed.

When I was sheriff, I would tell my fellow sheriffs that I had the prettiest county in the state.  Elk County is different in all parts.  The east part is different than the west part and is the north and south.  All four corners are different.  I wouldn't trade this county for any county in the state.

[elkgrandkid]

Hi Everybody!

Wow!  I'm glad for the posts.

Granddad used to tell a story, but I can't remember which way it went.  He said that they were close to (at least) 3 county lines, and he could tell which county he was in just by the gravel road.....1 county commissioner used kind of a regular grade gravel........and then, 1 was cheaper, so used bigger gravel, meaning more rocks might get thrown against the vehicle, and another one would use finer grade, so smoother driving in that county. 

I wish I could remember which he said was which, but he pretty much had the adults laughing with his take on the local politics of gravel...and how to tell if he was lost on the road or not.

Most folks don't know what it means to travel on gravel anymore.  (Or dirt.....man, I can remember some of the adults getting stuck in Granddad's driveway in some of those rains......hmmmm...can 't say I miss that part!)

You know that gravel road that goes north of Oak Valley?  One year, a relative tried to drive up that thing in the snow or ice or whatever frozen precip it was.....hmmmm....not sure I miss that either!  I'm just at the right age to be terrified of putting "chains" on the tires!!!

Was that road always gravel, or was it dirt in some places?  I think it was gravel.

[Wilma]

I am betting the rocks were in Elk County.  I don't get out in the country much anymore, but they used to be rocks.  We called it Elk County gravel.

[genealogynut]

If my hunch is right, I would guess that your grandfather was Glenn Crowell, as he was the road boss of the Longton district in Elk County at one time.  It sticks in my memory that some months back, Glenn and his wife celebrated their 50th (?) wedding anniversary.

[elkgrandkid]

Not Glenn, Charlie (Sr.).

Ok, I have a question about cedars.  On my grandparent Crowell's farm, up by their house, were these beautiful cedars.  I guess that's what they were.  I loved the peeling bark, and I played on their "roots".  Would those have been different than the cedars that are considered "intrusive" these days?  Or, are there 2 different types of cedars? 

(Well, of Course there's probably more than one type of cedar.....I'm just trying to categorize things in my pea-brain.)

If I remember right, there were some "wild" cedars in the part of the farm on the hills that wasn't used for pasture.  Are the cedars still a problem up that way?  Down here in Okieland, they fuss about them sometimes.  I've always loved them.

Also a question about the rock:  Is shale the same as that word "chert"? 

By the way, I sent this link to some members on both sides of my family, hope some of them show up!

[Wilma]

Shale  is clay that has been changed through pressure and heat over millions of years.  The process is called metamorphosis.  If you remember the real blackboard that was used in schools, it was shale.  Chert is of a silica material that consists of marine animals that die and settle to the bottom of the inland sea that covered Kansas during the dinosauras era.  If you look real close at the chert you will see remains of shells of clams that is imbedded in the stone.