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This means about $300 for each farmer in the glaciated area. * R. H. Whitbeck, "Economic Aspects of Glaciation in Wisconsin", in "Annals of the Association of American Geographers," vol. III in , pp. 62-67. Wisconsin is by no means unique. In Ohio, for instance, there is also a driftless area. * It lies in the southeast along the Ohio River.
THE DRIFTLESS AREA. In the upper Mississippi valley there is an area of about ten thousand square miles in southwestern Wisconsin and the adjacent parts of Iowa and Minnesota, which escaped the ice invasions. The rocks are covered with residual clays, the product of long preglacial weathering.
The driftless area lay to one side of the main track of both the Keewatin and the Labrador ice fields, and at the north it was protected by the upland south of Lake Superior, which weakened and retarded the movement of the ice.
Where the country rock is sandy, the soil is so much improved by a mixture of fertilizing limestone or even of clay and other materials that the average yield of crops per acre in the glaciated areas is a third larger than in the driftless. Taking everything into consideration it appears that the ancient glaciation of Wisconsin increases the present agricultural output by from 20 to 40 per cent.
In 1910 the average value of all the farm land in twenty counties covered with drift amounted to $56.90 per acre. In six counties partly covered with drift and partly driftless the value was $59.80 per acre, while in thirteen counties in the driftless area it was only $33.30 per acre.
In spite of the fact that glaciation causes swamps and lakes, the proportion of land cultivated in the glaciated areas is larger than in the driftless. In the glaciated area 61 per cent of the land is improved and in the driftless area only 43.5 per cent.
The region is an ancient peneplain, uplifted and dissected in late Tertiary times, with mature valleys whose gentle gradients are unbroken by waterfalls and rapids. Thus the driftless area is in strong contrast with the immature drift topography about it, where lakes and waterfalls are common. It is a bit of preglacial landscape, showing the condition of the entire region before the Glacial epoch.
Take Wisconsin as an example. * Most parts of that State have been glaciated, but in the southwest there lies what is known as the "driftless area" because it is not covered with the "drift" or glacial debris which is thickly strewn over the rest of the State. A comparison of otherwise similar counties lying within and without the driftless area shows an astonishing contrast.
The difference in the value of the farm land there and in the glaciated region is extraordinary. In the driftless area the average value per acre in 1910 was less than $24, while in the glaciated area it was nearly $64. Year by year the proportion of the population of the State in the unglaciated area is steadily decreasing.
BENEFITS OF GLACIATION. Like the driftless area, the preglacial surface over which the ice advanced seems to have been well dissected after the late Tertiary uplifts, and to have been carved in many places to steep valley slopes and rugged hills.
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