The Limestone Prairies of Wilcox County, Alabama

Abstract

Wilcox County lies just south of the well-known black prairie belt of Alabama, and all available statistics of soils, vegetation, population and agriculture point to its being the most fertile county south of that belt. Much of its fertility is due to the presence of several square miles of strongly calcareous soils in the northeastern half. A strip averaging four or five miles wide at the inland edge of the county is characterized by the Ripley formation (uppermost Cretaceous), which has considerable limestone and marl in it, and east of the Alabama River this is bordered on the south by the Midway limestone, of lowest Eocene age. The superficial non-calcareous clays and sands (commonly, or at least formerly, referred to the Lafayette formation) which cover much of the surface of the coastal plain farther south and east are very limited in extent in Wilcox County, so that most of its soils are residual from the Cretaceous and Eocene strata. In Dr. Eugene A. Smith's report on the coastal plain of Alabama, published by the state geological survey early in i895 (pp. I94, 59I, 592), the cedar brakes on that phase of the Midway formation called by him the Nautilus rock (from one of its characteristic fossils) in the eastern part of Wilcox County are briefly described. In the soil survey of this county by R. A. Winston and N. E. Bell, published by the U. S. Bureau of Soils in March, i9i8, the limestone soils are located for the first time on a map. Four types of distinctly calcareous soils are described in the soil survey report, aggregating 35,264 acres or a little more than six percent of the area of the county. In order of extent they are Sumter clay, clay, 'Trinity clay, and Houston fine sandy loam.'1 It happens that practically none of these are visible from any of the railroads traversing the county, and I never saw any of them until I made a special trip on foot for the purpose, across country from Greenville to Snow Hill on June II-I2,