To claim this cache please email your answers to the following questions
- What three processes helped to form Crowley's Ridge?
- Which two rivers ran on either side of Crowley's Ridge in ancient times?
- What is the elevation difference between reference point one and the posted coordinates?
- Describe the difference between the land at the posted coordinates and that to the east of the entry road coordinates
Ranging in width from one to twelve miles and and rising an average of 250 feet above the surrounding landscape, Crowley's Ridge is is an unusual geological formation that rises above the Alluvial Plain of the Mississippi Embayment. The ridge, made up of a continuous series of rolling hills, extends from just below Cape Girardeau in southeastern Missouri across eastern Arkansas to the Mississippi River at Helena.
The ridge is the most distinctive feature of the landscape of southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas and was formed by three processes; Fluvial erosion of the surrounding highlands, the collection of windblown deposits of periglacial loess and uplifting caused by the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
In ancient times the areas was an Island with the Mississippi west of the ridge and the Ohio east of it. these two rivers carved a vast alluvial plain leaving only Crowley's Ridge to rise above it. Eventually the waters of the Mississippi cut through and joined the Ohio, the two rivers becoming one, and they moved east of the ridge.
In addition to the fluvial process of the great rivers, Crowley's ridge is a natural collection point for periglacial loess, a wind blown sediment containing a high content of glacially ground flour-like silt and clay, that further contributed to forming the ridge, slowly building up the soil over the millennia. These deposits make the soil on the ridge, generally fertile, but the rugged hilly nature makes large-scale row crop agriculture unfeasible except in small floodplains next to streams that flow out of the region onto the Alluvial Plain.
Finally, there is evidence that the area's elevation has increased over the years, suggesting that uplift took place and is still taking place. This alternative explanation posits a link between the ridge and the nearby New Madrid Seismic Zone.