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Howard (1907), Chapters I and VIII; the county frame
Roseland stands on the gravel plain. Howard's physical chapter describes the county's northeastern quarter — Clay Township's country — as "an extensive gravel plain along the St. Joseph river," outwash spread from the Michigan moraine country as the ice withdrew, with drift measured at 160 feet in a South Bend test well; the modern physiographic frame places the reach at the eastern end of the Kankakee Outwash Plain along the river by the state line. Of the township itself Howard writes that "the soil is chiefly sand and gravel, and though not remarkably fertile at first, is easily worked," and the earlier record he quotes recalls the township's barrens — white oak and black oak openings across Clay and Harris, worn land later restored by plaster and clover. The easily worked, quickly drained sand-and-gravel ground is the agricultural fact under the farming community the town code describes at incorporation.