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71-597: The Kankakee Torrent was a catastrophic flood that occurred about 19,000  calibrated years ago in the Midwestern United States . It resulted from a breach of moraines forming a large glacial lake fed by the melting of the Late Wisconsin Laurentide Ice Sheet . The point of origin of the flood was Lake Chicago . The landscape south of Chicago still shows the effects of the torrent, particularly at Kankakee River State Park and on

142-475: A 180 kilometres (110 mi) candidate crater marking the impact was identified at Chicxulub in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico . These events sparked a wide acceptance of a scientifically based catastrophism with regard to certain events in the distant past. Since then, the debate about the extinction of the dinosaurs and other mass extinction events has centered on whether the extinction mechanism

213-453: A family was $ 43,231. Males had a median income of $ 35,709 versus $ 22,302 for females. The per capita income for the city was $ 16,863. About 8.1% of families and 11.7% of the population were below the poverty line , including 13.5% of those under age 18 and 8.9% of those age 65 or over. The Illinois Department of Corrections Pontiac Correctional Center is located in Pontiac. Pontiac housed

284-511: A few months later regular service on the railroad, soon to be known as the Chicago and Alton , began. Pontiac became a boom town. People flooded in and money for improvements was available. In 1856, Pontiac was incorporated. By 1866, the people of Livingston County could afford to spend $ 18,000 to construct a new stone jail in Pontiac. In 1870, the state established the Reform School at Pontiac. It

355-603: A paper published in Icarus in 1975, William K. Hartmann and Donald R. Davis proposed that a catastrophic near-miss by a large planetesimal early in Earth's formation approximately 4.5 billion years ago blew out rocky debris, remelted Earth and formed the Moon , thus explaining the Moon's lesser density and lack of an iron core . The impact theory does have some faults; some computer simulations show

426-525: A total area of 7.87 square miles (20.38 km ), of which 7.73 square miles (20.02 km ) (or 98.22%) is land and 0.14 square miles (0.36 km ) (or 1.78%) is water. Most of the land adjacent to Pontiac is farmland. Pontiac lies on the Vermilion River . On December 4, 1982, Pontiac had the worst flood in the town's history, cresting at 19.16 feet, caused by a major storm. The most recent flooding occurred on January 9, 2008, cresting at 18.85 feet,

497-559: Is a popular photo opportunity for tourists from many countries. Pontiac has 10 parks in the area, all of which are open to the public from dawn to dusk. Scenes from "Chained Heat," an episode of the TV series Revolution , were set in Pontiac. The episode was largely filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina . C. Thomas Howell appeared in the episode. Howell also starred in Grandview, U.S.A. , which

568-731: Is home to several museums including the Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum, the Pontiac Oakland Museum, the Livingston County War Museum, the Yost House Museum and Art Center, and the International Walldog Mural and Sign Art Museum. Downtown Pontiac has a collection of more than 20 murals that depict events, people and places from the history of the town. Included in these murals is a large Route 66 shield that

639-559: Is located on a low-lying plain with little variation in elevation, Starved Rock State Park features several canyons which were created in the Kankakee Torrent. Another, very different, geologic effect left over from the Kankakee Torrent is the existence of "sand prairies". Sand prairies exist where the massive flood waters stopped their movement and deposited large quantities of sand. When European settlers arrived, one remaining sign of these deposits were sand dunes located along parts of

710-429: Is that uniformitarianism observes the existence of vast timelines, whereas catastrophism does not. Today most geologists combine catastrophist and uniformitarianist standpoints, taking the view that Earth's history is a slow, gradual story punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events that have affected Earth and its inhabitants. From around 1850 to 1980, most geologists endorsed uniformitarianism ("The present

781-538: Is the key to the past") and gradualism ( geologic change occurs slowly over long periods of time ) and rejected the idea that cataclysmic events such as earthquakes , volcanic eruptions , or floods of vastly greater power than those observed at the present time, played any significant role in the formation of the Earth's surface. Instead they believed that the earth had been shaped by the long term action of forces such as volcanism, earthquakes, erosion, and sedimentation, that could still be observed in action today. In part,

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852-636: The Illinois River at Starved Rock State Park . The Kankakee Torrent was responsible for extensive modification of the Kankakee River and Illinois River river valleys and landforms characteristic of megaflooding . Both the Kankakee River and Illinois River largely follow paths carved out by the torrent, a process that is believed to have taken only days. Most notable today is a region in north-central Illinois known as Starved Rock; while most of Illinois

923-825: The Iroquois River into Lake Watseka over the Chatsworth ridge of the Marseilles morainic system to the Vermillion River Valley , past Pontiac, Illinois . The volume of water was blocked at the gap in the Farm Ridge moraine, a unit of the Bloomington morainic system near LaSalle, Illinois . This blockage created Lake Ottawa between Farm Ridge and the Marseilles moraine in the Illinois Valley , and Lake Pontiac between

994-454: The 1950s, Immanuel Velikovsky propounded catastrophism in several popular books. He speculated that the planet Venus is a former " comet " which was ejected from Jupiter and subsequently 3,500 years ago made two catastrophic close passes by Earth, 52 years apart, and later interacted with Mars, which then had a series of near collisions with Earth which ended in 687 BCE, before settling into its current orbit . Velikovsky used this to explain

1065-591: The Cropsey (unit of the Bloomington morainic system ), and Marseilles moraines in the Vermilion Valley. The flood did not occur just once, or all at once. It was a repetitive event, over possibly hundreds of years. In the early years it was doubtless small, but as the years passed it became larger and larger until at some time it reached a maximum, and then, as the Valparaiso glacier receded, it gradually subsided. Before

1136-459: The Earth's features had been shaped by same geological processes that could be observed in the present acting gradually over an immense period of time. Lyell presented his ideas in the influential three volume work, Principles of Geology , published in the 1830s, which challenged theories about geological cataclysms proposed by proponents of catastrophism like Cuvier and Buckland. One of the key differences between catastrophism and uniformitarianism

1207-639: The Kankakee Torrent were not limited to northeast Illinois. Both the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers appear to have had their courses altered by the Kankakee Torrent, with the Ohio being pushed further south and the Mississippi further west. The area is underlain by dolomite bedrock of Silurian age. Pre-glacial erosion of the surface of the bedrock created an irregular surface, allowing the glacial drift to vary in depth over short distances. Some areas are underlain by bedrock near

1278-503: The Kankakee far deeper than would normal river erosion, and the erosion of the bedrock along the slow-moving tributaries has never caught up. This effect is most evident where Rock Creek joins the Kankakee. The Illinois State Geological Survey reports that Rock Creek is cutting through the dolomite bedrock to the waterfall point, upstream of its confluence with the Kankakee River, at the rate of 3 inches (76 mm) per year. The effects of

1349-526: The Native American leader, who as far anyone knew had never set foot in the area that would be Livingston County. Fell had also selected the name of Livingston County. The town did have a few advantages. It was a good place to cross the river, there was a good mill seat, and James McKee was working to establish a sawmill on the Vermilion river at the town site. By 1838, the mill was in operation. Before leaving

1420-540: The Richmond speculators had not reckoned with Jesse W. Fell, who had retained a strong economic and social interest in Pontiac and had important friends among the railroad officials. The tracks missed Richmond and passed through Pontiac, with the station located in Fell's First Addition to the town. Richmond was quickly abandoned; some of its buildings were moved to Pontiac. On July 4, 1854, an exhibition train steamed into Pontiac, and

1491-493: The Vermilion River, and to build a county courthouse. None had the ready cash to support such an effort. They had simply promised to do so, and their promises were guaranteed by three others: C. H. Perry, the county's first storekeeper; James McKee, who had an interest at a mill at the new town site; and Jesse W. Fell , an Illinois legislator and Bloomington land dealer. Fell was the person who had been responsible for creating

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1562-446: The Vermilion was completed. Shortly after the $ 450 bridge was opened, a sudden rise in the Vermilion river swept it away. The 1878 History of Livingston County remarked, “the town of Pontiac was little more than a name.” In the early 1840s it had only a half-dozen cabins and an unfinished courthouse, and everything was so scattered among “clumps of bushes” that the town was almost invisible. In 1848, August Fellows, who now owned much of

1633-662: The best possible architect to design a new and more splendid building. They settled on John C. Cochrane , known for his work on the Capitol building in Springfield and for the Richland County courthouse. The building was finished in 1875 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. By 1880, improvements continued at a rapid pace, which included the installation of the first electric lights in 1882. In 1891,

1704-484: The biblical plagues of Egypt , the biblical reference to the "Sun standing still" for a day (Joshua 10:12 & 13, explained by changes in Earth's rotation), and the sinking of Atlantis . Scientists vigorously rejected Velikovsky's conjectures. Neocatastrophism is the explanation of sudden extinctions in the palaeontological record by high magnitude, low frequency events (such as asteroid impacts, super-volcanic eruptions, supernova gamma ray bursts, etc.), as opposed to

1775-686: The biblical account, was advocating a universal flood of short duration. Eventually, Buckland abandoned flood geology in favor of the glaciation theory advocated by Louis Agassiz , following a visit to the Alps where Agassiz demonstrated the effects of glaciation at first hand. As a result of the influence of Jameson, Buckland, and other advocates of natural theology, the nineteenth century debate over catastrophism took on much stronger religious overtones in Britain than elsewhere in Europe. Uniformitarian explanations for

1846-402: The city. The population density was 2,263.0 inhabitants per square mile (873.7/km ). There were 4,379 housing units at an average density of 835.3 per square mile (322.5/km ). The racial makeup of the city was 85.39% White , 10.90% African American , 0.19% Native American , 0.43% Asian , 2.06% from other races , and 1.04% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.37% of

1917-420: The concept of catastrophism in the early 19th century; he proposed that new life-forms had moved in from other areas after local floods, and avoided religious or metaphysical speculation in his scientific writings. In the early development of geology , efforts were made in a predominantly Christian western society to reconcile biblical narratives of Creation and the universal flood with new concepts about

1988-405: The county agreed. By a margin of 81 to 56, they voted to move the county seat but a two-thirds majority was needed to relocate a county seat. As a two-thirds majority failed by a small margin, Pontiac was continued to be the location of the county offices. After considerable delay, the first Courthouse, a twenty-two by thirty-foot wooden building, was finished and, in 1847, the promised bridge across

2059-460: The county, Seth Weed had built the first house in Pontiac. After the Young brothers' deaths, Isaac Fellows came west to settle their estate. He liked the location and took up residence. Work started on the courthouse, but was behind schedule. Early growth was so slow that rivals decided there was a good chance they could strip the honor and the business of the county seat from Pontiac. In 1839 they forced

2130-487: The east was eroded. This removed much of the drift and even began eroding into the Silurian dolomite beneath. In the last stages, channels were cut in the bedrock. The area along the southern bank of the Kankakee River, west of Kankakee, Illinois, consists of long narrow ridges leading to the northwest. These are gravel bars from the Kankakee outwash. The force of outflow scoured some of the dolomite bedrock, which can be seen in

2201-399: The flood's course. The Kankakee River also bears several features that are direct results of the catastrophic flood. The Kankakee River State Park encompasses all of the types of features that formed as a result of the catastrophic flood event. Along much of its course, tributaries enter the Kankakee over waterfalls, a phenomenon known as "hanging tributaries". This is because the flood carved

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2272-424: The formation of sedimentary rock and an understanding of the immense stretch of geological time , or as the concept came to be known deep time , were found in the writing of James Hutton , sometimes known as the father of geology, in the late 18th century. The geologist Charles Lyell built upon Hutton's ideas during the first half of 19th century and amassed observations in support of the uniformitarian idea that

2343-399: The formation of a ring or multiple moons post impact, and elements are not quite the same between the Earth and Moon. Pontiac, Illinois Pontiac is a city in and the county seat of Livingston County, Illinois , United States. The population was 11,150 in the 2020 Census . The 1984 movie Grandview, U.S.A. was set in Pontiac. According to the 2010 Census, Pontiac has

2414-441: The geologists' rejection was fostered by their impression that the catastrophists of the early nineteenth century believed that God was directly involved in determining the history of Earth. Some of the theories about Catastrophism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were connected with religion and catastrophic origins were sometimes considered miraculous rather than natural events. The rise in uniformitarianism made

2485-478: The gravel bars. The heavy flow of water transported boulders downstream and moved glacial erratics from the tills. The faster flow towards center created a channel, which the modern river still follows. Floodwaters were confined to the inter-moraine channels, which moved it west, then to the south. Upon reaching the LaSalle, Illinois , area, the flood entered the ancestral Mississippi valley, now abandoned. The area where

2556-521: The history of life on Earth. This led him to believe the Earth was several million years old. By contrast in Britain, where natural theology was influential during the early nineteenth century, a group of geologists including William Buckland and Robert Jameson interpreted Cuvier's work differently. Cuvier had written an introduction to a collection of his papers on fossil quadrupeds, discussing his ideas on catastrophic extinction. Jameson translated Cuvier's introduction into English, publishing it under

2627-589: The initial survey of Pontiac and staked out its streets and lots. Pontiac was the only town laid out in Livingston County in the 1830s, but similar square-centered towns from that time can be found at Metamora , Lexington , Danvers , Clinton , and Le Roy , all established within two years of Pontiac. The original Town of Pontiac differed somewhat from these others because it was unusually large, with ninety-three blocks, most divided into eight lots with some left unsubdivided. The new town extended on both sides of

2698-608: The introduction of a new catastrophe theory very difficult. In 1923 J Harlen Bretz published a paper on the channeled scablands formed by glacial Lake Missoula in Washington State, USA. Bretz encountered resistance to his theories from the geology establishment of the day, kicking off an acrimonious 40 year debate. Finally in 1979 Bretz received the Penrose Medal ; the Geological Society of America 's highest award. In

2769-731: The male death row until 2003. Prior to the January 11, 2003 commutation of all death row sentences, male death row inmates were housed in Pontiac, Menard , and Tamms correctional centers. Governor Rod Blagojevich threatened to close the prison in 2008. After the community protested the closing for many different reasons, the prison closure was averted. The city is served by the newspaper The Daily Leader . Local radio stations include WIBL 107.7 ("The Bull") and WJEZ 98.9. Pontiac Elementary School District 429 operates public elementary and junior high schools. Pontiac Township High School District #90 operates Pontiac Township High School . Pontiac

2840-449: The matter to a vote. The proprietors of Pontiac, they argued, had not lived up to their obligations: the courthouse was unfinished and no bridge across the Vermilion had been built. Their new suggestion for the seat of Government of Livingston County , four or five miles upstream would, they said, be more centrally located. They complained that the site of Pontiac had been poorly chosen and was low, damp, and generally unhealthy. The people of

2911-583: The mechanism by which repopulation occurred following the extinction event. In fact Cuvier, influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the intellectual climate of the French Revolution , avoided religious or metaphysical speculation in his scientific writings. Cuvier also believed that the stratigraphic record indicated that there had been several of these revolutions, which he viewed as recurring natural events, amid long intervals of stability during

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2982-847: The melt-water from the Michigan lobe in the Michigan basin , melt-water came from the Huron-Erie lobe to the east in the Maumee valley in Ohio and from the Sturgis Lobe coming out of Michigan across northeast Indiana. The water backed up behind the Marseilles moraine , forming a series of lakes . In the Morris Basin was Lake Wauponsee , which reached east up the Kankakee Valley into Indiana. It flowed south via

3053-564: The more prevalent geomorphological thought which emphasises low magnitude, high frequency events. In 1980, Walter and Luis Alvarez published a paper suggesting that a 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. The impact wiped out about 70% of all species, including the non-avian dinosaurs , leaving behind the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–T boundary). In 1990,

3124-412: The new county. As it turned out, for the town's three founders, the future of Pontiac would not be their problem. Within five weeks of the founding of the town, both Young brothers would be dead, and Henry Weed soon drifted away and would die of pneumonia in 1842 while working on a railroad near Binghamton, New York. The men who founded Pontiac would not be its developers. The design of the original town

3195-513: The old Mississippi valley was joined is called the Big Bend of the Illinois River. Outwash from the glacier was carried beyond the Kankakee area. The coarser outwash, consisting of the coarser pieces of the local drift and of rubble ripped from the bedrock, became bars along the river. At the end of the outflow, the lighter sands and silts were deposited in bars and across the valley floor. The sand

3266-439: The pavement of Route 4. The Threshermen's Reunion started in a modest way in 1949 at Pontiac's Chautauqua Park next to the Vermilion River as a gathering of interested people who brought together a collection of old farm machinery. The assemblage of steam engines and the people who ran them grew in popularity. In 1999, the sponsors purchased their own forty acres north of town. The first phase of construction on Interstate 55

3337-434: The place Buck Hotel. In 1851, there was a second attempt to displace Pontiac. On June 23, 1851, a town called Richmond was platted two miles east of Pontiac. Its backers included powerful local business and political figures. These men had calculated that the new Chicago and Mississippi Railroad would miss Pontiac and cross the Vermilion River at their location. Stores, shops, and a schoolhouse were built at Richmond. However,

3408-414: The population. Of the 4,139 households, 31.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.6% were married couples living together, 11.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.7% were non-families. 31.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.39 and the average family size

3479-583: The processes which had formed the Earth. The discovery of other ancient flood myths was taken as explaining why the flood story was "stated in scientific methods with surprising frequency among the Greeks ", an example being Plutarch 's account of the Ogygian flood . The leading scientific proponent of catastrophism in the early nineteenth century was the French anatomist and paleontologist Georges Cuvier . His motivation

3550-457: The rapid formation of major mountain chains . Plants and animals living in the parts of the world where such events occurred became extinct , to be replaced abruptly by the new forms whose fossils defined the geological strata. Some catastrophists attempted to relate at least one such change to the Biblical account of Noah's flood . The French scientist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) popularised

3621-503: The rest of the nation, was slipping into an economic depression that would cause the next decade to be called “the hungry forties". Moreover, the men had guaranteed a great deal in order to be granted the right to found the seat of the new county. They had agreed to donate twenty acres of land for a courthouse, another acre for a jail, and a pen for stray livestock. They had agreed to give the new county $ 3,000 toward erecting new buildings, to erect “a good and substantial wagon bridge" across

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3692-435: The river. The square, where the courthouse would be built, was bounded by Washington, Madison, Main and Mill Streets. At first, lots were sold for as little as five dollars each and, even as late as 1850, good lots could be had for as little as twenty dollars each. Jesse W. Fell had been asked to use his influence to establish a post office in the area. In order to do this, he needed a name and selected “Pontiac” in honor of

3763-600: The second worst in the town's history. Pontiac was laid out on July 27, 1837, by Henry Weed and brothers Lucius Young and Seth M. Young. A small group of people gathered at the cabin of Andrew McMillan on the banks of the Vermilion River . They intended to create a county seat for the newly established county of Livingston. The town they would design was nearly the last of hundreds of new towns laid out in Illinois between 1835 and 1837. Livingston County , created five months before, had almost no functioning government. Illinois, like

3834-459: The soldier's monument. He spoke there again in 1910. In the American Midwest, new highways often parallel early railroads. This happened at Pontiac. The Chicago Mississippi, linking St. Louis with Chicago, was Pontiac's first railroad. In 1922 and 1923, Route 4, the first paved highway between Chicago and St. Louis, followed almost exactly the same route as the railroad. Local people called it

3905-584: The surface; in other areas it can be 100 feet (30 m) deep. Some hills are solely glacial drift; others may be entirely of limestone. The water came from the melting "Valparaiso glacier", the glacier that deposited first the Manhattan moraine and then other moraines to the northeast in the Valparaiso morainic system . The melt-water came from three glacial lobes of the Laurentide Ice Sheet . In addition to

3976-524: The task of moving people between Chicago and St. Louis, and Pontiac has continued to be a stop. Pontiac is home to the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame . It was previously located at Dixie Truckers Home in McLean, Illinois , but it was moved to a new, larger location in Pontiac when Dixie changed ownership. As of the census of 2000, there were 11,864 people, 4,139 households, and 2,619 families residing in

4047-599: The title Theory of the Earth . He added extensive editorial notes to the translation, explicitly linking the latest of Cuvier's revolutions with the biblical flood. The resulting essay was extremely influential in the English-speaking world. Buckland spent much of his early career trying to demonstrate the reality of the biblical flood using geological evidence. He frequently cited Cuvier's work, even though Cuvier had proposed an inundation of limited geographic extent and extended duration, whereas Buckland, to be consistent with

4118-455: The torrent, the valley of the Kankakee River near the city of Kankakee, Illinois , was neither deep nor broad. It was a wide plain of Marseilles drift, with a small river. The early outflows spread across this plain. At its highest level, the torrent found channels in the Minooka ridge and flowed across the ridge to the drift plain in the west. As the outflows continued, the Marseilles drift plain in

4189-525: The town fathers, spurred on by insurance companies, created a “fire district,” a zone in the commercial part of the city where buildings had to be constructed of brick or some other fireproof material. These districts make Pontiac a classic example of one of the key visual features of the American Midwest: towns with brick commercial districts surrounded by wooden residences. Rebuilding was rapid, and growth continued. In 1871, The Chicago and Paducah Railroad

4260-406: The town, had managed to set up a hostelry. Some of the first church services in Pontiac were held at the tavern. In 1849 cholera swept through Pontiac, killing Fellows and two of his children. One early settler remembered that in Livingston County one person in two suffered from the disease. Fellow's widow, Maria Tracey Fellows, continued to run the hotel; she remarried Nelson Buck in 1850 and renamed

4331-486: The wooden bridge over the Vermilion river was replaced by an iron span. Pontiac built a municipal water works in 1892. Between 1875 and 1900, new buildings were erected around the courthouse square. Abraham Lincoln visited Pontiac in the 1840s and again in February 1855, when his train was snowbound on the nearby tracks, and he was taken by sled to spend the night at the home of Mr. John McGregor. On January 25, 1860, Lincoln

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4402-440: The ‘hard road.” The new state highway passed along Ladd Street and brought traffic through the center of Pontiac. The 1891 iron truss bridge over the Vermilion proved inadequate to carry increased traffic over the river, and in 1925 it was replaced with a steel and concrete structure. Also in 1925, the designation of the road was changed to Route 66 , but this was only a change in name, as most of this famous highway simply borrowed

4473-420: Was 3.00. The population of the city was spread out, with 22.9% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 32.7% from 25 to 44, 20.3% from 45 to 64, and 13.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 120.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 125.6 males. The median income for a household in the city was $ 37,593, and the median income for

4544-687: Was again in town when he addressed the Young Men's Literary Association. In 1858, Stephen A. Douglas and Owen Lovejoy , the abolitionist, both visited Pontiac. When local people learned in 1880 that former president Ulysses S. Grant would pass through Pontiac on his way to visit his son, they begged the general to stay over for breakfast, and a large reception committee quickly arranged a celebration. William Jennings Bryan came to Pontiac on October 27, 1896 and returned on several other occasions. On June 3, 1903, during his whistle stop tour through Central Illinois, Theodore Roosevelt spoke in Pontiac and unveiled

4615-522: Was built with the aid of local bonds. The new railroad had revenues of $ 21,600 by 1877, while the older Chicago and Alton Railroad was handling $ 61,578 worth of goods. A second and larger courthouse was built. During Independence Day celebrations on July 4, 1874, stray fireworks started a blaze which burned the courthouse, the Union Block, and the Phoenix Block. Undaunted, Livingston County set out to find

4686-417: Was finished in 1966, and in the early 1970s the road, which closely followed Route 66 , was brought up to improved federal standards. Highway-oriented businesses soon clustered around these roads, at first on the north and south sides of Pontiac, and later near Exit 197, west of the old town center. Unlike many towns, Pontiac has continued to be serviced by railroad passenger service. In 1971, Amtrak took over

4757-445: Was picked up by the wind, creating sand dunes to the south and southeast. Sand bars can be found as far south as Sand Ridge State Forest in central Illinois. 41°25′12″N 88°12′39″W  /  41.42000°N 88.21083°W  / 41.42000; -88.21083 Catastrophism Proponents of catastrophism proposed that each geological epoch ended with violent and sudden natural catastrophes such as major floods and

4828-479: Was the asteroid impact, widespread volcanism (which occurred about the same time), or some other mechanism or combination. Most of the mechanisms suggested are catastrophic in nature. The observation of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 cometary collision with Jupiter illustrated that catastrophic events occur as natural events. Modern theories also suggest that Earth's anomalously large moon was formed catastrophically. In

4899-629: Was to be a model correctional institution for boys. Jesse W. Fell donated sixty-four acres, valued at $ 10,000, and more land was purchased. Livingston County issued $ 50,000 in bonds. The town of Pontiac added another $ 25,000 in bonds, and the first buildings were constructed. In 1892, this facility became the Illinois State Reformatory and is now the Pontiac Correctional Center. In 1870, a fire destroyed $ 50,000 worth of buildings in downtown Pontiac and, like many Illinois towns,

4970-457: Was to explain the patterns of extinction and faunal succession that he and others were observing in the fossil record. While he did speculate that the catastrophe responsible for the most recent extinctions in Eurasia might have been the result of the inundation of low-lying areas by the sea, he did not make any reference to Noah's flood . Nor did he ever make any reference to divine creation as

5041-458: Was typical of Midwestern town plats in the 1830s. Since there were neither improved roads nor railroads, the plan was centered on a town square; such squares would become much less common after the arrival of railroads. In these early towns, the public square served to define the town center and therefore to establish the location of the highest value lots. Isaac Wicher, the County Surveyor, made

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