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  The central sandy area of Wisconsin has special charms and
limitations. The charms have been well documented in Sand
County Almanac by Leopold (1949), and are capitalized on by
summer home developments around recently created artificial
lakes. The limitations were experienced by early farm families
who suffered severe crop losses in dry years.
  This region responds very quickly to seasonal changes. The
well to excessively drained soils warm up earlier in the spring
than do the finer textured soils that have been considered in the
previous chapters on Soil Regions A and B. When the soils are
still moist from snow melt and spring rains, vegetative growth is
good. The lupine, the wild rose, and many other flowers make
the landscape attractive. Farmers can cultivate early. The
sandy soils are never sticky. Yet drought can strike the area
           CHAPTER  9
         Soil Region C:
Soils of the Central Sandy
     Uplands and Plains
      Figure 9-1. Index maps showing the geographic relationship of Soil
Region C to bodies of Cambrian sandstone and glacial outwash.
with a vengeance. Except where silt and clay beds underlie the
sands, uplands tend to dry up early in the summer. The "scrub
oak barrens," also called oak savannas (Curtis, 1959), are ex-
tensive, though far less open today than they were before forest
fire protection became systematic. The prickly pear cactus is a
natural component of some plant communities. Wind erosion
produced sand dunes in ages past and continues to do so today
around some cultivated areas. The sand flats and the associated
wetlands of the Central Plain constitute a "cold spot," with a
shorter growing season than in the immediately surrounding
terrain (Fig. 2-35). Yet with proper land management under
irrigation, large acreages of these soils can support impressive
crop yields. As a result, some agriculturalists apply the term
golden sands to the soils of this region.
 1. Curtis (1959, p. 327) states that "an oak savanna with an intact
groundlayer is the rarest plant community in Wisconsin today." The
sharptail grouse and other fauna are threatened by the gradual dis.
appearance of the savanna in this region.
 The soils of the central sandy uplands and plains, occupying
about two and a half million acres (7.1% of the area of the
state), are nearly level to undulating for the most part (80% of
the area). A number of butte-like sandstone mounds, such as
Friendship Mound in Adams County, are prominent but iso-
lated features of the landscape. On the east are uplands of
sandy glacial end moraines, till-capped sandstone hills, and
pitted outwash. These soil associations are distributed through-
out more than a dozen counties and are largely on stratified
Pleistocene deposits (Plate 4) in the Cambrian sandstone prov-
ince of the state (Figs. 9-1, 9-2).
 Glacial drift including extensive outwash sand (about two
thirds of the area) and less extensive, weakly calcareous, sandy
glacial till constitutes the principal substratum of the region.
Old, stabilized sand dunes are abundant in some townships.
Major bodies of lacustrine silts and clays, laid down in extinct
glacial Lake Wisconsin, are inclusions of Regions E and I. Also
included are some extensive wetlands of Region J. The sandy
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