USA > Minnesota > Polk County > Compendium of history and biography of Polk County, Minnesota > Part 2
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Heights of railway stations in this county, noted in feet above the sea, are as follows:
Beltrami 901 East Grand Forks .. 831
Russia 892
Burwell 914
Kittson 885
Benoit 1019
Carman
877
Dugdale 1138
Crookston 863
Mentor 1167
Shirley 900
Erskin 1187
Euclid 890
MeIntosh 1218
Angus
870
Fosston 1288
Fisher
852
Fertile
1140
Mallory
837
Tilden 1116
GEOLOGIC ERAS.
During the early geologic eras of Arehean and Paleozoie time, which were almost inconceivable long, Polk County appears to have been a land surface, re- ceiving no rock formations. Probably then, as now, it was in the interior of a large continent, which with many changes has become the North America of today.
Through the greater part of the ensuing Mesozoic era, so named for its intermediate types of plants and animals, Minnesota was wholly a land area. The floras and fannas of this time were gradually chang- ing from their primitive and ancient characters, called Paleozoie, but had not yet attained to the relatively modern or new forms which give the name Cenozoic to the next and latest great division of geologie time.
Toward the end of the Cretaceous period, in late Mesozoie time, western Minnesota was depressed be- neath the sea. Frequent outcrops of Cretaceous shales and sandstone, continuous from their great expanse on the western plains, oceur here and there in the central and southern parts of this state; and in numerous other places deep wells, after passing through the thiek covering of glacial drift, encounter these Cretaceous strata, which sometimes are found to reach to a thickness of several hundred feet.
Ever since the uplift of the Red River basin from the Cretaceous Sea, it has stood above the sea level and has received no marine sediments. It was in- stead being slowly seulptured by rains and streams through the long periods of the Tertiary era; and during a part of the relatively short Quaternary era it was deeply covered by snow and ice similar to the ice-sheets that now envelop the interior of Green- land and the Antarctie continent.
These two eras, or principal divisions of geologic history, may be here classed together as a single Cenozoic cra, distinguished by the evolutionary crea- tion of new and present types of life. Nearly all the plants and animals of the preceding eras have dis- appeared, as also many that lived in the early Cenozoie periods, while new species succeeding them make up the present floras and faunas.
THE ICE AGE.
The last among the completed periods of geology was the ice age, most marvelous in its strange contrast with the present time, and also unlike any other period during the very long, uniformly warm or tem- perate eras which had preceded. The northern half of North America and northern Europe then became enveloped with thick sheets of snow and ice, prob- ably caused chiefly by uplifts of the lands as exten- sive high plateaus, reeciving snowfall throughout the year. But in other parts of the world, and especially in its lower temperate and tropical regions, all the elimatic conditions were doubtless then nearly as now, permitting plants and animals to survive and flourish
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COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
until the departure of the ice-sheets gave them again opportunity to spread over the northern lands.
High preglacial elevation of the drift-bearing re- gions is known by the depths of fjords and sub- merged continuations of river valleys, which on the Atlantie, Aretie and Paeifie eoasts of the north part of North America show the land to have been elevated at least 2,000 to 3,000 feet higher than now. In Nor- way the bottom of the Sogne Fjord, the longest and deepest of the many fjords of that coast, is 4,000 feet below the sea level. Previous to the Glacial period or Iee age, and doubtless causing its abundant snowfall, so high uplift of these countries had taken place that streams flowed along the bottoms of the fjords, chian- neling them as very deep gorges on the borders of the land areas.
Under the vast weight of the iee-sheets, however, the lands sank to their present level, or mostly some- what lower, whereby the temperate elimate, with liot summers, properly belonging to the southern portions of the ice-clad regions, was restored. The iee-sheets were then rapidly melted away, though with numer- ous pauses or sometimes slight readvanees of the mainly receding glacial boundary.
On certain belts the drift was left in hills and ridges accumulated during this elosing stage of the Glacial period along the margin of the iee wherever it halted in its general retreat or temporarily readvanced. Upon the greater part of Minnesota and North Dakota the only hills are formed of this morainie drift, rang- ing in height commonly from 25 to 75 or 100 feet, but occasionally attaining much greater altitude, as in the Leaf Hills of Ottertail County, Minnesota, which rise from 100 to 350 feet above the moderately undulating country on each side.
GLACIAL LAKE AGASSIZ.
When the departing iee-sheet, in its melting off the land from south to north, receded beyond the water- shed dividing the basin of the Minnesota River from that of the Red River, a lake, fed by the glacial melt- ing, stood at the foot of the ice fields, and extended
northward as they withdrew along the valley of the Red River to Lake Winnipeg, filling this broad valley to the height of the lowest point over which an outlet could be found. Until the iee barrier was melted on the area now crossed by the Nelson River, thereby draining this glacial lake, its outlet was along the pres- ent course of the Minnesota River. At first its over- flow was on the nearly level undulating surface of the drift, 1,100 to 1,125 feet above the sea, at the west side of Traverse and Big Stone counties; but in the proe- ess of time this eut a channel there, called Brown's Valley, 100 to 150 feet deep and about a mile wide, the highest point of which, on the present water divide between the Mississippi and Nelson basins, is 975 feet above the sea level. From this outlet the valley plain of the Red River extends 315 miles north to Lake Winnipeg, which is 710 feet above the sea. Along this entire distanee there is a very uniform continuous deseent of a little less than one foot per mile.
The farmers and other residents of this fertile plain are well aware that they live on the area once oeeu- pied by a great lake, for its beaches, having the form of smoothly rounded ridges of gravel and sand, a few feet high, with a width of several rods, are observ- able extending horizontally long distances upon each of the slopes which rise east and west of the valley plain. Hundreds of farmers have located their build- ings on these beach ridges as the most dry and sightly spots on their land, affording perfectly drained cel- lars even in the most wet spring seasons, and also yielding to wells, dug through this sand and gravel, better water than is usually obtainable in wells on the adjacent clay areas. While each of these farmers, and in fact everyone living in the Red River Valley, ree- ognize that it is an old lake hed, few probably know that it has become for this reason a distriet of special interest to geologists, who have traced and mapped its upper shore along a distance of about 800 miles.
Numerous explorers of this region, from Long and Keating in 1823, to General G. K. Warren in 1868 and Professor N. H. Winehell in 1872, recognized the
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COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
lacustrine features of this valley ; and the last named geologist first gave what is now generally accepted as the true explanation of the lake's existence, namely, that it was produced in the closing stage of the Glacial period by the dam of the continental ice-sheet at the time of its final melting away. As the border of the ice-sheet retreated northward along the Red River Valley, drainage from that area could not flow, as now, freely to the north through Lake Winnipeg and into the ocean at Hudson Bay, but was turned by the ice-barrier to the south across the lowest place on the watershed, which was found, as before noted, at Brown's Valley, on the west boundary of Min- nesota.
Detailed exploration of the shore lines and area of this lake was begun by the present writer for the Minnesota Geological Survey in the years 1879 to 1881. In subsequent years I was employed also in tracing the lake shores through North Dakota for the United States Geological Survey, and through south- ern Manitoba, to the distance of 100 miles north from the international boundary, for the Geological Survey of Canada. For the last named survey, also, Mr. J. B. Tyrrell extended the exploration of the shore lines, more or less completely, about 200 miles farther north, along the Riding and Duck mountains and the Porcupine and Pasquia hills, west of Lakes Manitoba and Winnipegosis, to the Saskatchewan River.
This glacial lake was named by the present writer in the eighth annual report of the Minnesota Geolog- ical Survey, for the year 1879, in honor of Louis Agassiz, the first prominent advocate of the theory of the formation of the drift by land ice. Its outflowing river, whose channel is now occupied by Lakes Traverse and Big Stone and Brown's Valley, was also named by me, in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its Minneapolis meeting in 1883, as the River Warren, in commemoration of General Warren's admirable work in the United States Engineering Corps, in pub- lishing maps and reports of the Minnesota and Mis-
sissippi River surveys. Descriptions of Lake Agassiz and the River Warren were somewhat fully given in the eighth and eleventh annual reports of the Minnesota Geological Survey, and in the first, second, and fourth volumes of its final report ; and more com- plete descriptions and maps of the whole lake, in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba, were pub- lished in 1895 as Monograph XXV of the United States Geological Survey.
Several successive levels of Lake Agassiz are re- corded by distinct and approximately parallel beaches of gravel and sand, due to the gradual lowering of the outlet by the erosion of the channel at Brown's Val- ley, and these are named principally from stations on the Breckenridge and Wahpeton line of the Great Northern Railway in their descending order, the Her- man, Norcross, Tintal, Campbell, and MeCauleyville beaches, because they pass through or near these sta- tions and towns. The highest, or Herman, beach is traced in Minnesota from the northern end of Lake Traverse eastward to Herman, and thence northward, passing a few miles east of Barnesville, through Mus- koda, on the Northern Pacific Railway, and around the west and north sides of Maple Lake, which lies in Polk County, about twenty miles east-southeast of Crookston, beyond which it goes eastward to the south side of Red and Rainy lakes. In North Dakota the Herman shore lies about four miles west of Wheat- land, on the Northern Pacific Railway, and the same distance west of Larimore on the Pacific line of the Great Northern Railway. On the international bound- ary, in passing from North Dakota into Manitoba, this shore coincides with the escarpment or front of the Pembina Mountain plateau; and beyond passes northwest to Brandon on the Assiniboine, and thence northeast to the Riding Mountain.
Leveling along the upper beach shows that Lake Agassiz, in its earliest and highest stage, was nearly 200 feet deep above Moorhead and Fargo, a little more than 300 feet deep above Grand Forks and Crookston; about 450 feet above Pembina, St. Vin- cent, and Emerson; and about 500 and 600 feet, re-
14
COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
speetively, above Lakes Manitoba and Winnipeg. The length of Lake Agassiz is estimated to have been nearly 700 miles, and its area not less than 110,000 square miles, execeding the combined areas of the five great lakes tributary to the St. Lawrence.
After the ice border was so far melted baek as to give outlets northeastward lower than the River War- ren, numerous other beaches marking these lower levels of the glacial lake were formed, and finally, by the full departure of the ice, Lake Agassiz was drained away to its present representative, Lake Winnipeg.
While the outflow passed southward, seventeen sue- cessive shore lines, marked by distinet beach ridges, were made by the gradually falling northern part of this lake; but all these, when traced southward, are united into the five beaches before noted for the southern part of the lake. During its stages of north- eastern outflow. a lower series of fourteen shore lines were made. Thus Lake Agassiz had, in total, thirty- one successive stages of gradual deeline in height and decrease in area.
The earliest Herman beach has a northward ascent of about a foot per mile, but the lowest and latest beaches differ only very slightly from perfeet horizon- tality. It is thus known that a moderate uplift of this area, increasing in amount from south to north, was in progress and was nearly or quite completed while the iee-sheet was melting away. Before the Gla- cial period, all the northern half of our continent had been greatly elevated. prodneing at last the eold and snowy climate and the thick ice-sheet; in a late part of that period the land was depressed under the weight of the ice, which in consequence melted away ; and latest, at the same time with the departure of the iee-sheet, the unburdened land rose a few hund- dred feet, the uplift having a gradual increase toward the central part of the country formerly iee-covered.
In comparison with the immensely long and an- cient geologie periods that had preceded, the final melting of the ice-sheet, the deposition of its marginal moraines and other drift formations, its fringing glacial lakes, and the attendant uplifting of the land,
occupied little time and were very reeent. The en- tire duration of Lake Agassiz, estimated from the amount of its wave action in erosion and in the aceu- mulation of beach gravel and sand, appears to have been only abont 1,000 years, and the time of its ex- istenee is thought to have been somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
BEACHES AND DELTA IN TIIIS COUNTY.
The south line of Polk County crosses the highest beach near the middle of the south side of Garfield Township, about two and a half miles southeast of Fertile. In the east edge of the southeast quarter of section 28 and the west edge of the northwest quar- ter of seetion 27, Garfield, this beaeh is a typical ridge of gravel and sand, with its crest 1,166 to 1,173 feet above the sea. There is a gradnal deseent toward the west. The depression on the cast is a sixth to a fourth of a mile wide, sinking 6 to 10 feet below the beach. Farther eastward the land is moderately undulating glacial drift, rising 20 to 30 feet above the beach and bearing frequent groves of small poplars, bur oak, and canoe bireh.
When Lake Agassiz stood at its greatest height, the Sand Hill River brought into its margin a delta six miles long from south to north and three miles wide, reaching from the upper beach to the west side of Gar- field and continuing south through the northwest part of Sundal in Norman County. The surface of this delta deposit of stratified gravel and sand descends slowly westward and is erossed by the lower Herman and Noreross shores, though these lake levels are not there generally traceable. The Tintah shores pass along its western margin, which in some portions was worn away to a low escarpment, steeper than its origi- nal frontal slope, while the eroded sand and gravel, after being carried some distance southward, but not wholly beyond the delta, were deposited in beach ridges. Upon the delta plain many dunes of small and large size, seen from a distance of ten or twelve miles across the lower expanse at the west, have been heaped up by the winds, probably mostly before vege-
15
COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
tation had spread over this area after the withdrawal of the glacial lake.
In the south half of seetion 32, Garfield, and in a helt which thence extends approximately north and south, the surface of the delta, as it was originally deposited, falls toward the west with a slope of 25 or 30 feet in a mile, from 1,125 or 1,130 feet to about 1,100 feet above the sea. Beneath the original sur- face, however, channels have been eroded by the winds, and sand hills 25 to 75 feet above it have been blown up in irregular groups and series, seat- tered over a tract about a mile wide and extending three or four miles southward from the Sand Hill River, in section 29, the northeast part of section 30, and in section 31 and 32, Garfield, and reaching south- ward in seetions 5 and 8, Sundal. An isolated group of these hills lies north of the Sand Hill River, in the northwest quarter of section 16, Garfield. These sand dunes are in part bare, being so frequently drifted by the winds as to allow no foothold for vegetation ; other portions are clothed with grass or with bushes and seanty dwarfed trees, including bur oak, the common aspen or poplar, cottonwood, green ash, blaek cherry, and the frost grape.
The upper Herman beach, the first of the series which was formed in the vicinity of Maple Lake con- temporaneously with the single Herman beach farther south, runs approximately from south to north, through or near the northeast corner of seetion 4, Gar- field. It is a smooth gravel ridge, with its erest 1,165 to 1,175 feet above the sea. The second Herman beach, in the east part of section 5, this township, and section 32, Godfrey, about a mile west of the upper beach, has a height of 1,149 to 1,153 feet, being a ridge of gravel and sand about forty rods wide, with very gentle, prolonged slopes toward both the east and west. A half or two thirds of a mile farther west, the third Herman beach, passing through .the northwest quarter of section 5, Garfield, and the west part of seetion 32, Godfrey, has a height of 1,130 to 1,135 feet, forming a distinct ridge in its southern
part, but farther north being a flat area of gravel and sand, slightly elevated above the land next east.
Thenee the Herman beaches are very finely devel- oped for a distance of six to eight miles northward, passing through Godfrey Township into the southeast part of Tilden, where they eurve to the northeast and east. From this great bend of their course, these beaches pass eastward by the northeast end of Maple Lake and by Mentor and Erskine. The highest Her- man beaeh is traced onward northeast and east to Trail and Gully railway stations; and it continues through Clearwater and Beltrami counties, passing elose south of Red Lake.
Maple Lake, the largest of the many lakes in the southeast part of Polk County, is 1,169 feet above the sea. In its curving course west and north of this lake the highest beach of Lake Agassiz is magnificently ex- hibited, forming a massive, gently rounded ridge of gravel and sand, about thirty rods aeross, with the erest of its highest portion, along a distance of two or three miles, at 1,178 to 1,186 feet.
On the Fosston line of the Great Northern railway and on the same latitude with the eastwardly eurving beaches north of Maple Lake, three small beach ridges are crossed about two and a half miles east of Benoit, the elevation of their erests being successively 1,062, 1,069, and again 1,069 feet, in their order from west to east. These probably represent the upper Tintah beach. One and a quarter miles farther east a more massive beach is erossed, with its crest at 1,092 feet, which is probably the lowest Noreross shore line. Other beach ridges erossed nearly one mile and a half and again nearly two miles east of the last, with erests respectively at 1,114 and 1,120 feet, are apparently referable to upper Noreross stages of the lake. The next beach noted on this railway, three quarters of a mile farther east, at the height of 1,142 feet, belongs to the lower portion of the Herman series.
In seetion 34, Liberty, close south of the Sand Hill River, the Campbell shore is marked by a low eroded esearpment of the glacial drift or till, the top of which is 1,010 feet above the sea, being probably 10 feet
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COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
higher than the lake level when it was made. It runs in a nearly due north course, parallel with the well developed MeCauleyville beach ridges which lie a half to two thirds of a mile farther west. Continu- ing northward through Liberty and Onstad townships and the southern two thirds of Kertsonville, the Campbell shore is almost continuously a terraee eut in the till, having a deseent of 10 to 30 feet within as many rods. Numerous boulders, remaining from the wave erosion, are strewn on a narrow belt below the terrace. The erosion was in progress along the greater part of this terrace during both the upper and lower Campbell stages of the lake; but a beach ridge of gravel and sand, which was accumulated along its base during the lower stage, extends through section 5, Onstad, and into the adjoining sections.
From the southeast part of seetion 9, Kertsonville, the Campbell shore takes a north-northeastward course for the next ten miles to the southwest corner of the township of Red Lake Falls and to the Red Lake River. Along this extent it bears a conspicuous beach deposit, on which several farmhouses are built, their eellars being dug to the depth of six or eight feet in gravel and sand, while the surface on each side of the shore line is till. For the greater part of this distance there are two parallel beach ridges, usually occupying to- gether a width of about fifty rods. The crest of the eastern and higher beach is 1,012 to 1,015 feet above the sea, and that of the lower beach about 1,000 feet, varying from this only one or two feet. Each ridge has a descent of four to six feet toward the east, and their western bases are respectively at 995 and 985 feet, approximately. The upper and lower Campbell levels of Lake Agassiz, which heaped up these beaches by their waves, were very nearly at 1,000 and 990 feet.
Several muel later and lower stages of this ancient ice-dammed lake, after it had ceased to outflow at Brown's Valley, are represented by beach ridges traced in nearly parallel south to north courses
through Crookston, Parnell, Belgium, Euclid, Angus, and adjoining townships. The lowest beach observed in this county, passing through sections 10 and 15, Tabor, is referred to the Gladstone stage of the lake, named from Gladstone in Manitoba. The southern end of the waning Lake Agassiz had then receded from Brown's Valley to the vicinity of the mouth of Sand Hill River, and its depth of water above the present Lake Winnipeg was reduced to less than 200 feet.
Two relatively small deltas were formed in the east edge of the lake by the Buffalo and Sand Hill rivers, while its west edge received four deltas, each muell larger in both area and thickness, namely the Shey- enne, Elk Valley, Pembina, and Assiniboine deltas. All of these remarkable tributary sand and gravel deposits were brought by inflowing streams during the earliest and highest Herman stages of the lake, though each was considerably channeled and in part borne farther and to lower levels during the later and lower stages. In every instance the delta formations were supplied mainly by drainage from neighboring por- tions of the melting and departing iee-sheet. Alike on the east and west sides of the Red River Valley, the retreating border of the continental glacier nearly adjoined the ancient lake, being melted back from south to north as fast as the lake grew northward and made its earliest beaches.
Above the Sand Hill delta, southeastern Polk Coun- ty was yet covered by the ice, melting fast away every summer, when its drift supplied the sand heds of the delta. Not far distant northward, the front of the iee-sheet stretched across the valley, but it was grad- ually yielding its place to the great glacial lake. Soon the originally smooth delta expanse, laid bare by the land uplift and the declining lake levels, was partly blown by the winds into high and picturesque sand hills, before protecting vegetation eould overspread the surface.
CHAPTER II. THE EARLY INDIAN INHABITANTS.
LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT THIE VERY FIRST PEOPLE OF POLK COUNTY-THE MOUND BUILDERS DOUBTLESS NEVER LIVED IIERE, AND THE MOUNDS IN THE COUNTY WERE BUILT BY THE RED INDIANS-THE CREES WERE THE FIRST MODERN INDIANS TO LIVE HERE, ALTHOUGH EXACT PARTICULARS OF THEIR OCCUPATION ARE NOT KNOWN-THE CHIPPEWAS FOLLOWED THE CREES, FOUGHT THE SIOUX, AND DROVE THE MAJORITY OF THE LATTER FROM THE THIEF RIVER COUNTRY-ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF THIEF RIVER-TIIE SIOUX AND CHIPPEWAS BATTLE FOR THE RED RIVER COUNTRY-SIOUX DEFEAT AT PEMBINA-FLAT MOUTH, THE CHIPPEWA CHIEF, THWARTS TIIE TREACHERY OF BEAVER, THE SIOUX CHIEF, AND HAS HIM MURDERED NEAR EAST GRAND FORKS-COL. ROBERT DICKSON, THE SCOTCH TRADER AT EAST GRAND FORKS, PROTESTS THIE MURDER AND ALSO HELPS THE BRITISHI IN TIIE WAR OF 1812.
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