USA > Minnesota > Cottonwood County > History of Cottonwood and Watonwan counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 29
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"A friend of mine, Mr. Blixt, had gone out on the lake to fish. He had built a small shanty on the ice for protection. The storm coming on, he did not start for home, but very prudently remained within his shelter. His wife, however, had for some reason felt constrained to venture out. No sooner had she gotten out of the door before she was snatched by the grip of the storm and forced onward and onward until she had gone seven miles away from home, when her strength failed her and she sank down into her last sleep. She was not found until spring, when the drifts of snow began to drift away. Her hand was seen sticking out of the snow and her gold ring glittered in the bright moonlight. It was discovered later, by tracing her tracks, that she had passed the box where her husband sat a prisoner in the grip of the cruel storm.
"When her husband returned, two days afterward, he found the door of his home blown open and his little boy, three years old, standing in the bed, where he had been alone two days and nights. The little fellow had cried so that he could now scarcely sob. That boy is now a man, a prosperous farmer, but the traces of that terrible experience of two seemingly endless days and nights of loneliness, of fear, of cold and of suffering are left with him. His long crying brought on stuttering.
"In the same storm a mail carrier, going from Worthington to Indian Lake, was driven out of his course to Okaboji, Iowa. twenty-five miles away, where later his body was found.
"The lessons learned from such storms were many : Better protection for man and beast, a goodly supply of fuel and fodder near at hand, and guide ropes from the house to the stable so that one could pass safely be- tween the two without losing their way.
"The winter had passed, though never to be forgotten. The smiling spring, with its green verdure and lovely wild flowers, had again come to give cheer and hope for a better future."
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COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
A FIVE-YEAR GRASSHOPPER SCOURGE.
The same minister who wrote the above on the 1873 blizzard also wrote graphically. as an eye witness, of the grasshopper days between 1873 and 1878, which years devastated all southern Minnesota and northwest Iowa. Dr. Peterson said :
"I had frequently read from Exodus, tenth chapter, the following: 'When it was morning the east wind brought the locusts, and the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt and rested in all the coasts of Egypt. Very grievous were they; for they covered the face of the earth so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left ; and there remained not any green thing in the trees or in the herbs of the field.' But I never expected to see anything like it myself. Those who were in southwestern Minnesota during the grasshopper years find no difficulty in believing the story of Moses. Their invasion of Egypt was but for a season, but with us they remained five years.
"I remember quite distinctly the morning in June, 1873, when the ad- vance troop arrived. I had just started to go to Worthington and, crossing the cornfield. I was surprised at seeing what at first seemed snow fall. I looked up and saw millions of hoppers, with their outstretched wings, sailing down upon the field. As I stood and looked the air grew thicker. I re- turned to the house and asked my mother and sister, who were home, to come out and see what I jokingly called the 'snow-fall.' They were too astonished to speak. We could guess what this would mean. We went out to the cornfield, which only a few minutes ago looked so fine and gave promise of a good crop. It was now all bare. The succulent plants were eaten down to the ground. The garden had fared the same way. For a moment we stood dumb. The cloud of hoppers increased in density. They were now lighting down on the wheat field. We saw that the prospects of the year's crop had been snatched out of our hands in almost an hour. I looked at poor mother. She wiped away a tear with her apron, while she quoted the words of Job. 'The Lord gave; the Lord hath taken away.'
"This was but the beginning of a scourge which was to last five years. It was a blessing that we did not know what was ahead. Our hopes soon rose, and our courage was braced as we cheered ourselves with the thought that this was but for one year. We still had our stock and the hoppers had left the grass untouched. We soon discovered, however, that after they
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had finished the destruction of the crops they were busy depositing their eggs. This boded no good for the coming year.
"The following summer proved that our suspicions were correct. When the ground became sufficiently warm, millions of little hoppers made their appearance, until the ground was literally alive with them. This army of home-bred hoppers received tremendous accessions from the mountain re- gions of the west until they not only covered the ground, but lay in places several inches deep, and as you walked along they would fly up and you would find yourself moving along in a deafening buzz of a continuous swarm. Trains were even stopped by them. They would lie upon the track so thick that, when crushed, the wheels could not grip the surface of the rails.
"Their voracity was quite remarkable. Garden stuff and the growing grain were their choicest diet, but they would not spurn such things as clothes, tool-handles, tobacco, etc. We soon learned to know that it was not safe to lay aside a garment in the field exposed to their attack, for in an incredibly short time it would be perforated with holes.
"A Mr. Attick had, incautiously, left his tobacco and pipe in the field, while at work, and on his return for a smoke found to his surprise that the hoppers had devoured his tobacco, but had been gracious enough to leave the paper pouch for him. In his disgust he said, 'We have now reached the limit ; it is high time we leave; if the hoppers will not stop at tobacco there is no telling what they will devour next.'
"This state of things continued for five years. The settlers were driven to the last ditch. The governor of the state was concerned about the situation. He issued a proclamation setting aside April 26, 1877, as a day of prayer and fasting. Some scoffed. but many observed the day. The deliv- erance came the first week in June, when the grasshoppers arose in a body. The scourge was gone, let us hope never to return again."
BURNING HAY FOR FUEL.
The fuel question in those carly grasshopper, poverty-stricken years in this section of the country was no small problem to solve. The use of wood and coal was out of the question. These were entirely beyond the reach of those living back from the small groves along the Des Moines river. At first, stalks of tall weeds that grew along the edges of the sloughs were gathered and used, but these did not last long. When the keen blasts of the prairie winter came out of the northwest, something more was needed.
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COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
"Necessity being the mother of invention," it was soon discovered that prairie hay could be burned in stoves, by taking a swab of it and twisting up in a stove-wood length and fastening its ends to securely hold the wad together until it was needed in the stove. Of course it was mussy and the housewife did not like it, as white ashes would puff out every time the stove lid was lifted to replenish the fire with more hay. This fuel also clogged up the stove-pipe and chimney. so that it would not "draw" and hence every few days the pipe had to be cleaned out, which in a cold winter day was anything but a pleasing task. But this was better than going cold, so many were forced to depend upon prairie hay for fuel in the heating of their claim shack or sod shanty.
DREADFUL RAILROAD WRECK AT WINDOM.
About the 20th of September, 1899, occurred a terrible wreck on the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha railroad, at the bridge crossing the Des Moines river, at the edge of the town, coming from the southwest. To- wards midnight a rear-end collision took place on the railroad bridge. A train of thirty-five heavily loaded cars, drawn by two powerful engines, crashed into the rear of another freight train standing on the bridge. Four inen were killed: Engineer Carl Rasmussen; fireman T. M. Roberts; fire- man Hugh Stratton; John Roberts, merchant, St. James. Many more were seriously injured in the wreck.
It was the same old story of wrong and not plainly understood orders. One engine was standing on the bridge and could not get out, after seeing the heavy train coming from the west. A red light was put out over the track by the engineer on the bridge, but too late-the speed of the train was too great and the awful crash very soon came. The double-header collided with the engine on the steel bridge, which could not withstand such a shock and went down, the three engines and thirty cars going to the bottom and into the Des Moines river. The cars were loaded mostly with grain and the whole made a huge, unsightly pile, reaching nearly to the top of the bridge. The space was almost, if not quite, one hundred and fifty feet between the two north piers, this being the length of the span that went down; the other span of the railroad bridge remained in position.
To add to the horror of the midnight scene, the derailed, overturned locomotives set fire to the wreckage and it burned fiercely for a long time. Somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five thousand bushels of grain were wrecked, causing a loss to the company of sixty-five thousand dollars. The
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damaged grain was sold by the company to a St. Paul man for four hundred and fifty dollars. The cars were smashed to fine kindling wood-the worst wreck ever seen by the superintendent, as he stated. It took days to clear away the wreckage. A huge derrick was sent from the Northwestern road at Baraboo, Wisconsin, its lifting power being fifty tons.
Who was guilty? Superintendent Spencer said "The accident was caused by the gross carelessness of Williams, who in backing onto the main line, disobeyed the first rule a conductor learns." At first Williams disap- peared, but finally returned and went to his home in St. James. He was there arrested Friday following the wreck. He was placed on trial, at which County Attorney Annes and Wilson Borst appeared for the state and W. S. Hammond, of St. James, for Williams, who was acquitted.
MOUNTAIN LAKE WRECK.
On March 3. 1916, occurred a disastrous wreck at Mountain Lake, in which three were instantly killed and many injured. A special train, in which were a number of movables, was on the track. The engine was switch- ing out a couple of cars for men who were to move on farms near Moun- tain Lake. The engine had just spotted the cars at the loading chute and was backing out to couple up the train, when the through train came on at a high rate of speed.
THE OLD OX TEAM.
A. B. Irving wrote the following song and it was recited or sung at one of the Old Settlers' Association meetings in Windom :
We're living today in a very fast age; We go rushing along, to gain is the rage; We hustle and hurry and draw things by steam, All forgetting the days when we drove an ox team.
We live at high pressure and cut a great dash, Swell up like bubble and burst with a crash, Never thinking of turning and pulling up stream, As we did in the days we had an ox team.
We labored together in the days of "Lang Syne"; We stood by each other, we cleared up the land; We fallowed the ground, 'twas as new as cream. We dragged in the bright seed with the ox team.
How often we heard it, "Buck," "Haw Buck" and "Bright," The ox team has vanished; it's auto and bike; It's a forty-mile gait, by trolley or steam, The day has passed by for the old ox team.
We're nearing the border land, o'er the way; But memory will linger 'round the days passed away, When sleep drops the curtain, in many a dream, We're hallowing once more to the old ox team.
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1
WATONWAN COUNTY COURT HOUSE, ST. JAMES.
WATONWAN COUNTY MINNESOTA
CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGY OF WATONWAN COUNTY.
Situation and Arca. Watonwan county lies in the southern part of Minnesota, bordering on Iowa. It is a little west of the central meridian of the state. St. James. the county seat. is situated southwest from St. Paul and Minneapolis, about one hundred and twenty miles. From the west line of this county to the line between Minnesota and Dakota is eighty miles. The county is a rectangle, extending twenty-four miles from cast to west. and eighteen miles from north to south. The area of the county is 435-45 square miles, or 278.689.92 acres, of which about sixteen hundred acres are covered by water.
SURFACE FEATURES.
Natural Drainage. Watonwan county is wholly drained by the river of the same name, which empties into the Blue Earth river about three miles below Garden City in Blue Earth county. The north and south forks of the Watonwan river, having their sources in Cottonwood county, traverse respectively the northern and southwestern parts of Watonwan county, each receiving several tributary creeks, and are united in one stream two miles west of Madelia, and about twenty miles, following the course of the river. above its mouth. Antrim, the most southeast township of this county, is drained by Perch creek, which has its source a few miles farther south in Martin county, and flows northeast to the Watonwan river.
Among the original lakes of Watonwan county the following are worthy of mention: Emerson Lake, at the north side of Madelia, two miles long from east to west, and one and a half miles wide, with about half its area in Linden township, Brown county; this lake has been drained and used for farm purposes. Five or six smaller lakes in Madelia township within a few miles to the southeast from Emerson Lake; a dozen smaller lakes, probably
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COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
some of them dry in the summer season, lying in Fieldon and Antrim town- ships; three lakes in St. James, the largest a mile or more in length, close southwest of the town; Long Lake two and a half miles long from east to west and half a mile wide and Kansas Lake one and one-half east and west by one mile in width, in Long Lake township; four unnamed lakes in Odin township, the largest in sections 5 and 6 being about a mile long and a half mile wide, nearly gone now except in wet seasons, and Wood Lake in Antrim township, three and a half miles long and from a quarter to a half mile wide.
Topography. Watonwan county descends toward the east and north- east, but in a broad view its slightly undulating expanse seems nearly level. Generally its surface is in very gentle slopes, which soon conduct the sur- plus waters of rains and snow-melting into depressions, which merge into ravines and lead to small water-courses, and by them to the larger permanent streams. Here and there, however, are depressions which have no such free drainage, and contain sloughs or lakes.
In Watonwan county the south fork of the Watonwan river lies in a valley which it has cut forty feet below the general level along all its course from Mountain Lake to Madelia; and the north fork and its tribu- taries have similarly channeled their part of the drift-sheet. Below the junction of these branches the Watonwan valley increases to fifty or sixty feet in depth before leaving the county at the southeast corner of Madelia township.
Adrian, the most northwesterly township of Watonwan county, has the only outcrop of the bed-rock in the county, this being the eastern extremity of a prominent ridge of the red Potsdam quartzyte. It is seen at the sur- face in the northwest quarter of section 20. and gives to this and the con- tiguous sections 30 and 19 an elevation of fifty to one hundred feet above the rest of the township; but this ridge here, and through its whole extent of nearly twenty-five miles westward, where it rises much higher, is mainly covered by a smooth sheet of till.
Elevations, taken from profiles in the office of T. P. Gere, superin- tendent of St. Paul & Sioux City division, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway, are :
Madelia
1,02I
Watonwan river, water
1
1
979
St. James
I
1
1
1,073
Butterfield
1
1
1
1, 184
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COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
The highest land of Watonwan county is either the east part of the quartzyte ridge in sections 19 and 30, Adrian township, or the southwest corner of the county, both of which are nearly thirteen hundred feet above the sea. Its lowest land is where the Watonwan river passes out from this into Blue Earth county, at a height of about nine hundred and sixty feet above the sea. The mean heights of the townships of this county are approximately as follow : Madelia, ten hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea; Fieldon, ten hundred and fifty; Antrim, eleven hundred feet; River Dale, ten hundred and forty: Rosendale, ten hundred and sixty; South Branch. cleven hundred and twenty; Nelson, ten hundred and seventy-five; St. James, eleven hundred and twenty ; Long Lake, eleven hundred and fifty; Adrian, eleven hundred and fifty; Butterfiekl, twelve hundred; and Odin, twelve hundred and forty. From these estimates the mean elevation of Watonwan county is found to be eleven hundred and ten feet.
Soil and Timber. The soil of Watonwan county, like that of a vast region extending from them on all sides, is very fertile, easily worked, and well adapted for the cultivation of all the staple agricultural products of this latitude. A black, clayey, and slightly sandy and gravelly loam, from one to three feet thick, forms the surface, which is nearly everywhere sufficiently undulating to carry away the waters of heavy rains and snow- melting. Boulders are scattered very sparingly over the entire area of this county, but scarcely anywhere are objectionably numerous. This soil and the subsoil of yellowish gravelly clay are the till, or unmodified drift of the glacial period. They are somewhat porous on account of the considerable proportion of sand intermixed, causing them to absorb much moisture from rains and give it up readily to vegetation. The principal crop of Watonwan county, at first, generally northward through this state, was wheat, but corn, live stock, and dairying now predominate.
The county is principally prairie, being naturally grassland, without tree or shrub excepting narrow skirts of timber, which generally surround the lakes and extend along the principal streams, sometimes widening to form groves. Probably the aggregate area of these belts of timber is less than one hundredth part of the county. The following species of trees, arranged in their estimated order of abundance. were noted as occurring along the South Fork of the Watonwan river: American or white elm, white ash, box-elder, ironwood, cottonwood, bur-oak, slippery or red elm, hackberry, bass, soft maple, black walnut, willows, the American aspen, or poplar, and the wild plum.
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COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE.
The only exposure of bed-rock in Watonwan county is found, as already stated, in the northwest quarter of section 29, Adrian township. A smooth and flat surface of the very compact and hard, red Potsdam quartzyte is seen here along an extent of five rods from northwest to southeast, with a width varying from five to twenty feet. This is on an eastward slope, in a slight depression of drainage. The quartzyte does not project out of the drift, and cannot be seen at a distance. It is undoubtedly the bed-rock beneath all the southwest quarter of Adrian township, but is elsewhere cov- ered within the limits of this township and county by the smoother sheet of glacial drift, which rises in a broadly rounded ridge because of the prom- inence of this underlying rock. Through the north half of section 30, Adrian township, it lies at no great depth, and has been encountered in ploughing and digging at several places. This ridge, having here and there outdrops of the same red quartzyte, continues more than twenty miles to the west, in northern Cottonwood county.
The strike of the limestone and sandstone formations of the Lower Magnesian series, in their exposures along the valley of the Minnesota river and in Blue Earth county, indicates that their continuation underlies the greater part of Watonwan county, but here they are doubtless covered in part and perhaps mainly, by Cretaceous strata.
DRIFT AND CONTOUR.
Glacial striae are very distinct on the quartzye ledge exposed in section 29, Adrian township, mostly bearing south 30° east, referred to the true meridian, but in one place, on its southeast portion, bearing south 20° east.
The contour of Watonwan county is like that which prevails generally in the basin of the Minnesota river, and is formed by a slightly undulating. or in some portions a moderately rolling, sheet of till, with massive swells rising in long, smooth slopes ten to twenty to thirty feet above the depres- sions. The gently undulating, smoothed surface of most of this region appears to mark areas over which the ice-sheet moved in a continuous cur- rent, and from which it disappeared by melting that was extended at the same time over a wide field. Compared with the thickness of the drift, its inequalities of contour in this county are small, and in an extensive view
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COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
it seems approximately flat. It is a part on the inclined plain which rises by an imperceptible slope from the Minnesota river to the Coteau des Prairies. Its rate of ascent toward the southwest, or increase in average height, varies from five to fifteen or twenty feet per mile. This gradual change in altitude is doubtless produced by increase in height of the bed- rocks upon which the drift lies as a sheet of somewhat uniform depth, prob- ably varying in this county from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet; but the numerous small elevations and depressions of the surface appear to be due to the accumulation of different amounts of till by adjoining portions of the moving ice-sheet, without any corresponding unevenness of the under- lying rocks.
For one or two miles southeast and south of Madelia, and for one mile southeast of St. James, the surface has frequent swells twenty to thirty feet above the depressions, being more rolling than most other parts of Watonwan county, which is generally very gently undulating in smooth prolonged slopes, with occasional lakes and here and there sloughs ten to twenty feet below the highest portions of the adjoining country.
LAKE AREA.
Chains of Lakes. It has been frequently noted that the lakes which abound upon areas overspread by the glacial drift, have their prevailing trend. or average direction of their longer axes, parallel with the course that was taken by the ice-sheet. The swells and undulations of the till have their greatest extent in this direction, and the lakes fill the hollows that are formed by its unequal accumulation. Among the hills of the terminal moraines, however, the longer axes of the lakes are apt to be transverses to the course in which the ice came, but parallel with its border. In cach case, such lakes are due to variable glacial erosion and deposition; and the basins in which they lie are not more remarkable features of the contour than are its swells. hills and areas of highland. The deepest lakes contained in depressions of the till in this state are from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet in depth, reaching as far below the average level of the drift-sheet as its most elevated portions rise higher ; but a great majority of these lakes. especially upon regions of only slightly undulating surface without promi- nent elevations, are shallow, ranging from five to twenty-five feet in depth. They mainly have very gently ascending shores, but sometimes on one or more sides are partially bounded by steep banks, five, twenty and thirty fect high, formed by the wear of waves which have eaten away projecting por-
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COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
tions of their margin of till, leaving its boulders, but strewing its finer detritus over the lake-bed.
In regions of modified drift, consisting of stratified gravel and sand that were supplied from the dissolving ice-sheet, the lakes, from ten to fifty feet or more in depth, and often bordered by level or undulating tracts of modified drift, from twenty-five to one hundred feet or more above them, lie in depressions which at the time of the fluvial deposition of this drift, were probably still occupied by ummelted masses of ice, preventing sedi- mentation where they lay and consequently leaving hollows enclosed by steep and high banks, whose top is the margin of plateaus or plains of gravel and sand. No examples of lake basins thus surrounded by modified drift were found in Watonwan county, neither of which have any noteworthy deposits of this class, nor any such rough morainic areas as to influence the distribution and trend of their lakes.
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