USA > Minnesota > Cottonwood County > History of Cottonwood and Watonwan counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53
This county is natural prairie, affording rich pasturage, and ready for the plow. Less than a hundredth part of their area was wooded, including small groves and narrow skirts of timber and brushwood about the shores of the lakes, along the large creeks, and especially along the whole extent of the Des Moines river. The following species of trees and shrubs are found : American or white elm, bur-oak, white ash, box-elder, black walnut, willows, prickly ash, smooth sumach, frost grape, Virginia creeper, climbing bitter- sweet, wild plum, choke-berry, black raspberry, rose, thorn, smooth wild gooseberry and wolfberry, common red or slippery elin, cottonwood, hack- berry, waahoo. and black currant, less frequent, also basswood, sugar maple, etc.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE.
Potsdam Quartsyte. The only exposures of bed-rock in this district are the red quartzyte, which forms a prominent ridge in the north part of Cot- tonwood county, reaching into the edge of Brown and Watonwan counties. From the most eastern to the most western outcrop of this rock is a length of twenty-three miles, and the width upon which it is occasionally exposed increases from a half mile or less at the east to six miles at the west. The contour of this area is a massive highland of rock, mostly covered by a smooth sheet of till, with gracefully rounded top and moderate slopes. The general character of this formation, and the location, extent, and special fea- tures of its outcropping ledges are to be noted here.
About thirty miles east-northeast from this ridge in northern Cotton- wood county, the same rock formation has extensive exposures, and it con- tinues westward into Dakota to Dell Rapids and Sioux Falls on the Big Sioux river, and to Rockport on the James river, seventy miles west of Min- nesota, and about one hundred and eighty miles westward from New Ulin, (5)
66
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
in Brown county. All these outcrops are mainly very hard, fine-grained quartzyte, differing in color from pinkish gray to dark dull red, always hav- ing some red tint ; and varying in the thickness of its beds from a few inches, or sometimes only a half inch or less, to one or two feet. It is usually per- ceptibly tilted, with considerable variability in the direction of its tips, which vary in amount from one or two to fifteen or twenty degrees, and rarely attain an inclination of forty-five degrees. This quartzyte is a metamorphosed sand- stone. At a few places it occurs in an imperfectly indurated condition, being a more or less crumbling sandrock, composed of water-rounded grains. Some- times, too, it is a conglomerate, enclosing abundant water-worn pebbles up to an inch in diameter, which was originally an ordinary fine gravel, having become so cemented as to form a very compact and hard, tough rock, and by diminution in the number of pebbles scattered through it, the formation exhibits all grades between this pudding-stone and its typical condition as a quartzyte. Again, it occasionally contains layers, from less than an inch to several feet thick, of argillaccous rock, so fine-grained and even in its texture as to appear microscopically homogeneous, doubtless metamorphosed from deposits of fine silt or clay in the midst of beds of sand; commonly dull red, but often mottled with pale spots, or striped by the same lighter tints in parallelism with its stratification; soft enough to be easily carved and pol- ished, and its best varities entirely free from grit. This has been named catlinite, and its finest layer is that which has been worked by the Indians. at the celebrated Red Pipestone quarry.
The planes of bedding of this quartzyte frequently show very distinct and beautiful ripple marks, such as are made by waves upon the sandy shores and bottom of lakes or of the sea. No fossils have been detected in this formation, as here described in southwestern Minnesota and southeastern Dakota; and fucoid impressions, rarely observed, are the only remains of life yet found in the probably equivalent Cupriferous series of red quartzytes and sandstones interstratified with thick balsatic overflows developed about Lake Superior. The quartzyte from New Ulm to the James river is closely like the sandstone and quartzyte associated with trap rocks in northeastern Minnesota, in northern Wisconsin and northern Michigan, but its deposition was not similarly accompanied by outflows of igneous rock, nor has this formation in southern Minnesota been intersected by trap dikes. Foster and Whitney referred these rocks in the region of Lake Superior to the Potsdam age, considering them the western equivalent and representative of the Pots- dam sandstone in New York, and the explorations by this survey of their continuation into northeastern Minnesota sustain this conclusion, while the
67
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
observations of this quartzyte outcropping in the southwest part of the state and farther west indicate that it belongs to the same epoch. This formation underlies the Caliciferous or Lower Magnesian series, which outcrops along the lower part of the Minnesota river from a point fourteen miles east- southeast of New Ulm, in Brown county, and along the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers.
In the northeast quarter of section 25. Selma township, this red quartzyte is exposed upon an eastward slope of till, with an area three rods long from northwest to southeast, and about a rod wide, rising some two feet above the general surface. In the southeast quarter of section 23, Selma township, this rock outcrops on a southward slope along a distance of about twenty- five rods from the east to west, with a width of two or three rods and a height of only one to two feet. It dips about ten degrees southward. Both these ledges have been slightly quarried. They are the ordinary, very hard quartzyte, intersected by systems of joints which give it a rhomboidal frac- ture. Other outcrops of the same stone, which have not been visited in this survey, occur northwestward at numerous places in this township and in the northwest part of Delton, upon the high ridge and in the hollow where the north branch of the North fork of Watonwan river crosses it.
The quartzyte also has frequent exposures in Delton along nearly the whole extent of the Little Cottonwood river through this township, and in its tributary ravines. In the east part of the southeast quarter of section 8, it has been much quarried in the banks and channel of this strean, sup- plying rough stone used for foundations, cellar walls, well curbing and cul- verts, or by the Russian immigrants, for chimneys, being sometimes teamed fifteen miles. It occurs in layers of all thicknesses up to two and one-half feet, the thinly bedded portions, as usually, being much divided by joints into rhombodial fragments a foot or less in length. The bedding planes are often ripple-marked over several square rods together, in parallel undula- tions about a quarter of an inch high and two to four inches apart from crest to crest. This dip is about 5 degrees south, 20 degrees west. This is some twenty rods east of the Little Cottonwood falls, where the same rock in its upper portion forms layers three to six feet thick, dipping about six degrees to the south, but only a few feet lower, near the level of the stream, is thin-bedded and somewhat contorted and irregular in stratification.
Quartzyte outcropping in the north part of the southwest quarter of section 18, Delton township, occurs in layers up to six inches thick, dipping about three degrees south, seventy degrees east. Twenty rods farther south it has a dip of the same amount but changed in direction to south forty
68
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
degrees east, all these bearings being referred to the true meridian. Its only exposures observed in the south half of this township are in the southeast quarter of section 30, where it is visible at numerous places along an extent of about an eighth of a mile in a ravine tributary to the Watonwan river. A ledge of this rock, very remarkably striated, and bearing rude Indian inscriptions, is found on the ridge about a mile northeast from the Little Cottonwood falls and quarry, being in the north part of the northwest quarter of section 9, Delton township. It has an area of about twenty rods long from east to west, and four to eight rods wide. The dip of its stratification is distinctly seen, but is believed to be about five degrees southward, which is the slope of the surface. Numerous figures are pecked on this rock, rep- resenting animals, arrows, etc., similar to those inscribed by the Indians on the quartzyte beside the boulders called the Three Maidens, near the Pipe- stone quarry. From this ledge westward the same typical quartzyte fre- quently outcrops upon the higher part of this ridge and on its northern slope through the northwest part of Delton, northern Amboy, and northeastern Storden.
In the southwest quarter of section 2, Amboy township, a ravine ten to fifteen feet deep extends east-northeast in a straight course about forty rods, varying from two to three rods in width, bordered by vertical walls, ten to fifteen feet high, of rough, thick-bedded quartzyte, of red or reddish gray color, nearly level in stratification, mostly much divided by joints. The eastern half of this ravine holds a long pool, ten to twenty feet wide, and five to eight feet deep. At the top of the wall of rock south of the west part of this pool, the much jointed, deep red, striated surface is in many places soft and like pipestone to the depth of an eighth of an inch; but within, there small jointed masses are gritty and hard, the pipestone being only a thin coating at the bedding planes. At the western end of this ravine, on its north side, eight feet above the rivulet that flows east in to this pool, this rock encloses a layer, nearly level, varying from four inches to a foot in thickness, somewhat like the pipestone of the famous quarry in Pipestone county, having nearly the same very fine texture and dark red color, but not so hard, and at this place, through its extent of twenty feet exposed to view, easily divisible into small flakes and fragments because of joints, and therefore not seen in any solid mass. The edge of this layer has been mostly removed by weathering to a depth of two to six feet into the wall of tough, reddish gray quartzyte, which overhangs and underlies it. The divisions of this very fine-grained bed from the coarse quartzyte are not definite lines, but these unlike sediments are more or less blended and
69
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
interstratified through one to six inches. Both above and below, the quartzyte in some portions contains pebbles up to a third or half of an inch in diameter, and is quite variable in texture, but is nowhere finely laminated. At a few places the pipestone also is found to contain these small gravel stones; and a few fragments of pipestone up to three inches in diameter are seen enclosed in the quartzyte within one to two feet above the pipestone layer.
WATER-FALLS AND CASCADES.
Picturesque falls are produced by this formation in the northeast quarter of section 36, Germantown township. The rock here is mostly a very coarse- grained, thick-bedded sandstone, slightly iron rusty or reddish in color. Nearly all of it is somewhat friable, being thus unlike the other exposures of this formation in this county. In some portions, however, it is here very hard and compact, and then usually has a deeper red hue. Its dip is about five degrees, ten degrees cast. Besides this general dip, the beds often show oblique lamination. This rock is in some places slightly conglomerate, hold- ing pebbles of white quartz, and less frequently of red felsyte. or, possibly, jasper, the largest seen being an inch long. These falls are about two miles northeast from the gorge last described, being on the lower portion of the same stream, which is one of the sources of Mound creek. Along its inter- vening course and within short distances from it on each side, this forma- tion has frequent outerops, notably for a quarter of a mile south and south- west of the falls. The stream descends thirty feet in a little succession of cascades, within a distance of twenty rods; next below which is a basin some six rods' long and four rods wide, bordered by vertical or overhanging walls of rock, about thirty feet high. At its east end this basin is so con- tracted that for a distance of about twenty feet these walls of rock are only eight to fifteen feet apart. Below, for the next twenty-five rods, the gorge is four to six rods wide, bordered by vertical walls of reddish sandstone or quartzyte, which decline from thirty to twenty and ten feet high. The same rock is seen thence nearly all the way for a half mile east, mostly forming cliffs fifteen to twenty feet high at the south side of this creek, to the junc- tion of another stream from the south in section 31, Stately, Brown county, which also has an interesting fall formed by the quartzyte.
The most western exposure of this rock learned of in Cottonwood county is in the northwest quarter of section 28, Storden. Typical quartzyte, very compact and tough, varying in color from dull red to slightly reddish gray, is here exposed in the bed of a stream tributary to Highwater ereck, along
70
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
a distance of fifteen rods or more from north to south, with a width of two to four rods. Its dip is about five degrees to the southeast or south sixty degrees east. It is much divided by joints and is thereby somewhat fractured into rhomboidal pieces. Ripple-marks were seen in several places, the undu- lations being two to three inches wide. Fragments of red pipestone one to two inches in diameter occur rarely in this rock. Another outcrop is reported one mile northeast from the last, on the the northeast quarter of section 21, Storden, in a ravine; and others occur a half-mile southeast of Carlson's, near the center of section 27, in the bed of small ponds through which the brook flows. The west part of the southwest quarter of section 6, Dale, has considerable exposure of quartzyte, scarcely rising, however, about the general surface of the till, along a distance of twenty rods and more from north to south, on a westward slope, about a mile east from the east end of Lake Augusta. The stone varies in color from yellowish gray to a dull red, is mtich jointed, and has a dip at the quarry of about five degrees northeast. Laminae of pipestone from a fourth to a third of an inch thick, deep red, traversed by whitish veins, in their predominant red color and soft slaty tex- ture, closely like the pipestone of Pipestone county, were noted here upon the surface about fifteen feet east of the quarried excavations, occurring at bedding planes along an extent of about two rods. Here, also, fragments of this deep red pipestone, up to one or two inches in diameter, are enclosed in the quartzyte, which is mostly of a more grayish red color.
Several other outcrops of this rock, similar in extent and character, occur within a distance of a mile to the south and southeast through section 7. Dale, and in the east edge of section 12, and perhaps also of section I, Amo. These most southern exposures of this area of quartzyte were exam- ined by Professor Winchell in 1873. The stone is very hard, but banded with light and red beds, evident on the planed surface and on the fractured side.
The observations of dip recorded in the foregoing pages indicate that these Potsdam strata in Selma, Delton, Stately and Germantown are mono- clinal, dipping generally about five degrees southward; and that probably farther west in Germantown, Amboy, Storden, Dale and Amo, where a greater width is exposed, they are sunclinal on the north, dipping about five degrees toward the south, and on the southwest dipping an equal amount toward the northeast and north. From the Little Cottonwood falls in Delton along the distance of three miles northerly to the falls in section 36, Germantown, Professor Winchell in a recent reconnaissance found numerous outerops of the rock with a nearly uniform southward dip of about five degrees, from
71
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
which he computes the thickness of the formation exposed between those points to be approximately one thousand three hundred and eighty feet. Stratigraphically, the lowest of the beds thus observed are at the falls on Mound creek in Germantown, where outcrops extending twelve hundred feet from north to south, with a dip of five degrees toward the south, give a thickness of one hundred feet for the friable sandstone seen at that place. This forms the base of the strata measured, being below beds of very hard and compact quartzyte, which are almost a quarter of a mile thick.
DRIFT AND CONTOUR.
The surface of the Potsdam quartzyte in many places shows distinct glacial markings, notes of which are presented in the following table. These bearings are referred to the true meridian, from which the magnetic needle here has a variation of about ten degrees to the cast.
Course of glacial striae in Cottonwood county: Selma, northeast quar- ter of section 25, south twenty degrees east; Selma, southeast quarter of section 23, south twenty degrees east: Delton, southeast quarter of section 30, south fifteen degrees east ; Delton, southwest quarter of section 18, south fifteen degrees east : Delton, northwest quarter of section 18, south twenty-five degrees east : Delton, northwest quarter of section 9, south twenty-five degrees east: Amboy, south part of section 2, mostly south forty degrees east ; Amboy, southwest quarter of section 2, south 35 degrees to 50 degrees cast. Germantown, northeast quarter of section 36, south thirty degrees cast, and south seventy degrees cast; Dale southwest quarter of section 6, south twenty degrees to twenty-five degrees east; Dale, south part of section 7, south thirty-four degrees east; Amo. east part of section 12, south thirty degrees to three hundred and twenty degrees cast.
Near the Little Cottonwood falls, in the S. E. quarter of section 8, Delton, and at points on the north side of the quartzyte ridge in the north- west part of this township. the angles of projecting ledges of this rock were observed to be rounded off by glaciation.
Remarkable deflections and intercrossing of glacial striae were found at the locality mentioned in the N. W. quarter of section 9, Delton. It is on the southern slope of the ridge formed by this quartzyte, as already described. This ridge is elevated about 300 feet above the lowland, which, from its base two or three miles farther north, extends northward more than fifty miles, across the basin of the Minnesota river; but its height above the average surface to the south and southwest is slight, probably not exceed-
72
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
ing 50 feet. Its length is about twenty-five miles, extending from east to west ; and this locality is near the middle of its extent. Very distinct glacial markings occur here promiscuously, crossing each other in all directions between north to south and south sixty degrees cast, and very rarely, south eighty degrees east. but a great majority are between south twenty-five degrees cast and forty degrees east. Many are from ten to thirty feet or more in length, and from an eighth to a half of an inch deep; others are very delicate lines. Curned striae were observed at one place; two or three parallel furrows, covering a width of several inches and extending about ten feet to the southeast, were gradually deflected nine inches southerly from their direct course in the last four feet. All the other very abundant inter- crossed striae observed here are straight. or deviate only slightly from straight courses. The ontcrop containing pipestone in section 2, Amboy, furnished the only similar instance seen in these counties. Here several parallel glacial scratches bend twenty or thirty degrees in a length of about eight inches. The curvature of these ice-marks, where no obstacle existed to cause deflection, indicate that they were engraved during the final melting and recession of the ice-sheet, when it had become thin, and that its margin at the date of this curved striation was within a few rods. In such a situa- tion the unequal melting of the edge of the ice must produce changes, such as are thus recorded, in the direction of its motion. The prominence of the quartzyte ridge doubtless gave unusual irregularity to the outlines of the retreating ice-border in northern Cottonwood county, which, by the result- ing deflections of the glacial current, appears to have been the cause of the singularly varying and intercrossed striation of this region.
During the greater part of the last glacial epoch the ice-fields here appear to have flowed in a nearly south-southeast course; but when they were being melted away, the direction of movement close to the ice-border would be often deflected because it must flow toward the nearest part of this irregular and changing boundary, which here and there became indented by bays of small or large extent. The intercoursing striae on the ledge in section 9, Delton, record very changeable glacial currents, now deflected to a due south course, twenty degrees to the right from the direction which they had previously held through this glacial epoch. but presently diverging as much or twice or three times to the left, attaining a southeast or even a nearly cast course. The medial moraine directly south of this locality, in Carson and Lakeside, suggests that, when the ice retreated. probably two glacial currents converged here, pushing against each other, and that the striae bearing south were made by the current on the east, and those bear-
73
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAY COUNTIES, MINN.
ing south sixty degrees to eighty degrees east by the current on the west. Divergences to the east from the prevailing direction of glaciation were noted also four miles farther northwest, in Amboy and Germantown, upon the northern slope and at the north base of this massive ridge. In German- town a surface about a yard square was observed, on half of which the striae bear uniformly south thirty degrees east. and on the other half seventy degrees east, these portions meeting at a slightly beveled angle from which each side slopes down two or three degrees. The former of these courses of striation is probably that which prevailed till the departure of the ice- sheet, when the great quartzyte ridge and the irregularity of the glacial melt- ing caused a deflection of forty degrees toward the east. The later ice- current was steadily maintained during a considerable time, sufficient for planing off a part of this surface of very hard quartzyte, but not touching the adjoining part, which could only escape by having a thin covering of drift.
DRIFT.
The drift spread over Cottonwood county is principally till, in part morainic, being accumulated in knolls and hills, or with a prominently roll- ing surface in massive, smoothly sloping swells, but for the greater part it is only gently undulating in contour. Its thickness on the quartzyte ridge varies from one inch to probably fifty feet or more, and in other portions of this county it probably varies from one hundred to two hundred feet in depth. The moraines to be described were formed at the west border of the ice- sheet of the last glacial epoch, the first when this ice covered its maximum area, and the second after it liad receded considerably from its farthest lim- its, when its retreat was interrupted by a halt and perhaps even by some readvance.
In the southwest part of Cottonwood county, this belt of notably roll- ing and hilly drift occupies the west half of Great Bend, the north part of Springfield, northeastern South Brook, southwestern Amo, and nearly all of Rose Hill. Its width in these townships varies from two to five miles. To the northeast, from the offset of the Des Moines river which crosses this formation in Springfield, it lies a few miles northeast of this river and parallel with it, having within its limits of this county, and especially in Rose Hill township, a prominently rolling contour in smooth swells, twenty to forty feet above the intervening hollows and frequent lakes. To the south from this offset and the great bend of the Des Moines, the second terminal moraine lies west of this river and approximately parallel with it, their distance
74
COTTONWOOD AND WATONWAN COUNTIES, MINN.
apart being from one to ten or twelve miles, along an extent of a hundred and forty miles, through Jackson county and onward in a nearly south- southeast course to Pilot mound and Mineral ridge in northern Boone county, near the center of Iowa.
The most conspicuous portion and most roughly broken contour of this morainic belt in Cottonwood county are in the west part of Grant bend, where a group or range of hills, known as the Blue mounds, begins three miles west of Windom and thence extends three or four miles in a north- west course, with a width varying from a half mile to one and a half miles, lying between the Des Moines river on the northeast and Spring lakes on the southwest. These hills are composed of till with frequent boulders, and rise in very irregular slopes to heights of one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five feet above the river and twenty-five to seventy-five feet above the general level at their west side. The most elevated of these mounds, in sections 17 and 20, are visible from the southeast part of Murray county. fifteen miles to the west; but from the east they can only be seen within a distance of six or eight miles.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.