USA > Minnesota > Wright County > History of Wright County, Minnesota > Part 3
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 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61
At least nineteen-twentieths of this county was once wooded. The greater part of this area was thick and heavy timber. The two species of trees which were usually most plentiful and largest were the white or American elm and the bass. Next in the esti- mated order of abundance are bur oak, ironwood, red or slippery elm, white and black ash, box-elder, black oak, the American aspen or poplar, and the large-toothed aspen, generally common ; sugar maple and red or soft maple, mostly occurring in groups ; wild plum, black cherry, June berry, balsam, poplar, and willows, plentiful in many places; tamarack, common in swamps; hack- berry, white oak, butternut, and canoe or paper birch, less fre- quent ; bitteruut, cottonwood, and red cedar, rare.
Among shrubs the most common species are hazel-nut, prickly ash, Virginia creeper, climbing bitter-sweet, frost grape, sumachs, meadow-sweet, choke cherry, thorn, wild roses, bush cranberry, black currant, priekly and smooth gooseberries, high blackberry, and black and red raspberries.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE.
The only formation found in this county which can be referred to a date older than the glacial period consists of beds of sand and gravel, some layers of which have been cemented, apparently by the deposition of carbonate of lime from percolating water. so that they have become sandstone and conglomerate, nearly as
11
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
compaet and hard as the most indurated roeks. These were at first thought to be portions of the drift, cemented since their accumulation, but it seems possible that they may instead be Cretaceous, being perhaps of the same age with the Cretaceous sandstone that outerops in the Minnesota valley, in Courtland, Nicollet county, eight and eleven miles southeast of New Uhm.
Two localities of this rock are exposed in Wright county, one being on the Crow river, and the other on its North branch. From the bridge east of St. Michael's, crossing the Crow river between Frankfort and llassan, a conspienous outerop of it is seen in the left or northwest bank of the river, about twenty-five rods of this bridge. The bank here is some twenty-five feet high, and the cemented layer is in place near its top, from which position pieces five to ten feet in extent have fallen down and lie at or below the river-shore. This stratum of sandrock is three to five feet thiek, nearly horizontal, of gray color, and was seen well exposed at two points some twenty-five feet apart. It is made up mainly of sand, with abundant fine gravel-stone, seldom so large as a half inch in diameter, but sometimes one and a quarter inches in diam- eter. Its lower portion ineloses a layer of dark, irony sand, one foot thick. The bank fifty feet farther west is thirty feet high, and appears to be composed wholly of stratified sand and gravel, having pebbles up to two or three inches in diameter. Three hun- dred feet east from the exposure of the sandrock or conglomerate, the bank or bluff of the river is fifty feet high, but exhibits no clear section. A well at the top of this bluff went twenty feet through "quicksand," then a foot or two through "an irony hard- pan," then through "elay," to a total of forty-four feet, where water was struck and rose immediately eight feet. This irony layer, which is partly black, is seen also in the adjoining bluff, and probably corresponds to the layer of dark, ferruginous sand in the conglomerate. The cemented stratum is more or less ex- posed along an extent of thirty or forty rods, having a slight dip eastward which carries it in this distance from the height of twenty feet down to the river's edge. It has been somewhat quarried for use in underpinning. Numerous specimens collected near this place by C. L. Ilerriek, from other low outerops of the same formation, in the southeast bank of the river south of the bridge, are rather fine, gray, quartzose sandstone, containing no intermixture of gravel.
Mr. Herrick reports the discovery of a second locality of this roek in section 8, Middleville, where its outerop rises only two feet above the north branch of the Crow river. This is a gray sandroek, mostly made up of fine quartzose particles, the greater part of which are white or gray, while some appear to be dull red jasper. It contains also a small proportion of granite and other pebbles, up to three-quarters of an inch, but mostly less
12
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
than one-quarter of an inch, in diameter. This locality is about twenty-five miles west of that before described at the east side of Frankfort. No other exposures of this rock, or of any forma- tion, excepting the ordinary deposits of the drift, were observed by Mr. Herrick in a boat journey along the North branch and the Crow river, from Forest City in Meeker county to the month of this stream at Dayton.
Glacial and Modified Drift. Wright is covered to an unde- termined depth, probably averaging more than a hundred feet, by drift. The sections exhibited by streams and wells prove this mantle of drift to be so deep that the scientist may safely attribute the generally hilly surface to movements of the ice-sheet which spread its deposits in unequal thickness. It has been shown that this area was at the east border of a great segment of the ice- sheet ; and these masses of drift pushed up into hills, inclosing frequent lakelets, are found to be part of a very extended series of similar or yet more irregularly hilly deposits, which were ac- cumulated by the slow current of the ice along its fluctuating margin. By numerous short retreats and readvances, these ter- minal deposits were spread over an area from twelve to twenty miles wide ; but only very rarely in this county was the ice-front so long in one place or so loaded with drift as to heap np very abrupt and high, roughly-outlined hills, like those which make the most conspicuous parts of this formation.
The Moraine. The moraine occupies all this county except the nearly level area of till southeast from Smith Lake and Waverly and the areas of valley drift along Clearwater river and the Mis- sissippi. Its topographie features have already been sufficiently deseribed. The material of which it is composed is mainly till, or a mixture of boulders, gravel, sand and elay, confusedly blended in one unstratified mass. The principal ingredient is always clay, or very finely pulverized roek, unetnous and tena- cious, giving this deposit sufficient cohesion to remain as a vertical wall with little danger of falling during the process of excava- tion, as for a cellar or well. The proportion of rock-fragments is small, as compared with their usual abundance in the eastern states. Generally the till in New England contains twenty times as many rock-fragments as in Minnesota. Other names for this deposit are unmodified drift, boulder-clay, and hardpan.
In respect to color and hardness, considerable difference is perceptible between the upper and lower parts of the till. To a depth that varies from ten to twenty-five or thirty feet, it has a yellowish color, because its iron has been changed from the pro- toxide to hydrous sesquioxide or limonite, by weathering, that is, by exposure to the air and percolating water. Its iron is mainly in protoxide combinations as silicate or carbonate, or it is in the form of pyrites. At greater depths the till of central and western
13
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
Minnesota is dark and usually bluish. Further oxidation and hydration of this iron in the upper part of the till changes it to limonite, with a yellowish brown color that is very effective to impart its hue to the whole deposit, of which, however, it consti- tutes only a small percentage. When this disseminated ore of iron is deprived of the eombined water, changing it from limonite to hematite, as oceurs frequently in briek-burning, it imparts a deep red hue. In the more common cream-colored brieks of this region, the iron is usually present in as great amount, but, through the influence of earbonate of lime in the elay, is ehem- ieally combined as a silicate and has no important coloring effect. The difference in hue of the till appears thus to be brought about by eanses operating since its aeenmulation, which are still sending this zone of chemical change farther below the surface.
The distinction in hardness between the upper and lower till seems, on the other hand, to be due to unlike conditions in its formation. Usually at the same depth with the change of color, a similarly sudden and equally definite ehange is noted in the hardness of the till, which below is much more compaet and hard than above. Often the difference is such that the cost of excava- tion in the lower till is twiee as great as in the upper till. This change is frequently found very well-marked at an exaet and definite line, which is believed to mark the top of the till which lay beneath the ice-sheet and was subjected to its immense pres- sure, while the upper till was contained in the iee-sheet and dropped loosely when this was melted away. Because of the greater eompaetness and very impervious character of the lower till, the discoloration of weathering has been quite commonly limited to the upper till.
Fossiliferous Beds. Fossiliferous beds inelosed in till have been observed at numerous places in Minnesota ; but no examples of this are known in Wright eounty. The beds of stratified drift which occur beneath or inclosed between sheets of till, may have been deposited like the valley drift along the Mississippi, that is by the waters discharged from the melting of an iee-sheet, after which they have been covered by the till of a later glacial ad- vanee ; or they may be the deposits of subglacial streams, during a period when this region was deeply buried by ice. The former explanation seems to be demanded by the thicker of these strati- fied beds under till, while the latter was probably true of many thin water-bearing veins of gravel and sand, which may be the traeks of sub-glacial torrents.
The Boulders of the Drift. The boulders of the drift in Wright county are principally granite, syenite, and gneiss. Fragments of quartzyte, similar to that near New Ulm and referable to the Potsdam age, oeeur rarely. Boulders of magnesian limestone are so eommon that they are collected for lime-burning, perhaps
14
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
making up a twentieth part of the rock-fragments that exeeed one foot in diameter. This rock is a much more abundant in- gredient of the gravel in the till and modified drift, and of the recent beach-formations of the lakes. The proportion of lime- stone pebbles at the northwest side of Howard lake and at the south side of French lake, is about one-third of all. The largest boulder of this stone noted in an examination of Wright county was beside the road in or near the northwest quarter of section 17, French Lake. The amount exposed measured seven by four by one and a half feet in dimensions, perhaps an equal amount being buried. The surface of this block showed a section of large gasteropod shell, probably a Maclurea, seven and a half inches in diameter. The source of this limestone, forming a part of the glacial drift which here has been transported from the north- west, is believed to be the formations that outerop near Winnipeg in Manitoba and along the west side of Lake Winnipeg.
Lignite Deposits. Fragments of lignite, an imperfectly formed eoal, have been often encountered in digging wells in this eounty, and in some places have been found in such abundance in the beds of streams as to excite the hope that workable beds of eoal might be discovered by proper search. These pieces are from thin layers of lignite in beds of Cretaceous age, such as have been found at several points near Richmond in Stearns county, which borders this on the northwest, as also near Redwood Falls and Fort Ridgely, and on the Cottonwood river. Some of these lig- nite-bearing deposits have been plowed up by the ice-sheets, and now form part of the glaeial drift, in which through all south- western Minnesota, fragments of this eoal oceur sparingly, being usually only from one to three inches in diameter. A well or eellar sometimes yields a half dozen or more of such lumps, but oftener contains none or only one or two. None of the pieces found are of such dimension as to show that they were part of any thiek coal-seam; and it appears very improbable, judging from the small quantity of coal thus oeeurring in the drift, and from the character of the Cretaceous beds which have been ex- plored in the localities before mentioned, that any valuable de- posits of this lignite exist in Minnesota. Respecting this and other Cretaceous contributions to the drift, Prof. Winehell writes, on page 43 of his Sixth annual report, as follows :
"Information having been received from Hon. William Pfaen- der of the existence of some evidenees of eoal in Wright eounty, an examination was made of the designated localities. On see- tion 33, township 119, range 25, land of John Marth and Fred Wanderzee, along the north branch of Crow river, pieces of Cre- taeeous lignite have been found in considerable quantities ; also, along a ereek, seetion 25, township 119, range 26, on land of Joseph Plant. These are all flat pieces, exactly similar to what
15
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
have been found in numerous other places, though perhaps more abundant. An examination was made in company with John Marth, of Delano. The banks of the streams are composed en- tirely of drift, and largely of blue hardpan. The lignite was seen in the bed of the creek, having been most observed at or near fording places, where it was most likely to be brought to the surface and seen by passing travelers. At no point eould any ('retaceous beds be seen 'in situ.' Along the stream are miner- ous pieces of slate, or fissile shale, likewise derived from the Cretaceous, though here immediately from the hardpan drift. It is possible that Cretaceous beds would be struck below the drift, in sinking a shaft."
Explorations for Coal. Professor Winchell, in his fifth annual report for the year 1876. describes a former project for coal- mining, as follows: "Seventeen years ago there was some ex- citement in the vicinity of Dayton over a reported discovery of coal, about two miles west of the village, in Wright county, by a man named Charles Williams. Upon visiting the place. the excavation was found to consist of two shafts sunk in the drift, now nearly filled. About the place the drift thrown out shows nothing but drift elay with pebbles of all kinds and colors. One shaft is said to have been about eighty feet deep. The general belief now is that all the coal that was 'found' was brought for the purpose from St. Paul, as the owner, after vainly attempting to sell his land, placed a heavy mortgage on it and abandoned the country, allowing the sale of the land for the mortgage. There is certainly now no evidence of the existence of coal, or lignite, in the vicinity, though there are traces of the Cretaceous in the drift which point to the near proximity of its layers. There is also a reported exposure of 'slate' in a ravine a mile or so beyond, but it could not be found." The occasional oceurrenee of fragments of lignite in the drift has been noticed on a preceding page.
Typical Till Exposures. A very instructive seetion in the till is exposed in the right or east bank of the Crow river at Dayton, between the dam and the upper bridge. This section is about 500 feet long and from thirty-five to fifty feet high. On the left the till reaches to the surface and its upper one to two feet form the black soil, below which it has a yellowish color to a depth of fifteen feet, and is then directly underlain by reddish gray till, except that a layer of coarse ferruginous gravel, one foot thiek, intervenes at their junction. The same yellowish upper till is cut fifteen feet deep for the road at the north end of the upper bridge, about three hundred feet west from the northwest end of this section. There it shows in some portions an indistinet lamination, which was doubtless produced in its deposition from the ice-sheet, probably through the influence of the water set free
16
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
by its melting. Southeastward in the seetion here shown, the yellow upper till thins out to nothing in a distance of 300 feet. A little farther on, it is seen again and attains a thickness of ten feet near the southeast end of this section. For the hundred feet at the northwest this till is covered only by the soil. Through the remainder of the section a layer of yellow sand, mostly from five to ten feet in thickness, overlies the yellow till. Next below this yellow upper till, throughout most of the seetion, is a deposit of dark bluish till, from thirty to thirty-five feet thick, like that which occurs generally throughout all southwestern Minnesota. Next below the last is the reddish gray till, which was noted at the northwest end of the seetion. There the thickness exposed of this lowest till is about seventeen feet; elsewhere it is partly covered by the talus which has erumbled from the bank above; but at one place it was very plainly seen rising in a broadly rounded mass ten feet above the river-level. Professor Winchell has noticed this section on page 165 of his fifth annual report, and mentions that the blue till contains "many fragments of Cre- taceous slate, siderite, iron coneretions (covered with gravel and cemented by iron-rust), granitie pebbles, and (Devonian ?) limestone masses which have supplied a great deal of quieklime, and an occasional large granite boulder." The underlying red till has "a great many small greenstone and quartzyte stones, and but few that are large, also many granitie stones."
On the north side of the Mississippi river, one and a half miles west of Otsego village, and about seven miles northwest from Dayton, the river-bank newly undermined along a distance of an eighth of a mile, having a height of fifty or sixty feet, con- sists of red till for all its lower half, while its upper half is yellow drift. A few miles farther west, David Bagley's well, in section 16, in the east edge of Monticello township, found the following deposits of drift in deseending order: soil and yellow till, seven feet ; sand, twelve feet; very hard, red till, thirty-one feet; and quicksand, four feet, in which the well stopped, at a total depth of fifty-four feet. Water is found in this quicksand, but does not rise above it.
Eastward from Monticello and Dayton, to the Saint Croix river, and to Minneapolis and St. Paul, the blue (or superficially yellow) till and the red till continued together, the latter under- lying the former, which gradually thins out; and farther east, and northeast to Lake Superior, only the red till is found. These deposits were quite fully deseribed in the Fifth annual report of this survey, pages 156 to 174, and in the Sixth report, pages 84 to 87. The conclusion there annonneed is that the red till is the deposite of an earlier glacial epoch than the blue till which overlaps it. Another explanation is admissible and seems to be required by the distribution of these tills: for, while the red till
17
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
covers the northeast part of this state and the most of Wisconsin, the blue till is found everywhere upon the western two-thirds of Minnesota and in Dakota to the limit of the drift.
Climatic conditions ean hardly be supposed to have existed which should be capable of first producing an ice-sheet over the northeast part of the state only, and afterward in another glacial epoch forming a similar iee-mantle spread only upon the west half of the state. Professor Chamberlin, in his reports as state geologist of Wisconsin, demonstrated that the ice-sheet was partially divided at its front into vast tongues or lobes, each of which had its center current in the course of its longer axis, while the marginal ice-flow was everywhere perpendienlar toward its terminal edge. The presence of two such lobes of the jee-sheet upon Minnesota is indicated by the course of our terminal moraines, and affords an adequate explanation of the occurrence of these diverse kinds of till in the northeast and the west parts of the state, as also of the portion of one of them overlying the other. The ice-lobe that moved outward from the region of lake Superior toward the southwest spread a till derived in large part from red shales, sandstones and quartzyte, colored by the anhy- drous peroxide of iron, or hematite. The coloring power of this ore of iron, though it is only a proportionately small ingredient of these beds and of the drift, is sufficient to give a red or reddish gray hue to the drift wherever a considerable part of it has been obtained from this source, even when, being pulverized by the glacial grinding, it has become mingled with mueh material from other formations.
Western Minnesota was overspread by another ice-lobe whose eurrent moved from the region of Lake Winnipeg to the south and southeast. Its drift was gathered from granitic and sedi- mentary roeks which have their iron mostly in protoxide combi- nations; and hence its color, below the weathered upper portion, is dark bluish.
During the last glacial epoch, and perhaps in those preceding, it appears that these two lobes and opposing currents of the ice- sheet met upon the area lying between Dayton and St. Paul. The current from the northeast reached to the farthest limit at which the red till occurs, which is in northeastern Wright county, if we except the few localities described in the report of Big Stone and Lae qui Parle counties, in the west part of this state and the east edge of Dakota. Afterward, a change of climatic conditions, probably by bringing an inereased snow-fall at the northwest, caused the outflow of ice from that quarter to drive back the eurrent opposed to it, until its blue till, derived from the north- west, had been spread over the edge of the red till. This over- lapping of the drift deposits of the last glacial epoch, measured from west to east, that is, perpendicularly to the line of meeting
18
HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY
of these currents, varies from twenty to seventy-five miles. The red and blue tills are regarded, in this view, as mainly eontempo- raneous and similar in their formation, the northeast and the west parts of the state being covered by lobes of the iee-sheet which moved independently of each other. When the iee of the last glacial epoeh had its greatest extent, or nearly so, these ice- currents were confluent upon this area, the outflow from the northwest finally pushing back that from the northeast.
The erosion affected by the Mississippi river along the north- east side of Wright county has been mostly in the stratified gravel, sand and elay of the valley drift, which at the close of the glacial period was swept into this depression by the floods discharged from the melting iee-sheet. A flood-plain was then aeeumulated which covered a width of five to ten miles or more, with an average slope southeastward of about three feet per mile. It was depos- ited in the same manner that additions are now being made to the bottomlands by the floods of spring, save that during the melt- ing away of the iee-sheet similar high water existed through the whole summer. The flood-plain therefore rapidly inereased in depth and extent, the material of which it was formed as well as the waters by which it was brought being both supplied from the departing ice. Remnants of this plain, high above the present bottomland, attest the great supply of sediment during the preva. lenee and withdrawal of the last iee-sheet, and the large amount of erosion that has been accomplished since then by the river aeting under its present conditions. At Clearwater and Monti- cello the prairies ealled by these names are remains of this flood- plain, which extended with nearly equal height aeross the area now oeenpied by the river and its bottomland, to the similar high plains of modified drift on the northeast side of the Mississippi. The areas of the ancient valley drift that oeeur in Wright county are situated like bays on the side of the main valley, and have thus eseaped excavation. The height of Clearwater and Monti- cello prairies is about seventy-five or eighty feet above the river. Sanborn's prairie, lying between these, is regarded as a part of the same descending plain of valley drift, though it is not bor- dered by equally distinct bluffs and terraces upon the side next to the river. This prairie and its ad joining wooded areas of modi- fied drift are underlain at a small depth by till, the eoarsely roeky boulder-clay or hardpan, which appears at the bridge aeross Silver ereek on the river-road. The till rises so high along the river here that all of the overlying gravel and sand have been eroded. Where the modified drift extends deeper, it has been sculptured by the river in terraces and bluffs. Monticello village is situated on such a terraee, thirty-five to forty feet above the Mississippi, intermediate between the bottomland and the Monticello prairie.
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.