USA > Minnesota > Renville County > The history of Renville County, Minnesota, Volume I > Part 2
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A fertile country of rich, black soil, its surface divided into rolling land and prairie, beautified by meandering streams, inter- spersed with stately groves, the county has advantages of loea- tion and surface which have made it one of the best agricultural and stock raising counties in the state.
The elevation of this stretch of land above the sea, its fine drainage and the dryness of the atmosphere give it a climate of unusual salubrity and pleasantness. Its latitude gives it corre- spondingly longer days in summer and during the growing sea- sons about one and a half hours more of sunshine than in the latitude of St. Louis. The refreshing breezes and cool nights in summer prevent the debilitating effeet of the heat so often felt in lower latitudes. The winter climate is also one of the attractive features. Its uniformity and its dryness, together with the bright sunshine and the electrical condition of the air, all tend to enhance the personal comfort of the resident, and to make out- door life and labor a pleasure.
Embracing, as the county does, so pleasing a prospeet to the eye, and so fruitful a field for successful endeavor, it is natural that the people who from the earliest days have been attracted here should be the possessors of steady virtues, ready to toil and to sacrifice, that their labors might be crowned with the fruits of prosperity and happiness.
While there are no large cities, there are many thriving busi- ness centers along the two lines of railroad. These places have had their share in the general commercial upbuilding of the com- munity. furnishing excellent trading and shipping facilities for the rural districts as well as for their own people.
The agricultural neighborhoods are the scenes of peace, pros- perity and contentment. The homes are substantially built, and 1
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
furnished with the comforts and conveniences of modern life : stock is hnmanely housed and well pastured; the farm land is extensively tilled and productive : and the churches and schools which are seen on every side testify to an interest in the higher things of life by a law-abiding, progressive and prosperous people.
It is indeed in its men and women, rather than in its stores and commerce, its grains and vegetables, its live stock and fruits. that Renville county takes her greatest pride. From her hamlets. from her business centers and from her farms have gone forth those who have taken an important part in the activities of the world, and who, whether in commerce or statesmanship. in the professions or in the trades, have maintained that steadfastness of purpose, and staunchness of character, that mark true Renville county men and women wherever they may be found.
Unusually blessed by nature with deep soil and abundant natural resources, and endowed with a wealth of historie and prehistorie lore, the county is indeed a fitting home for the sturdy people who have here made their dwelling place. Hard-working. progressive, educated and prosperous they have appreciated the gifts which nature has spread for them and have added their own toil, and the fruit of their intelleet, to the work of the elements. making the county one of the beautiful spots of the earth. On the slopes graze well-kept cattle, on the prairie droves of swine find sustenance, chickens and turkeys wander about the yards and fields, dueks and geese find food to their liking in the many shallow pools, horses and colts canter about the fields, and the tilled lands respond to the efforts of the spring time sower and planter with a wealth of harvest in the summer and autumm. On nearly every quarter section is reared a comfortable home and commodious barns, while from the erest of every swell of land are visible the churches and schools wherein the people worship the Giver of all Gifts and edneate their children. Thus blessed by God and beloved by man, the county today stands for all that is ideal in American life, and is forging ahead to wider infinence and more extended opportunity.
Renville county, surpassed by few lands in the state for the fertility of its soil : its bountiful supply of domestic timber and pure water: its surface of swelling lands and rolling prairies : and its adaptation to every variety of agricultural prodnet, has Inrnished to the citizens material wisely improved by them for substantial wealth, good homes and sound public institutions. economically and prudently administered : where law and good order, industry and sobriety have always been upheld and observed ; where the comforts and provisions for the enjoyment of life are evenly distributed, and where, in the future, as in the past, "peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, will be established throughout all generations."
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
Situation and Area. Renville county lies in the central part of the south half of Minnesota. Its southern boundary is the Minnesota river, this county being midway between Big Stone lake and Mankato, the limits of the portion of this river in which it flows southeast. The length of Renville county from east to west is forty-eight miles, and its greatest width is thirty miles. Its area is 981.31 square miles, or 628,036.58 acres, of which 6.385.69 acres are covered by water.
The full Congressional townships are: Wang, Ericson, Crooks, Winfield, Kingman, Osceola, Brookfield, Boon Lake, Preston Lake, Hector, Melville, Bird Island, Troy, Emmet, Henryville, Norfolk, Palmyra, Martinsburg, Wellington. Brandon and Cairo. The townships of Hawk Creek, Sacred Heart, Flora, Beaver Falls, Birch Cooley and Camp are made irregular by the course of the Minnesota river.
On the west and north lies Chippewa county, on the north lie Kandiyohi and Meeker counties, on the east is MeLeod county, on the cast and south is Sibley county, on the south is Nicollet county, and on the southeast separated from this eounty by the Minnesota river are Yellow Medicine, Redwood and Brown counties.
Natural Drainage. About three-fourths of this county are drained to the Minnesota river. Beaver creek, some twenty miles long, lying wholly within this county, and Hawk ereek, about thirty miles long, rising in Kandiyohi and Chippewa counties, and flowing through the west end of Renville county, are its largest streams tributary to the Minnesota river. Several smaller creeks also join the Minnesota river in this county, including Middle creek in Flora, about three miles long: Birch cooley (the term conlee, also spelled coulie and anglicized to eooley, meaning a water-course, especially when in a deep ravine, was applied by the French voyageurs to this and many other streams, mostly in the country farther northwest), in the township to which it gives its name, about seven miles long, and Three Mile creek in Camp. about three miles long. From Cairo, the most southeastern town- ship of this county. Fort creek and Mud or Little Rock ereek flow southward into Ridgely in Nicollet county.
Nearly one-fourth of Renville county on the northeast is drained to the Mississippi by Buffalo creek and the South branch of the Crow river. The chief sources of Buffalo ercek are in the townships of Brookfield, Boon Lake and Preston Lake.
The last two named townships contain several lakes, the largest of which are Boon lake, three miles long from southwest to northeast, lying in the northwest quarter of the township to which it gives its name; Preston lake, one and a half miles long from north to south and nearly a mile wide. in the northeast quarter of Preston Lake township; and bake Alee, close north-
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
west of the last. about a mile long from north to south and three- fourths of a mile wide. Fox lake, four miles long from east to west, lying about half in this county and half in Kandiyohi county, is crossed by the north line of Kingman. Long or Lizard lake, extending three miles from east to west, but narrow. is situated about five miles farther southwest in Winfield. Frequent sloughs, from a few hundred feet to two or three miles long, and occasional small lakes were found originally throughout the cen- tral and western parts of the county, mostly trending from north- west to southeast, or approximately in this direction. Some have now been eliminated by ditching. On the southeast, a lake about a mile long lies at the center of Wellington, and Mud or Little Rock creek flows through another lake of about the same length in the southeast quarter of Cairo. Marshes are frequent through- out the county, nearly every farm having small "swales." which are as yet untillable, but which ditching and tiling will transform into valuable erop land.
Topography. Renville county is covered by the glacial drift so deeply that it has no outerops of the bed-rocks, except in the Minnesota valley, and in the valleys of Beaver creek. Birch Cooley and Fort creek, near their junction with the Minnesota. The minor topographie features of this county, excepting within the Minnesota valley, are therefore due to the form in which the surface of the drift-sheet was moulded at the time of its deposi- tion, here a gently undulating broad expanse of nearly miform average height. and to the eroding effects of rains, rills and streams since that time, principally exhibited in the excavation of water-courses, varying in size from tiny channels of rivulets to deeper gullies, ravines, and the valleys of rivers. The undula- tions of the surface rise with long slopes only five to ten or twenty feet above the depressions, and in an extended view these irregu- larities are merged in the ahnost level and apparently limitless prairie. The contonr of lector, Melville, Osceola, and the west part of Brookfield is more undulating or rolling than most other parts of this county. Kame-like hillocks, composed of sand and gravel, are seen near the north line of section 5. Hector, forty feet above the depression on their north side. East of this tract the contour as usual is nearly level, and Boon lake, Lake Alice and Preston lake lie only about fifteen feet below the general surl'ace.
The Minnesota valley cuts this monotonous expanse by bluffs which descend 175 or 200 feet. This valley here varies in width from one to two miles, or rarely three miles, as at the south side of Sacred lleart township. Its bottomland contains many out- crops of gneissie rocks, which rise fifty to one hundred feet or occasionally one hundred twenty-five feet above the river. The tributaries of this valley also flow in channels which they have
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
eroded to a slight depth along their upper portions, but which increase in depth to their junetion with the Minnesota valley, being in the lower part of their course one hundred to one hun- dred fifty or one hundred seventy-five feet deep, and an eighth to a quarter of a mile wide. The bluffs of the Minnesota valley are also indented by frequent short cooleys or ravines, eroded by the rivulets which flow in them, issuing from perennial springs, or in many instanees kept running only through the more wet portions of the year. Scarcely a half mile of the bluff can be found without such indentations. The length of these ravines is usually only a few hundred yards, but some are a half mile or a mile long, and then their supply of water, being from deep springs, is less affected by droughts than the larger streams.
Altitudes. The highest land of Renville county is in its north- ern part, from Hector and Brookfield westward to Lizard lake, the swells of the undulating prairie there being 1,100 to 1,125 feet above the sea, while the depressions containing sloughs or lakes are mostly below 1,100. The valley of the Minnesota river where it leaves the county is its lowest Jand, being 796 feet above the sea ; but its bluff's, rising 200 Feet, have their tops only about a hundred feet lower than the highest part of the county twenty- five to thirty miles farther north.
Estimates of the average height of the townships are as fol- lows: Boon Lake. 1,085 feet above the sea : Preston Lake, 1,075; Brookfield, 1.100; Hector, 1,090; Martinsburg, 1,065; Wellington, 1,040; Cairo, 1,015; Osceola, 1,110; Melville, 1,090; Palmyra, 1,160; Bandon, 1,135; Camp, 1,000; Kingman, 1,110; Bird Island, 1,080; Norfolk, 1,145: Birch Cooley, 1.000: Winfield, 1,090; Troy, 1.065: Henryville, 1,030; Beaver Falls. 990; Crooks, 1,075; Emmett, 1,060: Flora, 1,000; Eriekson, 1,060; Sacred Heart, 1,030; Wang, 1,040; and Hawk Creek, 1,010. The mean elevation of Renville county, derived from these figures is 1,055 feet.
Soil and Timber. The black soil is from one to one and a half feet deep, and gradually changes in the next foot to the yel- lowish color which characterizes the drift near the surface. In sloughs and on the bottomland of the Minnesota river, however, the thickness of the fertile black soil is often from two to four feet.
Nearly all of Renville county is prairie, or natural mowing- land and pasture. needing only plowing and seeding to prepare it for harvest. Timber oreurs along the bluff of the Minnesota river, and in a narrow belt along the river's course, but most of the bottomland is treeless. The valleys of Hawk and Beaver creeks, Birch cooley. and the small creeks in Camp and Cairo, are also wooded ; and groves are found on the borders of Boon lake, Lake Alice, and Preston lake.
All the groves now seen in the prairie parts of the county,
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
away from the watercourses and lakes, have been planted. Every honse has a stately grove as a windshield, and no farm is now without a plentiful supply of timber.
In the early days several acres in what is now Bird Island township was heavily wooded; slonghs and swales forming an island which was thus protected from the ravages of prairie fires.
Birch cooley takes its name from the paper or eanoe birch (Betula payrifera. Marshall), which occurs plentifully on this creek, some of its trees attaining a diameter of one foot, in sec- tions 28 and 33 of Birch Cooley township. It is also found, but only sparingly, on Beaver creek, and on Wabashaw creek in Red- wood county. while farther southwestward in the state it is absent. Other species of trees in this county include basswood, sugar maple and white or soft maple, box-elder, wild plum, white and green ash, white and red or slip-soft maple, box-elder, wild plum, white and green ash, white and red or slippery ehm. hack- berry, bur oak, ironwood, poplar, cottonwood and red cedar.
Archean Rocks. The Minnesota valley on the boundary of Renville county, excepting south of Hawk Creek township, con- tains frequent or in most portions abundant ledges of gneiss and granite, in some places inclosing masses of hornblende schist. For twelve miles above Beaver Falls, to the west line of Flora, these rock-outerops fill the whole valley. occurring on each side of the river, and rising filty to one hundred twenty-five feet above it. Between Beaver creek and Birch cooley the outerops are mainly on the north side of the Minnesota, rising in their highest portions one hundred feet above the river. Below the mouth of Birch cooley they are mostly on the south side, occurring in great abundance for two miles above and three miles below the month of Wabashaw creek.
Near the east line of section 20, Beaver Falls, a quarter of a mile north from the ford of the Minnesota river, the rock is gray gneiss, weathering to reddish gray, apparently almost vertical, with its strike east northeast. At the east side of the road this gneiss is crossed by a nearly vertical vein, one to three feet wide of coarsely crystalline feldspar and quartz, extending within sight fifty feet. These strata are also exposed in the valley of Beaver ereck one and two miles above its junction with the Minnesota valley. The mill-dam at the village of Beaver Falls is nearly within the line of strike of the gneiss described north of the ford, and a similar gneiss, with nearly the same strike, is found here. Its dip is fifteen degrees south southeast. At the dam, one mile northeast from the last, is an extensive exposure of gray gneiss, also with east northeast strike : it is nearly vertical or has a steep dip to the south southeast, and in some portions is much contorted. Veins, six to eighteen inches wide, of coarsely crystal-
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
line flesh-colored feldspar, eineiding with the strike. are common here.
In the valley of Birch Cooley, about one mile above its entrance into that of the Minnesota, are large exposures of granite, holding interesting veins, faulted and divided portions of which were figured and deseribed by Prof. Winchell in the Second Annual Report of the State Geological Survey. One of these veins, com- posed of granite and four inches wide, is traceable two hundred and fifty feet, running southwest. Other extensive outcrops of granite or gneiss, partly decomposed, apparently dipping south, southeast and southwest, form the sides of this valley or ravine below the mills.
Two miles southeast from the mouth of Birch Cooley, a low outerop examined on the north side of the river is granitoid gneiss, containing a large proportion of flesh-colored feldspar. This is in the northwest quarter of section 10, Birch Cooley. At an excavation for building a house near by, in the southwest quarter of section 3, a bed of decomposed gneiss was noted, show- ing a dip of twenty degrees to the west northwest. Ledges were next seen on the north side of the river three miles below the last, in the vicinity of the line between Birch Cooley and Camp, extending a half mile westward and rising ten to twenty-five feet above the bottomland. Another small outerop, the most south- eastern observed in this county, occurs about five miles farther southeast, being on the north side of a small round lakelet in the bottomland, probably in the east part of section 34, Camp.
The most northwestern exposure of rock noted in Renville county is in the northeast quarter of section 16, Sacred Heart, where a ledge of gneiss rises about fifty feet above the river. One to three miles farther west, but on the south side of the river, it has more prominent and extensive onterops. In the next six or seven miles northwestward to the west line of this county no roek-exposures were found.
Archean gneiss and related crystalline rocks doubtless also underlie the drift upon this entire county, being continous from the Minnesota river northeast to the syenite, granite and gneiss exposed in Stearns, Benton and Morrison counties and in the north part of the state.
Decomposed Gneiss and Granite. In the portion of the Minne- sota valley adjoining this county, the outerops of gneiss and granite are frequently found to be more or less decomposed. being changed in their upper part to a soft, earthy or elayey mass, resembling kaolin. This condition of the rock, as observed by Prof. Winchell in its exposure on Birch cooley, has been described by him as follows :
"A substance was met with here for the first time which was afterwards seen at a number of places. Its origin seems to be
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IHISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
dependent on the granite. Its association with the granite is so elose that it seems to be a result of a change in the granite itself. It lies first under the drift, or under the Cretaceous roeks, where they overlie the granite, and passes by slow changes into the granite. It has some of the characters of steatite, and some of those of kaolin. In some places it seems to be a true kaolin. It is known by the people as 'Castile soap." It cuts like soap, has a blue color when fresh, or kept wet. but a faded and yellowish ash color when weathered, and when long and perfectly weath- ered is white and glistening. The boys cut it into the shapes of pipes and various toys. It appears like the pipestone, though less heavy and less hard. and has a very different color. It is said to harden by heating. This substance, which may, at least provisionally, be denominated a kaolin, seems to be the result of the action of water in the underlying granite. Since it prevails in the Cretaceons areas, and is always present. so far as known, whenever the Cretaceous deposits have preserved it from disrup- tion by the glacier period, it may be attributed to the action of the Cretaceous ocean. In some places it is gritty. and in others it may be completely pulverized in the fingers. A great abund- ance of this material exists in the banks of the Birch Cooley within a short distance of its mouth."
Samples of this substance were analyzed by Prof. S. F. Peck- ham, who reported it as follows: "A dull-green, amorphous min- eral, unctuous and soapy to the touch. Fracture uneven, coarse- ly granular. Hardness, 1.5. Easily out with a knife, giving a smooth surface. Specific gravity. 2.562. Lustre dull, waxy, with very minute pearly seales. Color mottled, dull-green to grayish-green, apoque, scales translucent. When wetted it ab- sorbs water and softens, but does not become plastic. In elosed tube it gives water. B. B. infusible. Gives the color with co- balt, which is indistinct from excess of iron. Is decomposed by hydrochloric acid, leaving a white insoluble residue contain- ing only a trace of iron. The oxidation of the iron varies ac- eording to the extent of the exposure. The following are the mean results of three closely concordant analyses: silica, 37.8S per cent : ferrie oxide. 15.78: alumina. 26.96: magnesia, 1.74; potash and soda, 0.95: water, 15.88. A trace of lime was not de- termined. These results show the mineral to be allied to Fah- lunite, var. Iluronite of T. S. Hunt. See Dana's Mineralogy, ed. 1870, p. 485."'
Many exposures of this decayed gneiss and granite were ob- served in the ravines of creeks and in excavations for roads along the lower portion of the Minnesota valley bluffs through Camp, Birch Cooley. Beaver Falls and Flora. In the west part of section 21. Beaver Falls. near the foot of the descent to Red- wood Falls ferry, decomposed gueiss is seen in the gutter at
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
the east side of the road along a distance of about thirty rods, ' declining in height from sixty to thirty feet above the river. The depth to which the decomposition extends in this locality is at least ten feet. The deeayed roek here is eream-colored or nearly white. It is generally gritty with particles of quartz distributed through its mass, and also contains veins of quartz one to two inehes thiek, and of feldspar (Kaolinized) one foot thick.
Cretaceous Beds. Cretaceous beds are found in many places along the Minnesota valley, lying on the Archaean rocks and separating them from the glacial drift. Before the iee age Cretaceous deposits probably constituted the surface generally throughout western Minnesota, but they were in large part eroded by the ice, supplying much of its drift, beneath which their remnants are now concealed, excepting where they have become exposed to view in deeply excavated valleys.
On Fort creek in section 31, Cairo, and in the adjoining edge of Nicollet county, beds of Cretaecons clay or shale oeeur, eon- taining in one place a thin layer of limestone and at another point a seam of elayey lignite, or brown coal, about one and a half feet thick. Three miles west from Fort creek, a bed of grayish white Cretaceous elay, levelly stratified, was seen to a thickness of seven feet in an excavation on the upper side of the river road, near the foot of the bluff, in the north edge of the northeast quarter of section 34, Camp, at a height of about forty feet above the river. Close west from this point, another exea- vation beside the road was in decomposed gneiss or granite. At Redwood Falls and within a few miles to the southeast, near- ly opposite Beaver Falls, layers of Cretaceous lignite have been explored in the bluff's of the Redwood and Minnesota rivers without finding any deposit of lignite sufficiently thick to be profitably worked, and it seems very unlikely that such will be discovered in this state.
Most of the observations of Cretaceous strata along this portion of the Minnesota valley have been in its southwestern bluffs and on its sonthern tributaries. Besides the localities on Fort Creek and in Camp township, the only further notes of Cretaceous onterops in Renville county are the following, re- corded by Prof. Winchell in the second annual report.
"At a point two miles below the Lower Sioux Ageney, see- tion 10, township 112, range 34 (in Bireh Cooley), on the north side of the Minnesota, a small ereck joins the river. Up this creek, about three-quarters of a mile from the river bluff's, the Cretaceous appears in its banks. A eoneretionary marl, or apparently limy earth, of a white color, crumbles out under the projecting turf. It appears in fragments of an ineh or two, or sometimes larger, with angular outline. The surfaces of these pieees show a great number of round or oval spots, or rings,
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HISTORY OF RENVILLE COUNTY
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