USA > Mississippi > History of the upper Mississippi Valley, pt 2 > Part 64
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Nevertheless, although it is, more than the rest of Minnesota, a terra incognita of civilization, it is still the mysterious " Upper Nile" of sonthern Minnesota, and annually bears in its great arteries of flow and flood the treasures of its upper com- try to the plains below.
GENERAL TOPOGRAPHY.
That which shuts in the upper Mississippi region, and the upper St. Louis, with their thou- sands of lakes, like the rim of a basin, is a line
of glacial moraine which seems to run continu- ously in a grand sweep, eovering a belt from three to thirty miles in width, from the headwaters of the Crow river in Kandiyohi and Pope counties northward through Otter Tail and Becker eoun- ties, into the White Earth Indian Reservation, northenstward past Rice lake and Pemidji lake, including the "Julian Sources " of the Missisippi, discovered and described by Beltrami, and cast- ward to the southern sources of the Big Fork river; and finally, uniting with the Mesabi Heights ridge, passes out of Minnesota into Ontario, or sinks away near Gunflint Lake. The line of highi land, which at onee forms the divide and the source of numerous streams that flow from it, consists of coarse drift materials essentially, but more stony toward the north, and has been known and named in several places where it exhibts an unusual development. The Leaf Hills, the Mes- abi Heights, Dividing Ridge, Blue Hills, Langhei Hills, and Blue Mounds are some of the names by which it is known at different loealities. What- ever is south or east of this belt is strikingly dif- ferent from the country to the north and west of it. On the south and east of this belt of rolling and rough land is found the greatest effect of sur- face water. Here is modified drift. Here is sandy plain and gravelly terrace. Here are swamps and and ancient water levels, und multitudes of deep lakes of clear water. Here are eroded bluffs and roeky gorges. Here we find great diversity. On the other side is monotony -- a plain extends without interruption along the west side of Minne- sota, outside this hilly chain, from the Lake of the Woods to Spirit lake, on the Towa State line. It is timbered in the northeast; it is prairie in the
. 701
GEOLOGY.
south. Here are no lakes, orvery few, and they are shallow. Here we see no extensive sandy plains, no deep rocky gorges, no rock exposure .* One universal mantle of till covers it, and it is as level as the ocean.
We said that to the south and east of this hilly boundary is seen the greatest effeet of surface drain- age. It has been also the scene of moving and of contending glacier currents, but at an earlier date. Medial moraines, or eross-ridges, are seen inter- secting the country, showing where the line of battle was fiercest or longest maintained. One flow moved from the northwest, and one moved from the northeast. Where they met they left the traces of their eontliet in the form of boulders and heaped-up elay. Each contributed its peculiar produet to the mass. Limestone and blue elay came from the northwest. Green stones, sand- stone, and red chy from the northeast. Some- times the northwestern current loll first und was buried by the other, sometimes the northeast- ern, and sometimes the contest was evenly main- tained, as shown by the complete mingling of their remains in the same tomb. These medial moraines may be seen in Todd, Morrison, Crow Wing, and Cass counties, and probably at many points not yet aseertained. The whole country between Mille Laes and Leech Lake, and south and west from Leech lake is broken and even hilly, with drift ac- enmulations. South of the Mesabi Range, in Itasea and St. Louis counties, are other tracts of hilly land, characterized by frequent lakes, which probably were prodneed by the same eause.
Much of the area ineluded in this basin is flat. These that traets, while deeply underlain by till, at the surface may be either swampy, with growth of cedar or tamarue, or sundy and dry, with Bank's pine. Such swamps are found in Aitkin connty, northwest of Sandy lake, along both sides of the Willow and Little Willow rivers, where great num- bers of cedar telegraph poles have been cut, and in Carlton connty, between Sandy lake and Thom- son. Much of the country is swampy between Pokeguma Falls and Leech lake, as well as along much of the course of the St. Lonis and its tribu- taries. There are also extensive swamps in south- ern Carlton and in Pine counties. The sandy plains, in which the most abundant tree is Bank's pine, (often styled Juck pine) are found further south. North of the Leaf river, and of the Wing
river, after they unite, extending from Shell lake, in Becker county, to the Mississippi river, is an extensive traet of this kind. After erossing the Mississippi this becomes narrow, and is deflected southward along the east side of the river into Crow Wing and Morrison counties. It then turns east, widening, and finally uniting with a similar traet that comes from Wisconsin across the upper waters of the St. Croix river. On the west side of the Mississippi, in Beeker and Cass counties, this belt is from twenty-five to thirty miles wide; where it erosses the Mississippi it is about fifteen miles wide, and Brainerd is near the center. South of the Mesabi range, in St. Louis county, north of the Big White Face river, is another belt of similar flat and sandy country, on which the Bank's pine is the chief tree.
TIMBER.
This country is almost wholly covered with for- est. There is a little prairie included in it in Kan- diyohi, Stearns and Todd counties, and small patches elsewhere, but with these exceptions the Upper Mississipi valley inelnding the area drained by its tributaries, and the region drained by the St. Louis river, were covered, when first visited by the European, with a forest that stretched almost unbroken from the northern boundary nearly to the Towa line in the neighborhood of Winnebago City-tapering to a wedge-shaped extremity to- ward the south, in ascending the Blue Earth val- ley. This was a varied forest-coniferous largely in the north, and deciduous toward the south, and embraced a great variety of species. Among the conifers are three species of pine, though the lum- bermen speak also of distinetions by which they are led to believe that several other species are found. The only three pines are Pinnx strobus, P. resinosa, and P. Banksiuna. Other conifers are also abun- dant, such as White cedar, Thuja occidentalis, Bal- sam fir, Abies balsamca, White spruce, Abies alba, and Tamarac, Larix Americana. The hemlock has been reported, but does not exist in nature, in Min- nesota. Oak is represented by several species, which are distributed from north to south throughout nearly all this region. They occur in rank of abundanee about in the following order, though toward the north the red and the black oaks dis- appear before the bur oak does, and the white oak is found most frequent and largest along rich river bottoms, sometimes to the oxchision of other spe- cies. Black oak, Quercus tinctoria (of Bartram), Bur oak, Q. macrocarpa, White oak, Q. alba, and
*Except in the treasure valley of the Minnesota.
702
HISTORY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
Red oak, Q. rubra. The hickory is represented by one speeies, Carga amora, known as bitter-nut or swamp hickory. Of this, thousands of young sap- lings are ent anmially for hoops for Minnesota flour. The box-older, Negundo acervides, is dis- tribmited from Fond du Lac southward and west- ward. The sugar maple, Acer saccharinum, is found throughont, but fails in the extreme northeast at a few miles back from lake Superior-the most northern and eastern point known being in the Indian Reservation at Grand Portage. The Amer- iean Elm, Ulmus Americana, is found generally throughout the Mississippi valley, and in the St. Lonis valley, but fails in the extreme north. The Slippery Ehm, Ulmaus fulra, is about evextensive with the last, but is a much rarer tree. Bass, Tilin Americana, and soft maple, Acer dusycarpum, constitute in many places, a large proportion of the native forest. Along the valleys, particularly, these trees reach their stateliest dimensions, and overhang the streams so as to. interloek from side to side. Two kinds of Birel make large trees in the heavy timber, especially in the northern part of the region, viz., Betula papyracca and lutea. The former is the papn, or canoe bireh, and the latter is the yellow, or gray birch. The little white tree which grows common on sterile soils, mingling with the aspen in northern Minnesota, and extend- ing sonthward along the rocky bluff's of the Mis- wissippi, is probably another species, Betula albu, var. populifolia. Of the Poplars, three species are common, viz., Populus trenudoides, or Trembling Aspen, which ocenpies the pieket lines of the forest belt, exposed to the fires of the prairie, and the frosts and rocky soils of the north, the Cottonwood, P. monilifero, making a large tree along the rivers, und P. condicans, or Balm of Gilead, which is a northern species less hardy than the tremuloides. Another species of Poplar, which makes a large tree also ocenrs, but cannot be ranked as common. It is P. grandedentata. White and black ash, Fraxinus Americana, and sambucefolia, are also im- portant trees. The butterut Juglans cinerea, does not make a large tree, but is common. ·
There are a number of other smaller trees, sneh as Tronwood, Wator-beech, Thorn apple, Dogwood, Crab-apple, and an occasional tree of Haekberry, Cellis accidentalix, but the foregoing constitute the great bulk of the native forest. The following are conspienons by their absence :- Hemlock, Abies Canadenses, and Beech, Fagus ferruginea.
SOIL.
This large region of course presents a great di versity of soil and agrienltnral capability. If an; generalization at all were to be stated, it would b true to say that it has a class of soils strongly fer ruginous and arenaceous, and comparatively want ing in alkaline and ealeareous elements. The soil: are prodneed by loeal modifications of the sub) soils. In some places they are aluminous, as along the river valleys, and on the bottom lands, and along the western border of the region where the unmodified till is found at the surface. Where rank vegetation has grown and deeayed, or fires have consumed it, as on the prairies, for many sue- eessive years, the soil is blackened by earbon. Where surface drainage was gentle over large traets, earrying forward and distributing the sand of the washed till at the time of the glacial epoch, the surface soil is very light, and has been unable to eover the country with anything but the hard- iest species of trees. This is seen in the sandy plains characterized by the Bank's pine. Where the country is broken with morainie hills and val- leys, as in the hilly country about Itasea lake and sonth of Leech lake, or in the hills of the Mesabie range, or northeast of Pemidji lake, the soil is stony on the tops and sides of the hills, but deep, stoneless and rich in the basin-shaped depressions. Where standing water, since the drift period, or at its elose, has distributed a fine sediment over the surface, as in the tract between Pokegama Falls and Winnibigoshish and Leech lakes, the country has a tongli, elayey soil. Where the drainage is from the west, the surface soils, as well as the sub- soils, will partake of the more alkaline and ealca- reons nature of the drift that came from the north- west. In general, on the east of the Mississippi river, and throughout the valley of the St. Louis the soils and subsoils are red and more sandy than on the west.
HYDROLOGY.
The hydrology of the region is one of its elief natural features. It embraces the sources of the Mississippi, of the St. Lawrence and of the Nelson rivers, which find the ocean level by taking di- verse directions across the continent, sonth, east and north. Yet it is not in this region that oe- eurs the highest land of the continent, nor of the State. From north-central Minnesota the descent to Lake Superior or to Lake Pepin is gentle, and the streams that enter Lake Winnipeg are slng- gish so far as they are in Minnesota. The fall
703
from Lake Itasca to Lake Superior is 965.6 feet, and to Minneapolis is 745 feet. The descent of the St. Lonis river is generally gentle until it reaches the Dalles at Thomson, when it plunges rapidly down the rocky rim of Lake Superior, about six huidred feet in six or seven miles. The morainie character of the country generally is the cause of thousands of lakes. The sandy nature of the drift makes it like a sponge, to take up eagerly and give out slowly the waters that de- seend upon it. These circumstances unite with the generally level contour to retain the waters and to sustain the streams with full volume late into the summer season.
The following list of elevations above the ocean will convey a general idea of the evenness of the grand contour. There are no great and sudden elevations caused by rocky upheavals. Such are ' found further northeast, but beyond the limit of the St. Louis Valley. The great depression of the Lake Superior basin below the rock-vein that eneloses it is the only exception to this statement. This causes all the streams that enter it from the west to plunge down the declivity over the rocky strata; but before reaching the brink they are gentle and navigable.
Above the Ocean.
Lake Superior
609.4 feet
Minneapolis
830. 66
Brainerd.
1,214.
Mille Lacs
1,266.
Sandy Lake.
1,255.
Thomson .
1,036.
66
Northern Pacific Junetion.
1,090.
Fond du Lac.
614.
Wadena. .
1,358.
Pokeguma Falls ( head of falls ).
1,266.71
Knite Falls.
984.
Lake Pomidji
1,456.
Leoch Lake,
1,292.78 4
Cass Luko. 1,300.08 «
Itasca Lake. 1,575.
Leaf Hills (in Otter Tail county ) .. . .
1,750.
66
Winnibigoshish Lake. .
1,290.04 4
Mouth of Leech Lake river 1,279.23 *
Saganaga Lake,
1,525.4
Gunflint Lake
1,661.
66
North Lake.
1,666.
Vermillion Lake.
1,518.
Squagemaw Lake (about ) ..
1,400.
Divide between East and West Sa- vauna rivers.
1,334.
Divide between Itasca Lake and Red
River of the North.
1,680. 66
WATER-POWERS.
The descent of the streams being so gradual, and the rocky floor being so rarely encountered
by them, the natural water-powers for running machinery are not abundant in the interior of this tract. But the water-power that is afforded by the descent of the St. Louis, and by all the other streams that enter Lake Superior, over the rock border of that lake, is very great. The water in all cases can be used several times over before the lower land is reached. The Mississippi is occasionally rapid, with the production of water-power between Lake Itasea and Lake Pam- erjigermug. The first occurs about seven miles below Lake Itasca, where a fall of twelve feet is found in as many rods, the water passing over boulders. Below' this is a series of rapids, ex- tending nearly half a mile, the obstruction being large boulders of granite. Below Lake Pamer- jigermug (or Pemidji) are the Metoswa Rapids, so named by Schoolcraft, where a number of fine water privileges are available for lumbering or flouring.
There is no further break in the gradnal deseent of the river till reaching Pokegama Falls, where, with rocky walls and floor, the river descends about fourteen feet in a few yards, though from the np- per to the lower landing of the portage, inelnding the rapids above and below the fall, the descent is about thirty feet. The fourteen feet fall furnishes 3,936 horse-power at high water stage. Below Pokeguma Falls, three or four miles, are the Grand Rapids, the head of steamboat navigation above Aitkin. Boats can readily run above Poke- gama Falls, to several miles above Lake Winni- begoshish, and to Leech lake. At the Grand Rap- ids the channel is obstrueted by boulders, falling five feet in the distance of 1,750 feet. In time of mean high water the volume of the Mississippi at the Grand Rapids is 2,525 Feet per second, giv- ing 1,253 horse-power. About two miles below the Sandy Lake river the Mississippi shows a slight rapid, where it breaks over large boulders, but it is hardly worthy of being enumerated as an available water-power. At two miles below the mouth of the Willow river, in a right line, are the rapids known as the Big Eddy. Here, with a fall of 2.67 feet, the power available by dam is 1,148 horse-power, at mean high water. At the Island Rapids the slope is 3,000 feet long, and at the rate of 4.62 feet per mile for the first 800 feet, in which are 301 horse-power. At the French Rap- ids, a few miles above Brainerd, are 670 horse- power in high water stage. At Olmstead's Bar the horse-power is about 9,000, at high water
GEOLOGY.
704
HISTORY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
stage; at Prairie Rapids about 6,000; at Lit- tle Falls, 18,371;at Pike Rapids about 12,000; at Sank Rapids, 31,966, at mean high water. Between the St. Cloud and Augusta Mills, ut menn high water, it is 19,627; at St. Anthony F'alls, ( perpendicular fall of sixteen feet, before improve- ments ) 22,181 average for the year round; at St. Anthony Falls-whole available power from Nie- ollet island to one-half mile below the falls, (fall of 793 feet ) 110,905, average for the year round.
Of course there are avilable water-powers on all the tributaries of the upper Mississippi, some of which have been improved.
It is impossible to state the water-power about Lake Superior, but it is immense, and probably will never be wholly utilized. Between Knite Falls on the St. Louis river, and Fond du Lae, the waters of the St. Louis deseend in rapids, easeades and falls, a distance of over five hundred feet, plung- ing from rock to rock, the interval over which this fall is distributed being about fifteen miles.
This is found somewhat eoneentrated at con- venient points with intervals of a mile or two be- tween them. At Knife Falls the stream is divided by islands, both at the falls and above, and the perpendicular descent of the water is about nine feet. A rapid extends for one-quarter mile further, having a descent of about twenty feet more. Be- low this also one-half mile the water is rapid, with a broken caseade over boulders, the descent being about three fect. A quarter of a mile further down is a fall of seventeen feet in three hundred feet. There is a division of the river here of four channels by the strike of five different per- sistent beds of the formation, the water running in the strike of the intervening beds, the hard beds forming islands in the fall. The width of the river at the brink is about 230 feet. A mile below this is another important water-power, situated at Fortress Island, which rises fifty-five feet above the water, the fall being about eight feet, over large boulders, principally on the left of the island. Another small rapid is near the center of scetion 19, town 49, range 16. Below the Floodwood Islands are small rapid places, one descent of two feet, and another of three feet on south-west quarter section 30, over boulders lying on outerop- ping slate. Near the middle of section 31 the river deseends in a rapid six or eight feet. No other noteworthy rapids oeeur till at the north-east cor- ner of the large island which is abont one-half mile above the railroad bridge. Here the water
passes over the roek ranges diagonally, produc- ing a fall of about ten feet in twenty rods, the most of it being on the lower ten rods. As the river crosses the strike it is narrowed suddenly to about thirty foot in low water. Below this large island is n fall of ten feet, just above the railrond; then continuous rapids and caseades to the month of Otter ereek, the further deseent being twenty- five feet. Here the river is a rushing torrent, in a rough, narrow gorge, sometimes split by islands, und offers a very attraeting view to all who eross it on the ears from Northern Paeifie Junetion to Thomson. Below Otter ereek, within the first mile, is a deseent of thirty feet. The strike of the rock goes directly across the river, eausing it in several places to be contraeted suddenly to twenty or twenty-five feet in width. Through these narrow passages the river rushes with some fall and a swift eurrent. There is then a unifor- mity in the stream for a distance of nearly a mile, though an actual and steady fall amounting in the aggregate to seventy feet. Near the mouth of a little ereek, eoming in from the north, one of the harder beds of the formation protrudes above the rest, passing diagonally aeross the stream, and the water falls again six feet. Then the river is steady again in its descent for abont one-half mile, when an island appears in the channel, where by the disposition of the slate ranges, a very cu- rious and complicated series of eurrents and eoun- ter-currents and caseades are produced, with a deseent in the aggregate amounting to twenty- five feet. The river then descends rapidly, but rather uniformly, among thie roeks for a short distance, the fall being about twenty-five feet. The rocks then rise like dykes in the midst of the river, nearly parallel with its course, forming knobs and rough islands sometimes eighteen or twenty feet high, confining the water within nar- row troughs which run somewhat obliquely across its course. Through these rocks the deseent, from the mouth of a little ereck eoming in from the north to the head of the sixth island, (count- ing from the foot of the Dalles), amounts to six- ty-five feet, one of the principal chutes being near the head of Island No. 6. Below this island is one of the principal water-powers. The river, in a short spaee near Bridge No. 5, is divided into various channels by six islands. Three of these islands are above the fall and three are be- low, but there is also a considerable fall all the way to near the head of the sixth island. Alto-
705
GEOLOGY.
gether this part of the deseent amounts to fifty- five feet. There is still some rapid in the river below all these islands, but in general the char- acter of the valley changes at once, the Huronian slates and quartzites giving place to the shales and sandstones of the Potsdam formation. Above Knife Falls, rapids begin one-half mile beyond Pine Island, and continue five or six miles, mak- ing what is known as the Grand Rapids. The water then is comparatively quiet to the mouth of the Cloquet. But just below its mouth is a large rapid. The St. Louis, whilo generally navigable for canoes above this place, is oeeasionally rapid, but furnishes no water-power that can be com- pared to the valuable sites in the Dalles. Still further up on the Embarras, where it expands into small lakes, it passes by sudden chutes from one lake to the other, falling over large boulders of granite. These mpid places aro favorable for the construction of water-mills for lumber, sinee the lakes furnish excellent opportunities for boom- ing the logs. There is no roek-exposure along the St. Louis valley from the islands near Knife Fails to the point where the Embarras pours through the Mesabi.
GEOLOGIE FORMATIONS.
The roeky formations which underlie the region of the Upper Mississippi and of the St. Louis valleys, not including the drift, may be considered in descending order, as follows. It is necessary to understand that while we deseend in the geological scale of the strata, wo necessarily aseend the Mis- sissippi. The oldest rocks, which elsewhere un- derlie all the others, rise highest above the ocean when laid bare. They make the oldest water-di- vidos, and the mueleus of the dry land of the con- tinont :
1. 'Trenton limestone.
2. St. Peter sandstone.
3. Potsdam formation, (the Cupriferous series of L. Superior.)
4. Huronian.
5. Laurentian.
1. The Trenton formation extends but little above the Falls of St. Anthony. It is seen as far north as Shingle creek on the west side of tho river, and on the east side is only known a short distance north of the Hennepin county line. It is this rock that forms the brink of the Falls of St. Anthony, and has been used for building at Min- ucapolis and St. Paul.
2. The St. Peter sandstone which underlies, probably extends much further north. It doubt- less contributes nich toward the sandiness of the soils of Anoka, Isanti, and Sherburne connties. It is probably this roek which is wrought by the railroad company at Hinckley, and overlies uneon- formably the roeks of the lower formations.
3. The next rock known in aseending the Mis- sippi is the granite at St. Cloud, but the next in the geological scale is the red sandrock wrought at Fond du Lac, on the St. Louis. The same which, with some metamorphosis, is in out- crop at Pokegama Falls, and at Prairie river Falls. This sandroek is an extensive formation It eon- sits very largely of red shales, as may be seen in the banks of the St. Louis, above the sandstone quarries of Fond du Lac. It was deposited dur- ing a period of voleanie and igneous disturbance. It is upheaved and broken. It is interbedded with igneous rock. It is metamorphosed in a great many ways, and in different degrees, making pseudo-amygdaloids. Of itself, it is perhaps 600 or 800 feet thiek, but with the inerease due to the igneous disturbanees, and to the igneous beds themselves, it amounts to several thousand feet. The igneous roek eame from deep sources, pene- trating the underlying Huronian also. Dykes of it ean be seen cutting the Huronian at Thomson, and at many places between Thomson and Knife Falls. They generally run nearly north and south. The igneous rock seems to have been piled up in mountain-like ranges, and also to have flowed ont over the bottom of the ocean in vust sheets. The rock of the Rico Point range, at Duluth, is the best illustration of the mountain mass within this distriet, and the spreading sheets, interbedded between strata of sedimentary rock, (somewhat metamorphosed ), can be seen a few miles cast of Duluth, along the lake shore. Nearly all the roeks at Duluth belong to this formation in its various conditions, but principally to the igneous portion of it. These beds present the geologist with many very interesting, and perplexing ques- tions of geology and mineralogy. This is the great eopper-bearing formation. It extends about the shores of Lake Superior. It affords metallic copper. It is also an iron bearing formation. Its iron is characterized by being magnetie, and by containing titanenm. It may have been de- rived from the rednetion of the pexoxides of iron from the Potsdam shales, in the process of ig- neons upheaval and change. This is supposable
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