Brown County, Minnesota - Chapter 2: Geology, Timber, Flowers, Animals, 1916

Chapter 2: Geology, Timber, Flowers, Animals

Brown county is situated in the central part of southern Minnesota, within the basin of the Minnesota river, which is its boundary on the north. New Ulm, the largest town and county seat of Brown county, is thirty-six miles southeast from Redwood Falls. From New Ulm northeast to Minneapolis and St. Paul is a distance, in straight course, of about seventy-five miles. Two tiers of counties intervene between it and the south line of the state.

Natural Drainage

The Minnesota river, at the north side of this county, receives one large tributary, the Cottonwood (called by the Sioux the Wa-ra-ju) river, which runs easterly, dividing Brown county into nearly equal parts on its north and south sides, uniting with the Minnesota about one and one-half miles southeast of New Ulm.

Besides this, the Minnesota river receives from this county several small creeks, from one to five miles in length. In this county the Cottonwood receives only one noteworthy tributary from the south, namely, Mound creek, which has first a northeast and then a northwest course, the latter ex- tending about four miles among morainic hills to its mouth, two miles east of the west line of this county. Sleepy Eye creek, the largest branch of this river, comes into it from its north side, in the east part of Leavenworth. This flows easterly, approximately parallel with the Cottonwood river, and three to ten miles from it, through a total length of about thirty miles, the first twenty-five of which are in Redwood county.

On the south side of the Big Cottonwood river, another companion stream, the Little Cottonwood river, also flows in a nearly parallel course easterly through the south part of Brown county, being from two to seven miles distant from the Big Cottonwood along its extent of more than thirty miles. It joins the Minnesota river two miles beyond the east line of this county. It receives no tributary of considerable size in its whole course.

Among the lakes of Brown county are Lone Tree lake, a half mile long, in section 9, Eden; Sleepy Eye, Cross and Mud lakes, respectively one and one-half miles, one mile, and one-half mile in extent, in Home township; Boy's lake, a mile long from northwest to southeast, in the northeast part of Burnstown, a lake of similar size and trend in section 6, Bashaw ; Rice lake, a mile long from north to south, in the southwest part of Stark; Bachelor lake, of smaller size in the same township three miles farther northeast ; lake Hummel or Clear lake, a mile long from north to south, in the northeast part of Sigel ; lake Hanska, seven miles long from northwest to southeast, and from an eighth to two- thirds of a mile wide, in Alton and Lake Hanska townships ; lake Armstrong and Broom lake, farther northeast in Lake Hanska township, each about a mile long and trending southwesterly; lake Linden and another lake situated in sections 11 and 14, Linden, each exceeding a mile in length, with north to south trend, and lake Emerson, two miles long from west to east, crossed by the south line of this township. These lakes occupy hollows in the drift-sheet and many of them have neither outlet nor inlet.

Topography

This county has a smooth, gently or moderately undulating surface of unmodified glacial drift or till. Some portions are nearly flat, and the whole country has this appearance when overlooked in any broad, far-reaching view ; but mostly the contour is in broad swells of various extent, height and direction, generally without any uniformity in trend, and sometimes oval or nearly round.

The highest portions of adjoining undulations vary from a few rods to a half mile or more apart ; and their elevation is sometimes five to fifteen feet, and again twenty to thirty feet, or rarely more, above the depressions, to which the descent is usually by very gentle slopes. These hollows have a form that is like that of the swells inverted, being mostly wide, and either in long and often crooked courses of unequal length, variously branched and connected one with another, or in basins from one to one hundred acres or more in extent, which have no outlet but are surrounded by land five feet or perhaps ten, twenty or thirty feet higher upon all sides. The small swamps which often fill the depressions are called sloughs or marshes, the former name being the most common in this prairie region, while the latter is applied to them in wooded parts of the state.

Many others of these depressions contain bodies of water, which vary from a few rods or a hundred feet to five or ten miles in length. All these are called lakes, and the term pond, which would be applied to them in the northeastern United States, is here restricted to reservoirs made by dams. The lakes of these counties usually lie in shallow basins, bounded by gently ascending shores, which, however, are here and there steep to the height of ten or fifteen, and rarely twenty to twenty-five feet. These higher banks are mostly at projecting points of the shore, and they have been formed by the undermining action of the waves. The foot of such banks is plentifully strewn with boulders that had been contained in the till, all the fine parts of which have been thus washed away. Other parts of the lake shore, adjoining tracts of lowland or marsh, are frequently bordered by a flattened ridge of gravel and sand, often with intermixed boulders, heaped up by the action of ice in winters, in its ordinary freezing, thawing and drifting, when broken up, before the wind. These ice-formed lake-ridges rise only from three to six feet above the line of high water of the lake, and are from two or three to five or six rods wide. They occur most frequently in situations where they separate the lake from a bordering marsh, whose area evidently was at first a part of the lake.

The Little Cottonwood river through Bashaw, in southwestern Brown county, flows in a valley twenty-five feet below the general level, with an alluvial bottom an eighth to a fourth of a mile wide, not bordered by steep bluffs but by gentle slopes. Thence through the central part of the county this valley retains nearly the same features, and it is only in Cottonwood township, within a half dozen miles above its mouth, that its depth increases to coincide with that of the Minnesota river, to which it is tributary.

Lake Hanska, seven miles long, but somewhat river-like in its narrowness and its rather crooked east-southeast course, bordered by moderately or gently sloping shores of till that rise ten to twenty feet above it, may indicate an avenue of interglacial drainage, now in large degree filled and obscured by the till of the last glacial epoch.

The valley of the Minnesota river on the north side of this county is from one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and eighty and in some portions two hundred feet deep, having a bottomland of alluvium five to twenty feet above low water and from three-fourths of a mile to one and onehalf miles wide, bordered by steep bluffs which rise to the general level of the country. Within this valley at numerous places are jutting knobs and small ridges of gneiss and granite, exposures of Cretaceous strata, and terraces of modified drift, which are described farther on in treating of geological structure. From the top of the bluffs the vast prairie stretches away beyond the horizon, having a smoothly undulating surface of till, which appears to be in general approximately level, though a considerable ascent, varying in amount from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty feet, is made imperceptibly in a distance of twenty to twenty-five miles southwestw r ard across this county.

Here and there this sheet of unmodified glacial drift or boulder-clay, the direct deposit of the ice-sheet, is sprinkled with knolls, small and short ridges, or mounds, of gravel

In the southwest corner of this county, its even contour, which to this distance from the Minnesota river may be called in general a vast plain, is changed; and a gradual rise of two hundred or three hundred feet takes place within a distance of a few miles, along a massive terrace which extends from northwest to southeast and east-southeast. This line of highland forms the northeastern border and first prominent ascent of the Coteau des Prairies, which farther west rises gradually and at length steeply again, to the much higher watershed between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The south part of Stately, the most southwest township of Brown county, lies upon the foot of the sloping border of the Coteau, which here is formed by the massive, mostly drift-covered ridge of red quartzite that extends in a nearly east to west direction in northern Cottonwood county, its crest being one to two miles south of the south line of Stately.

The only tract in these counties that exhibits a conspicuously morainic contour is in Stately, and reaches from the elbow of Mound creek six miles west into the edge of Germantown in Cottonwood county, with a width of three or four miles, bounded on the north by the Cottonwood river. It is crossed by the lower part of Mound creek, so named because of its mounds, ridges and hills, which are twentyfive to seventy-five or one hundred feet high, abrupt and strewn with boulders and pebbles.

The elevation of th6 Minnesota river along the north side of this county, at its ordinary stage of water, twenty to twenty-five feet below its high floods, is approximately as follows :

The Little Cottonwood crosses the south line of Stately, entering Brown county, at a height of about 1,150 feet above the sea. In the central part of this county, two miles south of Iberia, its height is estimated to be 960 feet ; at the east line of Sigel, 900 feet, and at the east line of the county, 825 feet.

Brown county has its highest land upon the northern slope of the ridge of red quartzite at the south side of sections 31, 32 and 33, of Stately, its most southwestern township, which reach to 1,200 or 1,250 feet above the sea, 200 feet higher than the Cottonwood river at the north side of this township, but 100 feet or more below the top of this ridge, a mile farther south. The lowest land of this county is where the Minnesota river leaves it, about 778 feet above the sea. The average height above the sea level of the townships of Brown county is estimated as follows: New Ulm city, 875 feet ; Cottonwood, 950 ; Linden, 1,020 ; Milf ord, 950 ; Sigel, 990; Lake Hanska, 1,030; Home, 1,000; Stark, 1,000; Albin, 1,040; Eden, 990; Prairieville, 1,040; Leavenworth, 1,020; Mulligan, 1,060; Burnstown, 1,040; Bashaw, 1,090; North Star, 1,060; Stately, 1,050. From these estimates the mean elevation of this county is found to be approximately 1,025 feet.

Soil And Timber

This county has throughout its whole extent an excellent soil, well suited for the production of all the common cereals, garden vegetables and small fruits of this latitude. The principal crops cultivated are wheat and oats, corn and potatoes, sorghum for the manufacture of syrup, and flax for linseed oil. Stock-raising and dairying also receive considerable attention. A black soil, everywhere from one to two feet thick, and often reaching to a depth of three or four feet in the depressions, forms the surface, being glacial drift or till, colored by a small proportion of humic acid derived from decaying vegetation. This drift is principally (6) clay, with which is an intermixture of sand and gravel, with occasional but not frequent boulders. Its composition makes it quite unfit for brick-making, but gives it a porous character, so that rains and the waters of snow-melting are soon absorbed by it, excepting the large part which is drained away by the gentle slopes and the numerous water-courses. Below the soil, cellars and wells find a continuation of this till, yellow in color and commonly soft enough to be dug with a spade, to a depth of ten to twenty feet or sometimes more, and then dark bluish and usually harder to a great depth beyond, which is seldom passed through.

Brown county is mainly prairie, or natural grass land, without tree or shrub, but one continuous green sward, often reaching in gentle undulations and swells, five to twenty feet high, as far as the view extends. But this county has considerable timber skirting all the larger streams and lakes. A nearly continuous, though often very narrow strip of timber is found immediately bordering the Minnesota river through almost its entire course ; but generally much of the bottomland is treeless. The bluffs on the northeast side of this river have for the most part only thin and scanty groves. The southwestern bluffs, on the contrary, are generally heavily wooded, excepting two miles next northwest from New Ulm. Next above this for about fifteen miles, through Milford, Home and part of Eden townships, both the bottom land and the southwestern bluff are densely timbered to a distance from the river varying from a quarter of a mile to one mile. The greater abundance of timber on the southern bluffs of this and other rivers in this region of prairie appears to be due to their being less exposed to the sun, and therefore more moist, than the bluffs on the opposite side.

Along the Cottonwood river in the western part of Brown county, and along the upper part of the Little Cottonwood river, the width of woodland, excepting occasional interruptions, usually varies from a few rods to an eighth of a mile ; but along the last twenty miles of the Cottonwood river, and the last eight miles of the Little Cottonwood, the timber generally fills their valleys, from a fourth of a mile to one mile wide.

The lakes of western Brown county have only narrow margins of timber ; but in central and eastern Brown county groves of considerable extent border Sleepy Eye lake, the southeast part of lake Tanska, and lakes Armstrong and Linden, and reach a mile southeast from the last to Emerson lake.

At Sleepy Eye lake the principal species of trees are burr-oak, bass, white and red or slippery elm, white ash, box-elder, cottonwood, poplar, hackberry, the Kentucky coffee-tree and the wild plum.

Geological Structure

The foundation of Brown county, northwest from New TJlm, consists of metamorphic gneiss and granite, belonging to the great series denominated Eozoic or Archaean, which embraces the most ancient rocks known to geology. This is overlain by various shales, sandstones, limestones and clays, the latter sometimes holding beds of lignite, which are regarded together as of Cretaceous age. Exposures of these Cretaceous rocks continue in the Minnesota valley southeast from New Ulm, but there and through southern Brown county they probably lie upon red Potsdam quartzite, which outcrops on each side. Upon the east this quartzite is seen in Courtland, Nicollet county, two miles southeast from New Ulm. It is not exposed in this part of Brown county. Upon the west it makes a massive ridge. The north base of this ridge reaches into Stately, making falls in section 31 on one of the head-streams of Mound creek. Cretaceous strata, including lignite, outcrop on the Cottonwood river in western Brown county. Fossiliferous and sometimes lignitic clays of Cretaceous age are occasionally encountered in this region. These formations will be described in the order of their age, beginning with the oldest.

Gneiss and granite. These rocks have the same composition, being made of quartz, feldspar and mica. Gneiss differs from granite in having these minerals laminated, or arranged more or less distinctly in layers. Nearly all the metamorphic rocks to be described here are varieties of gneiss, with which masses of granite, syenite and mica and hornblende schists occur rarely.

In Brown county no exposures of the Eozoic rocks have been examined. Their outcrops in Brown county are of small extent, including only a few localities on the bottomland of the Minnesota valley along the northern boundary of Eden and Home townships. Their extent southeastward is to 4 4 Little Rock," about five miles below Ft. Ridgely, beyond which the only outcrop of these rocks in the Minnesota valley is a small area of granite opposite the southeast part of New Ulm.

Potsdam quartzite. The red quartzite of southwestern Minnesota is destitute of fossils, but from its stratigraphic relations it appears to belong to the Potsdam age. The only outcrop of this formation within this vicinity is in Brown

In the north part of section 31, Stately, this red quartzite, or metamorphic sandstone, occurs in its typical character, being very hard, varying in color from reddish gray to dark dull red, and much divided by joints into rhomboidal masses, mostly only one to two or three feet long. It is exposed upon a tract of four or five acres, forming a picturesque little water-fall on a southern branch of Mound creek, and reaching thence thirty rods or more to the east and south. The dip is about five degrees south. In some places the layers are obliquely laminated, this false bedding being partly steeper to the south, and partly, in other places, level or slightly inclined northward.

Cretaceous beds. Cretaceous strata, doubtless, lie next below the drift upon the greater part of this district; but their only outcrops, excepting within the Minnesota valley and the gorge of the Redwood river, occur on the Cottonwood river in Brown county.

The first discovery of lignite, or brown coal, on the Cottonwood river was made in 1861 by John F. and Daniel Burns, of Burnstown, in its north bank, near the northeast corner of section 34, North Star. The upper part of this bank, which is about twenty feet high, consists of alluvial sand and gravel, a few feet thick. The section of the Cretaceous beds below, as recorded by Eames, in the report of his survey as state geologist in 1866, is, first, iron ore, much broken; then, marly shale, three feet; impure lignite, two and one-half feet ; and dark shale to the bed of the river, ten feet. The third of these beds is a black, lignitic shale, enclosing a thickness of about four inches of quite clear lignite.

A quarter of a mile south from this outcrop, a shaft was sunk to explore for coal, a year or two before the date of Mr. Eames' report. He described the section below the drift as follows: "1. Bands of ironstone, and crystals of selenite enclosed in shale, with a seam of imperfect coal, thirteen feet. 2. Yellow sandstone, three feet. 3. Dark colored clay (siliceous), containing iron pyrites, argillaceous iron and sandstone alternating, 64 feet. The clay in this formation is well adapted for refractory brick and the manufacture of pottery ware."

Later exploration for coal was made in 1875 and again in 1878, by shafts forty or fifty feet deep, on the north side of the river near the point where the lignite is found in the river-bank, as before described. These encountered a layer of lignite, a few inches thick, at about the same level with its outcrop beside the river.

About two miles below this locality, and nearly a mile southwest from Springfield station, the north bank of the Cottonwood river in the northeast quarter of section 25, North Star, contains the following beds, according to Mr. Eames :

This sandstone, some portions of which are richly fossiliferous, is exposed along a distance of four or five rods, and has been somewhat quarried. A specimen of it, showing very distinct impressions of leaves, and another containing numerous casts of shells, have been presented to the survey by John F. Burns. A complete leaf is shown, five inches long and three-fourths inch wide, lanceolate, entire, tapering into a short petiole. This has been identified by Dr. Leo Lesquereux as Laurus Nebrascensis, Lesq. He also reports with this Salix proteaefolia, Lesq., and a new species of Ficus.

Three miles farther down the stream, its north bank in section 16, Burnstown, has a similar exposure of rock, described by Eames as "buff and gray sandstone, thinly laminated, ten feet in thickness, descending to the bed of the river; it contains stems and leaves of plants but too much broken to decide either character or class/ '

The next localities where outcrops of Cretaceous beds are known to occur on the Cottonwood river, are in Sigel and Milford, about eight miles, and again about five miles, west from New Ulm. Sandstone of yellowish, iron-rusty color, nearly level in stratification, partly friable, but containing hard layers up to one foot in thickness, exposed along a distance of several rods and rising five to ten feet above the river, is reported at two points in the south bank, about sixty rods apart, in the northeast quarter of section 6, Sigel. Above the rock-outcrops the wooded bluffs, probably consisting of till, rise about one hundred feet.

In the northwest quarter of section 3, at the south side of Milford, the north bank of the Cottonwood river has a height of sixty or seventy feet, and exhibits the following section : yellow till, about fifteen feet ; gray sandstone, containing lignitic particles, only one foot in thickness exposed ; and dark, bluish clay, free from gravel or grit, but in some parts enclosing specks and small lumps of iron pyrites, which render it unfit for manufacture of pottery, having a thickness of twenty-five feet clearly exposed; below which the remaining twenty-five feet of the bluff is concealed by the talus. From the wooded south bluff, in Sigel, a sixth of a mile farther southeast, but probably within the same quarter-section, clay nearly like the foregoing has been much excavated for use by the potters at New Ulm and formerly at Mankato. This clay is very fine and uniform in character, containing neither grit nor pyrites. It is dug between forty and sixty feet above the river. These beds seem to have no fossils.

About a mile farther east, near the middle of section 35, Milf ord, the northern bank of the Cottonwood river shows very fine, nearly white, crumbling sandstone, alternating with shale, reaching in some places thirty to forty feet above the river. The bedding is lenticular and inconstant. A layer of yellowish brown, ferruginous and more firm sandstone, with a dip of three or four degrees toward the west, exposed here about ten feet above the river, contains plentiful impressions of dicotyledonous leaves of numerous species. A considerable collection of these was made by Professor Winchell, and determined by Dr. Leo Lesquereux, who stated in correspondence that his observations of fossil leaves in 1856 were at this locality or in its immediate vicinity. The list is as follows: Magnolia alternans, Heer; Andromeda Parlalorii, Heer; Cinnamomum Scheuchzeri, Heer ; Platanus primaeva, Lesq. ; Salix proteaef olia, Lesq. ; Populus cyclophylla, Lesq.; P. elegans, Lesq.; P. Lancastriensis, Lesq. (probably the same with P. cordif olia, Newberry) ; P. litigiosa, Heer ; Populites cyclophyllus, Lesq. ; Protophyllum crednerioides, Lesq., Cissus sp. nov. ; Laurus sp. nov. ; Pinus sp. nov., and fragments referred doubtfully to Persea and Ficus. Nine of these species, according to Dr. Lesquereux, have been recognized in the Dakota group,

Clay and an underlying more sandy deposit, which have been used together for the manufacture of fire-bricks, occur in the base of the north bluff of the Cottonwood river south of New Ulm. The entire section of this bluff is given by Professor Winchell in the second annual report, in a classification of a section of the Cottonwood river south of New Ulm : "1. Hardpan drift, made up of clay and stones, seen about thirty feet. 2. White sand, the age of which is uncertain, containing irony concretions and deposits. It is somewhat indistinctly stratified obliquely, like drift sand, and has some coarse grains. Its position in reference to the overlying hardpan drift, together with its thickness and purely white color, indicates its age to be Cretaceous, one hundred feet. 3. Blue clay, containing some siliceo-calcareous, irony lumps; said by Mr. Dauffenbach to hold some coal; mixed with No. 4 for making fire-block, four feet. 4. Fine, somewhat gritty clay, largely aluminous. This is white, and when long submerged, soft and fluid-like, but when dry has to be quarried by blasting. This mixed at the rate of two-thirds with one- third of No. 3 makes a fine, white fire-brick, seen, twelve feet. Total height of bluffs, one hundred and forty-six feet."

"The above section varies in short intervals. About half a mile further up the river a sandstone outcrop was encountered. It rises in a bluff immediately from the water, on the opposite side of the river. In this sandstone, which here appears firm and massive, and which is probably equivalent to No. 2, of the foregoing section, are many irony mud balls, or concretions, having a fancied resemblance to plums

The valley of the Minnesota river was explored by Professor Winchell in 1873, and the greater part of the descriptions of the Cretaceous strata, as here presented, is from his report for that year. Some additional observations and information were gathered by the writer in 1879 and 1880.

In section 2, Cottonwood township, Brown county, near its east line, a bluff on the south side of the Minnesota river, situated on the land of John Gruebel, four miles below New Ulm, is described by Professor Winchell, as follows: "1. Black alluvium, two feet. 2. Clayey alluvium, of a light brown color, four and one-half feet. 3. Red clay, containing some sandstone in masses; stratified, two and onehalf feet. 4. Belt of greenish sandy clay, one foot.

6. Bedded sandy clay, of an earth color, two feet. 7. Greenish sand, the color coming from the mixture of green shale with the sand, the grains of sand being white quartz, two inches. 8. White sandstone in one bed, or weathering into beds of two inches, one foot. 9. Green bedded shale, or clay, with some fine sand grains, and some laminations or thick beds that are all white sand, but generally maintaining a green color, seen, eighteen feet. 10. Slope and talus, ten feet.

"The bedding seen in the foregoing section is horizontal, and shows no fossils. Although there is no opportunity at this place to determine whether this series of shales lies above or below the sandstone at a place four miles southeast, on the north side of the Minnesota river, by an observation made in the bank of the road at the crossing of the Cotton- wood river, it is believed to overlie that sandstone, but to underlie a series of calcareous beds that appear in the right bank of the river, about a mile below the mouth of the Cottonwood. The colors near the top of the foregoing section exchange places a little in following the bluff along, drift boulders and gravel occupying the place of clay in No. 3. In some places the red irony stain passes down lower. It is likely that the red, brown and ochery colors are due to ferriferous waters, since the deposit of the Cretaceous, and to oxygen in the air. Hence it is not certain that the drift extends through the whole of No. 3, although drift boulders are mixed with it, or replace it, in some places. When evenly bedded and free from boulders, it undoubtedly belongs to the Cretaceous, the drift stopping with No. 2. When it is replaced by boulders, the Cretaceous is only so much more worn away, the color prevading them, as passing down to lower beds."

Professor Winchell continues: "From the mouth of the Cottonwood river going down the right bank of the Minnesota, a regular terrace is seen to rise several feet above the flood plain. About a mile down, this terrace shows its origin and composition in the banks of the ravine which cuts it. Before reaching that point, however, an outcrop of 'gray concretionary limestone 9 is seen on the top of the terrace plateau. This limestone here is overlain by a couple of feet of water- washed limestone, gravel and cobble-stones, mixed toward the top with the usual black alluvium. The appearance of the quarried stone is like drift pieces, and the bed from which it is taken is intersected variously with divisional planes, cutting the mass into irregular fragments, which, on being taken out, appear weathered. Yet there are crystal-lined cavities, some parts of it being mostly made up of calc spar. Since the formation of the crystals, calcareous water has again deposited lime on the edges of the crystals, which, having first been of the thin (axe-shaped) variety, have now the appearance of separate but crowded cock's combs, the little beaded accretions of lime being arranged on their edges. There is also a considerable quantity of uncrystallized lime on other surfaces. The interior of the stone is of a light gray or drab color, and when compact and free from crystals is very fine grained. It is said to make a white, strong quicklime, of which there can be no doubt. This limestone outcrop, which shows only about sixteen inches, is within a mile of the red quartzite outcrop near New Ulm, the bare, bald surfaces of which are visible from this point, on the other side of the Minnesota.

"A little below the last described exposure, is the old Winkelmann lime-kiln and quarry, in section 2, Cottonwood. The limestone is much mixed, confusedly, with shale, but the following general section can be made out, in which no fossils were seen : 1. Alluvium and boulders, two feet. 2. Green shale, interstratified with belts and irregular nodules or masses of gray limestone, fifteen feet. 3. Green shale, one foot. 4. White sand, varying to green shale, one and one-half feet. 5. Green clay, two feet. 6. Calcareous shale, or marl, with some argillaceous matter, five feet. 7. Green shale, or clay, with blotches of red, seen, one foot. Total, twenty-five and one-half feet.

"The same kind of greenish marl is exposed up the Cottonwood, the immediate bluffs being somewhat wrought in it, to a point just back of New Ulm."

quarry, Professor Winchell has noted about forty feet of the green shale, with thin layers of concretionary limestone ; underlain by red shale, of which a thickness of about five feet was seen, but it may extend below the river-level, which is some five feet lower than the base of the section exposed. Occasional layers of red shale were seen somewhat above its general mass, separated from it by green shale. There seems to be a very slight dip toward the south.

Prof. James Hall mentions ferruginous sandstone, containing plant remains, interbedded with red marls, lying below the green shale and concretionary limestone in the vicinity of the Winkelmann lime-kiln. Four species of fossil leaves, collected in these beds by Hall, and found also in other states on the west and south, are described by Lesquereux, who regards them as proof that the formation belongs to the Dakota group at the base of the Cretaceous series. The green shale and nodular limestone may belong to a later formation, and Professor Winchell refers them provisionally to the Niobrara group. The highest divisions of the Cretaceous series seem also to be represented in these counties, at least by fossils derived from them, found in the drift.

Of the Cretaceous strata seen at New Ulm, Professor Winchell writes: "The flat on which New Ulm stands seems to be made up by a terrace wrought in Cretaceous. The surface of this flat is strewn with boulders. The general section of the Cretaceous at New Ulm is as follows:

"The conspicuous Cretaceous terrace that occurs along the Minnesota at New Ulm, is due to this fine sand, overlain by a more tenacious clay or shale. The varying composition of the Cretaceous makes it difficult to establish the horizontally of different outcrops, but there cannot be much doubt that No. 3 above is equivalent to No. 2 of the section on the Cottonwood."

The terrace at New Ulm thus formed of Cretaceous beds, overlain by drift, is more than a mile long, parallel with the river, and varies in width from twenty-five to fifty rods or more. Minnesota street, the principal business avenue, is on this terrace, sections of which, agreeing well with that just quoted, are exposed, especially near its south end, by ravines and gullies at its margin. Its height is about ninety feet above the bottomland and river, and forty feet above the depot, which is on an intermediate terrace. The west part of New Ulm, including State street, several churches and the county buildings, occupies a higher terrace or plateau of modified drift, which is elevated some twentyfive to thirty-five feet above Minnesota street, or 115 to 125 feet, approximately, above the river. Further details respecting the topography and geology of the Minnesota valley in this vicinity will be brought out in treating of the glacial and modified drift.

In the north part of New Ulm the grading of North Third street close northeast of the railroad, express Cretaceous clays. This cut is fourteen feet deep and 200 feet long, with its top about forty-five feet above the river. Its upper four feet are soil and drift, containing and overspread with boulders of granite, gneiss and schists, up to six feet in diameter. The remaining ten feet are curved, contorted, and irregularly interstratified, red, yellow, green and gray clays. They are free from gravel, but contain flat, limey concretions, in some portions abundant up to one inch in diameter and elsewhere joined in sheets a foot or less in length and one-half inch or less in thickness, conforming with the stratification. These strata are eroded and covered unconf ormably by the drift.

Glacial and modified drift. Glacial striae are plainly seen on the southwest part of the outcrop of quartzite that forms the waterfall in section 31, Stately, having a course south fifty degrees to fifty-five degrees east, with reference to the true meridian; and upon the ledge of gneiss in section 12, township 111, range 38, bearing south 50 degrees to 60 degrees east.

The surface of Brown county is principally till, or the mixture of clay with smaller proportions of sand and gravel and occasional enclosed boulders, which was thus deposited in a mingled unstratified mass by the ice-sheets of the glacial period. Its thickness in these counties is generally from 100 to 200 feet. Within the till are found occasional layers of sand or gravel, which often yield large supplies of water in wells. Many of these veins of modified drift were probably formed by small glacial streams, and they cannot be regarded as marking important divisions of the ice age. It is shown, however, by shells, remains of vegetation and trees, found evidently in the place where they were living, underlain and overlain by till, that this very cold period was not one unbroken reign of ice, but that this retreated

Two principal glacial epochs can be distinguished, in the first of which all of Minnesota except its southeast corner was deeply covered by the continental ice-sheet, and its border was several hundred miles south of this district, in Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and southern Illinois; whereas, in the later very severely cold epoch, the ice-fields were of less extent, and terminated from fifty to 300 miles within their earlier limit, covering all the basin of the Minnesota river, but not enveloping a large tract in the southwest corner of Minnesota and leaving uncovered a much larger area than before in the southeast part of the state. Between .these glacial epochs the ice-sheet was melted away within the basins of the Minnesota and Red rivers, and probably from the entire state. The greater part of the till appears to have been deposited by this earlier ice-sheet; and during the retreat of the ice this till was overspread in some places, especially along the avenues of drainage, by beds of modified drift, or stratified gravel, sand and clay, washed from the material that had been contained in the ice and now became exposed upon its surface to the multitude of rills, rivulets and rivers that were formed by its melting.

In the ensuing interglacial epoch, this drift-sheet was channeled by water-courses till its valleys were apparently as numerous and deep as those of our present streams. The interglacial drainage sometimes went in a different direction from that now taken by the creeks and rivers ; and the valleys then excavated in the drift, though partly refilled with till during the last glacial epoch, are still, in some instances, clearly marked by series of lakes. More com- monly the interglacial water-course must have occupied nearly the same place with the valleys of the present time ; and there seems to be conclusive proof that this was true of the valley of the Minnesota river. A long period intervened between the great glacial epochs ; the earlier ice-sheet gradually retreated northward; a lake was formed in the Red river valley by the receding ice-barrier on the north; the outflow from this lake, and the drainage of the Minnesota basin itself, appear to have excavated the valley of the Minnesota river nearly as it now is ; and the further recession of the ice-sheet probably even allowed the drainage of the Red river basin to take its course northward, as now, to Hudson bay, this being indicated by f ossilif erous beds enclosed between deposits of till within the area that has been covered by this interglacial lake and was afterward occupied by Lake Agassiz at the close of the last glacial epoch.

Again a severely cold climate prevailed, accumulating a vast sheet of ice upon British America and the greater part of Minnesota. By this glacial sheet the valley of the Minnesota river was partly refilled with till, but it evidently remained an important feature in the contour of the land surface. During the final melting of this ice-sheet, its waters, discharged in this channel, quickly removed whatever obstructing deposits of drift it had received, and undermined its bluffs, giving them again the steep slopes produced by fluvial erosion. This partial re-excavation and sculpture were then followed immediately, during the retreat of the ice-sheet, by the deposition of the stratified gravel, sand and clay, seventy-five to 150 feet deep, remnants of which occur as terraces on the sides of this valley, from its mouth to New Ulm, and less distinctly beyond. Had not the great valley existed nearly in its present form through the last glacial epoch, it could not have become filled with this modified drift, which must belong to the era of melting of the last ice-sheet. After the departure of the ice, the supply of both water and sediment was so diminished that the river could no longer overspread the former flood-plain of modified drift and add to its depth, but has been occupied mainly in slow excavation and removal of these deposits, leaving remnants of them as elevated plains or terraces.

Terminal moraines. The morainic tract in Stately is probably a portion of the third terminal moraine, formed at the boundary of the ice of the last glacial epoch during a pause in its recession. This moraine is well exhibited in Martin county and thence to Forest City and Pilot mound in Hancock county, Iowa.

The valley of Mount creek, across the morainic area in Stately, has a level bottom from 500 to 1,000 feet wide, and appears as if in some former time, which was doubtless the epoch of melting of the last ice-sheet, it had been the watercourse of floods pouring southeastward from the upper part of the basin of the Big Cottonwood river into the Little Cottonwood valley.

Modified drift of the earlier glacial epoch. Thick deposits of stratified sand and gravel, found enclosed in the till near New Ulm, are believed to be portions of the modified drift which was deposited at the close of the earlier glacial period, as explained in the foregoing brief history of the ice age. The locality first mentioned is on the extension of Center street, one-half mile west of New Ulm, where it rises to the top of the bluff, 180 feet above the river, but only some 100 feet above its old channel which lies between New Ulm and this bluff. The height here reached is the general level of the vast prairie of gently undulating till, through which the Minnesota valley is excavated. The grade cuts to a depth of about forty feet at the edge of the bluff and thence ascends, with decreasing depth of cut, along a distance of some twenty-five rods, to the surface of the drift-sheet. This section exhibits two beds of true till, separated by modified drift which is probably an interglacial formation, supplied, as already stated, at the time of final melting of the earlier ice-sheet and spread beyond its receding margin upon the unchanneled surface of the till that had been formed during that earlier part of the ice age. The upper bed of till, apparently representing the total thickness of the drift deposited here in the last glacial epoch, is sixteen to eighteen feet thick, and is an entirely unstratified yellowish clay, containing occasional rock-fragments up to six or eight inches in diameter, but showing only two or three of larger size, these being two or three feet in diameter. Portions of this till, within six to eight or ten feet below the top, are gray, with limey concretions and limey layers that have been gathered by percolating waters. The bottom of this upper till, seen clearly exposed along a distance of about 250 feet, is an almost exactly level line. Next below is the earlier modified drift. Its thickness is also sixteen to eighteen feet, levelly stratified throughout, but having the horizontal layers often obliquely laminated. The dip of this lamination, which marks the direction of the current of water that brought this sediment, is to the east or northeast, toward the Minnesota river, and varies in amount from two or three to fifteen or twenty degrees. Floods produced by glacial melting, and carrying gravel, sand and clay that had been contained in the ice-sheet, appear to have taken their course along the central depression of the Minnesota basin, coming from ice-fields which still covered its upper portion, with their retreating border probably only a few miles distant at the time when this stratum was deposited. Its largest pebbles are six to eight inches in diameter. The underlying till was seen along an extent of 100 feet, the greatest depth cut into it being about eight feet. Its upper line, separating it from the modified drift is approximately level but undulating, with its highest points two or three feet above the lowest. This till, like the upper bed, bears no marks of stratification; and neither shows any interbedding or transition, but both are bounded by definite lines, at their junction with the intervening gravel and sand. The lower bed of till is dark bluish, excepting for about twenty feet from the face of the bluff inward, where weathering has changed it to the same yellow color that characterizes the modified drift and upper till.

Modified drift of the last glacial epoch. Upon the sheet of till which covers these counties are frequently noticed mounds and knolls or short ridges of gravel and sand, ten to twenty feet, or rarely thirty feet or more in height, which in any excavation are seen to be irregularly interstratified and obliquely beaded. In Brown county a notable series of kames, or short ridges and knolls of gravel and sand, twentyfive to forty feet high, occurs about a mile east and southeast of Sleepy Eye, extending from north to south through the southwest quarter of section 28, and in the west half of section 33, in the south part of Home.

The modified drift which was deposited in the Minnesota valley is represented at New Ulm by the plateau of gravel and sand, a mile long and about an eighth of a mile wide, on which the west and highest part of the city is built. A hollow, about forty feet lower and a quarter of a mile wide, lying between this plateau and the bluff, was formerly a channel of the river, since which time the valley has been cut eighty feet below it. Other remains of the valley drift are seen on the southwest side of the river for two or three miles northwest from New Ulm; and on the northeast side it forms long and wide terraces in Courtland.

Below the modified drift, New Ulm is underlain by Cretaceous beds which have been already described. These differ in hardness and ability to withstand the river's erosion in cutting its valley, which characters have been elements in determining the position and outlines of the lower terraces of this city, as that of Minnesota street, about ninety feet above the river, and that of the depot and brick yard, fifty to forty feet above the river, and of the continuation of the latter, about forty feet in height, along the valley some three miles below New Ulm, reaching beyond the Cottonwood river, as also of a terrace at nearly the same elevation on the opposite side of the Minnesota river. A considerable thickness of modified drift forms the surface of these terraces, but their lower portions are Cretaceous beds, from which pottery clay has been taken near the southeast end of Minnesota street, while the terraces about forty feet high, at each side of the Minnesota river contain beds of nodular gray limestone, much of which has been burned for lime, interstratified with green and red clay and shale. The cut in Cretaceous clays upon North Third street in New Ulm

Alluvium. The bottom land at New Ulm and generally along the Minnesota valley at the north side of these counties, is from one-half mile to a mile wide. It is composed of recent alluvium, mostly sand and fine silt, having a height from five to fifteen feet, and sometimes more, above the river, which meanders through this lowland, here and there sweeping quite to its border. The highest floods, formed by snow-melting in spring or by heavy rains, cover the greater part of this bottom or flood-plain and at each inundation add slightly to it by their sediment.

Material Resources

The excellence of this county for agriculture, and its area of woodland and prairie, the latter far exceeding the former, have been noticed in treating of its soil and timber. Besides the fertility of the land, this region possesses an invigorating, healthful climate, and almost invariably good water in its wells and springs. The material resources which remain to be mentioned are water-powers, building stone, lime, bricks, pottery and mineral paint. Explorations made for coal, its mode of occurrence, and the improbability that it exists here in any valuable amount, have been spoken of in the account of the Cretaceous strata. No ores of any practical importance have been found. The principal resources of this part of the state are the products of its rich soil, and the waterpowers afforded by many of its streams.

Native Timber, Flowers And Animals

[The publishers are indebted to Benedict Juni, one of the most practical botanists in this part of country, for the following article, showing the various species of animal and plant life found in Brown county when white men first discovered it.l

Time has wrought out many changes in animal and plant life since the advent of the first white man in this part of the country. The elk, beaver, buffalo, deer and the northern rabbit have vanished in the order named. The rat, cotton tail, jack rabbit and grey squirrel have made their entry since the country became settled. Countless flocks of geese and ducks covered the lakes and streams or darkened the sky as they flew from place to place. Such immense numbers of pigeons roosted in the forests that young trees bent or broke under their weight. There was no scarcity of fur-bearing animals, such as mink, otter and muskrats.

Fruits And Flowers

Wild plums and grapes were found in unlimited quantities and of excellent quality. Strawberries of exquisite flavor and sweetness abounded on prairie and in sunny woodland. The higher ridges and bluffs of the prairies yielded an abundant crop of pome de prairie of the voyageurs, which were regularly harvested and dried by the Indians and formed a considerable part of their winter supply of food.

have become extinct or so rare that they are seldom met with. Of the four species of lady-slippers, there remain but two and these are scarce indeed. Of the lilies, the prettiest, Lilium Philadelphirum, no longer delights the eye.

Some of the best native grasses have given way for weeds and inferior grasses. Although all the original species of forest trees have persisted, they have deteriorated. Hickories and poplars, eighteen to twenty-four inches in diameter and straight as a candle can no longer be found. Where is the oak and butternut that will split like glass, of which the pioneer made his shingles, rails and posts ? The forest primeval is a thing of the past.

Wild fruit abounded everywhere along the streams. Wild plums and grapes, excellent in quality, were gathered by the first settlers in Brown and adjoining counties. Verily, this was a land of plenty.

Many ravaging insects and diseases that now sap the vitality of plants followed in the wake of the paleface. No potato-bug, nor chinch-bug, nor pea-weavil, nor scab or scale, nor rust wrought their destruction. The potato reached its highest perfection and development and its vines were loaded with fruitage now unknown to many people. In 1862 wheat was harvested two months after it had ripened ; it was still standing upright, the straw bright and clean, with only the heads bending under the weight of the golden grain.

The following is a list of trees found here when the pioneers first entered this part of the state of Minnesota: Sugar maple, soft maple, Kentucky coffee tree, plum, bird cherry, choke cherry, black cherry, hawthorn, Juneberry, cornel, white ash, black ash, white elm, slippery elm, rock elm, hackberry, butternut, black walnut, hickory, white oak, scarlet oak, swamp oak, ironwood, white willow, American aspen, cottonwood, balm of Gilead, large-toothed aspen, red cedar, linden or basswood and box-elder.

Shrurs And Vines

The pioneers of Brown county found the following shrubs and vines, growing in Nature's orderly array, each flourishing in the soil and moisture conditions to which it was best adapted: Sumac, cornel, burning bush, bladdernut, wild grape, bittersweet, Juneberry, arrowood, Hazelnut, black haw highbush, cranberry, rose, gooseberry, raspberry, currant, leatherwood, prickly ash, greenbrier, honeysuckle, spirea, juniper.

The following fishes were common and abundant in the waters of Brown comity in the fifties: Cat fish, buffalo fish, pike, pickerel, bass eel, sturgeon, sheephead, carp, bream, perch, sucker, bullhead, gar-pike.

Turkey buzzard, hawks (several species), eagle, owls (three species), wood peckers (two species), hummingbirds, swallows (three species), whippoorwill, nighthawk, kingfisher, fly-catchers, thrush, robin redbreast, bluebird, wren, scarlet tanager, cedar bird, shrike, cat bird, Ameri- can creeper, nuthatch, phoebe, titmouse, goldfinch, snowbunting, sparrow, cow bird, blackbirds (three species), meadow lark, oriole, crow, blue jay, wild pigeon, turtle dove, prairie chicken, partridge, quail, sandhill crane, blue heron, bittern or stake drivers, night heron, kill-deer, woodcock, snipe, rail, snow goose, Canada goose, brants, mallard, teal, spoon-bill, wood duck, canvas-back, butter-ball, gull, tern, loon, grebe or mud-hen.

Bat, schrews, mole, lynx, wild-cat, prairie wolf, timber wolf, fox, fischer, weasel, mink, otter, beavers, skunk, badger, raccoon, red squirrel, gray squirrel, flying squirrel, chipmunk, striped gophers, pocket gopher, prairie squirrel, woodchuck, mice (several species), rat, muskrat, rabbit, jack rabbit, northern rabbit, elk, deer, buffalo.