370 Artesian Wells in North and South Dakota. 



ARTESIAN WELLS IN NORTH AND SOUTPI DAKOTA. 



By Warren Upham. 



On the broad fertile plain called the Red river valley, which 

 was the bed of the glacial lake Agassiz, many artesian wells have 

 been obtained within the thick drift sheet, deriving their supply 

 of water from porous beds or veins of sand and gravel beneath 

 and frequently between deposits of bowlder clay or till. The 

 depths of these wells vary from 40 to about 250 feet, and the 

 height to which the water is capable of rising is often only a fevv 

 feet and seldom more than 25 to 50 feet. Hundreds of these 

 flowing wells, commonly one to two inches in diameter of pipe, 

 are in use on farms, at grain elevators, and for the supply of 

 towns, on both the Minnesota and North Dakota sides of the Red 

 river. Some tracts of considerable area, however, fail to find 

 artesian water, but even these generally encounter water-bearing 

 layers at depths corresponding with those of the artesian wells, 

 from which water rises nearly to the surface. 



The narrow areas that may be sometimes occupied by the 

 sand and gravel layers yielding artesian water, or the thin and in 

 some places entirely deficient condition of these layers, is illus- 

 trated by the different depths at which a flow of water was first 

 encountered by four wells in the village of Grandin, North 

 Dakota. These wells are on an area only about 50 rods in ex- 

 tent, and their several depths are 105 feet, 158 feet, 187 feet, and 

 248 feet. Either the upper water-bearing beds here are narrow, 

 like a stream course, so that they were not found by the deeper 

 wells, or, if they exist as sheets of great width as well as length, 

 they are in some parts thinned out, allowing the impervious till 

 above to rest on that below. But in the direction from which the 

 water supply is received, these gravel and sand veins or beds must 

 have a great extent and descend from levels higher than the sur- 

 face of the central part of the Red river valley, where the artesian 

 wells are situated. At least this must be the case where the water 

 is fresh or only very slightly saline, as at Grandin and in all the 

 southern part of the valley as far northward as to the vicinity of 

 Crookston in Minnesota, and Blanchard in North Dakota, and in 

 a large district of Manitoba including Winnipeg and the Men- 

 nonite reserve east of the Red river. 



North of Crookston and Blanchard to the international 

 boundary, and in the south edge of Manitoba, the water of these 



