3/8 Artesian Wells in North and South Dakota. 



brian and Archaean areas of Minnesota and Manitoba. It may be 

 thus the bed-rock, on which the drift is deposited, beneath ex- 

 tensive tracts in the middle part and on the western border of 

 the Red river valley, discharging there its alkaline and saline 

 artesian water- into the permeable beds of gravel and sand in the 

 drift sheet, whence it rises in the brackish wells of that district. 



Besides the classes or groups of artesian wells thus far con- 

 sidered, there remain to be mentioned numerous shallow flowing 

 wells, from 20 to 168 feet deep, in the drift of the Vermillion 

 river basin in South Dakota, reported by Prof. G. E. Culver, and 

 two deep artesian wells in North Dakota at Tower City and Graf- 

 ton. The wells in the vicinity of the Vermillion river are on an 

 area unmarked by grand contrasts of elevation, though toward 

 the north and northeast the surface gradually rises in the Coteau 

 des Prairies. They seem to be comparable with the plentiful 

 flowing wells or fountains along the Maple river in Blue Earth 

 and Faribault counties, Minnesota. 



The Tower City well, fifty miles east of Jamestown, is four 

 feet lower than the depot, being 1,168 feet above the sea. Its 

 depth is 670 feet, through drift, 163 feet ; Cretaceous shales, with 

 occasional beds of sandstone, 502 feet ; and quicksand, into which 

 the boring advanced only 5 feet. Salty and alkaline water out- 

 flows 93^ gallons per minute, and is capable of rising 33 feet 

 above the surface. The scanty flow and low head of this well 

 suggest that the water-bearing stratum may be enclosed within 

 the Fort Benton shales ; but its altitude, 500 feet above the sea 

 level, accords with that of the sandstone reached by wells at 

 Blanchard and Mayville, so that more probably it is the top of 

 the Dakota formation. The plane of the head of water supplied 

 from this formation would show a marked descent northeastward, 

 as is thus indicated at Tower City and in less degree at Devil's 

 Lake, in comparison with Jamestown and Ellendale, if there are 

 abundant natural outlets of this artesian water along the Red 

 river valley, as appears to be true, by springs rising through the 

 drift. These brackish springs occur on many of the streams 

 tributary to the Red river both in North Dakota and Minnesota, 

 the most remarkable being on Forest and Park Rivers, which 

 therefore were formerly called the Big and Little Salt rivers. 



At Grafton, in the Red river valley on the Park river, the 

 artesian well, 825 feet above the sea, is 915 feet deep, going 



