COUNTY. 891 



Lime.] 



MATERIAL RESOURCES. 



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In addition to the soil Freehorn county has very little to depend on as 

 a source of material prosperity. As already stated there is not a single 

 exposure of the bed-rock in the county. All building stone and quicklime 

 have to be imported. The former comes by the Southern Minnesota R. R. 

 from Lanesboro in Fillmore county, or Stockton in Winona county, though 

 it is very likely that the Shakopee stone from Mankato will also soon be 

 introduced. The latter comes from Iowa, largely, (Mason City and Mitchell) 

 and from the kilns at Mankato and Shakopee. Some building stone is also 

 introduced into the eastern part of the county from the quarries at Austin. 



Lime. At Twin Lakes three or four thousand bushels of quicklime have 

 been burned by Mr. Carter from boulders picked up round the lake shores. 

 This lime sold for seventy-five cents per bushel. It was very fine lime, and 

 purely white. The construction of the railroad put a stop to his profits, as 



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the Shakopee lime could then be introduced and sold cheaper. The boul- 

 ders burned were almost entirely of the same kind as those that are so 

 numerous in McLeod county. They are fine, close-grained, nearly white on 

 old weathered surfaces, and of a dirty cream color on the fractured surfaces. 







They very rarely show a little granular or rougher texture, like a magne- 

 sian limestone, though this grain is intermixed with the closer grain. They 

 hold but few fossils. There are a few impressions of shells, and by some 

 effort a globular mass of coarse favositoid coral was obtained. 



Besides the above, which are distinguished as "white limestone", there 

 are also a few bluish-green limestone boulders. One of these, which now 

 lies near Twin Lakes, is about seven feet long by five or six feet broad, its 

 thickness being at least two and a half feet. It has been blasted into smaller 

 pieces for ntaking quicklime, but nearly all of it yet lies in its old bed, the 

 fragments being too large to be moved. This stone is also very close- 

 grained. It is heavier than the other and more evidently crystalline. It 

 holds small particles of pyrites. It is not porous, nor apparently bedded. 

 On its outer surface it looks like a weathered diorite, and it would be taken, 

 at a glance, for a boulder of that kind. It is said to make very fine lime. 

 Several hundred bushels of lime were formerly burned also at Geneva. 

 llrick. At Albert Lea the following persons have made brick: 

 George Broughton, Wm. Cook, G. C. Dillinghani, and Rusfeldt and 



