WATONWAN AND MARTIN COUNTIES. 477 



Cretaceous sandstone.] 



about three cords of good building stone, besides one or two cords of infe- 

 rior quality wasted. This lay at a hight of about five feet above the creek, 

 being imbedded in the base of its bluff of till, which rises thirty feet. It 

 was divided in beds one to two feet thick, with an inclination of about 

 30 eastward, and is said to have been entirely removed by quarrying. 

 Some of these layers show oblique lamination. The color and texture of 

 this stone, its rarely enclosing soft black particles, which are apparently 

 lignite, and the oolitic structure that much of it exhibits, give it a very 

 close resemblance to the sandstone, quite surely of Cretaceous age, found 

 outcropping in Alta Vista, the most northeast township of Lincoln county, 

 and in Eidsvold and Westerheim, lying next to the east in northwestern 

 Lyon county. Mr. Livermore states that bed-rock exists near the surface, 

 as learned by thrusting down an iron bar, along the marshy bottomland 

 and beneath the channel of the creek, for a distance of six or eight rods 

 from the point where this block occurred, being probably the same for- 

 mation in place, but not rising into view. The only wells learned of ki 

 these counties that have gone through the drift are the following, situated 

 in Fairmont and Jay townships in Martin county. 



On land of A. L. Ward, in section 9, Fairmont, a well about 150 feet deep went through 

 drift, 90 feet; hard rock, about 50 feet; and a softer layer 10 feet thick, from which water rose to 

 sixty feet below the surface. On land of H. W. Sinclair, in section 29, Fairmont, rock was en- 

 countered at a considerable depth and the well was abandoned. No f urther details were ascer- 

 tained respecting the bed-rocks in these wells; consequently no opinion of their geological age can 

 be given. The strike of the limestone and sandstone formations of the Lower Magnesian series, 

 in their exposures along the valley of the Minnesota river and in Blue Earth county, indicates 

 that their continuation underlies the greater part of Watonwan and Martin counties; but here 

 they are doubtless covered in part and perhaps mainly, by Cretaceous strata. 



Deposits which seem referable to the Cretaceous age, were found in the lowest thirty feet 

 or more of a well 180 feet deep, on the farm of Cargill. Van & Co., in the S. E. J of section 14, 

 Jay. This was dug a hundred feet and bored below. Its section in the portion dug was soil, 2 

 feet; yellow till, 18 feet; and very hard blue till, much of it about as hard to excavate as rock, 80 

 feet. Some ten barrels of water come in daily from the lower two feet of the yellow till, but 

 none was found in the blue till. The portion bored consisted of yellowish gray sand with little 

 gravel, dry, and yielding gas in which lire could not burn, 50 feet ; then, shale, 10 feet ; and gray 

 sand or soft sandstone, bored into 20 feet, and continuing below the bottom of the well. The 

 last thirty feet were bored during the rainy season, when so much water (a hundred barrels or 

 more per day-}, came in from the yellow till that it was not evident whether the last stratum 

 yielded any water. This well was made in 1879 and the spring of 1880, and supplies all the 

 water that is wanted from it. The strata here encountered below 150 feet probably belong to the 

 Cretaceous age, and perhaps also the fifty feet of sand between these and the till. This thick 

 bed of gas-bearing sand and gravel was struck at the bottom of a well 113 feet deep at Sher- 

 burne station, two miles to the northeast, of which full notes are given in the list of wells illus- 

 trating the drift. 



