BROWN AND REDWOOD COUNTIES. 537 



Stone. Lime. Bricks.] 



of in Brown county, this being at the Golden Gate mill, a custom grist-mill, owned by J. Heimer- 

 dinger & Sons, on Big Spring creek, in sec. 20, in the north part of Home township; head, about 

 twenty feet. 



The only water-powers used in Redwood county are on the river of this name at and below 

 Redwood Falls. These, in descending order, are as follows: Delhi mills, owned by A. A. Cook 

 & Co., with a head of twenty feet; Redwood mills, owned by Worden & Ruter, with a head of 

 eighteen feet; E. Cuff's mill, with a head of thirteen feet; and E. Biruui's mill, with a head of 

 fourteen feet. Between the second and third is the cascade called "Redwood falls," which de- 

 scends twenty-five feet; and between the third and fourth about ten feet of fall is unused. The 

 foot of Birum's dam is 30 or 40 feet above the Minnesota river; and the top of Cook & Co.'s dam 

 is 140 feet, approximately, above the Minnesota river, being some 75 feet below the general level 

 of the prairie and town. The beauty of this deep, rock-walled gorge, about one and a half miles 

 long, with its cascades and rapids and meandering river, can scarcely be over-stated. Its geo- 

 logical formations are equally interesting, by reason of their variety and uncommon character. 



Less than a half mile northwest from this gorge, Ramsey creek, a tributary of the Red- 

 wood, has a perpendicular fall of 30 feet, over the same granitic rock which forms the Redwood 

 falls. 



The Minnesota river at the north side of Swede's Forest, Redwood county, has a consider- 

 able descent, probably amounting in all to 25 feet, in a succession of rapids, which alternate with 

 intervals of slow current, along a distance of about seven miles, known as Patterson's rapids. 



Building stone. New Ulm obtains considerable supplies of stone for common masonry from 

 the red quartzyte which outcrops two miles farther east on the north side of the Minnesota river, 

 in Nicollet county. Drift bculders may also be collected, and are used, in most parts of this 

 county, in the amount needed for stone-work on common farms, as for foundations, cellar-walls, 

 and wells. The only quarrying for these purposes in Brown county is of small amount, in an 

 outcrop of Cretaceous sandstone, at the north side of the Cottonwood river in section 25, North 

 Star, about a mile southwest from Springfield station. The recent calcareous deposit generally 

 known as "petrified moss," occurring in the bed of a small rivulet tributary to the Minnesota 

 river near the east line of Home township, has been somewhat used as a building material. 



The gneiss and granite of the Minnesota valley at the north side of Redwood county have 

 not yet been quarried to any considerable extent. The only stone worked for masonry in this 

 county, excepting boulders, is the gneiss, somewhat decomposing, at the bottom of the gorge of 

 the Redwood river, about an eighth of a mile north of Redwood Falls. 



Lime. Three miles southeast from New Ulm, beside the Minnesota river in section 2, Cot- 

 tonwood, William Winkelmann's kiln has burned lime during the past ten years or more, from 

 the nodular limestone of the low Cretaceous terrace before described. The yearly product is 

 about 3,000 barrels of lime, which is sold at $1 per barrel. This lime is gray, and slacks to a 

 pure white. One to two hundred barrels of lime are burned yearly from drift boulders by Hanson 

 Fisk, in Swede's Forest, Redwood county. 



Bricks. The brick-yard at New Ulm, situated close southeast of the city, on a terrace 

 about 40 feet above the river, formerly owned by William Winkelmann, was purchased in 1879 by 

 Fritz Aufderheide, who made about 1,000,000 bricks here in 1880, selling them at $6.50 per 

 thousand. These are red bricks, of fair quality. No sand is required for tempering. The clay 

 used is modified drift, probably overlying Cretaceous beds. It is dug near the brick yard, on the 

 same terrace, showing a section of about two feet of fine, silly, black soil, in which, and scattered 

 over the surface, are occasional boulders up to four feet in diameter; underlain by yellow clay, 

 finely laminated, nearly horizontal, but slightly undulating and irregular in stratification, con^ 

 taining a few layers, up to one or two inches in thickness, of ferruginous sand, having a vertical 

 exposure in this excavation of seven feet and extending lower. 



Before his work here, Mr. Aufderheide had made bricks five years in the N. W. J of section 

 12, Milford, three miles northwest from New Ulm, using a similar stratified, yellow clay. He 

 made 700,000 to 800,000 there yearly; but the business at that locality is now discontinued. 



At Sleepy Eye, a kiln of bricks was made several years ago from the pebbly clay of the till, 

 failing because of limestone particles, by which the bricks were cracked after burning. 



Bohn & Lamberton, at Redwood Falls, in 1878, made two kilns of red bricks, amounting 

 to about 200,000, which were sold at 48 per thousand. The clay and sand used are a deposit of 



