YELLOW MEDICINE, LYON AND LINCOLN COUNTIES. 



Water-powers. Stone. Lime.] 



Water-powers. The utilized water-powers of this district are all employed for flouring mills. 

 Four powers are used on the Minnesota river, as follows: 



Hixson Brothers; one mile west of Granite Falls; head, about eight feet. 



Banner mills; Stoddard & Libbey ; in the north part of Granite Falls; head, ten and a half feet. 



Granite Falls mills; W. W. Pinney; head, twelve feet. It is estimated that there is a fall of 

 eight feet within a third of a mile below this mill. 



Minnesota Falls mills; Austin & Worden; head, ten feet, but it may be increased to fifteen 

 feet. 



The Minnesota river at Granite Falls is about 150 feet wide. It usually has sufficient water 

 for running the mills during the driest part of the year. 



On the Yellow Medicine river one power is used, about five miles from its mouth, by E. II. 

 Sorlien & Brother, in section 35, Minnesota Falls. This is at the neck of a long loop of the river, 

 across which a canal twelve rods long carries the water to the mill, the head or fall being about 

 twenty feet. 



The Kedwood river in Lyon county has three utilized powers, as follows, in descending order: 



Camdeu mills; V. M. Smith; in the S. E. } of section 32, Lynd; head, twenty-one feet. 



H. R. Marcyes' mill; in section 23, Lynd; head, twelve feet. 



Marshall mills; J. A. Rea; in the west edge of Marshall; head, about nine feet. 



No water-powers are used in Lincoln county, and none on the Lac qui Parle and Cottonwood 

 rivers in this district. 



Building stone. No quarrying of any importance has been yet undertaken in the gneiss 

 granite and syenite of the Minnesota valley, nor in their other outcrops lying farther west in Yel-' 

 low Medicine county. It is probable, however, that some portions of these exposures will furnish 

 good stone for ordinary masonry, and perhaps even of sufficiently fine quality for ornamental 

 work. The only quarry in this district is George B. Mason's, in section 12, Alta Vista, Lincoln 

 county, in the Cretaceous sandstone, which has already been fully described on page 599. 



Boulders of gneiss, granite and limestone, usually are sufficiently abundant for the ordinary 

 masonry needed by farmers, in cellar walls and foundations of buildings, in curbing wells, and 

 making culverts for roads. These boulders are especially plentiful upon the morainic belts of the 

 Coteau des Prairies, being mostly of smaller size than five feet, but sometimes ten or fifteen feet 

 or more in diameter. 



Lime. In the northeast part of Sioux Agency, the most eastern township bordering the 

 Minnesota river in Yellow Medicine county, lime has been burned from boulders by Ole Swenson 

 and Iver Olson. It is white, strong lime. 



At Minnesota Falls, Simon Christiansen and William C. Darby burn lime from boulders, 

 each making some 300 ban-els yearly, and selling at $1.50 per barrel. It is white, and of excel- 

 lent quality. 



Several farmers burn lime from boulders within ten miles to the north and west of Canby. 



At Gary lime is burned by David Bradley, who leases Capt. H. H. Herrick's kiln. Boul- 

 ders, collected from the neighboring morainic hills, yield white lime; and the deposits of traver- 

 tine, or calcareous tufa, mentioned on page 610, situated at and near the kiln, supply a dark, but 

 equally strong lime. The former is sold for $1.25 per barrel, and the latter for $1, the yearly 

 product of both together being 400 or 500 barrels. Soft wood, brought on the cars, costs $ 3 to $4 

 per cord. 



In western Lyon county, Tobias Trana, living in the S. W. J of section 30, Nordland, burns 

 lime from boulders, gathered mostly on morainic hills within one or two miles westerly in Lime- 

 stone township, Lincoln county; yearly product, about 200 barrels, sold at $1.25 per barrel. 

 Abundant limestone boulders, sometimes ten to fifteen feet long, occur in northern Lincoln 

 county, and have given names to Limestone and Marble townships. 



One mile farther south, a fine drift-gravel, cemented by carbonate of lime, occurs in the S. 

 W. J of section 31, Nordland, on the west side of the South branch of Yellow Medicine river, the 

 exposure being about 40 feet in length, and 4 to 6 feet in vertical thickness, at 35 to 40 feet above 

 the creek. It is underlain by sand and gravel, and ten or fifteen feet below this cemented 

 stratum a large spring of very irony water issues, and is still forming a calcareous deposit, work- 

 ing in nearly the same way as the waters by whose agency the cementation of this gravel was ef- 



