630 THE GEOLOGY OF MINNESOTA. 



[Wells. Water-powers. Stone. 



18, requiring to be picked, but containing streaks of sand; harder blue till, 4; water rose eleven 

 feet from gravel at the bottom. 



William Glage; sec. 18, T. 12O. R. 4tt: well, 60 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, 30; softer blue till, 

 28; water seeps from the lower part of the blue till. 



D. A. Murray; sec. 30, T. 12O, R. 45: well, 28 feet; soil, 3; yellow till, containing only 

 very little gravel or other rock-fragments, 22; bluish sand, 3 feet, with water, which does not 

 rise; gravel lies next below. 



Mehurin. R. Kinmore; sec. 2: well, 33 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, spaded, 21; sand and silt, 

 not caving in, 10; with coarser layers of sand and gravel containing water at the bottom, from 

 which it rose only one foot. 



G. J. Hardy; sec. 4: well, 30 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, picked, 20; gravel, 2; dark bluish clay, 

 probably till, 6 feet, to a boulder a foot or more in diameter, which stopped the boring. Bitter- 

 ish water comes from the gravel between the yellow till and blue clay. 



Freeland. C. B. Ford; sec. 10: well, 20 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, 8; dark bluish hardpan, 

 very dry and hard in digging, but becoming quicksand when mixed with water, 2 ; blue till, 8 ; 

 water in twenty minutes rose five feet from quicksand at the bottom. Both these tills required 

 to be picked, The wells of this township vary from 15 to 25 feet in depth, and are all in till. 



Riverside. J. B. Sumner; sec. 34: well, 26 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, spaded, 10; sand, 1; blue 

 till, picked, 8; dark gravelly hardpan [also till], much harder than the last, 5; water of excellent 

 quality rose three feet from sand at the bottom. 



Lac qui Parle. J. H. Brown; hotel in village: well, 74 feet; yellow till, 25; very hard blue 

 till, 49 ; the only water found seeps from the lower part of the yellow till. A piece of wood, 

 splintered, sixteen inches long and three inches wide, was found in this till at the depth of 52 

 feet. 



W. M. Mills; N. E. Jof sec. 30: well, 31 feet; soil, 2; clayey silt, 8; yellow till, spaded, 7; 

 sand, 6 inches; the only water found in this well, a scanty supply, is from this sand; blue till, 

 very hard, picked, 14 feet, including thin layers of dry sand. The upper ten feet contained 

 numerous bivalve shells. The blue lower till in this region is reported to be generally twice as 

 hard and compact as the yellow upper till. 



MATERIAL RESOURCES. 



Agriculture must evidently be always the chief industry and source of 

 wealth in this district, attended, in villages and towns, by needed branches 

 of trade and manufactures. 



Water-powers are available but have not yet been utilized in these counties. Sufficient fall 

 occurs on the Minnesota river two to five miles below Big Stone lake, and at other points; and 

 this lake may serve as a reservoir, to be raised at least two or three feet by a dam, for use at 

 times of drought. The Lac qui Parle river has a valuable water-power on land of W. M. Mills, at 

 the east side of section 30, Lac qui Parle, two and a half miles west of the village. Mr. Mills 

 states that by excavating a tunnel here for a canal ten rods in length, through a ridge of drift at 

 the neck of a loop of the river, a fall of 24 feet might be obtained, the descent of the stream in 

 this loop, two miles long, being 14 feet, to which 10 feet more may be added by a dam. 



Building stone is usually attainable in the amount required by farmers, for foundations and 

 the walls of cellars and wells, from the granitic and limestone boulders of the drift, though they 

 are seldom so numerous as to be objectionable in the cultivation of the land. The outcrops of 

 granite in the Minnesota valley may be advantageously worked to supply such masonry and for 

 buildings; but they have not yet been quarried, except that some rough stone, used at Ortonville, 

 has been taken from their surface, and from a railroad cut, about one and a half miles southeast 

 of this town. 



Lime is burned by several farmers on the northeast shore of Big Stone lake, from dolomyte 

 boulders of the drift, the fuel being obtained from the border of the lake. These lime-burners, 

 in their order from northwest to southeast, are Amund Ericson, in section 23, Brown's Valley, one 

 and a half miles southeast from the head of the lake; W. H. Bowman, in section 18, at the west 



