BIG STONE AND LAC QUI PARLE COUNTIES. 



Lime. Bricks. Mounds. J 



side of Prior, burning about 300 barrels of lime yearly, which is sold for $1.25 per barrel; E. T. 

 Hanes, in section 5, at the south side of Prior, burning some 150 barrels yearly, selling at SI per 

 barrel; Jacob Hurley, in section 19, Big Stone, producing 150 barrels yearly since 1870, selling for 

 $1.25 per barrel at the kiln; and Alfred Knowlton, in section 5, Ortonville, a mile north from the 

 town, producing annually 300 to 500 barrels of lime, vhich is sold for $1.25 per barrel, used in 

 Ortonville and Big Stone City. About a tenth or twentieth part of these boulders yield yellowish 

 or cream-colored lime, while the remainder make lime of snow-like whiteness. In Lac qui Parle 

 county lime is burned in similar small amount from boulders by Mr. Peterson, in the north part 

 of Hantho; by Ole Gunderson, one and a half miles northeast from Lac qui Parle village, selling 

 at $1.25 per barrel; and by Henry Johnson and Andrew Amarude, in Camp Release township. 



Brick-making has not been undertaken in Big Stone or Lac qui Parle counties; but at Big 

 Stone City, in the edge of Dakota, this business was begun in 1879 by Tobias Oehler, who made 

 240,000 that year and about 800,000 in 1880, selling at $10 per thousand. These are light red 

 bricks, of good quality. Tlie deposit from which they are made lies upon the general surface of 

 the drift-sheet, about a hundred feet above Big Stone lake and the Minnesota river. After strip- 

 ping off the black soil, the next three feet, consisting of yellow clay free from gravel, is used, 

 mixed with one-fourth as much sand. This clay extends lower, but is there somewhat gravelly. 

 It is said to cover several acres, and is apparently a bed of modified drift, formed when the last 

 ice-sheet retired. 



ABORIGINAL EARTHWORKS. 



At Big Stone City two aboriginal mounds of the usual circular form, each having a hight 

 of about six feet, were noticed upon the verge of the bluff of the Minnesota valley a quarter of 

 a mile north of the Whetstone river. Their distance apart from north to south was about six 

 rods. Two or three other mounds, of similar size, are seen also on the top of the bluff near its 

 edge, three-quarters of a mile south from these. 



In Lac qui Parle township, four mounds occur similarly on the verge of the bluff at the 

 southwest side of the Minnesota valley, about a quarter of a mile east of the Lac qui Parle river, 

 and one and a half miles northeasterly from the village of this name. These mounds lie in a nearly 

 straight line, extending about twenty rods from northwest to southeast, parallel with the edge 

 of the bluff and only three or four rods from it. The most northwestern mound here is seven 

 feet high, and the others five to three feet in hight, decreasing toward the southeast; but they 

 cover nearly equal areas, each being about fifty feet in diameter. 



