PLATE XLVIII. 



DOUGLAS AND POPE COUNTIES, 1888. WARREN UPHAM. 



These counties do not afford a single known outcrop of the underlying rock. 

 There is no reason to doubt, however, that the formations of Stearns and Todd 

 counties, the Archean and the Cretaceous, extend westward under these counties. 



The drift features are therefore the only geological phenomena that need be 

 mentioned. An extensive morainic belt runs north and south through these counties. 

 It is about twelve miles wide. On the west this rolling belt is bounded by the nearly 

 level till expanse of Grant and Stevens counties, which slopes gently toward the 

 Red River of the North or to the valley of the Minnesota. On the east of this rolling 

 tract are gravel plains which extend into Stearns and Todd counties. In the midst 

 of these gravel plains are considerable areas of more nearly flat surface composed 

 apparently of till, and others also in which the morainic features of the main 

 morainic belt extend eastward. 



Crossing this morainic belt from the region of the Leaf hills, in Otter Tail 

 county, is a remarkable narrow series of more pronounced drift ridges which need 

 special mention. This series first runs southwestward through Douglas county, then 

 southeastward through Pope, entering Kandiyohi county, where it turns east and is 

 apparently joined north of Green lake by another range which runs northeast. It 

 then seems to fade away in the general gravelly plain which extends from Kandiyohi 

 county into Stearns county, from which an ancient water-course is traceable entirely 

 across Stearns county in a northeasterly direction to St. Cloud, uniting there with 

 the high gravel plain which forms the highest gravel flat of the Mississippi. 



This series of gravelly hills and ridges has received different interpretations. 

 By Mr. Upham, who is more familiar with it than any other person, it is considered 

 a special morainic ridge or series of ridges, formed by ice moving outwardly from 

 the general glacier that occupied the Red River valley. There is, however, some 

 reason to consider it a monstrous kame, or series of kames, formed by a great river 

 which, at its source, was constantly in the ice field and received the drift which it 

 washed, directly from the ice. As the ice retreated the source retreated, but the 

 course of the river, once established by the removal of a large amount of the drift, occu- 

 pied the same position in its lower reaches as was determined by the drainage while 

 the ice was present. The lower part of this water-course was therefore the oldest 

 and was modified by the incidents of the river during the floods that were later. 

 Whereas, the gravel near its source was laid down in kames, in the lower reaches its 

 gravel was spread over alluvial plains and buried or obliterated the original kames; 



