TIIK INTERSTATK PARK', TAYLORS FA U.S. ^fT!5NES0TA SI 



Honorable George H. Hazzard, the Minnesota conimmissioner of the 

 Interstate park, has partially cleared and sounded a very deep pothole 

 situated 15 rods north-northeast of the wharf and about 5 rods east of 

 the road (called Trap Rock street on the plat of Taylors Falls). The 

 diameter of the mouth of this hole, not exactly circular, is 13 by 15 feet. 

 Beneath several feet of water it was found filled to 15 feet l)elow its 

 mouth b}' i)eat and decaying leaves, branches, and trunks of small 

 trees, but with no sand or gravel. By bailing out the water and exca- 

 vating, the workmen went to the depth of 55 feet below the mouth, find- 

 ing the diameter of the hole undiminished to that depth, its average 

 being from 10 to 15 feet, with vertical cylindric form. A pole was then 

 thrust 10 feet farther down, to a total depth of 65 feet, without reach- 

 ing any grinding stones such as are almost invariably present at the 

 bottom of these holes. The mouth being about 40 feet above the river, 

 the bottom of this giants' kettle is thus ascertained to be more than 25 

 feet beneath the river level. The ratio of its diameter to its depth (so 

 far as that has been probed) is as 1 to 5, showing thus a similarity with 

 the deep cylindric giants' kettles near Christiania, Norway, but having 

 a depth that exceeds them or any others known elsewhere. 



It is exceeded, however, by its very close neighbor on the west, an- 

 other pothole 25 feet distant, which has a diameter of 10 by 12 feet. 

 This hole, filled by water to about 15 feet below its top, was sounded 

 in the year 1878 by Dr Greeley Murdock, who since 1877 has been the 

 principal resident physician of Taylors Falls. He found no bottom at 

 the depth of 84 feet below the top of the rock at its mouth. It was an 

 amusement of boys to thrust down tamarack poles 30 feet long into the 

 water of this pothole, and it has now become partly filled with these 

 poles and with driftwood, leaves, etcetera, that have been washed into 

 it from a little marsh, a watercourse in times of river floods, adjoining 

 it on the north and west. The mouth of this hole is mostly about 35 

 feet above the river, but its northeastern third falls off 8 or 10 feet — 

 nearly to the marsh level. On the west the higher part of the mouth 

 or rim is divided by only 5 or 6 feet of rock from a vertical descent of 

 12 feet of rock face or cliff bordering the marsh. It will be noticed 

 that the ratio of the diameter to the known depth of this pothole is 1 to 

 7, but its entire depth has yet to be determined. It is known to extend 

 about 50 feet beneath the surface of the river, which itself, near the angle 

 of these Upper Dalles, is stated by Dr C. P. Berkey to be 160 feet deep.''' 



At a distance of about 40 to 70 feet northeast of " the caldron," the 

 southern side of a rock knob is smoothly waterworn in two half cylin- 



*Am. Geologist, vol. 20, p. 379, December, 1897. 



