Geological Survey Bulletin 611 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part A

The State of Minnesota has a gross area of 84,682 square miles, of which 3,824 square miles is covered with water. It was admitted to the Union in 1858, and its population according to the census of 1910 was 2,075,708. The earliest settlements were made along Mississippi River, which was then the main artery of commerce in this part of the country. From this valley the incoming people spread to other valleys and to the general upland between the principal streams. This was essentially an agricultural population, and it has covered all the southern and western parts of the State. The northeastern part was originally a land of swamps and heavy timber, not at all inviting to the man in search of a farm, and for this reason all of that part except a small area about the head of Lake Superior remained for a long time comparatively unknown.

While the agricultural lands of southern Minnesota were being converted into prosperous farms, the natural water power at the Falls of St. Anthony attracted the attention of millers, and great flour mills sprang up to grind the wheat that came pouring in from the surrounding region. At the same time the pine forest began to be utilized, and soon the great mills were denuding the country of its valuable timber.

The last great industry to develop was the mining of iron ore in the northern part of the State. Though the output of the mines is of less value than the products of either agriculture or manufacturing, it has probably brought the State into public notice to a greater degree than either of the others, for Minnesota is now the greatest producer of iron ore in the country, having in 1913 an output of nearly 39,000,000 long tons, out of a total for the entire country of 62,000,000 tons. The first iron mines in the State were opened in the Vermilion range¹ in 1884. The great Mesabi range was opened in 1892 and the Cuyuna range in 1911.

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¹The term range, as applied to a deposit of iron ore or to the ore and the rocks with which the ore is associated, is limited to the Lake Superior region. It doubtless resulted from the fact that in the first districts developed the rocks associated with the ore are hard and form ridges or low ranges. From these districts the term has been carried to the other deposits of iron ore in the region, until now they are all known as ranges, even if the surface is flat and swampy.

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The values of the products of the State are approximately as follows: Manufactures (1909), $409,000,000; agriculture (1909), $275,000,000; mining (1913), $70,000,000.

The locations of the centers of commerce and industry in this State, as in many others that were settled in the early days, were determined largely by the availability of water transportation. Thus St. Paul, which stands at the head of navigation on Mississippi River, and Duluth, which is at the upper end of Lake Superior, were the principal points. The use of Mississippi River as a commercial highway has gradually diminished, until to-day it has little or no effect on the commerce of the Northwest; but St. Paul and Minneapolis still continue to form a center for all the northern transcontinental railroads and also for those that connect central Canada with the United States. Lake Superior still holds its own as a water route for heavy freight—iron ore and grain going east and coal and manufactured articles going west—and the places at which most of this traffic concentrates are Duluth and Superior, at the extreme western point of the lake.

SHEET No. 1. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

On leaving the Union Station at St. Paul (see sheet 1, p. 20) the Northern Pacific Railway follows a small ravine almost due north for about 2 miles, gradually climbing from an altitude of 732 feet at the station to more than 900 feet at the highest point within the city limits. In passing over this part of the road the traveler unacquainted with glacial topography will have an opportunity to become familiar with some of its peculiarities—its knobs and basins composed of materials which the moving ice carried or pushed along and deposited near its margin.

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²The figures for population in this book are those of the United States Census of 1910. For unincorporated places the figures give the population of the election precinct, township, or like unit; such figures are marked with an asterisk (*).

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The region was at one time covered (as shown on the map of Minnesota on sheet 3, p. 32) by what is here called the middle ice sheet, which, as it came down from the north, brought into this region clay and fragments of red rock from the country north of Lake Superior. This body of ice extended southward beyond St. Paul and on melting left its load of reddish clay, sand, gravel, and bowlders, commonly known as drift, spread over the surface like a blanket. Later another large glacier, the western ice sheet, invaded Minnesota from the northwest and spread a mantle of gray drift over part of the area already covered by red drift. The boundary between these two drift sheets passes through St. Paul but is not a sharp line of separation.

When the front of the western ice sheet rested on the hills about St. Paul streams of water issued from the ice and carried with them vast quantities of sand and gravel, which they deposited beyond the ice front. One of these streams left the ice mass in the vicinity of Minneapolis and spread a great sheet of sand and gravel over the country upon which St. Paul has been built. It is mainly these outwash materials that can be seen from the Northern Pacific trains as they pass from St. Paul to Minneapolis. The gravel was deposited irregularly and now forms knobs that are separated by kettle-like depressions. Lake Como, on the right (north)¹ of the railway, lies in a basin of this character.

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¹The terms right and left refer to the westbound journey.

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Descending somewhat from the high land the railway crosses the gorge or canyon cut by Mississippi River in the Platteville limestone and St. Peter sandstone. These rocks were formerly well exposed here, but they have been obscured by the construction of mills and the slumping in of soil from the top of the bluffs. While crossing the river the traveler can see on the right what remains of the Falls of St. Anthony, after a large part of the water has been diverted for the development of power. Further erosion of the rock has been prevented by the building of a low dam at the crest of the fall, and about 35,000 horsepower has been generated for running the great flour mills that line the river bank for some distance.

On the left are the buildings of the University of Minnesota, which occupy a commanding position on the east side of the river. The rocks rise toward the north, as shown by figure 2 (p. 17), even more steeply than the grade of the stream, and the top of the St. Peter sandstone and the overlying Platteville limestone appear higher in the canyon wall than they do at Fort Snelling. Immediately after crossing the river the train enters the Union Station at Minneapolis, to receive other travelers bound for the far West.

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²The figures giving distance from St. Paul are taken from the Northern Pacific Railway folder of 1915.

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FIGURE 2.—Diagram showing northward rise of the rocks in the vicinity of Minneapolis, Minn.

North of Minneapolis the railway again crosses Mississippi River, but here there is no gorge, the river flowing in a shallow valley in the drift-covered plain. Just beyond Northtown, on the right (east), the St. Peter sandstone is visible for the last time. This outcrop lies at considerably higher level than any outcrop of the sandstone in the gorge below the Falls of St. Anthony, indicating that the beds of rock rise northward more steeply than the surface of the ground. As this northward rise continues up the Mississippi until the underlying granite is brought to the surface about St. Cloud it is probable that in the past the St. Peter sandstone and associated beds extended farther northward than at present. They were, however, worn away by the weather, the streams, and the ice, until now the railway passes over their beveled edges onto lower and lower formations toward the north, as shown by figure 2.

The Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways operate the line from Minneapolis to St. Cloud jointly. At Coon Creek a branch of the Great Northern turns nearly due north and joins a line of the same system from St. Cloud to Duluth. In this part of the valley the surface is composed largely of sand and gravel washed out from the glacier when its front lay a short distance to the northwest. The fine part of this material when dried was picked up by the west winds and carried over the country to the east, forming sand dunes which, with intervening marshes, still characterize this part of the country, as shown on the map.

The succession of events during the several invasions of this country by the ice and the various materials deposited by the ice sheets are described in the footnotes on pages 26-30.

For nearly 100 miles the railway follows the valley of the Mississippi, here a broad and flat depression much of which has the appearance of a level plain; but in places the low hills on both sides approach the river and the valley is confined by fairly definite bounding walls. About Anoka the floor of the valley consists of a gently undulating plain. The river has cut its channel but little below the general surface, and it seems to wander over the plain without plan or purpose, except to discharge its waters southward. The valley is well cultivated, and the glacial hills and wooded banks of the river are just sufficient to break the monotony of its even surface.

Although no rocks are exposed about Anoka, deep drilling for water has shown that the glacial drift there is about 80 feet thick and that the underlying rock is probably a part of the Dresbach sandstone. (See footnote on p. 9.) About Anoka flowing wells obtain water from this sandstone, and in the southeastern part of Anoka County millions of gallons are pumped from it daily to St. Paul for the city supply.

The route followed from Minneapolis through Dayton and beyond in historic association. The first white man to traverse it was Father Louis Hennepin, who in 1680 named the Falls of St. Anthony and St. Francis River. There is some doubt about the stream to which Hennepin applied the name St. Francis. Some think it was the stream now bearing that name; others think it was Rum River, which joins the Mississippi at Anoka. Hennepin traversed part of the Indian trail to Lake Superior, which is generally supposed to have passed by a portage from St. Francis River to Mille Lacs, thereby saving greatly in distance over the route up Rum River.

At the village of Elk River the stream visible from the train is Elk River, and this is in sight for several miles west of the station. St. Francis River enters Elk River nearly due north of Big Lake station, but can not be seen from the railway. At the town of Elk River a branch of the Great Northern turns to the right (north) and joins the St. Cloud-Duluth line at the town of Milaca.

The second white man to traverse this part of the valley was Jonathan Carver, who visited the region in 1766 in order to claim it for the British sovereign. Carver ascended the Mississippi as far as St. Francis River in an endeavor to reach the Pacific coast, but owing to lack of supplies he was obliged to abandon the expedition and return to the East. Of the American pioneers, Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, for whom Pikes Peak was subsequently named, was the first to visit the newly acquired territory in his search for the source of Mississippi River in 1805. An account of his journey will be found in the footnote on page 20.

Later the route up the Mississippi from Fort Snelling to Sauk Rapids became widely known as a part of the Red River trail. Over this trail several exploring expeditions went into the Big Lake. Northwest, but probably the most important, at least so far as its influence on the location and building of Northern Pacific Railroad was concerned, was the party of Government engineers under the leadership of Gov. I. I. Stevens, which made the first surveys for a Pacific railroad in 1853. This expedition followed the Red River trail by the sites of Big Lake, Becker, and Clear Lake to Sauk Rapids, and thence westward to Bois des Sioux River, which it crossed just below the outlet of Traverse Lake. Although the country traversed by this expedition in Minnesota and a part of North Dakota was well known, even at that early date, its route farther west lay in large part over virgin territory, and the results of its explorations have been of great value in the subsequent development of the region. The engineers of this expedition explored most of the prominent passes through the Rocky Mountains in Montana and the Cascade Mountains in Washington, and practically outlined the route that was followed by the Northern Pacific engineers some 20 years later.

In the vicinity of the village of Clear Lake the railway passes from the gray drift that was brought into this region by the western ice sheet from the Red River valley to the red drift of the middle ice sheet. The exact point of change from one of these drift sheets to the other can not be determined from the train, but close observation will show that there are more fragments of red rock in the drift north of Clear Lake than there are in the drift south of that place.

Although the glacial drift covers this country so completely that the hard rocks are hidden from view, deep drilling for water has shown that all the sedimentary rocks¹ underlying the drift in the country farther south have been eroded from this region and that nothing is left but the granitic rocks which are supposed to form the basement or foundation of this part of the continent. Fortunately these rocks are exposed at several places along the line, so that the traveler may see them and realize how different they are from the stratified sandstone and limestone that show at the surface in the vicinity of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

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¹Sedimentary rocks are those that were laid down as sediments, either in lakes or in the sea. They were deposited layer upon layer, and these layers show to-day in what is known as the bedding or stratification of the rocks. Where the material deposited was very fine and was supplied in small amounts and intermittently the layers are very thin, in some places as thin as paper; but where the material deposited was coarse and was supplied in great abundance, or where it was of such character that it did not form distinct layers, the beds may be very thick or even massive—that is, they may show no bedding planes.

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After passing milepost 71, beyond Cable, the train runs close to the State reformatory, which stands to the left of the railway. The walls and buildings of this institution are constructed of blue-gray granite quarried on the premises. The granite is an excellent building stone, being durable and of pleasing appearance, and beyond the reformatory it is quarried commercially. The stone can be obtained in fairly large blocks, and it has been used extensively in St. Paul and Minneapolis and shipped to different parts of the country.² A large amount of it was used in the new State capitol. The granite is hard and resistant, forming the rapids in the river and the rough topography that marks the valley for some distance.

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²The quarrying of granite for buildings and monuments is an old and well-established industry in this part of the State. The first quarry was opened at East St. Cloud in 1868. Since that time numerous quarries have been developed at East St. Cloud, Sauk Rapids, and Watab, on the east side of the river, and at St. Cloud and Rockville, on the west side. The quarries in this vicinity produce both red and gray granites of varying degrees of coarseness, ranging from fine gray granite suitable for monuments to coarse red and gray granites that can be used only as building stone. In 1913 the granite quarried in Stearns, Benton, and Sherburne counties, with St. Cloud as a center, was valued at about $850,000.

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