Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/31

IMSTOUY OF GOODHUE C01 TY 7 any other deciduous tree. Large Tooth Poplar — Bark darker. Colored leaves with large teeth. Less common than common pop- lar. The wood is harder and more valuable for fuel. Cotton- wood — Largely used as a shade tree. A rapid grower. White Pine — Found in several places along the banks of rivers and small streams, but now largely cut off. Bed Cedar — A beautiful tree found in small quantities along the banks of streams. To do justice to the detailed description of the geological structure of the county would be to use more space than the lim- its of this volume would justify. The thoughtful reader will find much valuable information on this subject in the second volume of a publication entitled "The Geology of Minnesota," dated 1885, edited by X. IT. Winehell. upon whose statements much of the information in this chapter is based. The first deep well drilled in the county is at the station of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, beginning at the grade line of the road, 687 feet above the sea. Tin 1 work was done by W. E. Swan, of McGregor, la., who estimated the discharge at 800 gallons per minute. The water could rise seventy-five feet above the surface when confined in a pipe. The water began to flow at 190 feet from the surface, and kept on increasing to the end. Another deep well situated about eighty rods west of the Milwaukee station, three rods south of the track and thirty feet above it, spouted three hundred barrels per day, rising thirty feet above the surface. This well passed through 160 feet of drift materials and entered the sandstone one hundred feet. Following is the record of the well at the Milwaukee depot, as given by Mr. Swan: Sand and gravel. 40 feet; sandy shale, 10 feet ; blue shale, 50 feet ; sand rock, 10 feet ; blue shale, 30 feet ; mixture of sand, quartz and limestone, 45 feet; soft sandrock, 265 feet. Total depth, 450 feet. In the early part of 1887 August Peterson obtained another artesian flow at the extreme northwest corner of section 26, township 113. range 15, in the valley of Spring creek. The surface of the ground where this well begins is about fifty feet higher than at the well above mentioned, and the water rises freely through a pipe that stands twenty feet above the surface. On striking the yellow, green and brown sandrock. the water rose to within twenty-five feet of the surface, and increased constantly in volume and force as the well went deeper. The bottom of this well is 146 feet short of the bottom of the well at the depot. The water is soft and pure. The record of this well was taken by the late Colonel William Colvill as follows: Sand and gravel, 112 feet; compact sandrock, 4 feet; blue sand- rock, 30 feet; green slaty shale, 90 feet; yellow, green and In-own sandrock. 15 feet: white sandrock. 104 feet: total depth, 355