Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/27

 lllsroUY OF G00DH1 I. COUNT'S 3 five hundred feet above the adjoining valleys. The transition v between these extremes is gradual, and is due to a variety of causes. Some of the deep valleys of the northeastern part of the county penetrate, in their uppermosl sources, far within the flat and monotonous areas of the county. Such are the valleys of the Little Cannon and of Belle Creek. The north fork of the Zumbro, which entirely crosses the county from west to east, in its southern portion, introduces an agreeable diversity of surface westward from Zumbrota, which otherwise would be one of mere open and nearly Level prairie. The north middle fork has the same effeel near the southern border of the county, about six miles further south. The townships of Tine Island. Roscoe, Cherry Grove, Keiiyon. the central portion of Holden, the northern half of Wanamingo and Minneola, and much of the area of Warsaw, Leon and Belle Creek, also some of Vasa, Peatherston and Good- hue, are included in this higher portion of undulating prairie. The uplands of the most elevated portions of the county are from 1,150 to 1,250 feet above the sea. The streams in those portions are but little below thai area. They gradually work to lower and lower levels, becoming larger by springs and territories, until they reach the level of Lake Pepin, which is 662 feet above the sea. At the same time the uplands that immediately adjoin these streams, even The Mississippi valley itself, do not partake of this gradual slope toward the Mississippi. The Mississippi bluffs are from 1,000 to 1,100 feet above the sea. or only about 150 feet lower than the average elevation in the southwestern part of the county. In Stanton, Cannon Falls and Vasa, rounded or elongated knobs and ridges rise abruptly from the plains to tic height of about one hundred and fifty feet, and to a ceil a in extent the same features may be seen in Welch, Burnsicle, Red Wing, Featherston, Hay Creek and Florence. But in the latter town- ships the knolls are larger and higher. In those vastly remote ages, so remote that the passage of time since then can only be vaguely estimated and expressed in terms of thousands of years, when nature, by the exertion of her forces, was preparing the earth for the habitation of humankind, occurred a period known as the glacial epoch, by reason that a large part of the earth was covered with vast fields of solid ice,. many hundreds of feet deep. With the melting of this ice were formed vast seas and streams in which floated huge icebergs, composed both of stone and ice, which plowed out the valleys which are now dry land, and wrote their evidences in scratches upon the rocks, and gradually melting, left various deposits of mud and gravel in the turbulent waters. On the shrinkage of the high waters of the glacial epoch, numerous streams were dried.