Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/28

 4 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY old channels were abandoned, and the hastening currents made deeper cuts in the gravel and loam, which they themselves had previously deposited there. The location of these old streams, some of which were dried up, or changed their courses thousands of years ago, forms an interesting subject for conjecture. Colonel "William Colvill during his lifetime, after long study, suggested the course of some of these old streams in the following words: "Hay creek, going upstream, carried one of these currents. The Trout brook, whose branches came down through those mag- nificent gorges, now followed by the roads leading up to Feath- erston, came at the old tannery, on to the ground now held by Hay creek. The bluffs below the tannery, on that side, are a con- tinuation of the Trout brook bluffs, and beyond the range of Hay creek at any time. At the then mouth of Trout brook, on the river, struck in the current, and soon broke across the narrow and low divide, into Hay creek, followed aloug its valley to the mill, Section 12, Featherston, near its then head, and broke over into the wide and deep valley which there comes down from Featherstone — pointing directly to the great bend of Hay creek. This bend was then a part of the main valley of "Wells creek, and the current then flowed down that, now dry, valley to AVells creek mill, on the present stream. With what eloquent tongues do the acrid cliffs and isolated peaks of that old dry valley speak. They seem to echo the thundering floods which in those days bat- tered their faces, and, like the gigantic bones of an old creation, to tell us the history of the past." Colonel Colvill conjectured, further, that the water of AVells creek was not then able to reach the Mississippi freely, but passed through some of the valleys now tributatory to it, south- ward into some of those that are tributatory to the Zumbro, mainly through, the valley of Skillman's brook, uniting with the Zumbro at Mazeppa. The disproportion between the size of the Zumbro valley and the drainage area which it now serves has been noted by geologists, and this hypothesis serves to account, possibly, for this irregularity. There is still observable by one passing southwesterly, a perceptible valley, running southeast- wardly, outlined on the west by the Trenton bluffs all the way from northeastern Vasa 4o southwestern Zumbrota. Another probable water course which is now abandoned was from Cannon Falls, northeastwardly. The observer is struck with the narrowness of the Cannon valley at once on passing Cannon Falls, as compared with the width of the low, flat valley, lying next north. It is probable that much of the water of the Cannon, in glacial times, passed north of the bluffs that lie next north of the village. Some of it re-entered the Cannon valley again about at the mouth of Belle creek, by way of Trout brook,