Page:History of Stearns County, Minnesota; volume 1.pdf/25

 miles; and its width is from twenty-five to thirty-four miles. Its area is 1,330.07 square miles, of 851,241.36 acres, of which 37,021.27 acres are covered by water.

Natural Drainage. This county is drained to the Mississippi river by the following tributaries, arranged in their order from north to south; the south branch of Two Rivers, Spunk brook, Watab river, Sauk river, St. Augusta creek, Clearwater river, and Crow river. THe largest of these is the Sauk river, whose basin includes about half of this county, its principal affluents being Adley and Getchell creeks from the north, and Silver, Ashley, Stony, Cole and Mill creeks from the south. The North branch of Crow river drains the southwest part of the county.

Lakes. Eighty lakes equaling or exceeding a half mile in length appear on the map, and about a hundred and twenty-five of smaller size. The most noteworthy are Sauk lake, crossed by the north line of Sauk Centre; Birch Bark Fort lake, on the north line of Millwood; Two River lake, in the southwest corner of Holding; the Spunk lakes in Avon; Cedar or Big Fish lake in Collegeville; Lake George, Crow lake, Lake Henry and Eden lake which give names to townships; Lake Koronis in the south part of Paynesville; Grand lake in Rockville; Pearl lake in Maine prairie; and Clearwater lake, through which the Clearwater river flows a few miles east of Fair Haven.

Topography. Though Stearns county contains numerous rock-outcrops, these rarely form conspicuous elevations, and the contour is due almost wholly to the overlying deposits of glacial and modified drift. Glacial drift or till is spread with a moderately undulating or rolling surface on the area between the Sauk river and the north branch of the Crow river northwest from Richmond and Paynesville. Its elevations here are 10 to 30 or 40 feet above the lakes and small streams; but its general height above the rivers on each side is 75 to 100 feet southeastward, decreasing to 40 or 50 feet in the west part of the county. Its most rolling portion extends from west to east through Baymond, Getty and Grove townships. With this area should be included also the undulating and rolling till, having similar contour and average height, on the northeast side of the Sauk river in St. Martin, the western two-thirds of Farming, Albany, except its eastern edge, the southwest part of Krain, and the southern half of Millwood and Melrose. The greater part of North Fork, Crow Lake and Crow River townships, southwest rom the North branch of the Crow river, are nearly level or only slightly undulating gravel and sand of the modified drift, 10 to 20 feet above the lakes, sloughs and watercourses; but sections 31 to 34 on the southern border of Crow lake are chiefly kame-like knolls and ridges of gravel and sand 25 to 50 or 75 feet high. The remainder of this county is greatly diversified with partly undulating and partly knolly and hilly till, the latter being morainie accumulations, which on some areas have a very irregularly broken surface, though not rising to much height, while elsewhere they form hills from 50 to 200 feet high.

Morainic hills, about 100 feet above the adjoining modified drift or 150 above the Mississippi river, occur one to three miles south-southwest of St. Cloud and a mile west of the river. In the southeast part of St. Joseph, about file miles farther west, a series of morainic deposits begins west of 