Page:History of Stearns County, Minnesota; volume 1.pdf/27

 elevations of this tract is Cheney hill, about 100 feet high, in the north part of section 1, Melrose. This moraine continues northward in Todd county.

Morainie till also extends from the Sauk river in the northwest part of Rockville northward through the west half of Saint Joseph, the east edge of Collegeville, and southeastern Avon; it occupies the southern third of St. Wendel, west from the Watab river; and continues northeast in a belt one or two miles wide from sections 17, 18, and 19, St. Wendel, to near the center of Brockway, and thence north to the county line at the east side of Spunk brook. The elevations in these townships are 50 to 100 feet, or rarely more, above the adjoining land; in northwestern Rockville they rise about 150 feet above the Sauk river, and in northern Brockway their height is fully 200 feet above the Mississippi. Nearly all of Holding township, northeastern Krain, the greater part of Brockway and Le Sauk, and much of the northern two-thirds of St. Wendel and Avon, are moderately undulating till.

Level gravel and sand of the modified drift forms a belt a half mile to one and a half miles wide along the Mississippi river through Brockway and the north part of Le Sauk. Its broad southern portion, some three miles long, is the Winnebago prairie, about 40 feet above the river, but in the north part of Brockway its height is 50 or 60 feet. Moderately undulating till borders the west side of the Mississippi from the mouth of the Watab river to St. Cloud, soon ascending 40 to 60 feet, and thence maintaining the height westward. From St. Cloud to Clearwater the Mississippi is again bordered by a plain of modified drift, which increases in this distance from a half mile to two or three miles in width and from 50 to 75 feet in height above the river.

Along the Sauk river modified drift occupies a width that varies from a half mile to two miles through Sauk Centre, Melrose, Grove and Oak townships. It is mostly flat, and from 25 to 40 feet above the river; but one to two miles south from Sauk Centre, on the west side, it is partly in kame-like knolls and partly in massive swells, 15 to 40 feet above the hollows and 40 to 60 feet above the river. The plain of modified drift at Richmond and in the west part of Wakefield has a height of about 30 feet. East of this the Sauk river is bordered by morainic till for a short distance about one mile west of Cold Spring, as also again through nearly three miles, beginning one and a half miles east of Cold Spring and extending to Rockville.

A very remarkable belt of modified drift reaches from the Sauk river at Cold Spring northeast and north to the Watab river in section 30, St. Joseph, and continues thence northeasterly along this stream to the extensive plain of modified drift in the northeast quarter of St. Joseph and the northern third of St. Cloud. The village of Cold Spring is on valley drift about 20 feet above the river, and some portions of the alluvial bottoms bordering the river are only 5 or 10 feet above it, being subject to annual overflow. Next north and west of the village is a terrace of modified drift nearly three miles long and one-fourth to three-fourths of a mile wide, about 50 feet above the river, probably formed at the same date with the Richmond plain and the modified drift in Paynesville and westward along the southwest side of the North branch of Crow river. A mile north from Cold Spring there is a further ascent of 40 feet along an escarpment coinciding nearly with the south line 