Page:History of Stearns County, Minnesota; volume 1.pdf/28

 of sections 10 and 11, Wakefield, to a plain which occupies the southeast part of section 10, and all of section 11, and the northwest part of section 12, elevated 90 feet above the river. This tract, consisting of sand and coarse gravel, often with a foot or two of clay next to the soil, reaches northeast through the south part of section 1, Wakefield, and section 6, Rockville, and thence north two miles, with a width varying from a sixth to a third of a mile, to the Watab river in the N. E. ¼ of section 30, St. Joseph. Onward it has a width of about a half a mile along the Watab river for three miles northeast to near St. Joseph village, where it expands into the plain that stretches east to St. Cloud. Between Cold Spring and St. Joseph this modified drift, marking a former water-course, is bounded on each side by morainie till 40 to 60 feet higher. Its descent in these eight miles is about 75 feet, and the plain of similar modified drift between St. Joseph and St. Cloud, also eight miles, descends 50 feet, making the whole slope in sixteen miles approximately 125 feet, or an average of nearly eight feet per mile.

Altitudes. The highest land in Stearns county is in its northwest part, where portions of Millwood, Melrose, Sauk Centre, Ashley, Getty and Baymond are 1,350 to 1,400 feet above the sea-level. The tops of some of the morainic hills in Farming, northeastern Munson, and the southeast corner of Wakefield, are about 1,350 feet above the sea, being 150 to 250 feet above adjoining areas. The lowest land in the county is the shore of the Mississippi river at Clearwater, 938 feet above the sea.

Estimates of the average heights of the townships are as follows: Brockway. 1,125 feet; Le Sauk, 1,060; St. Cloud, 1,060; St. Augusta, 1,040; Lynden, 1,020; Fair Haven, 1,100; St. Wendel, 1,120; St. Joseph, 1,100; Rockville, 1,120; Maine Prairie, 1,140; Holding, 1,140; Avon, 1,150; Collegeville, 1,175; Wakefield, 1,160; Luxemburg, 1,180; Krain, 1,225; Albany, 1,210; Farming, 1200; Munson, 1,175; Eden Lake, 1,180; Millwood, 1,275; Oak, 1210; St. Martin, 1,180; Zion, 1,210; Paynesville, 1,175; Melrose, 1,275; Grove, 1,240; Spring Hill 1,240; Lake Henry, 1,260; Sauk Centre, 1,280; Getty, 1,320; Lake George, 1,300; Crow River, 1,225; Ashley, 1,340; Raymond, 1,340; North Fork, 1,270, and Crow Lake, 1,240. The mean elevation of Stearns county, derived from these figures, is 1,195 feet above the sea.

Soil and Timber. The black soil is generally one to two feet deep throughout this county. It is the surface of the glacial or modified drift enriched and blackened by the decay of vegetation during many centuries. The subsoil for the greater part is the pebbly and stony clay called till; but considerable tracts along the Mississippi, Clearwater and Sauk rivers, and southwest of the North branch of Crow river, as also the northeast part of Maine Prairie township and adjoining portions of St. Augusta and Rockville, have a subsoil of gravel and sand. Wheat, oats, barley, rye, corn, sorghum, potatoes, other garden vegetables, live stock, and milk, butter and cheese, are the chief agricultural products. Nineteen-twentieths of this county are probably fitted for cultivation, the exceptions being frequent sloughs, which yield good hay, the bluffs along creeks and rivers, and roughly knolly or hilly and stony portions of the morainie belts, which are valuable for pasturage.

About a third of Stearns county is prairie, including most of the area 