Page:History of Stearns County, Minnesota; volume 1.pdf/26

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4
HISTORY OF STEARNS COUNTY

Mud lake, and extends thence along the southeast side of Sauk river to Rockville and Cold Spring. Northeast of Rockville it is separated from the Sauk river by a tract of nearly level modified drift averaging a half mile wide and about 25 feet above the river; and the width of this part of the moraine is about one mile, with elevations 50 to 75 feet above the adjoining country. Between Rockville and Cold Spring morainic till borders the Sauk river and occupies a width of three miles to the south, rising in hills 100 to 200 feet above the intervening hollows, attaining the greatest elevation, nearly 300 feet above the river, in section 36, Wakefield, and section 31, Rockville. Thence a low morainic belt reaches south through sections 6 and 7, Maine Prairie, and 13, 24 and 25, Luxemburg; next it extends east through Maine Prairie, forming conspicuous hills, about 150 feet high, in section 27; and from a point halfway between Maine Prairie and Fair Haven it turns northeastward, continuing through the north part of Fair Haven and into the southeast quarter of St. Augusta. In the latter portion its elevations are 50 to 75 feet above the plain of modified drift, six miles wide, which occupies the northeast part of Maine Prairie and reaches thence northward in a continuous belt, nowhere less than a mile wide, through the west part of St. Augusta and St. Cloud to the Mississippi river. On the east it is separated from the Clearwater and Mississippi rivers by flat or moderately undulating modified drift one to two miles wide in Fair Haven and Lynden.

West from the high morainic hills in the southeast corner of Wakefield, a roughly broken belt of morainic till extends through the south edge of Wakefield and Munson and the north edge of Luxemburg and Eden Lake, thence southwest diagonally across Paynesville, and averaging one and one-half miles in width, with elevations 50 to 75 feet above the hollows and 75 to 125 feet above the Sauk river, the North branch of the Crow river, and Lake Koronis. South of this moraine, most of Luxemburg and Eden lake, with the southeast edge of Paynesville are moderately undulating or rolling till; and on its northwest side a belt of nearly leve modified drift, two miles wide and about 25 feet above the North branch of Crow river, extends from Roseville in Kandiyohi county northeast by the village of Paynesville to the head of Cole creek in sections 34 and 35, Zion.

North of the Sauk river, hills of morainic till, 100 to 250 feet high, extend northwest from a point one mile west of Cold Spring, throuhg sections 21, 16, 17, 18, 7 and 8, Wakefield, and 12, 11, 2 and 3, Munson. They are very conspicuously seen from Richmond on the plain of modified drift one to two miles wide and five miles long, which lies southwest of this moraine between it and the Sauk river. Near the north line of Munson the moraine changes its course to the north-northeast, and passes through the east part of Farming and northwestern Collegeville to the Spunk lakes, forming a roughly hilly belt two or three miles wide, with elevations 100 to 150 feet above the smoothly undulating or rolling till on each side. Thence it continues north through the west part of Avon to Two River lake, consisting of hills and ridges 40 to 100 feet high, and northwesterly through Krain in a low knolly belt. Farther west, till with typically morainic contour extends from Birch Bark Fort lake through the north half of Melrose to Sauk lake. One of the more prominent