The scarcity of limestone in the gravel along this old water-course indicates that the glacial melting was then progressing most rapidly on its north side. At the somewhat later date of the Waconia moraine, the angle of confluence of the ice from the west and northwest with that from the northeast and north seems to have been at Glenwood in Pope county. The glacial floods which there poured down from the converging ice-slopes and thence flowed southeast along the present course of the north branch of the Crow river to Paynesville and then east-northeast to the Sauk valley at Richmond, eroded a broad channel into the till of southwestern Stearns county. The northeast limit of this erosion is the bluff of till 40 to 100 feet high, which rises close on the northeast side of this river from North Fork to Paynesville, a distance of twenty miles. From these floods were deposited the extensive beds of modified drift which reach from eastern Pope county through the southwest part of Stearns and the northeast of Kandiyohi county to Paynesville and Richmond.
When the ice-sheet again retreated, to the line of the seventh or Dovre moraine, its western lobe was withdrawn from this county, but the ice-fields flowing from the north appear to have extended to the moraine in Brockway, the northwest part of St. Wendel, Avon, northeastern Albany, Krain, northern Millwood and Melrose, and the northeast corner of Sauk Centre. At this time, also, the modified drift along the upper part of the Sauk river and on the Mississippi in Le Sauk and Brockway was deposited.
Boulders are frequent or often abundant in the morainic accumulations of till; but in the smooth, undulating deposits of till they are usually so few that they give no trouble in the cultivation of the land. Numerous pieces of sandstone, up to one or two feet in size, like that outcropping at Hinckley, in Pine county, were noticed in Le Sauk and in Sauk Rapids on the opposite side of the Mississippi.
Material Resources. The agricultural capabilities of this county, and its good supply of timber have already been noticed; also the occurrence of thin seams of lignite in the Cretaceous strata near Richmond, and the futile explorations for it in workable quantity. Water-powers have been utilized to a considerable extent. Quarrying is a most important industry. The boulders from the drift are used by the farmers for various pruposes. Lime burning and brick making have both been important.
Waterpowers. The following report of the waterpowers as they existed in the county in 1885 is most interesting, though many of these dams and mills are now only memories of the past.
Ward Brothers' saw-mill and grist-mill on the south branch of Two Rivers at Holdingford; head, eight feet, flowing back nearly two miles. M. Ebnet's saw-mill, in the south part of section 25, Krain, on a tributary of Two River lake; head, about fifteen feet. William Ross' saw-mill on Spunk brook in the S. E. ¼ of section 5, Brockway; head, about six feet. J. B. Sartell.& Son's grist-mill on Watab river in section 21, Le Sauk, having fifteen feet head; and their saw-mill in the same section, a quarter of a mile farther east on this stream near its mouth, having fourteen feet head. St. Joseph flouring mill, having eighteen feet head, and saw-mill, having fourteen feet head, on the
