Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1913-05-11
GEOLOGICAL DIVISIONS
Of north DAKOTA

, In this vast area loans, Sands, Sits
and gravels alternate as soil types in
order depending largely upon the kind
of rock wastes brought n dumped there
| By thcg lacicr. Here and there limited
areas enclosed on all SIDES by the hily
! mountains, collected water from melt
| ing ice or modern rains and were con-
! verified into lakes. Examples arc Devils
Lake, and its ancient. more expended
| counterpart: Lake Souris, a large glacial
! lake of moderate duration. Accommodated
in the Mouse River Valley. Both OF
these at one time filed with basins brim
full, ovcrfiowcd to the south, and were
drained by the Slleyenne. The ice then
Mouse.
The soil of this area as we'll as that
of the Red River Valley, may be consid-
| cred as q vast gift OF the glacier, and
brought without duty, too, mostly from
Canada, as it consists largely Of lime
stone, GRANTEES and other rock plucked
from the native lodges there, and mixed
here with the Pierre shale which, under
lies much Of the drift and occasionally
| outcrops. as along the river gorges.
! Many Of the field stones can be traced
back to the exact beds from which they
! came.
The western part of the drift" area
is often underlain with coal, in fact.
the western half Of the state is largely
undcrlain with this vast rich deposit Of
Fort Union age. Diagonally across the
state in this drift area runs the Coteau
Of the Missouri, Il name often given u
| the abrupt slope marking the edge OF
the plateau forming roughly the west
| ern half of the state. which Is capped
by the toughest morainic hills Of the
drift. This is seen in Divide, Burke,
, Mclean, Ward, Sheridan, Wells. Stuts-
man, LaMourc and Dickey counties. The
Turtle Mountains nay be considered as
an CUTLER Of the before mentioned pla-
teau, and separated from it in the re-
moval by erosion Of the intervening
| rocks.
The third, or ,'driftlcss' division com
l prises the upper parts of the valleys OF
the Little Missouri, Heart and Cannon
Ball rivers, with their enclosing mud
walls of the Bad Lands, alternating with
the level to rolling prairies II the big
lands. <- VIZ
Here for the most part, the prosper
Gus rancler has been forced to give
place to the homcsteader. who, with IA
deficient amount of rainfall ckes out q
miserable existence, until patience and
the money with which he came is gone,
then he tricks to a more llOspitablc CHM
ate. This is the rule, however there arc
exccptions-notably the Golden Valley
and other prosperous areas Just out Of
the BAD Lands. In travelling in the Bad
Lands one cannot but be forcibly i'm
pressed with the great mistake made in
opening them up for settlement when
they could still serve as a prosperous
~cow-country.
The Bad Lands are composed OF the
horizontal sedimentary beds made in a
vast inland (Tertiary) sea which occu-
| pied certain western states. Here, how
ever. the process of pressing, cementtng
| and heating OF, the rock waste was stopp-
i ed too soon. AS a result there s very
little hard rock of economic value as
! a building stone in the state. The 'scor-
ia made from the clay and sl1ale, and
b y the heat Of the burning out OF great
seams. of Ignite. is a road material equal
in value to the a%rtiicially burned clay
used in the southern states. a.
Dividing the state according to the
/ chief geological time periods we a v
o. the Pleistocene Lake Agassiz silt de-
post, everything drift. (2) Pierre sl1ale
underlies the drift in nearly all the east
ern half of the state, go the Fort Union
coal bearing strata Of the Tertiary un-
derlies most Of the western half OF the
: state.