Geological Survey Bulletin 611 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part A

SHEET No. 9. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

A few miles west of Lehigh is Dickinson, a district terminal and a thriving town in the midst of an extensive district of dry farms. This place was named for W. S. Dickinson, of Malone, N. Y., a former State senator and an enthusiastic advocate of the value of the country west of Missouri River. The clay beds worked near Hebron are well developed along the valley of Heart River in the vicinity of Dickinson and are extensively worked a mile south of the town. The clay from this pit is manufactured into dry-press brick and fire brick near the railway just east of the town.

The valley of Heart River is broad and shallow, and few exposures of rocks are to be seen in it, but here and there the bare side of a butte or a freshly cut ravine shows the yellowish sandstone or a bed of lignite of the Fort Union formation.

The climate of the region about South Heart is marked by great extremes in temperature, the mercury ranging from 30° or 40° below zero in the winter to 100° or more in the summer, but these extremes are not so trying as they would be in a more humid climate. The total precipitation for the year in the part of this region west of Missouri River is about 14 inches, but nearly half of this falls in the winter, leaving only 8 or 10 inches for the growing season. Formerly this amount of rain was considered entirely inadequate for agriculture, but in the last five or six years it has been demonstrated that good crops of grain can be obtained here about three years out of four, if the ground is properly treated. This discovery has changed the activities of the country from stock raising on the open range to the cultivation of grain and the consequent fencing of the country into 160-acre or 320-acre tracts.

The railway rises steadily up the regular slope by Belfield to the divide between Knife River and Little Missouri River. The valley of the Little Missouri is noted for its scenery, but it is of even greater interest on account of some of the distinguished people who inhabited it in the days of the open range, when the "cow puncher" was in his glory. Col. Theodore Roosevelt resided for a number of years on a ranch in this valley about 20 miles south of the railway, and here he acquired that knowledge of and sympathy for the free life of the plains that has so endeared him to the western people.

Fryburg is situated on the summit between the drainage basins of Knife River and Little Missouri River. The descent to the Little Missouri is made through a maze of badland forms that stand out in striking contrast to the gentle rolling surface of the upland east of the divide. Little Missouri River has cut its valley about 500 feet deep, and all its tributaries have made similar sharp cuts in the upland, so that the main stream is bordered by a belt of rough country from 10 to 15 miles in width. As the early French explorers and traders had difficulty in crossing these belts they called them "mauvais terres à traverser" or bad lands to cross. From this has come the common appellation "badlands."

The change from the grassy upland east of Fryburg to the badlands of Pyramid Park on Sully Creek is very abrupt, and the traveler is likely to be bewildered by the seemingly endless variety of form, arrangement, and color. There is an apparent lack of plan in the arrangement of the forms, as if some giant hand had fashioned these monuments and then strewn them about without plan or purpose. Views of the badlands are shown in Plates VI—IX. The natural color is a somber gray, but this is enlivened by bands and splotches of red where beds of lignite have burned. In some places, as at Scoria siding, the burning has been so intense that all the rocks are deep red and huge blocks of half-fused material are abundant. From the evidence on every side one might imagine that at some previous time this place had been an inferno rivaling that of Dante's most vivid imagination, but it is probable that the burning took place so slowly that the general temperature was no greater than it is to-day. It is reported that one of the lignite beds is now on fire at no great distance from the track. If the traveler should come this way on a hot day in August he might well believe that he felt the added heat of the burning lignite, for there is no place hotter than badlands of this character on a hot day, but a cold day in winter would give him a different impression.

PLATE VI.—A (top), SILICIFIED STUMP IN PYRAMID PARK, N. DAK. A remnant of one of the big trees of the Fort Union forest, now a mass of stone resting on a pedestal of soft clay. Photograph by Haynes, St. Paul, Minn. B (bottom), THE "PROW OF THE BATTLESHIP," ONE OF THE BUTTES OF PYRAMID PARK, N. DAK. Note the concretions which weather out of the sandstone and cover the ground long after the main mass has been removed. Photograph by Haynes, St. Paul, Minn.

PLATE VII.—A (top), VIEW OF THE BADLANDS OF NORTH DAKOTA. Away from the main stream the small side branches and headwater streams are just beginning to cut into the level upland. The wealth of detail in such natural sculpture is beyond description. B (bottom), A BED OF LIGNITE 15 FEET THICK IN THE CANYON OF LITTLE MISSOURI RIVER, N. DAK. Some of the beds are as much as 35 feet thick.

PLATE VIII.—A (top), B (bottom), VIEWS OF THE BADLANDS OF NORTH DAKOTA. As shown in the upper view, fantastic shapes abound in every valley and ravine. In places flying buttresses support the slender columns and gargoyles may be seen projecting from beneath the roof. Even with the scanty rainfall of this region, every stream has carved for itself a channel—great ones for the large streams and small, almost infinitesimal ones for the tiny rivulets that trickle down the slope—as shown in the lower view.

PLATE IX.—A (top, left), B (top, right), C (bottom,left), D (bottom, right), VIEWS OF THE BADLANDS OF NORTH DAKOTA AND MONTANA. Towers and pinnacles abound on every side. These are remnants of hills or buttes or of a ledge of sandstone that now remains only as protecting caps to the columns of softer material beneath.

In the badlands many beds of lignite can be seen outcropping as black bands along the faces of the buttes and "temples," and petrified stumps and logs are especially abundant about Sully Springs and near the lower end of the valley. (See Pl. VI, A.) The reason why some of the stumps and logs are petrified is that when the trees fell they were covered by mud before they could decay and for ages were soaked with water charged with silica. This silica replaced the vegetable tissues, preserving even the most minute structures of the plants, so that it is possible to tell to what kind of tree the wood belonged. The petrified logs give a good idea of the size of the trees composing the forests of that day.

The village of Medora is situated on Little Missouri River at the point where it is crossed by the Northern Pacific Railway. The river flows here in a deep, rugged canyon, which seems to be about the last place in which to establish a settlement. The village was founded in the early eighties by the Marquis De Mores, who named it after his wife. On an eminence on the west bank of the river he built a "chateau," which can be seen on the left (south) from the passing train. The marquis evidently expected that Medora would become a busy center, for he built a large packing house, the remains of which can be seen on the right. He left the country and met a tragic death a few years ago in the Far East.

There are two prominent beds of lignite in the bluff at Medora, one 40 feet above river level and the other 30 feet higher. The upper bed is 4 feet 6 inches thick and the lower one 9 feet 4 inches, with 3 inches of clay near the bottom.¹

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¹The log of a deep well at Medora, sunk by the railway company for water, records the occurrence of a lignite bed 23 feet thick at a depth of 120 feet. Although beds of lignite from 8 to 9 feet thick are known farther up the river at nearly the same depth and may extend under the town, too much confidence should not be placed on the thickness given in the log of the Medora well, as drillers are not always careful to distinguish dark shale from lignite. As reported in this log, there is altogether 29 feet of lignite in beds 3 feet or more thick.

The lignite here has been mined only for local use, but when improved methods for the utilization of this kind of fuel have been devised, the canyon of Little Missouri River will offer exceptional opportunities for cheap mining on a large scale.

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After crossing the river the road follows Andrews Creek and climbs to the upland in about 16 miles. For most of this distance the rocks of the Fort Union formation are well exposed, and near the river there are exposed the same thick beds of lignite that were seen at Medora. (See Pl. VII, B.)

Near milepost 160 (Demores station) a flat-topped butte can be seen on the left (south) that stands far above most of the other surface features. This is known as Square Butte. An irregular, two-crested butte, which is about as high as Square Butte and visible on the right (north), is called Camels Hump. The most prominent and best known of the high knobs in this vicinity is Sentinel Butte, which has an altitude of 3,350 feet, or 620 feet above the town of the same name, and is the highest point of land in North Dakota. These buttes are composed mainly of the Fort Union formation, but they are capped by a thin bed of shale that is supposed to belong to the White River formation, of Oligocene age. The land about the base of Sentinel Butte was a few years ago only a sagebrush plain, but is now divided into farms that in appearance resemble those of the older farming regions farther east.