Red River of the North Valley Earthcache EarthCache
Red River of the North Valley Earthcache
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Difficulty:
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This earthcache is available from the Minnesota Welcome Center, on Eastbound I-94, just east of Moorhead, MN. If you plan to access this cache from I-94 westbound, you may use exit 1 in Moorhead to come east on I-94 for less than a mile.
This earthcache is handicap accessible.
The fertile areas along both banks of the Red River of the North were once the bed of a huge glacial lake. When the last glacier retreated and the lake slowly drained. The plain left behind contained some of the richest farmlands in North America.
During the Pleistocene epoch (ice age), huge glaciers covered Canada and advanced into the northern United States, in the region we term the low-lying interior plains, or Central Lowland Plains. These glaciers are responsible for leaving behind huge amounts of highly fertile sediment, the remains of massive amounts of decomposed material previously locked into the frozen ice. This rich soil deeply blankets the Central Lowland Plains, an area that extends from central North & South Dakota to the west, the Ohio River to the southeast, Oklahoma to the south, and southern Michigan and Western Ohio to the east (Another way to view the impact is to see the area bounded on the west/south by the Missouri River and on the east/south by the Ohio River). The glaciers affected the area by creating immense flat areas, literally “scrubbing” the area into a series of gently sloping hills, often with erratics (rocks that were originally part of rock formations hundreds or thousands of miles away) dropped randomly in the rolling fields and plains.
The flat valley lands were well suited to the new farm machinery of the 1870’s and 1880’s. Settlers followed the railroads west and sent their huge wheat crops back to the growing flour mills in the Twin Cities. Many of the “bonanza” farms of the Red River Valley were more than 2,000 acres in size and the largest was more than 30,000 acres.
Today. Wheat is still grown across the area. However, instead of the single-cash crops of the 19th and early 20th centuries, today sugar beets, sunflowers, and potatoes are the staple of the Red River Valley agriculture. Today, instead of single-farmer farms, large-scale operations manage a multitude of farms and employ a variety of seasonal workers.
Logging Requirements:
Send the answers to #1-#4 to me through my geocaching profile (Since the advent of the "new" Message the Owner feature, I prefer messages through that venue).
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1. List the name “GC**** Red River of the North Valley Earthcache” in the first line of your email. Also, list the number of people in your group.
2. Based on the information panel at the coordinates, list the name of the lake that slowly drained after the glaciers had retreated from the Red River Valley plain.
3. Based on the information panel at the coordinates, how many years ago did the great lake drain?
4. Look west across the valley towards the Moorhead MN water tower. Describe what you see and contrast that with what you imagine this area looking like at the turn of the 20th century (1900).
Also, Imagine this area as the lake has drained leaving the virgin plain….what do you imagine being here then?
5. (Per current gc.com guidelines, photos are no longer allowed to be required. HOWEVER they are encouraged, since they can help clarify that you have visited the location if your other logging requirement answers are vague). Take a picture of yourself with your GPS at near the listed cords, showing the Moorhead water tower in the background. Post this picture with your log. Failure to post a picture may result in your log being deleted.
I will only respond if you have incomplete logging requirements. Go ahead and log your cache
Resources:
Information Panel at the Minnesota Welcome Center Rest Area
The Geologic Story of the Great Plains by Donald E. Trimble, © 2006.
Additional Hints
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