by Don McCollor
The Valley. The Red River Valley. More properly the
Valley of the Red River of the North to distinguish it from the southern
Red River bordering Texas and Oklahoma. The Red River of the North flows
sluggishly north down the center of the Valley, which is not a valley but
rather the level bed of an ancient glacial lake. The Valley is many things.
Where the West begins. The borderland tallgrass prairie between forest and
the dryer land west of the hundredth meridian. Flat level land, where the
earth curves away beneath an endless empty sky. Rich land, deep lake silt
soil with a fertility equaled only by the valley of the Nile. A climate
shared with the rest of the great plains--extremes of heat and cold and
sudden changes. And the wind, as much a part of the Valley as the sky and
soil. 
The Valley is young, born of ice and water of the last continental glaciation.
One lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet thrust south along what is now the
course of the Red River, stripping away the older rock layers of the past,
in places scouring down to the ancient bedrock of the Precambrian. As the
ice retreated, the meltwaters pooled to form the glacial lake known as Agassiz.
Hemmed by high ground to the south and the ice to the north, Agassiz grew
to spread across the Valley into northern Minnesota and far north into Canada.
A giant, larger than the five Great Lakes combined. Agassiz's waves thundered
against beaches to raise sand and gravel ridges that now mark the boundaries
of the Valley. The torrents of mighty rivers flowed into and out of Agassiz,
carving the Minnesota River Valley, the Pembina Gorge, forming the Sheyenne
and Assiniboine deltas. With inflowing waters came silt deposited as level
sediment on the lake bottom, sometimes scores of feet thick, burying the
rock and glacial debris under what would become some of the richest soil
on earth. The Valley has a continental climate, with extremes of temperature
and powerful storms. Temperatures exceeding +100 degrees F in summer and
-40 degrees F in the winter are not common, but not unusual. More importantly,
the moisture--rain and snow--is not enough for forests to grow, but adequate
for unirrigated farming. Before the crops, the Valley was a tallgrass prairie.
Grass higher than the head of a man, waving in the wind like billows of
a sea. Like the flow of the Red River, much of the recent history of the Valley
faces north. The first European settlement was founded by Lord Selkirk at
the juncture of the Red River and the Assiniboine where the city of Winnipeg
now stands. Nestled in the level prairie, the tree-lined courses of rivers
and streams held a bounty of animal furs. And in season, long caravans of
Red River ox carts with high wooden ungreased wheels creaked and squealed
along the Valley trails--from Winnipeg and Fort Gary down the Red River
Valley, then down the Minnesota River valley to the Fort Snelling and the
frontier village of St. Paul. Travel on the prairie is as on the sea. The
groves along small rivers and streams represented safety--firewood, water,
and shelter--with every effort made not to be overtaken by thunderstorm
or blizzard on the open prairie. Later, the ox carts (and dog sleds in winter)
gave way to threshing steamboats churning round the thousand bends of the
Red River. In turn, the steamboats gave way to the railroads, bringing waves
of settlers into the Valley. Railroad land grants and the introduction of
mechanical farm machinery gave birth to corporate Bonanza farms. Agriculture
on a giant scale. Wheat fields-not farms-fields a mile square. The Grandin
farm--95 square miles--carried wheat on their own steamboats south to railhead
at Fargo to be stored in their own elevator complex. The Valley has changed much, but appears unchanging. Like the geology,
it is best seen from the sky.
The Great Plains, Walter P. Webb, Grosset Dunlap, New York, NY.
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The tallgrass prairie and
buffalo are gone, replaced by a patchwork of fields. Lines of shelterbelts
march in orderly rows--for except along the river courses nearly every tree
has been carefully planted. Also almost unnoticed is the massive network
of drainage ditches, for the level Valley floor once held shallow wetlands
by the hundreds. Water, carrying fertilizers, chemicals and soil winds its
way to the Red River more quickly today, and increases the severity of its
seasonal floods. Yet the Valley remains, level and timeless in its seasons.
