Buffalo Ridge
Range of hills in Minnesota, US
Buffalo Ridge is a large expanse of rolling hills in the southeastern part of the larger Coteau des Prairies. It stands 1,995 feet (608 m) above sea level. The Buffalo Ridge is sixty miles (97 km) long and runs through Lincoln, Pipestone, Murray, Nobles, and Rock counties in the southwest corner of Minnesota, and Minnehaha, Moody, and Lincoln counties in southeast South Dakota.
Because of its altitude and high average wind speed, Buffalo Ridge has been transformed into a place for creating renewable energy. As of May 2022, over 1,000 wind turbines stand in the Buffalo Ridge area, the oldest of which was built in 1984 and consists of 16 Kenetech kvs 33 turbines.
Geology
Buffalo Ridge is on a drainage divide separating the watersheds of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
Buffalo Ridge is part of the inner coteau and is the highest point of the Coteau des Prairies in Minnesota. Its bedrock is formed of Cretaceous shale, sandstone and clay that lie above the pinkish-red Upper Precambrian Sioux Quartzite. These units are covered in most areas by thick deposits of glacial drift, which consist of up to 800 feet (244 m) of pre-Wisconsin age glacial till (generally considered Kansas drift) left after the glaciers receded. The inner coteau is made up of extremely stream-eroded glacial deposits of pre-Wisconsin glacial drift, which is then covered by a 6 to 15 foot (1.8 to 4.6 m) thick deposit of a wind-blown silt called loess.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Buffalo Ridge” is range of hills in Minnesota, US. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Buffalo, Ridge and Range, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Buffalo Ridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.