FROM BISMARCK TO ST. PAUL
(to the tune of Wabash Cannonball)
by Bruce Olsen, Minnesota Geological Survey

From the Lake Superior lowlands to the North Dakota plains
We'll plot the paths of glaciers by their tills and their moraines
There's kettles, kames and eskers, and drumlins to recall
We've been to ev'ry gravel pit from Bismarck to St. Paul

Now, the eastern tills are sandy, and full of rocks, they say
It's mostly in the western tills you find abundant clay
We know this by their textures, they've been sieved by one and all
To help in our stratigraphy, Wadena to St. Paul

So here's to pollen pluckers, may their names forever stand
They sit in little darkened rooms all over this great land
Counting grains of Quercus from kettle lakes and bogs
Correlating them with carbon dates from prehistoric logs

Far in the distant future, I think it's safe to say
The great Laurentian ice sheets will return again some day
While others flee in terror, we'll be standing tall
We'll study them advancing from Churchill to St. Paul

So listen to the rumble, the grinding and the roar
They're covering the peat bogs, the forest and the shore
They'll scoop up North Dakota, and if they never stall
They'll smear a hundred feet of till from Fargo to St. Paul!