Cottonwood River (Minnesota)
Cottonwood River State Park in Flandrau (2007)
Location of the Cottonwood River in the catchment area of the Minnesota River
The Cottonwood River is a 245 km long right tributary of the Minnesota River and is located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Minnesota.
About the Minnesota River, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River and drains an area of 3401 km ² in an agricultural region. The river's name is a translation of the name Waraju from the Sioux languages for the Canadian black poplar ( " Cottonwood Tree" ), which is widely distributed along the rivers of the plains. A historical name for the river was also Big Cottonwood River.
The Cottonwood River flows in its course in a generally easterly direction. It rises south-west of Lake Balaton in Rock Lake Township in the south of Lyon County, as a leading irregular water flow on the Coteau des Prairies, a morainic plateau which separates the basins of the Mississippi River and the Missouri River from each other. The river leaves the plateau overlooking a wooded valley in the southeast of Lyon County, where he loses 60 m in height within five kilometers. Then he reached a Grundmoränenebene and flows through the southern part of the Redwood County, the northeast corner of Cottonwood County and the northern part of Brown County, in the places Sanborn and Springfield over. In a forest -covered valley of the river flows through the Flandrau State Park and flows south-east of New Ulm in the Minnesota River. The river was originally converted by dams within the park to a lake, but these were swept away by flood waters in 1965 and 1969 and no longer built.
Based on the northeastern flank of the Coteau des Prairies and the presence of a terminal moraine on the north side of the river, the Cottonwood River has few tributaries of Norder ago. The largest of these is the 82 km long Sleepy Eye Creek, which flows eastward through the County Redwood and Brown. Southern tributaries are of the 56 km long Plum Creek, of the Murray County and the Redwood County happens to a north- eastward course, and the 74 km long Dutch Charley Creek, the counties Murray, Cottonwood and Redwood flows in a northeasterly direction.
About 84 % of the land in the catchment area of the Cottonwood River is used for agriculture, mainly for monocultures of corn and soybeans. The wetlands in the area have been drained extensively, so it is less than 16 km ² of which were left.
Runoff
At the level of the United States Geological Survey in the vicinity of New Ulm, 5.2 km above the river mouth, the river discharge was the long jähren annual average between 1909 and 2005 11 m³ / s The highest measured value was recorded on 10 April 1969, 813 m³ / s and the lowest amount of water carried by the river on 27 November 1952, less than 0.05 m³ / s