USA > Iowa > An illustrated history of the state of Iowa, being a complete civil, political, and military history of the state, from its first exploration down to 1875; > Part 48
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When the coal measures in Hardin county come to be worked in a scien- tific and exhaustive way it will prob- ably be found that none of the mines that have been opened reach the best deposits.
The future cannot be read, save by the light of the past, and that where most brilliant suggests modesty to the seer, consequently it must remain for experience to unfold what will be done by the mineral resources of Har- din county, not only for its own growth, but also for the development of a great part of the state of Iowa. There are some mines now extensively worked, those of the Eldora coal com- pany among the number, but all these operations are but scratching the sur- face, while the great results to be at- tained are far below, demanding large expenditures of capital and labor. The Central Railroad of Iowa, and the Illinois Central, anuually convey large quantities of coal from this county, but scarcely a tithe of the shipments which may be made within the next decade from this same region.
Building stone, of good quality, is found in this county, nearly all the way along the course of the Iowa and many of its tributaries. The lime- stone at Iowa Falls is easily quarried, but it admits of a polish almost equal to marble, so fine is the grain. Under certain imaginable circumstances this might have been one of the finest mar- ble quarries in the world, equal to Carrara in quality, and vastly ahead of it in quantity. But the magic change was not effected in nature's laboratory, so the stone is not marble, but the resemblance is not without a charm. The quarry is very largely drawn upon already, but the beauty of this limestone will illimitably increase the demand, and it is well that the quantity is so great as to defy exhaus- tion. In some places the stratum sinks below the bed of the Iowa but it crops out again at Alden, six miles above, and elsewhere, in limitless pro- fusion.
Buildings, in the town near at hand, have been erected of the subcarbonif- erous limestone, but shipments to a distance are generally of blocks for special works and parts of edifices
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only, and it will require many years | near future, than any imaginable dis- of such work with ten times as many covery of gold could make the county. men and as much capital as are now in operation to make the faintest im- pression upon a mass of rock miles in length and eighty feet in thickness, as this quarry and its companion works, have revealed the rock foundation along this part of the Iowa.
Sandstone of good quality is also found alternating with this stratum of limestone, and that also, is a very good material for building purposes. The manufacture of quicklime is carried on very extensively at Iowa Falls, at Alden and elsewhere. Potter's clay of excellent quality and fire clay of the best kind are procured at many points, and works have been erected for their utilization in manufactures which will go on increasing as the facilities for transport increase and the quality of the stoneware and firebricks supplied becomes more and more understood. Much of this clay is shipped unmanu- factured, and it is pronounced equal to the best New Jersey clay. Such an item in the wealth of the county, if it stood alone, might give employment to thousands of men and women in the fire works which will become possible, but when such a resource is in the completest sense, suppelmentary to other and greater wealth, it must be evident that the future is full of prom- ise.
Brick makers' clay is abundant in every section of the county, and some very fine specimens of iron ore have been discovered along the line of the Iowa, but whether the quantity will be such as to make manufacturing profit- able, the facts will not at present en- able us to decide.
The county is agricultural in the best sense, in addition to developing the wealth below the surface at which we have glanced, so much so that when all the mineral resources of the district are being adequately worked, and all the crude materials wrested from nature are being worked up into the best forms possible, and all the manufactories which can be set ago- ing upon the wide basis indicated, have been long in full operation, there will be enough good producible from the farms of Hardin county to supply the mouths of all the workers. Such a region is more certainly an Eldo- rado, with such possibilities in the
Corn, wheat and oats are staple pro- ductious in the county, and they come to the farmer's hands with as little trouble as elsewhere, and all the cus- tomary crops in this state can be raised with reasonable certainty. Native grasses are nutritious here as else- where, and prodigal of growth, in spite of the prejudice which says that a mining country must be desolate up- on its face. The open prairies give hay enough and to spare to all who care to harvest it, and thus a resource of special value falls in the way of the men who are engaged in stock raising among other money making pursuits. There is hardly another county in Iowa which contains so many condi- tions of prosperity in such large pro- portions as we find developed in Har- din county, and as a natural conse- quence, where nature has been lavish, art and skill and capital come in from all over the world to improve the op- portunity for advancement.
Thoroughbred stock and the very best importations have been secured by agriculturists in this region, with the best results, in the appreciation of the characteristics of the stock raised here. Sheep have been introduced and have succeeded well with due care, but the best qualities of meat and wool can hardly be looked for in this cli- mate under present circumstances, nor indeed can we ever hope to compete in staple with the finest qualities of the Merino fleece which is sent to Europe and to this country from the sheep runs of Australia.
The quality of fruit which can be raised in this county will never com- mand a premium in the market, but it is satisfactory to know that apples and pears can be rasied here with tolerable certainty, if the hardiest varieties are selected. The small fruits grow with little care and of fair quality.
The first white settlement in this county, was made in 1849, and during the following year many others came to the neighborhood. Cedar Rapids was then the nearest market and not a good one, consequently most of the settlers preferred to send or carry their produce one hundred and fifteen miles to Iowa City, where they could trade to much better advantage. The pro- gress of settlement was not rapid, but
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it went on steadily from that time. In | the year 1851, a little colony of Quak- ers came into the county from North Carolina, and settled near Honey creek. Subsequently this very desira- ble body of colonists founded the town of New Providence and became the nucleus of the thriving body of " Friends," now living in harmony with all the world in that locality.
To follow in detail the movements of the several colonists as they came to the land of promise would occupy too much space. Suffice it to say that flouring mills and other works slowly made their way into profitable exist- ence and as the people progressed, it was found necessary to organize. The site of the town of Eldora, was entered for the purposes of a county seat, and while the name for the infant town was under consideration, the gold fever was culminating in Iowa. The name selected was at last taken as an abbre- viation of the word Eldorado and it remains as a memento of that fitful fever from which the country so happi- ly recovered, to enter into much more satisfactory possession.
Organization was effected in 1853, and the county seat duly located at Eldora, but Point Pleasant envied the honor thus conferred on her golden named competitor, and for more than ten years there was voting and litiga- tion upon the subject, the result being eventually a decision in favor of El- dora by the supreme court. Meantime a court house was built in 1856 at El- dora, destroyed by fire and rebuilt within twelve months. The press of the city of Eldora came into existence in 1856, and has gone on increasing in value and importance to the present day, but our space positively forbids us to say more on this head.
dora, and other railroads are projected which can hardly fail to supply all the needs of this splendid region for many years to come.
ELDORA the county seat is on the west side of Iowa river, very hand- somely located and in itself a beauti- ful city. Timber and coal are abund- ant near the site, and the town was platted on a high rolling well drained prairie. South and west of Eldora Îies a beautiful expanse of agricultural land, full of inducements for the farm- er and grazier. To the north and east the valuable timber lands bordering the river make the scene delightful. The mineral resources of the county have been so fully discussed, that it would be folly to reopen the several questions here, although the riches of the city are necessarly dependent upon their full development. The streets of the city have been ornamented by the planting of shade trees, one of the most graceful and enduring of all forms of ornamentation possible in a young city. A public park has been laid out with considerable space and some choice ornamental shrubs, which dimly predict the excellence which is some day to be realized on that spot. Some men who rise by plodding in- dustry to great wealth, never cultivate the graces of life until it is too late for them to hope for any appreciable result in that line; they only begin to learn how to live when they are on the point of descending to their tombs. That is not the design of Eldora. With a fair prospect of immense wealth in the near future, the young city is learning how to live from the first.
The man who knows how to begin will come generally to a good ending. Eldora is a case in point. This city, with a population of about eighteen hundred, has not only a handsome site, well occupied, but the people have procured for themselves railroad and telegraph communication, by means of which they are en rapport with all the movements of the great world, aud the wealth which lies be- neath their feet is made a familiar topic on Wall street, on 'change, and even in Paris, among speculators on the Bourse. Such a city could not fail to secure good schools.
Railroads have been given to Hardin county sufficient for present need, but larger accommodations will before long become necessary. The Dubuque and Pacific railroad and the Iowa Falls and Sioux City, operated by the Illinois Central railroad company, run east and west through Hardin county in the northern townships, and a very fair business is transacted at the stations established at Alden, Iowa Falls and Ackley. The Central Rail- road of Iowa runs through the eastern IOWA FALLS is a business town of much promise; the site is already townships north and south, passing through the mineral region near El- [ known to our readers. The town was
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laid out in 1855. The first mill was erected two years afterwards; the post- office was built in the same year, and a very commodious school house. The Illinois Central company, operat- ing the Dubuque and Pacific railroad, made connections with the city of Iowa Falls in 1866, and from that time progress has been rapid. The city is located on a beautiful bend of the Iowa river, just at the point where the east bank changes to the north, and the larger part of the town stands on a plateau, gently rolling and well drained, about seventy feet above the river level, where the palisades, already mentioned as one of the features of this stream, appear to have made their master effort. Fine groves of hickory and oak almost surround the city, and the scenery as a whole is seldom sur- passed. A sparkling rivulet, Rock Run, empties itself into the Iowa within the limits of the town, at a point where all the best effects of scenic art appear to have been lav- ished, and nature sits enthroned in loveliness. The town has wide, well made streets, and the buildings are substantial, the area occupied being large, and the taste displayed by the inhabitants very great indeed ; enough to vouch for their general intelligence and high tone. When treating of the county generally the prevailing fea- tures in the surroundings of Iowa Falls were necessarily set forth, and for this reason we must content our- selves with very brief particular men- tion in this instance.
ACKLEY, named in honor of the founder, was not a town in fact until the shrill whistle of the Dubuque and Sioux City railroad called it into life in 1865. The bugle call of reveille has seldom been answered by an en- camped host more readily than the summons in this instance. The depot once established, business men took up sites in contignity ; cabins became houses, and before long the houses bid - fair to enter the palatial order. The town has now a population of fifteen - hundred people, with no past on which to slumber, but with a future worthy of all the effort that is being expended. The town is the shipping point for a very prosperous farming community, and a large trade is transacted in con- nection therewith.
1
STEAMBOAT ROCK lies five miles
from Eldora, on the east bank of the Iowa river, in a very pleasant locality on the Central railroad of Iowa, and was first laid out in 1855. A large rock, which somewhat resembles a steamboat, or a whale, or a weasel, hut " by the mass, very like a " steamboat, on the bluff, has the honor of having named the town, which is a prosper ous place.
ALDEN stands on the west bank of the river, six miles above Iowa Falls, and just one mile from a station on the Iowa division of the Illinois Central railroad. The village was located in 1856, and a saw mill was erected at this point at about the same time. There is a good water power here, and some excellent quarries, fit for every purpose to which limestone can be applied.
There are some few villages and many postoffices which must be men- tioued, but concerning which we have not space to append descriptions. The names of the several locations are Ber- lin, Abbott, Cottage, Eilis, Hardin City, Midland, Point Pleasant, New Provi- dence, Tipton Grove and Union.
Harrison County is on the bank of the Missouri river, in the fourth tier from the southern boundary line, and contains an area of six hundred and sixty square miles. The configuration of this county differs from the more inland sections of the country in the greater variety which it presents. Most of the streams that flow through and in this county have been mention- ed in connection with some of the other localities which have been de- scribed, but their peculiar features, and their effects on this habitat will call for special notice. The bluffs in this county bordering the Missouri, are, as elsewhere, broken by the rush of waters, which fall from the uplands in their headlong course to the great stream which they have traveled so far to find ; and that fact gives a broken and picturesque aspect to the scene in many places, such as only the valley of the middle Missouri can present. The county is well watered and drained, and the water is almost everywhere clear and sparkling until the streams are swallowed up in the mighty and turbid waters which roll onward to the ocean. The general trend of the country and the flow of its surface waters is southwest, the streamns cross-
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ing the county diagonally. The Boyer, Little Sioux and Soldier rivers, and the Pigeon, Wilson and Mosquito creeks are prodigal of mill sites and similar locations for powers, in which also many of the tributaries of these several streams are liberally endowed. Very few of these opportunities have been improved up to this time.
The Boyer valley contains some very charming tracts of land, richly alluvi- al, varying from half a mile to two miles in width, with gentle slopes bounding the fertile area, until the Missouri bottom lands are reached and the scenery assumes bolder as- pects. The Little Sioux river makes its course mostly through bottom lands, but in some places the scenery is very marked and beautiful. The Soldier river, with its valleys bordered by bluffs more or less abrupt, has a character in every sense peculiar; a succession of terraces inviting the at- tention of the artist and soliciting the hand of the farmer, from the river bed back to the ascent by which the rich bottom lands ascend toward the rolling prairie. Pigeon and Mosquito creeks lie in the southeast of the county, and their vallies are hemmed in by swell- ing uplands which have imprisoned the vegetable deposit of by-gone cen- turies to secure for the farmer of to- day a forcing bed of extraordinary wealth.
The Missouri river is a great disturb- er of territorial limits; some whim prompts the stream to annex land to one side and to despoil the other with arbitrary violence. Of course, such changes make it difficult to preserve the topographical features of the coun- try near the line of disturbance; but, back from the river line, there seem to have been no such causes in operation for centuries. The bottom lands bound- ing the great stream are alone subject to revolution, and to that fact they owe some of their valuable qualities. The line of bluffs limit the scope of the capricious river, but all the lower land outside the mighty rampart is at the sport of the ocean rushing stream, and the bottom lands, varying from four miles in breadth at some points to ten in others, give a vast area within which their playfellows can find "ample scope and verge enough." Some of the bottoms of the inland streams are very extensive, and they
serve as escape valves from the river when the Missouri is dammed back for a time, or where a succession of freshets has swollen the stream to au unwonted level. Then the minor streams, also surcharged, can find no outlet, and the great river pours back the treasure it has gathered from the country beyond, filling the valleys which have been hollowed out by ten thousand such visitations, and leaving there, upon its eventual retreat, a sub- sidence of soil such as the Nile gives every year to the arid plains in Egypt. Cottonwood trees and willows mark the old and the new beds of many of the streams which flow through these valleys, and near those lines of timber the farmer can reckon with cer- tainty on raising corn and wheat in abundance. Grass becomes very nu- tritious in these locations - a complete mine of wealth to the grazier.
The shelter which is afforded to cat- tle by the inclosing bluffs and ridges, makes the lowlands thus mentioned a favorite resort, food being plentiful, and the rude winds of winter compara- tively shut out. Sometime, ages ago, it is probable that all this vast area of country, with much beyond it, was one huge lake or system of lakes. Down below the base of these bot- tom lands water can be found, appa- rently flowing over a quicksaud, about fourteen feet from the surface. On that singular foundation it looks as though the upheaving earth and subsiding waters had combined their efforts to build up solid land, fill- ing in the interstices of rock with soil from the river, and upon the sands accumulating vegetable spoil, until the outlines of this country had been completed. Even since the year 1857, there have been many considera- ble changes in the location of land and water, and the channels of the Missou- ri have moved from one line to another many times. Some splendid farms are now flourishing on the Missouri bottom lands, but there should be a qualm of doubt occasionally, as the farmers think that where their plows now leave a furrow there once flowed a stream upon which no track re- mained longer than the moment when the breeze ruffled its surface.
Some small lakes, hardly, perhaps, deserving a title so ambitious, form a disjointed chain from the Little Sioux
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river along the bottom lands. They | seem to have located themselves with- out regard to rule, but of course, they have obeyed some law of natural se- lection, which may be understood upon due investigation. Fish can be found in the smallest of these lakes, there- fore it seems probable that they are the remnants of a much larger body of water gradually subsiding and drying up.
Some of the rivers and streams have changed their channels within historic times, a very brief era in this county from one to several miles at the point of outlet with corresponding changes in the line traversed inland, so that the example of the Missouri is followed by its young companions. Many indiea- tions prove that what seems to be old land, upon a cursory examination, is really a new filling up of old channels and a rounding of superfluous angles by the riches of the river.
On the uplands in this county the bluff deposit prevails, and in the bot- toms the same features are also discov- erable, but mixed with vegetal matter until a soil results in the highest de- gree fertile. The depth of soil is prac- tically unlimited on a territory built in the bed of an old lake over a quick- sand which would swallow a moun- tain, but which submits to be ridden safely by more buoyant drift and earth. The land liere never suffers materially from dry weather, and rains form no lodgment on the surface, con- sequently the farmer is quite pleased with his fruitful acres which always answer to the plow.
Harrison is a well timbered eounty considering that it is on the Missouri slope, but the quantity really is not great. Where the ravines and deep valleys afford protection, groves, belts and even forests in miniature can be found, but beyond these limited areas it is only too evident that ever reeur- ring fires have devastated the country Icaving the prairies bare of wood, not because nature was niggardly in its operations, but because the savage gave little heed to anything beyond immediate necessities, and allowed the destructive element to sweep over the plains as the result of carelessness.
Here as elsewhere the prairie lands are clothing themselves with forests since settlement first commenced, and before many generations have passed
away it will be difficult to make the young student comprehend that the well wooded tracts in which he may seek seelusion, were at one time within the memory of man, treeless plains. The changes of the past thirty years illustrate on a small scale what the growth of the forests and groves in this county may be within the next half- century. Most of the streams are now bordered with timber.
Orchards have had much attention in this county, and the supply of ap- ples, pears, and other fruits is very satisfactory. Grapes and peaches come to the eall of the horticulturist, and in many parts of the county, grapes grow wild. Their quality is pronounced excellent, but they are somewhat laek- ing in saecharine.
Some good quarries have been found at Logan and elsewhere from which limestone has been shipped, but that is not the strongest suit with Harrison county. The specialty from which it has gained reputation and some wealth is stoek raising. There are very fine native grasses here in nearly all parts of the county, and in favored situations at all seasons of the year which can be used by cattle with ad- vantage, and with no trouble but the harvesting, every farmer can have as mueh hay for fodder as he will store. The Chicago market largely depends upon Iowa for its supplies of fat cattle, and Harrison county participates largely in that trade.
The white man first settled in this county near where the village of Cal- houn now stands, in 1848, and the In- dians were very troublesome as thieves, when the male defenders of house and family were away, but there is no record of sanguinary raids such as we find in other localities. The redskins came for the cattle and destroyed prop- erty, but possibly from fear of the con- sequenees of any other line of conduct, they appear to have respected life. Organization was affected in 1853, and the county seat located at Magnolia. Railroad companies have been very considerate in providing for the wants of Harrison county. The Chicago and Northwestern railroad passes through the county from northeast to southwest, having many stations in good country, and the Sioux City, Pa- eific railroad runs along the bottom lands of the Missouri, in the western
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section connecting the county with St. Paul and St Louis. Facilities for communication more thorough could hardly be desired.
MAGNOLIA, the county seat, is just a little to the west of the geographical center of Harrison county, on rolling prairie well situated, about ten miles distant from the Missouri. There is plenty of timher within easy reach, and before railroads came into the county a fair business was done by the inhabitants, but new roads have made new locations, and for the time this enterprising little town is on the de- cline. There is an effort being made to locate the county seat elsewhere, but the newspaper published in Magnolia treats that proposal as a monstrous er- ror, if not something worse.
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