USA > Iowa > Buena Vista County > Past and present of Buena Vista County, Iowa > Part 3
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The state constitution provides that twelve congressional townships shall be the minimum number constituting a county, and this has so far prevented Iowa from having the one hundredth county, although an effort has been made at least once to divide Kossuth county, the largest in the state, so as to make an additional county.
Contraets were made with surveyors and the government for a stipulated price per mile, all lines counted by running measure. The lines around a sec- tion are not always straight lines, as may be observed in traveling some highways. On the prairie marks were made by cutting out a square of the tough sod with a spade and forming a slight mound or elevation. These mounds were eight links of the chain from the pit that had been made by remov- ing the soil from the mound, so that there could be no mistake, as both pit and mound were in evidence. Into these mounds, at the corners of the square miles or sections, and midway between them, were posts, ealled half-mile posts. These were square stakes driven into the ground with the number of the section cut thereon. The pits were south of the stakes at the corners of the sections and east at the half-mile posts. In the timber country a growing tree would be marked and the distance and the direction of the posts noted on the surveyor's field notes. It was not many years after the survey was completed until the small stakes rotted or were burned out by the annual prairie fires, and it often beeame a very difficult and perplexing affair to relocate them. The mounds everywhere thrown up by gophers could not always be distinguished from those made with a spade.
The work of the county surveyor was simple when the marks or original points could be found. In subdividing a section into one fourth a line was drawn from one-half mile post to the one on the opposite side, which would intersect one drawn in a similar manner from the other side, at the middle of
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the section. The point of intersection would be the corner from which. by a like process, the one-fourth of the quarter section could be divided into forty acre tracts or smaller if desired. The smaller area to be surveyed the more labor it required to locate it.
The importance of the established corner and care of boundaries is very evident at the present time. As land is increasing in value the uncertainty of the exact location of the government corner sometimes causes neighborhood quarrels and even family troubles, resulting in long and costly litigation.
A SURVEYOR'S EXPERIENCE.
The government surveyor makes notes of all observable characteristics of the country streams, timber, soil. minerals, etc., prizes the sections as he passes over them, first, second. third. quality and from him the department derives the first definite information of any tract of territory obtained by purchase, treaty or otherwise. It may not be uninteresting in this connection and as il- lustrative of this locality at that time. to state that during the summer of 1855, J. L. Ingalsbe and W. G. Allen were the two surveyors engaged in townshiping northwestern Jowa, under a contract given to "Uncle" Jack Parker of Dubnque, with the privilege to close up to the Minnesota line. Mr. Ingalshe writes of his experience as follows :
"The two parties worked in conjunction and were pushing their lines from the south over a tract forty-two miles in width east and west. It was required that township lines be run by a Solar instrument. and the practice prevailing among surveyors was to utilize every hour of sunshine and rest only when com- pelled by cloud or storm. This entire region was at that time devoid of timber or shade and at one time one of the surveyors afterwards related. one company was pushed for thirty-five successive days, averaging thiry miles per day. ab- sohitely without a halt in daylight.
"The men. exhausted by the continuous strain. subsisting on hard tack, rusty bacon, half-cooked beans, and coffee concocted from water from the near- est mudhole, enjoying no shade beyond what was furnished by onr wagon cover, had become so bilions and sleepy that when not actually chaining on the line they would frequently go to sleep while walking. I was at that date only a 'Neophyte' engaged by the month and trying to earn 'shoulder straps' in my profession
"One day I closed ont to where Allen's work should be. We could find no corner established nor any trail indicating previons travelers. I was en- gaged in reviewing my notes to find possible errors, when a scouting party brought tidings of a distant trail. I shouldered my instrument and reaching the trail, found it straight and evidently made by a surveying party. Trying the course I found it just ten degrees wrong. viz north ton degrees east, when it should have been due north. I knew at once that Allen had by mistake clamped his vernier at ten degrees when it should have been at 0. I was in a quandary. Unele Jack was with my party and we were becoming great friends. He was a veteran of the Black Hawk war and at one time commandant of Fort Atehinson,
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an old Indian fighter, bluff and hearty in friendship, but a suspicion of tres- pass was to him like a red banner to a mad bull.
"The matter could not be concealed. Allen was running the job, 'ont of pocket' sadly. as this work must all be obliterated, and corrected. I was eom- pelled to show 'Unele Jack' the error and the old fellow was furious. Ile ordered me to box my tools, put all apparatus in the wagons, and the entire cavalcade to start in pursuit of the other gang. As for himself he shouldered my sixteen pound rifle, of which he had become very fond, and, swearing dire vengeance, only waited my answer to his question 'where shall we find the enss ?' The question was not difficult for me to answer but I thought best to defer the meeting.
"The plethorie old campaigner forged ahead on foot at a vigorous rate and the ox teams lumbered slowly behind. Compelled by darkness we went into camp by a small water course and in the morning as we were 'off duty' the cooks were far from prompt with breakfast and when we did push on I managed to get the old man engaged in shooting elk. The rifle was a 'bone cracker ' and after he had made several capital shots and was getting back into better humor I engaged him in conversation inquiring about Allen's younger days and the death of his wife, Mr. Parker's daughter, and when I thought the time had come I swung around and striking Allen's trail we followed it up and sailed into their camp at sundown, when the old contractor ordered us to 'On strap en hopple the critters, h'ist yer tents and jist lay fer a week tew see ef ye can't sort o' git rested.
"The men were enjoined to secrecy ; what Allen may have suspected I do not know. I spoke no word to him of the matter until I met him later.
"In the early part of our survey a couple of men followed up our lines and inquired the significance of the figures and letters on the corners. They in- formed us that they had with two yoke of oxen and a wagon, come down the Little Sioux and on finding timber had fitted up a set of plow irons brought with them and marked a furrow around and staked claims on all patches of timber. We were glad to see white faces again, but considering them 'land sharks' and not actual settlers we gave them no information. Early in July we were, thanks to Inkpaduta, with wagons and tents surrounded by rifle pits, on a little knoll or perhaps promontory along the border of higher land south of the Little Sioux and one morning. taking inventory of stock, found some of our teams dead, some wounded and one odd ox with no mate.
"I took a man or two with a pair of horses set off down the stream and find- ing timber, ent and fashioned a single yoke for an ox. In the edge of this timber we came upon a rude foundation of a cabin with, I think, some name written on or near it. I have reeounted all the indications of settlement found in the vieinity and whether this last mentioned was by some genuine occupant or a relie left by the parties before mentioned I have no knowledge, nor the name of any of the parties. I think the little knoll where our camp was on that morning, must have been not far from where Sioux Rapids now lies.
"We carried up the survey to within eighteen miles of the Minnesota line. onr store of provisions running short, Indian hostility so evident and no protection being afforded us by troops, we decided not to prolong the work and
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turned our faces eastward. We found neither trail, settlers nor timber on our route until we struck the 'Lizard Forks' a few miles above Fort Dodge, at that time garrisoned by a few soldiers under command of Major Webster."
BUENA VISTA COUNTY.
Buena Vista county is located in the northwest corner of Iowa, and lies in the third tier of counties from the north and the third from the western borders of the state. It is bounded on the north by Clay, on the east by Pocahontas, on the south by Sae and on the west by Cherokee counties. The county contains sixteen congressional townships of thirty-six sections each, and is twenty-four miles in size each way.
It is primarily a farming and agricultural county and has some of the most fertile soil of any in the state. The county is watered by the Little Sioux river in the north, the Raccoon river in the east, the Maple creek in the southwest and Brooke's creek in the central portion. Storm Lake, one of the prettiest of Towa's lakes, lies in the south central part.
In the central and eastern parts of the county the land is low and marshy, but highly productive. An extensive system of drainage is now under way which will effectively dispose of all surface water in this part of the county, and will make almost every acre in the sixteen townships fit for cultivation in all seasons, both wet and dry. Of interest in this connection will be found Prof. MacBride's geological notes on this county.
Buena Vista county has a population composed of law abiding and indus- trious people. Of the foreign born, the Swede, the Dane, the Norwegian and the German, form an important part. In the northwestern corner may be found a few Welsh, and in the southeastern some Irish, but the Scandinavian and the Teuton form fully a third of our people. The county has increased in wealth by leaps and bounds, and in material welfare stands with any of the counties in the state. It is a splendid community in which to live and every citizen is prond of Buena Vista.
GEOLOGY OF BUENA VISTA COUNTY.
During the summer of 1902 Prof. Thomas H. MaeBride of the Iowa State University, made an exhaustive investigation of the geological formation of Buena Vista and Cherokee counties, and embodied the result of his research in a monograph published by the State Geological Survey. The editors of this work have taken the liberty to use a portion of Prof. MacBride's work, omitting that part which is of interest to the scientists alone, and taking all that is of popular interest. It will be found of interest as revealing in new light our beautiful prairies, our lake and our Little Sioux river and valley.
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TOPOGRAPHY.
To the ordinary observer it might seem idle to attempt to find. much less to describe anything of interest in the socalled monotonous prairie of our north- western counties. At first sight to most people one prairie is exactly like another, and a "rolling" landscape in one locality is simply the counterpart of broken country twenty-five or. fifty miles away. But let the attentive observer onee traverse the prairie with the special intent of study or comparison and his views of monotony and of the prairie topography in general will undergo remark- able change. Especially will this be the case if the path of his investigation chance to cross the county now the theme of description and discussion.
Let our traveler, for instance, enter the county from the west, near the middle of its western boundary and pursue a course directly east. At first he will encounter a comparatively level plain: "gently rolling," he would say. But as he pursues his journey eastward suddenly the scene is entirely changed. He passes over the last broad claycovered ridge and looking southward may behold the town of Alta, beautifully located and perfectly named, a crest, a summit of older than historie interest. Still trending eastward the traveler presently finds himself confronted by an unexpected swamp, a marsh of unusual extent. sufficient perhaps to deffect the nnopened section highway. Beyond the swamp, rises a singular ridge which proves to be made of sand or gravel, precipitous, narrow, soon crossed, landing the traveler by perhaps irregular, abrupt descent upon the plain again, which curiously enough shows no erosion, or only the slightest, has no valleys and no streams, no ridges with their sloping sides as watersheds, but instead a confusion of irregular mounds. some perhaps worthy the names of hills, others simply swells or low, abrupt, causeless eleva- tions, a few feet in height, on which perchance the farmer has pitched his farmstead, as if to keep out of the general wet. Some of the hills are so large and monnd-like as to have attracted everybody's attention ; they are real knolls almost dunes, with a trend southeast, northwest.
As the traveler proceeds great marshes again obstruet his course, affecting not sections only, but sometimes a township entire; there are no bridges, only here and there a culvert through which the road-makers have coaxed part of the slough water from one side of the road to the other. it matters little in which direction. To the south are the beginnings of the Coon river, small creeks which wind about through lands much better drained. To the north the mounds are ridges and are again the features of the landscape, stretching off about the town of Marathon, becoming more and more prominent as we approach again the county line.
The topography of the country is an inscription written in large letters, it is true, and occasionally somewhat obscured and blurred since it often overlies similar earlier inscriptions-becomes a palimpsest in most real sense-but an inscription it remains, legible enough once we find the key and take the pains to decipher line after line.
These topographical differences between two adjoining sections of the country are accordingly no accident. We should find very similar contrasts if we drive from Sae to Calhoun, or from Crawford into Carroll county. We have
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before us two distinct topographie plans or types, each bringing with it a history of its own. The topography of Cherokee county is erosional; that of Buena Vista county, morainie. The first represents the general effect of long continued weathering, and the washing of storm-waters down a broad and gentle slope; the second shows the scattered piles of drift material and detritus deposited by some great glacier or ice-sheet, once dominant so far south and west, its debris as yet little affected by the rains and snows of the centuries that have since elapsed.
The drift or morainie topography is emphasized when the swamps and marshes deepen into lakes, as in the counties immediately to the north of us, or when the hills and kames rise to ridges or knobs of considerable height, as at Ruthven or in the vicinity of Ocheyedan ; in our present limited district there are really no morainie lakes, though plenty of swamps, and the morainie eleva- tions are generally low and insignificant.
Of course, we have not overlooked Storm Lake. Here is a body of water fine enough and large enough to deserve not mention only, but a more or less complete description. It is evident that Storm Lake belongs in some way at least to that great series or chain of fresh water glacial pools that extends from far northwest in Minnesota and South Dakota all the way to Wall lake in lowa and the pools of Greene and Dallas counties farther south and cast.
One of the largest of our glacial lakes, Storm Lake, is strangely enough one of the most shallow. Its extreme length is about three and one-half miles; its greatest breadth about two miles. The shores are low and generally even with several sandy beaches. Bowlders formerly decorated the whole margin, but especially the northern and eastern rim, as with an ornate wall, but these have mostly been long since hauled away by enterprising builders. The bottom of the lake is, however, reported to be paved with stone in many places, and here and there along the shore an erratic block of unusual size may yet be seen. The greatest depth of the lake from all accounts does not exceed fifteen feet : the outlet, once a marshy slongh. has long since been closed; the incoming streams are few and of minor importance. The fact is the lake has been slowly filling, probably for a long time, and chiefly by vegetable detritus. Once the lake seems to have stretched away in shallow expanse much farther to the north and west as evidenced by the present reedy, marshy swamp, undrained, extend- ing half way to Alta.
It is a matter of surprise to see no high hills or mounds abont Storm Lake. The surroundings are remarkably low, almost flat in fact, with no hills worthy of the name approaching the lake on either side. Storm Lake is at the very limit of the Wisconsin drift sheet, and would seem to be the very remnant of some preglacial valley, part of the drainage system of this country before the Wisconsin ice eame on; or it may represent part of the drainage channel that at one time lay along the glacier's front, choked up at length by the extension of the ice below, that is, toward the southeast. The drainage, never very vigorons here, since, as we shall see, most of it went north by the way of Brooke's creek, was easily checked and Storm bake with its accompanying swamp was the result. That the stream was thus checked is evident from the circumstance that the lake's outlet, when all glacial topographie change has reased, was into the Coon river, an intramorainie stream, and not by way of the glacier's margin.
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The ice was possibly not very thick here and the morainie materials are pro- portionately scant. Nevertheless, Storm Lake is a beautiful feature of this prairie landscape. Its bright waters attracted the pioneer; nor are they less charming to the thousands of people who now find happy homes about its curv- ing shores. Its unprotected surface and its shallowness expose the waters of the lake to the full violence of the wind. These are stirred to the very bottom, producing the wildest effects in both waves and color; hence the name.
The Little Sioux valley. the topographical feature of opposite type, is interesting for several reasons. It is a great channel eut through drift, and although recent as the story of Iowa goes, is yet far older than Storm Lake or any of the morainie topography of Buena Vista county. When the glacier lay on the plains to the east and north, the valley of the Little Sioux, as it ap- pears today, broad and deep, did its part in carrying away the waters from the glacier's front, the constantly melting margin. Indeed the valley seems to have been more than once nearly choked by deposits of Wisconsin gravel and perhaps in the upper parts of its course with ice. The banks of the river valley are everywhere marked with gravel terraces far above the flood-plain of the present stream. in places sometimes as much as a hundred feet above it. Such deposits are not the effect of ordinary erosive process. There is every evidence that the channel of the river had been fully excavated long before these deposits came to place. Sometimes they hang as a simple residue far up on the side of the sloping bluff; again they form great masses and parapets choking up half the valley ; sometimes two or three succeeding terraces may be traced.
The presence of the gravel-trains, for so sneh deposits are named, affects the topography in yet another way ; the gravel has not only in many places filled up and obliterated older erosion features, but it has itself been subject all the while to the processes of erosion. We encounter evidence of recent change, of newness and youth, where we should naturally expect the reverse. The walls of the river valley to the north everywhere show this. Old tributary streams have been choked across, and new channels later excavated, sometimes, generally indeed, in the direction of the older valley ; not always.
DRAINAGE.
The drainage of Buena Vista county is, in a large part, artificial. there being no natural system. The Little Sioux skirts the county along the north and receives as tributary Brooke's creek and one or two minor streams; the Coon river becomes efficient in some of the southeastern townships; but the entire eastern and central portions of Buena Vista county are without any natural drainage at all. Instead, we have here simply wide marshes and low sand-hills as already described. The valley of the Little Sioux is wide and deeply eroded ; probably a valley of erosion in large part, although that part of the valley before Linn Grove seems of different history and may be in part constructional. The banks of the river in Buena Vista county are generally precipitous, breaking down suddenly from the common level with short, precipitous, narrow, tributary ravines.
Li 500
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HISTORY OF BUENA VISTA COUNTY
The Raccoon river, or North Coon, as it stands on the maps, appears as a considerable steam in Providence township. It is for many miles of its tortuous course perennial. fed by seeping springs and long crooked prairie slonghs, now generally either tiled or at least in process of artificial drainage of some sort. The former, southern. outlet of Storm Lake is one of the tributaries of the Coon ; another branch takes rise about half a mile north of the lake shore but is cut off from the lake by a low plateau of sand and gravel upon which stands the city.
The most interesting stream in Buena Vista county is Brooke's ereek. This stream also takes rise in marshy ground abont a mile and a half north of the lake and flows almost directly north to the Little Sioux. Flows, did we say ? Flows is a term too strong by far. For the greater part of its course Brooke's creek consists simply of a succession of marshes by nature imperfectly united, and originally hardly to be recognized as a creek at all. Northward we have a more definite stream and channel; until as we approach the Sionx the usual erosion features sneceed with steep. bluffy banks, gravel beaches and short im- passable tributary ravines.
The southwest townships of the county are well drained by the several branches of the Maple creek. In all parts of Buena Vista county where natural drainage has been less efficient, artificial channels have been constructed, their course dictated by the art of the civil engineer. Some of these form far-extended systems and drain whole townships at a time.
ECONOMIC PRODUCTS.
The natural resources of this limited district herein described are quickly listed. There is no coal, no limestone, no sandstone, no first-class brick elay, at least none at present in nse. What is known of the geology of the state, taken in connection with what has been ascertained elsewhere relative to the occurrence of oil or natural gas, does not lend encouragement to the view some- times expressed that these substances naturally belong as part of the original wealth of northwest lowa. Coal occurs a little farther south and cast, but it is not likely that the coal-bearing rocks of Webster county extend under the drift so far west as our present region. Cretaceous coal might be thought a possi- bility since the sandstones of that system erop ont in the county west along the Sioux river. But even if such cretaceous coal were possible the depth of the overlying drift in all places so far explored, would seem to make the mineral almost, if not quite, inaccessible. All evidence at hand would indicate that there are no indurated rocks anywhere in the county now considered within less than several hundred feet of the surface.
SOILS.
The soils of northwest lowa are its wealth, a richness immediately accessible and if properly used, unlimited in future prodnetiveness. Oft recurring glaciers have prepared and pulverized this garden; nature through centuries
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BUENA VISTA COUNTY COURT HOUSE.
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HISTORY OF BUENA VISTA COUNTY
has covered it with rank vegetation for the enrichment of its humus; all atmos- pheric agencies have done well their work until now, as far as regards natural fertility, there are nowhere better soils. Nevertheless, these soils are not all just alike. In Buena Vista county there are at least three distinct types; soil with Wisconsin subsoil; soil with loess subsoil; and soil that is the immediate result of water transportation, the alluvium. From what has been said the limits of the several types are already patent. The first effects nearly the whole of Buena Vista county; the third the lowlands of the wider river valleys, as of the Maple and the Little Sioux. True alhivial soil is much the same every- where. It generally rests upon a sub-stratum of sand and gravel and is of casy tillage and excellent crop-producing quality. The Wisconsin soils are of entirely different character but apparently of equal excellence. No farms with- stood better the drought and heat than did those of Buena Vista county and other counties within the Wisconsin moraine. The surface soil is here very fine, very black. and very rich ; the subsoil either a fine caleareous clay. overlying the gravel, or a more porons mixture of lime, gravel and sand. At any rate, the subsoils of Buena Vista county seem to yield up to the growing erops in unusual measure the moisture needed at a time when other subsoils seem to fail entirely It is a problem what effect the wholesale tile-draining of northwest Iowa is likely to have upon the region and upon the state at large in the matter of local precipitation. In the days when vast areas were yet undrained but lay as pool and marsh and lake over hundreds of square miles, northwestern Iowa acted as a water storage reservoir for the remainder of the state. All summer long the waters sucked up, day by day, by the summer sun were passed on in clouds to descend as showers all up and down the eastern counties. But with the progress of our agriculture these surface waters have almost entirely disap- peared, hurried away by our finer systems of drainage to the rivers and to the sea, and the immediate source of loeal showers for lowa has disappeared as well. We are probably too near this situation yet. rightly to understand it or to reckon accurately the change we have effected but the case will certainly bear investi- gation and all the more exact observation of those in position to observe will be needed to enable us wisely to use the resources of this great state and to prevent our civilization from self injury, if not self destruction.
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