USA > Indiana > Grant County > Centennial history of Grant County, Indiana, 1812 to 1912 : compiled from records of the Grant county historical society, archives of the county, data of personal interviews, and other authentic sources of local information > Part 16
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The physiological structure of the human system as well as other animal and all vegetable bodies is dependent as a means of existence upon frequent and plenteous supplies of water. It is a life-giving resource. Without it life becomes extinet. Then yesterday, today and tomorrow Grant county must needs be supplied-and bountifully, too -- with this indispensable element. Indicative of a supply of bountiful proportions are the streamlets, creeks and river within the limit of our borders. Once springs, ponds and miniature lakes were with us in numbers. Now they are rapidly becoming extinet with consequent lowering of water level. To the pessimist and calamity howler this spells drouth and water famine. But not so. Where once stood stag- nant and germ breeding pools are today fertile fields. Why mourn their loss? Let him that is athirst drink, and not only drink but drink freely. This does not justify waste. Waste is not and never can be justified. Use may consume but does not destroy.
Like other natural resources our native soil is a gift of Providence. It is. however, very susceptible to external influences. To the average citizen of Grant county the maintenance of soil fertility is the one big problem in conservation of natural resources.
In its virginity it possessed pronounced Fertility. Necessity, igno- rance and enpidity in many instances have so redneed its virility that response is tardy and half-hearted. Experience and science, however, inform us that rational treatment and careful husbanding result in increased yields and storage of latent plant food. The inexperienced and uninitiated desirous of entering into active soil tillage are enabled to avail themselves of the advantages of detailed and exhaustive trea tise on maintenance of soil fertility.
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
XV. THE FOREST OF GRANT COUNTY
By Garfield Vestal Cox
None but the pioneer can realize how dense and unbroken was the hardwood forest that onee covered Grant conty, and few consider how great has been its influence upon the county's development. When white men met the Indians at the Battle of the Mississinewa they fought beneath the cover of giant trees. Here grew elm, oak, ash, poplar, wal- nut, beech, maple, linden (commonly called linn), hickory, sycamore, cottonwood and willow, together with other species of lesser importance. Beneath this canopy was a dense growth of underbrush such as paw paw, hazelnut, sumach, elder, briers and spicewood. Just cast of what has since become the town of Fairmount occurred the only break in the forest, a few hundred acres of werd covered. black prairie, dotted with cranberry bogs.
The oaks were the most plentiful, and the most generally distrib- uted of all trees, though many other species were everywhere abun- dantly intermingled. White pine, and red oak grew on the higher ground, while burr and swamp oak thrived in the lowlands. White and red elm preferred much moisture. White ash was found on clay loam, while swamp ash songht land well watered. Hickory and linden sometimes grew in swamps, but were found in greatest numbers on high ground. Hard (sugar) maple was most plentiful on the upland, while soft (red) maple grew with sycamore, cottonwood, and willow in swamps and along streams. Yellow poplar and black walnut re- quired that rich elay loam which has since been transformed into the best farm land in the county.
Of all species poplar attained the greatest height and oak the great- est diameter, though ehn, ash, and black walnut also grew to great size. In Little Dear creek "bottom, " Liberty township, was found a burr oak nine feet in diameter four feet from the ground. It is prob- able that a larger tree never grew in the county, though poplars at- tained a diameter of five feet and a height of more than one hundred and fifty feet. Though these cases are exceptional, on almost every seetion of land grew thousands of nature trees of large proportions.
The axe. the saw and the mattock in the hands of rugged men have transformed this wilderness into a garden, but only the pioneer can ever know the cost-the labor of felling and burning trees, of grub- bing stumps and underbrush, of tilling soil that was full of roots and stumps. Yet the forest was not the settler's enemy. His hogs ran in the unfenced wood, and thrived on beech nuts and acorns. Every fall the pioneer "laid in" a store of hickory nuts and walnuts to be cracked and caten before the open fire on long winter evenings. Many farmers had sugar camps, and every spring when the sap began to rise in sugar trees, holes were bored in the sapwood, and "sugar-water" was drawn off through wooden spiles, and boiled in huge kettles until the most delicious maple syrup was obtained. But it was the timber that rendered the forest invaluable to the settler. From tall, clean bodied yellow poplar trees he built his stable and cabin of logs. From straight grained oak and black walnut he split the rails that fenced his clearing. Much of the best splitting timber he burned in the large open fireplace. A great quantity of timber was used within the county to construct more than one hundred miles of corduroy roads through swamps, by paving the highways with logs. Millions of feet of the finest oak were split into two inch slabs, and used in blind ditches to drain the land, for tiles were unheard of in those days.
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
Though the drain upon the forest for the settlers' use was heavy. the slaughter in clearing the land was heavier still. for it was upon the richest soit that the linest timber grew. Neither a market for wood nor a means of transportation had yet come, and trees which today would be worth l'ar more than the land upon which they grew were eut into logs, piled and burned. The writer's father, though not an old man, has helped burn hundreds of huge black walnut logs to clear the ground for corn. In fact, log rollings were social events, the fam ilies of a neighborhood gathering at a home while the men rolled logs and ate the bounteous dinner cooked by the women. The writer's grandfather has ent hundreds of large oaks and stripped them of bark to be used at the fanyard, while the trees were left in the woods to rot.
But in 1868 there came a change. In that year the Pennsylvania railroad was built through Harrisburg and Marion, and the shipment of timber eastward began. Black walnut trees like those burned a year before were soon worth twenty-five dollars cach. The price of yellow poplar rapidly advanced. A demand for ash and oak quickly followed, and saw mills sprang up in every neighborhood. Wahnt. used for cabinet work, and poplar, used for building material, were the first to disappear. The demand for oak was equally great. but because of greater abundance it lasted longer. The marketing of our timber was still Further simplified by the construction in 1875 of the Cincinnati, Wabash and Michigan Railway through Fairmount and Marion. During these years the drain upon the forest was enormous. Thousands of car loads of oak barrel staves were exported by stave factories. Much of the finest black walnut was shipped to Germany to be made into Furniture. Heavy oak timbers were sent to the Atlantic
roast to be used in ship building. With the discovery of natural gas in 1887 men, confident that the new fuel would prove inexhaustible. cleared their remaining woodland with reckless rapidity. As the sup- ply of the more valuable species of hardwood began everywhere to fail, inferior varieties came to have a market value. There was scarcely a tree of any species large enough for a saw log that the humberman was not eager to buy. The last body of virgin timber in the county, a wood adjoining the Wabash county line, was exploited during the years from 1900 to 1907.
The days of the rail fence, the log cabin, and the roaring hearth fire are passed, for there remain only a few isolated woodlots. sodded and heavily grazed -- woodlots of a few inferior trees-the skeletons of a forest that has been. We are without timber to supply local de mand at a time when the world faces a timber famine, and only a few have thought of tomorrow. These are preserving small wooded plots, or planting groves of catalpa or black walnut. Farmers are beginning to realize that small woodlots are indispensable, and that if rightly managed they are profitable. The woodlot of the future will doubtless be a windbreak for the farm buildings and orchard, a small, carefully managed grove prodneing a maximum of the most valuable kinds of timber.
Today, as we point with pride to Grant county's fertile fields, let us think of the wilderness that once was here, and remember with praise those sturdy pioneers by whose hard labor it has been trans- formed into an unrivaled land of homes.
XVI. SOME WEATHER OBSERVATIONS
Almost every man, woman and child knows James F. Hood as the weather observer for this locality, and what he reports is always
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
"official," because almost all of his life he has made records of the shifting weather conditions. Since January 1, 1888, Mr. Hood has been supplied with the necessary instruments for observing the weather by the weather department of the United States government, and he makes daily reports to Indianapolis and frequent reports to Wash- ington.
It has become second nature to Mr. Hood to record weather condi- tions, and the newspapers always rely on him for periodical reports. llis weather plant is in his own door yard, and temperature and rain- fall are part of his daily routine, and monthly summaries are always expected from him. For almost a quarter of a century the mean annual temperature has been 49.6, and the warmest year, 1896, the temperature averaged 52.6 with an average of 48.5, in 1904, on record as the coolest year in his time of observation.
The hottest day was July 24, 1891, when the thermometer showed 105 above, and the coldest day. was January 20, 1892, when it registered 22 below. The mean annual rainfall in Grant county has been 39.28 inches since record has been made of it, and in the wettest year, 1892, the total rainfall amounted to 56.28 inches. In the driest year. 1895, the rainfall was 22.14 inches, and in October, 1892, there was no pre- cipitation at all. On September 13, 1892, the rainfall was 4.75, and in the March flood, Easter Sunday and Monday, 1913, the rainfall in two days was 8.08 inches.
Frost was recorded in every month in 1894, and on the night of November 12, 1912, the temperature dropped 65 degrees. On April 26, 1893, there was a destructive eyelone in the southwestern part of the county. While the past is no Forecast of the future, this sunt- mary of conditions is of interest, and those who discuss weather when they meet friends will certainly familiarize themselves with 11
XVII. GLACIAL DRIFT AND SOIL FORMATION
By Ml. O. Pence
The study of soils is one that has long commanded the attention of writers of all classes, but it has only been within recent years that a systematie study and examination of them has been made from the standpoint of their source and origin, as well as their relation to soil fertility and practical agriculture. Formerly the soil, or the undig- nified term "dirt," was probably given little consideration because it gave forth such bountiful and remunerative erops with but little care, study or attention. However, when the sciences of chemistry and bac- teriology began to be applied in a systematic study of soils, it was soon observed that the problems in connection therewith were as complex and intangible as any that have ever baffled our best research workers. There are so many exterior faetors, difficult to control, such as light, heat, moisture, elevation and aeration, affecting the internal character of the soil that it is difficult to select any one phase of the soil for study and draw from it definite conclusions.
In this study of the subject, it is the desire of the writer to treat the topie in a general way, using only the necessary scientific names and with the hope that everyone may become interested and appreciate the vital relation of the soil to local as well as national prosperity. Any lo- eality. any people, any nation, may be measured in terms of national Vol. I-7
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
"official, " because almost all of his life he has made records of the shifting weather conditions. Since January 1, lass, Mr. Hood has been supplied with the necessary instruments for observing the weather by the weather department of the C'united States government, and he makes daily reports to Indianapolis and frequent reports to Wash- ington.
It has become second nature to Mr. Hood to record weather condi- tions, and the newspapers always rely on him for periodical reports. His weather plant is in his own door yard, and temperature and rain- fall are part of his daily routine, and monthly summaries are always expected from him. For almost a quarter of a century the mean annual temperature has been 49.6, and the warmest year. 1896, the temperature averaged 52.6 with an average of 48.5. in 1904. on record as the coolest year in his time of observation.
The hottest day was July 24, 1891, when the thermometer showed 105 above, and the coldest day was January 20. 1892, when it registered 22 below. The mean annual rainfall in Grant county has been 39.28 inches since record has been made of it, and in the wettest year, 192. the total rainfall amounted to 56.25 inches. In the driest year, 1895, the rainfall was 22.14 inches, and in October, 1892, there was no pre- vipitation at all. On September 13, 1892. the rainfall was 4.75, and in the March Hood. Easter Sunday and Monday, 1913, the rainfall in two days was 8.08 inches.
Frost was recorded in every month in 1894, and on the night of November 12, 1912, the temperature dropped 05 degrees. On April 26, 1893, there was a destructive eyelone in the southwestern part of the county. While the past is no forecast of the Future. this sum- mary of conditions is of interest, and those who discuss weather when they meet friends will certainly familiarize themselves with n
XVIL. GLACIAL DRIFT AND SOIL FORMATION
By M. O. Pence
The study of soils is one that has long commanded the attention of writers of all classes. but it has only been within recent years that a systematie study and examination of them has been made from the standpoint of their source and origin, as well as their relation to soil fertility and practical agriculture. Formerly the soil, or the undig- nified term "dirt," was probably given little consideration because it gave forth such bountiful and remunerative erops with but little rare, study or attention. However, when the sciences of chemistry and bae- teriology began to be applied in a systematic study of soils. it was soon observed that the problems in connection therewith were as complex and intangible as any that have ever baffled our best research workers. There are so many exterior factors, difficult to control, such as light, heat, moisture, elevation and aeration. affecting the internal character of the soil that it is difficult to select any one phase of the soil for study and draw from it definite conclusions.
In this study of the subject, it is the desire of the writer to treat the topie in a general way. using only the necessary scientific names and with the hope that everyone may become interested and appreciate the vital relation of the soil to local as well as national prosperity. Any lo- cality. any people, any nation, may be measured in terms of national Fel. 1-7
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
wealth, progressiveness, prosperity and longevity as they have appre- cated and studied the soil and its relationship to agricultural progress.
As we glance about us on a casual walk through the country, or in our travels through a state or across the continent, everywhere about us is the soil with its manifold verdure clothing the level prairie and the most rugged hill. We are unable to flee from its presence, or, as we may say, a study of it. Let us examine this soil that is so common and which makes one dubious that it is a chemical complex teeming with unknown life and vigor. These living elements (beneficial fungi and bacteria) have recently been found as essential to a fertile soil as the chemical elements. Tilth, brought about by plowing and cultiva- tion, affects the soil mainly in its physical sense, or as one particle is arranged with respect to every other. The proper soil structure as well as texture is always essential. Geologists have made a study of this crust or soil mantle until they are able to tell us accurately the age of it, and where it came from.
Early in the glacial era there was a change in the climate of the earth from a condition warmer than the present to one colder than the present. As the climate grew coller over North America the snow began to accumulate in the Canadian highlands. As more snow fell than melted during the year an accumulation formed on the uplands. This snow solidified, as it no doubt does at the present time, and formed granular and later blue ice; flowing away in sluggish streams from the center. This glacier was so large that it flowed ont from the Cana. dian highlands as a great ice sheet, hundreds, in places thousands, of feet in thickness, that spread out over northern United States. It cov- ered a large part of Indiana in the southeastern and southwestern parts of the state, and in the central portion as far south as Owen county. The southern boundaries of this invading glacier are marked by grau- ite boulders of the type brought from their far away home in Canada.
We are more interested in the general effect of these glaciers than in their canse. We know from the glaciers in Switzerland and Greenland of the present time that they travel very slowly; in fact they creep along much slower than the most sluggish rivers of today. This soil of ours we must remember has not all been deposited by one glacier, for we have evidence, by means of glacial drifts, that several, glaciers of increasing thickness passed over this very section of the state. Inter- vals of very long duration might have occurred, too, between glacial invasions. Let us see what the effect of this prodigious mill was, for the grinding of rock into soil. Geologists tell us that the aggregate depth of these glaciers ranged from 300 to 1,000 feet in thickness, and single glaciers as much as 500 feet in depth. Can one imagine a more powerful mill for the grinding of rock into soil? A glacier with a depth of 500 feet would exert a pressure of 198 pounds per square inch, or 28,000 pounds per square foot. And this too in motion, giv. ing the grinding action of our stone burrs in old mills. With its netherstone, one-half of the North American continent, and for its upper one a block of ice of corresponding size, having its grinding face set with hard boulders and gravel; we can understand how such a foree, acting day and night, year in and year out, for centuries mm- bered by the hundreds if not by the thousands, wrought the wonders that it did.
It eroded the rocky surface, grinding it off in great quantities here. and filling in deep depressions yonder. Great deposits of conglomerate clay, sand, gravel, rocks, etc .. are found in the ill detined drifts mark ing the boundaries of glaciers. A change of climate, combined with a period of rest, may have caused a melting of these glaciers. The lakes
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
of northern Indiana and Michigan are the result of the gouging action of the ice on the rocks; by the deposition of material across valleys, forming an earth dam; and still others by water accumulating in the depressions formed by the irregularities in the mouth of glacial drift.
Great streams of water emerging from the melting ice sorted and resorted the glacial grist, leaving in some places beds of coarse. clean gravel with surface sloping gently in the direction of discharge, over which has since developed one type of extremely fertile soil; leaving in other places beds of sharp plastering sand, often unstratified in the most eurious manner with coarser or finer material, while the finest silt was removed to subside in immerable lakes, or to be borne away to the sea to form coastal plains. All are familiar with these gravel and sand pits of the county that have contributed, through their use in improving our roads, to the rapid progress of our county.
The hills of Grant county extending from a northwestern to a south- eastern direction, east of Marion, belong to the moraines formed by the glaciers. These are the result of a glacial halt, which allowed the con- glomerate deposit of rocks, sand and gravel in these ridges, known par- tienlarly as terminal moraines. As residents of the county we are only interested in the study of the above subject as it might affect the county in whatever manner.
But we have learned that Grant county was in the thickest of this glacial era. The wonderful rielmess of most of her soil, together with its capacity for the production of large crops without the application of foreign plant foods, are silent testimonials to the effect of glaciation and its relation to soil formation.
Our river is bordered by a rich, and varying layer of alluvial soil deposited by the action of moving water. We are familiar today, in the period of one generation, with the changes that have taken place in the beds of our streams; of the entting away here and the piling up yonder, all of which constantly changes the stream bed and the val- ley. From one point of view, the most important result of stream action is the wonderful mixing up of the soil in some places, strati- fication of particles of soils in others, and a general enricheute vi overflow lands by means of the silt deposit. The flood in the spring of 1913 is a good example of the wonderful transportation qualities of rapidly moving water. In some places whole farms were practically ruined by washing, and in still other places farms were covered many inches in depth with a coating of fine sand and silt. Such, or worse, may have been the past history of our alluvial soil formation.
The beating action of raius has been very potent in the transpor- tation and formation within short distancees, as within the limits of one man's farm. The moving of accumulated rainfall on even gently roll- ing land will wash gulches and demade hillsides of their surface soils, piling and sorting the same in the bottom of ravines, or in its total loss by way of the stream and river. Every action of moisture in the soil, freezing and thawing, rising and falling, wetting and drying, all move and change the soil structure. The soil is the loose mantle of material covering the earth's surface. It consists of the disintegrated materials derived from rock mixed with decomposing organic or vegeta- ble matter. This erust is composed of seventy elements, some of which are present in small proportions. Only ten of these are known to be essential to the growth of plants, while but three of these are all that are usually needed in the form of applied fertilizer. These elements are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The surface soil is that part usually turned into the cultivation, and the subsoil is all that- - part of material found beneath. This distinction is not exact, for the sur-
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HHISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
face soil, which is marked by an admixture of organic matter together with certain chemical differences, varies from a few inches in thick ness in some places to several feet in others. Another striking dittt. ence'is the relative compaetness of soil and subsoil. The subsoil, hav. ing a smaller organic content, is usually of a lighter color. The soil and subsoil in their relations of compactness, color, depth, capacity for drainage and ease of cultivation, all have a vital bearing on the crops that may be produced, and on the prosperity of a farming community.
When a soil begins to fail in its erop-producing power, we are in- clined to think that it is run out or that its store of plant food is nearly exhausted. But if we analyze a heavily cropped soil alongside a vir- gin soil, we shall find that the total content of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (the necessary fertilizing ingredients) in each is of lit- the difference. But we must remember that it is through a wise pro- vision of nature that most of the plant food is found in an unavailable state, and through contimmons cropping for a few years is all used up as far as the available supply is concerned. In a soil of good tilth, rich in plant residues and Inuuns, properly drained and rotated, we have about all the processes of soil digestion at work to change the unavail- able plant food into the available. Then it is the problem of the farmer, not only to add available plant food to the soil, but also to study the means whereby the unavailable supply may be made use of. Therefore, it follows, that a chemical analysis of total plant food in a soil is of little indication as to the kind of fertilizers most needed, un- less ofte of the necessary elements is practically absent.
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