It is a matter of history that not long after this incident the great Gogebic iron range, which has made Wisconsin famous as an iron producing state, was discovered in the northern part of the state, and “Old John T.” was one of its large owners to the day of his death.
CHAPTER XI
TRAPPING GAME BIRDS
In one of their cow-hunting expeditions, the Allen boys went some seven or eight miles to the west, where they came to a deep but narrow little river, running down through a broad marsh, or wet prairie, which was more than a mile in width. The water in the little river was clear and quite cool. Up and down the stream, as far as the eye could see, the marsh was covered with luxuriant, nutritious “blue-joint” grass, in many places growing to a height above the boys’ heads.
Of the purchase money received for the Wisconsin “swamp land,” a certain portion was set aside for its reclamation, the direction of which work was placed in the hands of the county authorities. Mr. Allen was a natural, as well as practical civil engineer, and his investigation of the land convinced him of the value of this great tract, if it might be properly drained and dammed to take care of the annual floods coming down from the melting snows of the north. He found a place where, by cutting through one high sand knoll, a ditch might be constructed all the way in the easily-worked peat, and the waters of the little stream be thus turned into the Yellow river.
Some wealthy friends were found who were willing to back Mr. Allen’s judgment, with the purchase money, and more than ten thousand acres of this land were secured. Mr. Allen was able himself to obtain from the county the contract for the drainage works.
It was late in August before arrangements could be completed for beginning the big ditch, which was to turn the waters of one river into another, and give such control over the irrigation of some thousands of acres of level land, that it might be planted with cranberry vines, and the water be held upon it during the summer months, or, drained dry, to be converted into choice farm lands, as the future should determine.
A camp house was built upon the pine knoll where the deep cut would be made, and a score of men secured who would labor as shovelers and dam builders. First, the course of the little river was to be straightened, by the meanderings being cut across, then a big dam thrown across the wide expanse of marsh, back of which the waters could be held if needful.
I suppose that never was there such another dam constructed, and yet it served its purpose well, and endured for many years. The soil of that great marsh was not what we are accustomed to call “soil”—sand or clay mixed with humus—but was composed of peat. Ages of moss and other vegetable growth had fallen and decayed into a brown mass, into which grass roots had crept, weaving the whole into a tough, fibrous blanket of from three to ten feet in thickness. The line of the ditch was staked out across the marsh, and with knives whose blades were as broad as one’s two hands, and three feet long, lateral lines were cut deep into this tough peat. Then cross cuts were made the width of the to-be ditch forming squares ten inches or a foot each way. Then, with a many-pronged bent fork these squares were pulled up by the men, and there were huge “bricks” of peat, three feet long, to be laid into the wall of the dam on the downstream side.