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"This sketch is intended principally as a
pen-picture of Sac County as it now is, and will include a short
outline of its history and a few incidents of the life of the early
settlers.
“The soil of Sac County is a deep black loam, and in its nature
is purely a vegetable decomposition. Its depth is from eighteen
inches to five or six feet. In some parts of the county the surface
is almost perfectly level for long distances, but in general it is
of the genuine 'rolling prairie' description. The inexhaustibility
of the soil is shown by the fact that farms which have been under
cultivation for from twenty to twenty-five years are now as fertile
and productive as ever. More than that-the land may be plowed here
when it is so wet that it is almost impossible to do work and it
will never bake.
"As regards the
productiveness of Sac County, perhaps as effective a way of showing
whether the detractors of Northwestern Iowa, mentioned in Governor
Campbell's letter, are right or wrong, will be to give to our
readers the benefit of some of the observations of the Hon. Eugene Criss, pioneer and resident of Sac County for more than a quarter of
a century. Judge Criss says that his average yield of corn in his
twenty-five years' residence has been from forty to fifty bushels to
the acre, and the highest yield he has ever had was sixty-five
bushels. Average yield of oats, forty to fifty; highest yield,
seventy-six bushels. Average yield of wheat, fifteen to eighteen;
highest yield, thirty bushels. This is his personal experience, and
with fair cultivation only no fancy farming; that he knows of at
least two of his neighbors who have raised as high as forty bushels
of wheat to the acre. Others, too, have raised, in more than one
neighborhood in the county, from seventy to eight bushels of com per
acre, and, it is said, without more than ordinary tillage. The
principal agricultural products of Sac County and this section
generally are com, wheat, oats, flax, barley, rye and grass.
Timothy, clover and blue grass grow readily and will make Sac, at an
early day, one of the leading stock and dairy counties of Iowa. And
Iowa is, with rapid strides, coming to the head of all the States in
dairy products. We will put Judge Criss on the stand again in regard
to the advantages for stock raising.
"We have stated that the tame grasses grow
rapidly. Besides that fact, it is also true that the Kentucky blue
grass is rapidly coming 'of itself in places where it has never been
sown. Along fences, along paths made by cattle through the brush and
in pastures, in spots where the timber and underbrush have been
cleared, in door-yards and other places, in some mysterious way that
sweetest and best of feed for stock is making its appearance. It is
a matter which the present writer does not understand, but it is a
good thing, and we are glad to see that this section is so
fortunate. Grass is always sufficiently high to turnout stock at a
date varying in the different years from April 1st to April 30th.
And now we produce Judge Criss's testimony. The Judge is a Virginian
by birth, but has had some years experience in the two States, it is
his firm belief that both cattle and horses do better 'running out'
during the winter months in this part of Iowa than they do in
Maryland. This, our readers will observe, is not guess work or the
dictum of a traveler or chance observer, but the carefully
considered verdict of experience.
The location of Sac County is on the Great
Divide, as the watershed between the Missouri and the Mississippi is
called. It is in the west northwestern part of the State, the sixth
from the southern, the third from the Missouri River, and the tenth
from the Mississippi. Sac City, the center of the government, and
not far geographical center, is about fifty miles by wagon road west
from Fort Dodge and abut eighty-five miles' east of Sioux City.
Sac County's only railway communication
with the busy world outside is by means of branches of the Chicago &
Northwestern Railroad. These branches are the Maple River Railroad
and the Sac City & Wall Lake Railroad. The former has two stations
in the County, Odebolt and Wall Lake. The latter has, as yet, no
other stations than it termini, Sac City and Wall Lake, which
are twelve miles apart. Another station is now being put in which
will be better entitled to the latter name than the town which now
bears it, being situated on the shores of the Lake, while the
present station at Wall Lake is some four miles distant. It seems to
us that the present town will be obliged, in honor, to resign its
name in favor of the baby town not yet christened. Sac City is
situated twenty-eight and eight-tenths miles from Maple River
Junction, on the main line (Chicago & Council Bluffs) of the Chicago
& Northwestern Railway, and just thirty-three miles from Carroll,
the nearest town of any consequence in direct railway communication.
Both these branches have been built within the past three years, and
a large part of the present.
[The additional station on the Sac City & Wall
Lake Railroad was eventually christened Fletcher. An account of it
will be found in the proper place.] |
