Dunklin County, Missouri - Resources, 1896

Resources

This section is unsurpassed in its agricultural resources; all the products of the field, dairy, orchard, garden and vineyard, may be produced from our soil with ease. This is the banner county of the State for cotton, and is a very large corn producer.

The character of the soil is of such a nature that it is susceptible of the highest state of cultivation and productiveness. It yields promptly and bountifully to every intelligent touch of labor. Its resources only need development to make it one of the richest counties in the State.

The timbers of Dunklin County are abundant, the county being literally covered with a very fine grade of timber where the land is not in cultivation, and consists of sycamore, sweet, black and tupelo-gum, cypress, white, burr, cow and black-oak, locust, redelm, hickory, ash, cotton-wood, maple and some beech, walnut and poplar. There are also mulberry

This county sent to the World's Columbian Exposition an ash block two feet long, five feet, eight inches in diameter, which not only excelled any ash on exhibition from any State in the Union, but also from any other country in the world. There was also a walnut block three feet, eight inches, and a hickory block three feet, nine inches in diameter. The only specimens of iron wood from this State were sent from Dunklin County. Cork wood, which is found to be plentiful in this county and not found elsewhere in the State, made a very valuable acquisition to the exhibit.

The products of our fields sent were a cucumber weighing forty-six pounds, and very fine samples of pumpkins, sweet and Irish potatoes, corn and the finest cotton of any county in Missouri. It may be stated here that this county produces annually more cotton than the entire remainder of the State of Missouri.

Nearly all kinds of fruit, tame and wild grasses, yonkepins, mosses, etc., went along with the exhibit, and showed Dunklin County's resources and products to be equal to, and in some instances better, than any county in a State made up of good counties.

From personal knowledge and from such information as can be gained from the Map of Topographical Survey of the Swamp Lands in Southeast Missouri, made under the direction of N. C. Frissell, chief eogineer, by J. R. Van Frank, assistant engineer, the writer judges the following to be a very close estimate of the lands now in cultivation in the county.

Of the remaining 234,602-^^0% acres there are probably at least 100,000 acres that might be practically put in cultivation. There are approximately 100,000 acres within the limits of the county which are subject to overflow in spring, and this includes some of the lands in cultivation. Thirty-five thousand acres of this overflow lands lie west of Little River, and the remaining 65,000 acres in the swamp of that river.

Taking the estimate of high land, which is and might easily be put in cultivation, at 182,640 acres, then there is left 134,602-3^0% acres of swamp lands in Dunklin County, that may not be cultivated now. Still it is reasonably certain that the levee along the Mississippi River will protect Dunklin County from the periodical overflows, and give it a much larger tillable area. On this swamp land the timbers are abundant and valuable.

The value of lands in this county varies from $3.00 to $25.00 per acre. The timbered land is worth from $3.00 to $7.00, and the improved land from $15.00 to $25.00 per acre, according to the amount of improvements, proximity to towns, etc.

Certainly there is land in our county that cannot be bought for $50.00 an acre, simply because its owners do not wish to sell at any price, knowing that their land is every year increasing in value, and that it produces more than plenty of lands in other places which have been bragged up and sold for $75.00 to $100.00 per acre.

That the lands in Dunklin County may be made to produce good crops with less labor than almost any other place is a fact worthy of note. Where, as in many places, farmers are obliged to use from two to four horses to break their land, the Dunklin

County farmer uses only one and two horses for the same purpose. It is a rare thing for one to see a farmer plowing four horses in this county. This is ovvins: to the fact that the soil does not bake and get hard, but is easily penetrated by the plow and turns readily. Where the stumps are off the cultivator may be used with the greatest advantage.

Our lands produce, on an average, from thirty to fifty bushels of corn per acre; from 800 to 2,000 pounds of cotton per acre. This year, 1895, the acreage of cotton is about a three-fifth crop, but having better cotton than usual brings the crop up to about a three-fourth crop. Wheat average twelve bushels per acre on the sand and along on Halcomb; this wheat averages fifty -nine pounds per measured bushel.

Wheat ofrovvn on the clay land of the ridge and on clovered land averages twenty-five bushels per acre, and in weight averages sixty-one pounds per measured bushel. This is on the crop of 1894, in this county.

J. I. Caneer of Horse Island states that off of fifteen acres of clover he gathered four to seven bushels of clover seed per acre, which brought him $4.00 to $5.00 per bushel. Sold $50.00 worth of hay and put up 47,000 pounds of hay in the bale. He says further that the pasture was worth $50.00 to him, he having kept about thirteen head of horses and twenty-five of cattle on it for six weeks. These facts show that our land will not only produce good corn and cotton but good wheat and clover when properly and intelligently cultivated.

farmers of Dunklin County should certainly study the above statistics and give more attention to wheat and clover. To give here a list of our exports will show our principal products perhaps better than any other way.

The water of Dunklin County is pure and healthful, and there is no such thing as a scarcity at any time of the year, unless it might be up on the ridge where the people use a few cisterns. But there are good springs, from which clear branches trickle down through the valleys during all times of the year, affording plenty of water for people and stock. There are also a number of sulphur springs on the ridge, which, if opened up and properly cared for, would no doubt be equal in healthfulness and medical properties to many of the so-called great springs. All over the remainder of the county the ** driven well," or Pitcher Pump with galvanized iron pipes, is in use. One of these pumps may be driven to the depth of twenty feet, and made ready to send forth a bountiful supply of pure, clear water in two hours' time. The water is strained through fine gauze at the lower end, and there is no possibility of anything impure getting into the water, as it is pumped fresh from the interior of the earth just as you want it, and that too, with ease ; any child six years of age can pump the water for the family. There is no such thing as drinking musty water full of ** wiggle tails " in Dunklin County.

Health Rate

Since the doing away of the dug well, caused by the introduction into the county of the iron pump, the health rate has increased a hundred per cent.

Malarial diseases, such as chills and fever, are far less prevalent. Malarial fever, which usually runs about two or three weeks, is the most serious malarial trouble we have. This disease is not dangerous unless it runs into typhoid fever, which it does not one time in a thousand. A prominent and popular physician says he has not seen but two cases of typhoid fever during his residence of eight years in the county. Many other prominent physicians say they have never treated a single case of this disease in the county. Diphtheria is also nearly unknown here. There has perhaps not been exceeding three dozen cases of this disease within its limits, since the settlement of the county. Scarlet fever is another much dreaded disease that is seldom seen here. When you realize that our children are free from diphtheria and scarlet fever you can readily understand how it is that the death rate is lower, instead of higher, as many uninformed people imagine, than it is in many so-called healthy localities.

It has been estimated that one death out of every seven in the United States of America is caused by consumption, and as yet it has laid its terrible grasp on very few citizens of this county. It ma}^ be confidently stated that two-thirds of the deaths caused by this disease occur among the late emigration and not among the early settlers, showing decisively that the disease is not contracted here, but brought from other localities.

Indeed, it is a matter of remark that diseases of the throat and lungs are so seldom seen and so mild as compared to other localities. A person with an ordidinarily good constitution may have pneumonia or *' winter fever" for two or three consecutive winters

As to epidemics of various other diseases they do not occur here as often as in many localities which are termed healthy. I believe these facts will be substantiated by any well informed physician in the county.

It is not the purpose of this writer to pretend that this locality is exempt from all diseases, for it is not, but to show that, while we have malaria here, we are exempt, or nearly so, from many dread diseases that are prevalent in other localities. The malarial season in Dunklin County is from the middle of July to the middle of October; this is presumably caused by the decaying of the rank vegetation grown in the spring and early summer. During dry seasons malarial diseases are much less prevalent than during wet ones.

At the present time malarial diseases are not so prevalent as formerly, occasioned from the fact that as the timber is cut out and the land allowed to dry, it is put in cultivation ; thus the causes of malaria cease to be so numerous.

After all that has been said about the unhealthfulness of Dunklin County, our people have better health during the winter, and as good, taking the year around, and can show a lower death rate than many counties in the various States of our great Republic, which are considered healthy. It is an erroneous idea that people can not live long here. Our list of old citizens disproves this. Among the biographies of Dunklin County people, will be found the names of plenty

Climate

The climate is mild, the thermometer seldom falling much below zero. The winters, though variable, are short and mild, and while the summers are warm they are not excessively oppressive. Februar}^ April, May, June, October, November and December are usually exceedingly pleasant months.