Grant County, Wisconsin - Chapter 3: Grant County Described, 1900

Geography And Topography

It is bounded on the south by the line between the States of Wis* consin and Illinois, on the east by the Fourth Principal Meridian, on the north and northeast by the Wisconsin River, and on the west and southwest by the Mississippi River. It forms an irregular triangle, the Fourth Principal Meridian its base and the Wisconsin and Missis¬ sippi its sides. Its greatest length is forty-eight miles from north to south and its greatest width thirty-seven miles from east to west. It contains 1152 square miles, or 737,280 acres. Next to Dane it is the largest of the old-settled counties. The principal streams within its borders are Grant, Platte, Blue, and Green Rivers. The principal tributaries of Grant are Little Grant, Blake's Fork, and Rattlesnake. The Little Platte is the principal tributary of the Platte.

The land of the county is a high plateau, deeply cut into by the valleys of the rivers and creeks, and the bottoms of those rivers. The numerous and very deep valleys (considering that it is not a rooutainous region) form a striking feature of the topography of the county. We have these deep valleys, in contrast to the country not far east, west, or south, because the county is in what is called the Drifitless Area, and the valleys, the work of countless thousands of years of eroding rains, have never been filled by the vast plows of the glaciers, as will be described in the Geological History in this work. The great watershed between the Wisconsin River and the streams to the south running into the Mississippi, and the divides between Grant and Platte Rivers and their several tributaries are what is left of the pla¬ teau just mentioned. These ridges form one system, of which the great watershed mentioned, called the Military Ridge, is the backbone and the lesser ridges the ribs.

Ridge is occupied by Long or Fennimore Prairie, stretching from the eastern border of the county to within a few miles of the Mississippi. Here it sends off an offshoot to the south, called Blake's Prairie, occu¬ pying the divide between the Mississippi and Blake's Fork and Rattle¬ snake. In the middle it has another offshoot on the divide between Grant and Platte Rivers, extending south to within a few miles of the Mississippi, called Boice Prairie. On the eastern edge of the county another prairie extends south about to the village of Hazel Green on the divides between the Platte and Pecatonica, and the Little Platte and Fever River.

The highest land in the county, of any extent, is the Military Ridge. This is at Montfort, on the eastern edge of the county, 1,195 feet above the sea; at Fennimore 1,170 feet; at Mount Ida 1,170 feet. Beyond this it descends considerably to Mount Hope and from there runs level to Patch Grove, the ridge near both places having an ele¬ vation of 1,108 feet. The top of Sinsinawa Mound is 1,264 feet above the sea. The river shore at the northeast corner of the county has an elevation of 695 feet ; at the mouth of the Wisconsin, 605 feet; at Glen Haven 600 feet; at the southwestern corner of the county 580 feet, the lowest land in the county. Other elevations are : Lancaster (C. H.), 1,082 ; Platteville (P. O.), 837 ; Bloomington (Canal St.), 907 ; Ellenboro, 691 ; Wyalusing, 613; Cassville (P. 0), 610; Beetown, 764; Potosi, 784; Liberty Ridge (old P. 0.), 1,146; Jamestown (P. 0.), 914; Fairplay (P. O.), 780; St. Rose, 996; Washburn, 843; Castle Rock; 849. This is from recent observations giving the level of Lake Michi¬ gan as 580 feet instead of 578, as Professor Chamberlain calculated it.

A remarkable feature of the topography south of the Military Ridge is that watersheds between the several streams are, in most places, very close to the west side of the streams and at a considerable distance from the east side. This is noticeable along Rattlesnake, Hackett, Blake's Fork, Little Grant, and Platte. In consequence, the eastern slopes of the divides are short and steep and the western sides long and gentle, while the tributaries of these streams from the west are few and short and from the east comparatively long and numerous. The northeastern slope of the Military Ridge is much shorter than the southern, so that its streams, Blue River, Green River, Sander's Creek, etc., are mnch inferior in length to the streams of the southern slope, and their valleys cut abruptly down through the rocky strata, mak¬ ing many picturesque glens and rude, steep hills, and a very broken region in general. As there is not so much soluble limestone here as on the southern 9lope, the water is not so hard, and trout are found in the streams, this fish being entirely absent from the streams south of the Ridge. The Blue River is the principal stream north of the Ridge. It consists of two main branches, the longer one rising in Iowa County near Montfort, and the other, called Fennimore Branch, rising near Fennimore village. The two streams unite near the southwestern corner of the township of Muscoda. The Green River has also two branches, called Big Green and Little Green. The stream empties into the Wisconsin a short distance below the village of Woodman.

Soil

The soil varies greatly in different localities. Along the high steep bluffs bordering on or near the Wisconsin and Mississippi the soil is thin and stony. In many places along the Grant and Platte and some places along their larger tributaries, the bluffs are also high and stony. The hillsides of the smaller tributaries and the ridges have a soil varying from a yellow clay to a dark gray clayey loam, washing easily. The prairies occupying the great 'divides are very peculiar. The soil in most places is very deep, black, and fertile - a fine vegetable loam. They are veritable garden spots. Some parts of Fennimore Prairie are, however, somewhat sandy. Why the prairies have this peculiar deep black soil, with some sand along the slopes near the Military Ridge, in sharp contrast with the soil of the lesser divides and the bluffs and hillsides of the rivers and creeks, will be explained (or, at least, the editor's theory of it will be given) in the Geolog¬ ical History further along in this work. Much of the bottom of the Wisconsin River is very sandy, because that river has brought down the sand from the great sandstone formation above, and the skirting bluffs and the rough hills and narrow valleys behind them being little cultivated, little loam has been washed in to mingle with or cover the sand. The bottoms of the Mississippi are somewhat sandy, but much less so than those of the Wisconsin.

Timber And Water

At the present day most of Grant County, except the prairies just mentioned and the parts which have been cultivated or recently cleared off, is covered with timber, or at least shrubbery. In an early day it was not so. Then there was very little timber away from the large streams, with the exception of a few areas such as u Hurricane,"

Platte Timber," etc. Notwithstanding the great amount of clearing that has been done in the last ten years, it is a low estimate to say that there are five times as many trees in the county now as there were fifty years ago. In early days an Englishman called Lord Mur¬ ray (his name was Charles Augustus) bought most of the timbered land in the county not reserved as mineral land or preempted by the old mining settlers, and would sell neither the land nor the wood. The settlers on the prairies who needed wood simply took it from the Murray lands. Murray's agents looked into the matter. In one neighborhood, not twenty miles from the county seat, where the set¬ tlers were mostly of the Methodist persuasion, they were holding, one fine evening, a class-meeting or. a love-feast, or something of the sort, when a constable, armed with a large lot of warrants, swooped down and arrested pretty much all the male portion of the meeting for taking wood from the Murray lands.

Of late years a theory has been industriously taught that the clearing off of timber causes the streams to dry up, and that planting trees will cause an increase of the water supply. The history of Grant County falsifies this theory. Fifty years ago this was one of the best watered regions on earth. Springs of ample volume bubbled up at the head of every ravine and in hundreds of places along every stream, and trickled from many a stony hillside. To-day the large majority of these springs are dry and the rising generation knows nothing of them unless by tradition.

Take one locality with which the editor has long been well ac¬ quainted as an example - the head of the west fork of Hackett Creek. In 1852 the creek began as a little rill near the head of the valley and only a few rods below the house in which George Harger lived. Beginning with Benjamin Hudson and going up, the settlers were Wm. Holford, David Cook, Zentz, David Ketner, John Clegg, Simon Woodhouse, Samuel Woodhouse, and Mark Hadley. At each of these houses and at several places between were springs, most of them with a large flow. There was no timber on the east side of the hollow. On the west side there was a little grove extending a few rods above Benjamin Hudson's. The rain falling on the head of the valley and the ridge above and feeding all these springs above Hud¬ son's was not kept from running off rapidly over the surface by trees, for there were no trees to hold it in the soil. But now most of these springs are dry and last October (1899) the editor noted that there

Thus it will be seen that the water supply of the county has de¬ creased, while (probably not because) the timber has increased many fold. Men ask, "If this goes on for the next fifty years as for the last fifty, what will become of this country? It will become a desert." There is probably little cause for alarm. A maximum has probably been reached. Fifty years ago their was a similar alarm in New York. Western New York has a limestone formation much like that of Grant County. Half a century ago the poet Bryant put into the mouth of an Indian chief, viewing the land from which his tribe had been ex¬ pelled, these lines :

As with Grant County, so it has been with the prairies of Illinois and Iowa. Every one who crossed Iowa in the early fifties will re¬ member that a great part of its surface was almost a swamp with not a tree in sight. Now this same land is dry and firm and there are many trees.

One thing may partly (and only partly) account for the failure of the springs: the filling up of the old sink-holes. Over most of Grant County is a limestone formation with many fissures. The rain water, charged with vegetable acids from the soil, penetrated many of these fissures and, dissolving the lime, ate out subterranean galleries and holes. The torrents of rain-water, entering these sink-holes, filled the galleries, fissures, and little caves in. the limestone and furnished reser¬ voirs to feed the springs. In 1852 there were half a dozen of these holes in and about the village of Tafton ; now there are none. One of them fed two large springs coming out near the mill-race on the south edge of the village. The sink-hole long ago disappeared and these springs have not one-fifth of their old time flow.

famed "oak-openings." In our present woodlands can be seen (if they have not been cut down) here and there great white oak trees. Sixty years ago they were the only trees in their localities. None of the smaller trees then existed.

The advance of the timber on the primitive prairies was by throw¬ ing out an advance guard, so to speak, of hazel thickets, which seemed to act as a protection from fire to the young oaks, poplars, etc., that grew up among the brush. These thickets of mingled hazel bushes and young trees were called "rough," a term introduced by the Mis¬ sourians.