The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1902-06-07
GREAT SWAMP FARM
Where Black Soil Is Worth as Much
- h., as Gold. = = .. X
OVER $4,000 ACRES RECLAIMED
Plans to Control Chicago Produce
: Market-Land Values Increase
~ Twenty-FOld.

Indianapolis, Ind, April 1o.-The largest
swamp farm in the world and the most
remarkable farm, on this side of Holland
is in northern Indiana, within fifty miles
of Chicago. It spreads out over 81 900
acres that ten years ago were Under the
wash of the great Kankakee and the Iro-
ouois swamcs.
Tho owner is B. J. Clifford of Kankakee,
who has the distinction not only of having
attained his sixtieth. year without having
had his picture taken, but also of being
the most extensive farmer in the Mis-
sippi valley south of the great wheat
growers of the Dakotas.
He is now negotiating for the purchase
OF 22.c0o acres adjoining his farm, the
property of Nelson Morris, the Chicago
packer, who uses. the land for grazing
purposes. With the addition of this tract
the second largest farm in 1ndiana-to
his place, Clifford will be able to compare
his acreage with the farms further north.
Up to 1890, when Clifford made his first
purchase, the Kankakee river part Of the
state was one great morass, and northern
Jasper county, in particular, was a
swamp Only here and there was the
monotony of the waste ,broken by small
knobs or islands that furnished foot
ing for scrub oaks.
About the only inhabitants had been
! horse thieves and other law breakers who
found a 9lace of refuge there. To-day
| all this area of former waste is garden
! so productive that its owner has refused
| offers of 800 and even 1928 an acre for
| his holdings that have been freed OF wa
ter. .-.--.
Gifford's attention was first attracted
| to the swamp by the remark of a real es-
! tate man of Jasper county, who said that
all Of the north part of the county was
good for nothing except to trade to
suckers eight unseen" When Clifford Of
fered SIS an acre for 5000 acres in the
very center Of the swamp, the owners IN
loaded on him in hurry. People VINO
had holdings near his purchase hurr1edly
let him know that he could get their lano,
toc-and to their astonishment, he took
it in until he had $4,000 acres of swamp
lying in one body. and extending from
north to south nineteen miles and from
east to west from two to five miles.
The soil had been growing rich for cen
turtles through the decay of vegetable
matter and Clifford started to drain 1t.
The dredges that Clifford bought mad to
be ferried to the islands in the morass,
where the bottoms were built. Iney were
then put at work and for ten years they
have been digging-night as we'll as day
their way out of one marsh into another
and then down to the Iroouois river and
back
It was found that it would be useless to
RELY on the Kankakee for drainage, so the
dredges were put at work cutting through
the divide and taking advantage OF a
slight fall of eleven feet to the Iroquois
river, twenty miles to the southwest. Now
there are 200 miles Of waterways, some
of them from fifteen to twenty feet deep
and from twenty to forty feet wide. Drains
cut the great farm UP into patches OF
from fifteen to thirty acres.
AS the bitches were made the excavated
earth was pushed out over the land,
dyking and building it up high above the
water. When the ground was thus freed,
little at time, from the water, the
work of retaining the soil for cultiva-
ton had just begun. The soil was
rich and the vegetation grew so
rank and rapidly that it was
as dificult to conquer 1t as it had been
to get dominion over the water.
It has been only in the last few years
that any Of the great tract was put under
Cultivation, but now the acreage is an
-nually increasing rapidly Last year
there were $4,000 acres under cultivation;
this year the area will Ian to 10000