Wheat: the cash crop of the canal era, and its fall

1840s — 1908

First a fortune, then a footnote: Corn was the first crop in the new ground — the federal soil survey of 1908, looking back, puts corn first in the partially broken clearings, followed by wheat — but wheat was the crop that paid. With no ready market, most early grain was eaten where it grew, and the surplus that did move went by ox team to Chicago or Cincinnati on trips of several weeks. The completion of the canal in 1843 changed the arithmetic: ground was cleared faster, implements improved, and prices rose. The Allen County Agricultural Society's own account of the county's staples for the year ending June 1, 1856, shows what the canal era made of the county's fields: 110,333 bushels of wheat worth $146,303 — the most valuable production in the county — against 408,913 bushels of corn worth $98,273, 193,285 bushels of oats worth $41,765, 38,975 bushels of potatoes, 11,055 tons of hay, and 12,080 pounds of wool. Corn outweighed wheat nearly four to one and still earned a third less; wheat was the money crop, and the aggregate value of the county's farm products the following year was estimated at $658,573. The 1870 reports show the wheat crop at its documented height, 432,752 bushels. Then the fall, which the 1908 survey states in plain terms: "the yield of wheat has gradually decreased because of continuous cropping," and attention shifted to oats and hay. The census of 1900 counted just 3,765 acres of wheat in the whole county, against 70,840 acres of corn and 50,715 of oats, and by 1908 the surveyors believed the wheat acreage was "not over 2,000 acres." The county that had shipped wheat as its fortune had, in two generations, nearly stopped sowing it.

Sources:

1. U.S. Bureau of Soils, Soil Survey of Allen County, Indiana (1908; issued 1910) — the early crop order (corn, then wheat), the ox-team trade, the canal's effect, wheat's decline "because of continuous cropping," the 1900 census acreages (corn 70,840; oats 50,715; wheat 3,765), and the 1908 estimate of not over 2,000 wheat acres.
2. History of Allen County, Indiana (Kingman Brothers, 1880) — the Agricultural Society's staple production for the year ending June 1, 1856 (wheat 110,333 bushels, $146,303; corn 408,913 bushels, $98,273; oats 193,285 bushels, $41,765; potatoes 38,975 bushels; hay 11,055 tons; wool 12,080 pounds), the aggregate estimate of $658,573 for the following year, and the 1870 wheat yield of 432,752 bushels.