Draining the wet prairies and the Kankakee edge

1858 — 1937

The county's second founding was done with dredges: West and south of South Bend the young Kankakee spread through a marsh that reached from just southwest of the city to the LaPorte County line, and the low prairies ponded water much of the year. Quinn's survey of 1916 describes what two generations of ditching did to both. The marshes southwest of the city "are now a thing of the past, for a large acreage of this land has been reclaimed. is now considered the most productive soil in the county," and the survey adds the other dividend plainly — the marsh water bred mosquitoes and malaria, "but drainage did away with such a state of affairs." The work was organized farm by farm and township by township, through the drainage law's petitions: one Liberty Township farmer in Howard's 1907 biographies served eight years as county drainage commissioner and was "the leading factor in the reclaiming of thousands of acres of land along the Kankakee river"; another's petition to the circuit court drained nine miles of Liberty Township and converted 9,000 acres to cultivable land.

Downstream, the river itself had to be remade before the ditches could empty. The valley's drainage history, as the Kankakee Valley Historical Society and Fay Folsom Nichols's river history give it, runs: the first real drainage ditch in 1858; the Indiana Legislature's 1882 direction to John Campbell to survey the whole valley "from the river's source near South Bend" to Momence for its cheapest drainage outlets; a drainage meeting at the South Bend courthouse on March 8, 1884, after which steam dredge boats dug lateral ditches that same year — a Walkerton society photograph of dredging operations on the Kankakee in St. Joseph County survives in that record; the Kankakee Improvement Company dredging and channelizing the upper river from 1901, fifty-five miles of it straightened by 1906; the Kankakee Reclamation Company formed in 1902 for the deepening and straightening "from South Bend down"; the final lower-river dredging from 1917, the work complete about 1922–23, when, in the society's words, "the entire length of the Kankakee in Indiana was channelized, and most of the great marsh was gone." The two accounts are printed as they stand — one emphasizing the upper-river work of 1901–06, the other the 1902 company's South-Bend-down purpose and the 1917–22 finishing — because together they are the sequence: ditches first, then the river from the top, then the river finished from the bottom. The outcome is measured in the scholarly summary of the valley: by 1937, ninety-four percent of the original marsh was cultivated. The marsh that remains in this county's record is place-name and memory; its soil grows the mint of the next entry.

Sources:

1. E. J. Quinn, "Soil Survey of LaPorte, St. Joseph, and Bartholomew Counties" (1916) — the Kankakee marshes southwest of South Bend reclaimed, steam dredges and laterals, drained land as the county's most productive soil, and the malaria dividend.
2. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), biographical sketches — the Liberty Township drainage commissioner who reclaimed thousands of acres along the Kankakee, and the nine-mile Liberty Township drainage converting 9,000 acres.
3. Kankakee Valley Historical Society, "Whatever Happened to the Kankakee Marsh?" and "Dredging of the River" (monon.org compilation, with the Walkerton Area Historical Society photograph) — the 1858 ditch, the 1884 South Bend meeting and dredging, the 1901 Improvement Company, fifty-five miles by 1906, the whole Indiana length channelized by 1923, and the lower-river dredging of 1917 to about 1922.
4. Fay Folsom Nichols, "Down by the Riverside," Kankakee Valley Historical Society — the March 8, 1884, courthouse meeting notice and the Kankakee Reclamation Company of 1902, formed for the river's deepening and straightening from South Bend down.
5. The 1882 legislative survey by John Campbell and the valley's reclamation outcome as summarized in Josh Imhoff, "History of the Kankakee River," drawing on the scholarly record — the survey ordered over the whole valley from the river's source near South Bend, and ninety-four percent of the original marsh cultivated by 1937.