SANDUSKY BAY AND CEDAR POINT 193 
ble land, including woods, from marsh. By inspecting this map 
and making a rough estimate of the percentage of tillable land in 
each section, I conclude that in the sections, Nos. 21, 22, 23, 26, 
27, 28, 34 and 35, the total amount is not more than half a sec- 
tion. From the plat of Bourne’s survey of 1820 it would appear 
that these eight sections then contained about 51% sections of 
land. Part of this is now open water, part of it marsh. In 
several other sections of Bay township a good deal of marsh has 
formed within the past century. Porter Wright who went there 
in 1836 remembers that section 35, now nearly all marsh, used to 
be dry land. In section 2 of Riley township he owns 200 acres 
of marsh which formerly was dry land. Mulkerry stumps are 
still standing there where now the water stands half the time. 
He estimates that more than a thousand acres of marsh south 
of Graveyard Island used to be dry land except after heavy rain. 
“Honey locust, elm and poplar used to grow over a good deal of 
the land where the water now (1904) is 214 feet deep. All the 
way from the bay to Peach Island was good dry land, mostly 
prairie; there was a streak of timber half or three quarters of a 
mile south of the river, some of it still standing on the highest 
ground. All the marsh from Raccoon Creek to South Creek was 
prairie land covered with blue joint and hoop pole grass (Spartina 
cynosuroides), a grass seven or eight feet tall which does not 
grow where it is wet. The region between South Creek and 
Green Creek is now marsh, but when I came here it was mostly 
dry land.”’ 
The total amount of land west of Eagle Island converted 
into marsh or open water since 1820 is probably six or eight 
square miles. In Margaretta Township, Erie County, the recent 
‘topographic map shows about 123 square miles of marsh. 
Most of this was probably above lake level until after 1820. On 
the north side of the bay the marshes are less extensive. 
At the east end of the bay the marsh that extends from the 
mouth of Pipe Creek to Rye Beach has spread over considerable 
of the low land along its inner margin within the past century. 
Two miles east of Perkins Township the late Albert Judson, 
county surveyor, found the line originally run by Almon Ruggles 
and supposed to mark the border of the land at the time of the 
early survey, to cross the marsh about half a mile out from the 
present margin of the land, the water and mud over the inter- 
vening region being a foot to 18 inches deep. This was in 1887. 
A lot, half a mile square, had been converted into marsh. 
Between this and the Perkins Township line the recession of the 
shore line he found to be very much less. Walter Devlin says, 
cattle used to go out half a mile toward Cedar Point farther than 
