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turn north again, following the range line road. (Between R. 2 and R. 3 
W.) This road is much more level. ‘The streams crossed in small valleys 
on the west or river road have no valleys where crossed by the range line 
road. Formerly they existed as broad sloughs or strips of marsh land, 
and where crossed stretches of corduroy road were used to enable teams 
and vehicles to cross without miring. Scarcely the beginning of a channel 
could be discovered threading its way through the lowest part of the marsh 
or Slough. The drainage was by over wash or sheet streams spreading out 
many rods in width and slowly creeping away to the river. Within the last 
mile or two of their course the channel became gradually deeper and wider 
and the stream sped freely down a steeper slope into the river. These 
sheet streams are gocd examples of the primary drainage or runoff. Theye 
were interrupted frequently by ponds and broader widths of marsh, keeping 
large areas so wet as to make cultivation impossible—the land furnishing 
a poor quality of pasturage. 
Within the last few years man has done by machinery what nature 
has not done and could not do in thousands of years. Starting at the head 
of the sloughs fifteen to twenty miles from the river steam dredges have 
been used to dig channels for these over wash waters and practically every 
slough on both sides of the river in all this region has been furnished a 
channel ample for its drainage. 
Pike Creek, Keen’s Creek, the Carnahan Ditch, the Ackerman Ditch 
and Indian Creek on the east side of the river, and the Monon Creeks, 
Honey ‘Creek and others on the west side, furnish examples of infant 
drainage aged by the aid of man in pushing forward the work the waters 
were so tardily Going. 
