CHAPTER XIV. 



WILL COUNTY. 



Will county is bounded on the north by Cook, on the west by Kendall and 

 Grundy, on the south by Kankakee, and on the east by Kankakee and Cook 

 counties, and the State of Indiana. Its form is very irregular, its length, from 

 north to south, varying from twelve to thirty-six miles, and its breadth from 

 twelve to nearly thirty miles. It includes twenty-three entire townships, and 

 two fractional townships along the State line, the whole amounting to some- 

 thing over eight hundred and forty square miles. 



This county probably exhibits as great a variety of soil and surface as any 

 portion of the State of equal extent. Through its western half flow the Des- 

 plaines and DuPage rivers, with wide bottoms, subject to annual overflows, 

 and underlaid, at no great depth, through nearly their whole extent, 

 with beds of limestone, which two causes combine to make these bottoms 

 exceedingly fertile, wherever the soil is deep enough to give holding-ground 

 for crops. 



The banks of these rivers, with those of the Kankakee, which flows through 

 the southern part of the county, being largely composed of decayed limestone 

 ledges, and banks of limestone gravel, furnish many fine localities for the culti- 

 vation of the erape and other fruits, Messrs. J. H. Daniels, R. H. Waterman, 

 and others, are already engaged in grape culture, near Wilmington, with very 

 flattering success. 



The eastern part of the county is mostly rolling prairie, with some consider- 

 able stretches of small timber in its northern portion, where the high land of 

 this part of the county begins to slope off toward Lake Michigan. The ridges 

 are mainly composed of sand and gravel, which give good drainage to the com- 

 paratively thin covering of brown loam, and favors wheat and other small 

 grains, while the intermediate stretches of lower ground possess a heavy black 

 mucky soil, underlaid by clay, and produce heavy crops of corn. 



The southwestern corner of the county, below the Kankakee, is a level 

 prairie, being the northern extremity of Grand Prairie, and possesses the usual 

 heavy, rich, black muck, which produces such immense crops of corn. Con- 



