Reclamation by Drainage 



The First National Drainage Congress met in Chicago December 9, 

 rll. Among the facts presented were the following: 



That there are in the United States more than 75,000,000 ^cres of 

 swamp land that are non-productive. 



That the drainage of this land will reclaim it for agricultural pur- 

 suits and add several billions of dollars to the wealth of the nation. 



The location of these reclaimable swamp lands and their approx- 

 imate areas are shown in the table below : 



ACRES. 



Alabama 1,120,000 



Arkansas 5,760,000 



California 1,850,000 



Connecticut 37,700 



Delaware 200,000 



Florida 18,500,000 



Georgia 2,400,000 



Illinois 2,688,000 



Indiana 1,000,000 



Iowa . 800,000 



Kansas 160,000 



Kentucky 224,000 



Louisiana 9,600,000 



Maine . 240,000 



Maryland 356,000 



Massachusetts 138,700 



Michigan 4,400,000 



Minnesota 4,500,000 



Mississippi 6,173,000 



Missouri 1,920,000 



Nebraska 256,000 



New Hampshire 43,000 



ACRKS. 



New Jersey 601,900 



New York 576,000 



North Carolina 2,400,000 



North Dakota ... 226,000 



Ohio .. 200,000 



Oklahoma 35,000 



Oregon 500,000 



Pennsylvania 96,000 



Rhode Island 17,900 



South Carolina 1,760,000 



South Dakota 226,000 



Tennessee 800,000 



Texas .' .' 1,620,000 



Vermont 70,000 



Virginia 384,000 



Washington 75,000 



West Virginia 2,500 



Wisconsin 2,500,000 



Wyoming 25,000 



Total 74,541,700 



A writer in a Southern publication gives the following interesting 

 information regarding the swamp areas of the United States and the 

 value of these areas if they were drained. 



"The latent wealth in 10,000,000 acres of reclaimable delta and 

 overflow lands of Louisiana is so much greater than any discovery of 

 mineral wealth in gold deposits that was ever made that it is hard to 

 make a comparison. If that land were reclaimed, settled and cultivated, 

 with a settler and his family on every ten-acre farm, it would yield 

 every year food products that could be sold for gold aggregating a 

 thousand million dollars a year. And if it were known that along the 

 marshes of your coasts and under the waters of your bayous there 

 was $1,000,000,000 contained in gold deposits of some form, you would 

 have a gold rush from every part of the world that would bring 

 greater multitudes to your state than the gold discovery of 1849 took 

 to California. 



"There is no place in this world where such latent possibilities of 

 agricultural wealth exist on such a stupendous scale as in Louisiana. 



"This whole question of land reclamation or drainage is of enor- 

 mous importance nationally. There are estimated to be 74,541,700 

 acres that can be reclaimed by drainage and it is scattered through 

 forty states." 



27 



