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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 good examples of the primary drainage or runoff. They 

 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 doing. 



