IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
259 
On the writer’s return to the region in ’71, the stream still ran 
south, but had so built up its bed that it was very sluggish and in 
time of flood overflowed westward from its egress from the hills. 
William Holloway who owned the land there repeatedly built low 
dykes to stop it. 
Bur son's Mill. Meanwhile, in ’72-’73, Joseph Burson, who has 
furnished the writer with several facts of his own observation, put 
in a grist mill several rods up the creek, damming the stream still 
higher up where the valley was narrowed. He had a fall of 9 
feet at ordinary stages. 
In 1875 the stream so succeeded in cutting out its channel at Hol- 
loway’s that it kept it permanently and abandoned its southerly 
course below that point. It then ran nearly straight west to a 
channel which it followed northward to the north lake. The de- 
scent westward was so steep, nearly 30 feet in the first mile, that 
erosion was rapid and quickly cut down and backward with a re- 
ceding rapid. When this rapid reached the mill there was a fall 
there of 20 feet, and the foundations of the mill were endangered. 
Emmet's Mill. In cutting back the stream revealed the posts 
and mill-stones of an old grist mill which aroused much wonder. 
No one at first seemed to know anything about it. Old residents 
could tell nothing. Its primitive character was evident. The mill- 
stones were made of limestone like that in quarries not far away. 
An old hollow sycamore served as a fore-bay, apparently to an 
undershot wheel. The old surface at the old mill was buried about 
12 feet. The old dam for the mill was also revealed and the old 
surface in the old mill-pond, where were found stumps cut with an 
ax, buried 12 to 14 feet. . 
Conjecture and speculation were rife, and inquiries started which 
have continued till recently and have brought out the following 
facts. 
When the Mormons were driven out of Nauvoo, 111., in 1846, 
many settled in western Iowa, Kanesville (Council Bluffs) being 
their rendezvous. Most went on to Salt Lake in 1848 but many 
remained in Iowa. 
A man by the name of Emmet put up the mill in 1847 or 8. 
William Leeka, coming in 1848 engaged the mill-site for a mill which 
he brought with him but Emmet backed out. Leeka consequently lo- 
cated at the point on Plum Creek afterwards well known as Leeka’s 
Mill, and with better machinery got all the patronage. The Emmet 
mill was forgotten by 1856 and brush and trees had so grown over 
the place that it seemed part of the original timber. The accumu- 
