70 
SOIL SURVEY OF JACKSON COUNTY 
dams are built in the latter case, they need to be carefully con¬ 
structed to prevent the water from cutting around them. 
Darns of concrete, stone, wire mesli, and brush have been suc¬ 
cessfully used. Flume devices also have been used to carry the 
water over the head of the ditch and down into it preventing 
its continued growth. 
Planting willows and bushes on the sides and bottom of ditches 
too deep to fill often arrests the growth of the ditch. Sorghum, 
sweet clover, or rye make good emergency crops on eroded spots 
and fields which later need to be seeded to grasses and left in 
permanent sod.* 
DRAINAGE f 
In Jackson county there are at least 150,000 acres of land 
which would be classed as poorly drained, and which must be 
provided with open ditches or tile drains before cultivated crops 
can be safely grown from year to year. The major portion of 
this poorly drained land consists of deep peat, and in the 
eastern part of the county, the two townships, town 20 and 21 
north, Range 1 East, have more than eighty per cent of their 
area in deep peat. This means that there are over 36,000 acres 
of this low land in one large body. In addition to this, there 
are other extensive areas of peat throughout the eastern part 
of the county. There are also extensive areas of Dunning sand 
which consist of marsh border soil and this requires drainage, 
and there is also some land along the Black River which is sub¬ 
ject to overflow and which is classed as poorly drained, which 
is more difficult to reclaim. At the present time there are 
46,760 acres of land in drainage enterprises. There are 25.5 
miles of open ditches in these drainage enterprises, but only a 
very small amount of tile has been installed up to the present 
time. The capital invested in and required to complete opera¬ 
ting enterprises in Jackson county amounts to $113,570. 
Quite a large number of open ditches have been constructed. 
Statistics indicate that only 4,140 acres of this drained land 
are improved at the present time. This means vast areas of 
land within drainage districts are still lying idle. This is due 
to the fact that even though outlet ditches have been installed, 
laterals have not been constructed so that individual tracts of 
*See Bulletin 272 of the Wisconsin Experiment Station. 
tEor a full discussion of drainage questions consult the bulletins of the 
Wisconsin Experiment Station. 
