INDUSTRY OF COUNTIES. 
389 
convenient and well adapted to the purposes for which they are designed. 
At Wyocena the county has erected, as an adjunct to the poor house, an 
asylum for those insane persons for whom the state has not made suffi¬ 
cient provision. The building is of brick, cost six thousand dollars, and 
will accommodate thirty patients; it is well patronized, and is one of the 
most beneficient institutions of the county. 
Our agricultural society is in an active, prosperous condition; there seems 
to be a growing interest on the part of our farmers in the society, so that 
now it has come to be considered the institution of the county, and is 
working a very perceptible good. 
The population of the county is about 30,000, and is made up of settlers 
from all parts of the Union and the old world. Those from New England 
and New York predominate. To sum up all, we regard Columbia county 
as one of the model counties of the state, both considering its geograph¬ 
ical position, its physical features, its agricultural, social and financial ad- 
\ T antages, and the intelligence and enterprise of its inhabitants. 
CRAWFORD COUNTY. 
BY WALDO BROWN, PRAIRIE Dtl CHIEN. 
This county, which originally embraced a large portion of western Wis¬ 
consin, is now composed of about five hundred and sixty square miles, near 
the southwest corner of the state, and north of the junction of the Wis¬ 
consin and Mississippi rivers, the former being the southern, and the latter 
the western boundary. The population of the county by the census of 1870 
was 13,177. 
Among the striking features of its topography, are the towering bluffs, 
which often rise to the height of from four to six hundred feet, and which 
present their bold, rocky fronts on the whole line of river boundary, as well 
as along either bank of the principal streams. The bottom lands lying at 
the foot of these bluffs are very fertile, and the soil, wliieh is a light, sandy 
loam, is of great value for the production of garden vegetables of every 
description, which come to maturity much sooner than on the high lands 
in the same localities. 
Through this county, near its center, runs a divide, which separates the 
valley of the Mississippi from those of the Wisconsin and Kickapoo rivers, 
and from this, at right angles with it, are alternations of ridge and valley, 
the former generally wooded, while in the vales are fertile lands, valuable 
forests, prairie meadows, and good water-powers, on never-failing streams . 
This peculiar formation gives the county the appearance of being rough 
and broken; and so it is, yet its soil, not only on the bottom lands but on 
the ridges, is rich and productive to such an extent that the husbandman 
