INDUSTRY OF COUNTIES. 
465 
ing good crops of all kinds; it is well wooded; it is at the head of naviga¬ 
tion on the Wolf river, thus enabling heavy freight to be brought from 
New York by way of the lakes direct to the village of Shawano, or by way 
of the Mississippi through the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, and up the Wolf; 
it is a healthy and rapidly growing county, yet in its infancy; it is a county 
where intelligence and education are permanently secured, where all of the 
necessaries, and most of the comforts of life are easily accessible; where 
agriculture, one of the chief sources of wealth, is conducted with success 
and profit; and where land can be obtained at fair prices, so that all can 
purchase. 
SIIEBOYGAN COUNTY. 
BY J. H. DENISON, SHEBOYGAN FALLS. 
The first settlement in this county was made at the mouth of the She¬ 
boygan river, as early as 1836, but the financial tempest that swept over the 
land a year or two after so completely destroyed the new town that in 1840 * 
but a single inhabitant remained. A few families, however, had removed i 
up the river, five miles, to the falls, and in that vicinity they remained, and 1 
were the nucleus of a future settlement. 
In the beginning of 1844 the population of the county did not exceed one • 
hundred, and it was not until the spring of 1845 that emigration was really 
directed to this region. Then farmers from New England, New York and 
Ohio began to locate land and open clearings. In 1846 and 1847 still larger 
numbers arrived, but many, repelled by the forbidding aspect of so dense a 
wilderness, hastened through the Sheboygan woods to find some place re¬ 
quiring less toil. About this time the Germans began to arrive and settle - 
in the north and east, and the Hollanders in the south; these with a few 
from England and Ireland, together with the Americans already on the 
ground, soon occupied the remaining portions of the county. In 1850 the 
population had reached 8,000, and in 1855 it rose to 20,000; now it is over 
31,000. 
The timber on the land along the Sheboygan river, and for a few miles 
up the Onion river, is pine and hard wood. On the low land, elm, basswood, 
ash, etc. That of other portions is hard wood; chiefly oak, maple, beech, 
ash, etc. There is an occasional swamp of tamarack or cedar, which in¬ 
crease in value as the country becomes older. The surface of the eastern 
part is undulating, except along the streams, where it is somewhat broken.. 
The western part is cut up by a range of hills and hollows, known as the 
Kettles, where the soil is either gravel or sandy loam, except the low lands 
where it is alluvial. The subsoil is pretty uniformly the red clay, of which 
the cream colored brick are made. There is little danger that this land will 
ever wear out if properly cultivated. 
30—Ag. Tr. 
