INDUSTRY OF COUNTIES. 
279 
INDUSTRY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY. 
BY ALFRED BRUNSON, OF PRAIRIE DU CIIIEN. 
Topography.— This county contains the equivalent of 15 
townships, or 540 square miles. The general surface is roll¬ 
ing or hilly. The river hills or bluffs rise about 450 feet 
above the level of the large rivers, diminishing as we follow 
up the smaller streams, till they disappear in a rolling surface. 
There is scarcely an acre of waste land in the county. A few 
perpendicular bluffs are seen along the river hills, and some of 
the slopes are too steep for plowing, but timber and pasturage 
occupy such places to the brow or foot of the cliffs, and the 
cliffs afford excellent quarries for building purposes. Along 
the rivers are wet bottom lands and islands, with but little or 
no waste lands, for they afford timber and grass in large quan¬ 
tities. 
The First Settlement of the county was by the Canadian 
French, for hunting and Indian trading purposes at Prairie 
du Chien. The first white man who settled here, as nearly as 
we can now decide, did so in 1720. About 1747 it became a 
trading post, and thereafter the discharged employees settled 
on the prairie, for farming and hunting, when not employed 
by the traders, till in 1793 some 40 or 50 families, making say 
200 souls in all, had divided thejprairie into 43 farm lots, with 
about the same number of village lots. The proper settlement 
of the country by Americans cannot be dated farther back 
than 1836, when the French and mixed bloods numbered 
about 350, not exceeding 400 souls. All of them lived on the 
prairie, the adjoining lands being yet unceded. In 1837 the 
Winnebagoes ceded the land, but settlements did not extend 
into the country until 1842, 5 43. The inhabitants now are 
about 8,000. 
Prairie du Chien is the oldest and the principal town in 
the county. It is situated on the prairie of that name, which 
extends seven miles long, and from one and three-quarters 
wide on the margin of the Wisconsin river ; it runs up the 
Mississippi to a point. It now contains about 3,000 inhabit- 
