Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1905 — RECLAMATION OF THE KANKAKEE [ARTICLE]

RECLAMATION OF THE KANKAKEE

Progress of Work on « Stupendous Project In Laporte County. Michigan City Dispatch: Although many large ditches have been dug in the south part of the county to reclaim marsh lands, the most stupendous task in hand at this time is the scheme to deepen, widen and straighten the Kankakee river. This is being accomplished with a great canal that cuts off all bends. The ditch iB to be seventeen miles long and a large part of it has already been dug. It will shorten forty-five miles of river to seventeen miles, and increase the fall from four and one-third inches a mile to fourteen and two-tenths inches a mile. This will reclaim about 150,000 acres of land in Laporte and Starke counties. The ditch will be from eight to twelve feet deep, forty, forty-five and fifty feet wide at the bottom, and most of the way not less than seventy feet wide at the top; in one place, or where the ditch goes through “goose neck,” it will be eighty feet wide. It is estimated that there will be thrown out in constructing this ditch 1,400,000 cubic yards of soil, which is clay, gravel and sand, mixed with muck and peat—an alluvial soil containing no rocks. The amount of money necessary to construct the ditch, including the incidental expenses, is estimated at $120,000. The amount of assessed benefits in Laporte county is $141,(559, and in Starke county $72,3(5(5, a total of $214,025. For this work Laporte county has issued bonds to the amount of $79,500, which may be paid in installments during seventeen years; and Starke county has issued bonds to the amount of $40,500, which may be paid iu installments during fourteen years. The average cost of lateral ditching is about SI,OOO a mile; that of river work, or ditching along the general course of the Kankakee to cut off its bends, is about $5,500 a mile. The Danielson arm of what is called the “Place ditch” is river work; this makes the Place ditch practically a river ditch; it shortens sixty-five miles of the river to twenty-two miles, and as the new ditch will shorten forty-five miles of the river to seventeen, here are 110 miles shortened to thirty-nine. The result of all this is, that the allied interests working this grand transformation in the valley, now have a total acreage covering approximately seventy-six square miles, which is rapidly coming under successful cultivation. This land is situated in Dewey, Union, Prairie, Johnson and Hanna townships, Laporte county; although some of it lies in the southeast part of Porter county. All of it borders on the Kankakee river, but some scattering tracts are in Starke county.