Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1897 — Kankakee Drainage and Sugar Beets. [ARTICLE]

Kankakee Drainage and Sugar Beets.

According to articles recently published in the Chicago papers, the Kankakee valley swamps, are soon to be turned into a vast fields of sugar beets, and one or more immense factories for the manufacture of the sugar are to be erected. —According to these papers—therecent schemes for draining the Kankakee marshes have been revived, stronger than ever. The lands embraced in the proposition include about half a million acres of the Kankakee marshes in the counties of St. Joseph, Porter, LaPorte, Starke, Lake and Newton. The Kankakee river winds through this region for a distance of 240 miles in making 100 miles in a straight line. Owing to their liability to overflow they have been practically valueless for agricultural purposes. The project for their reclamation contemplates the construction of a levee on both sides of the river to the height of ten feet, leaving a channel half a mile in width. This, it 'is believed, will be ample to carry off the largest volume of water without overflow. It is also proposed to provide means for irrigation from the river when the season demands it. The aggregate cost of the proposed improvement is estimated at $1,000,000, or at the rate of $2 per acre —a small sum when the increased value of the reclaimed lands taken into consideration.

Experiments already made during the present year, it is claimed, prove the soil of these marsh lands (consisting of muck and sand) peculiarly well adapted to the growth of sugar beets of a superior quality. The tests alluded to have shown a saccharine product ranging from eleven to nearly seventeen per cent. This high average is taken as evidence that the lands can be most profitably employed in this industry.. The river being confined within narrower limits will be rendered navigable for small boats, which will be required to transport the products of factories, which will have to be erected within the district. The amount of raw product the lands are capable of furnishing has been estimated at half a million tons per year, worth S6O per tors, or a total of $30,000,000. The enterprise will furnish employment to thousands or people, both for the fields and the refining works which will have to be erected for the treatment of the product of the factories. Two companies have already been formed for carrying the drainage scheme into execution — one known as the Kankakee River Improvement association, composed of land owners, chiefly in Laporte and St. Joseph counties and the other as the Kankakee Improvement association embraing land owners and others sortie of whom reside in Chicago. It is also said that English capitalists have been investigating the subject with a view to engaging in the manufacture of the product of these lands in case the drainage project and the beet culture should prove successful. All of which sounds very

plausible, and part of which may be realized in the near future, for certainly the evidence is accumulating fast that this section, and especially the Kankakee river region are in the sugar beet -belt, good and strong. Furthermore, it is certain that the time is soon coming when the people of this country will make their own sugar and out of sugar beets. As to the proposition to drain the Kankakee by building high levees, it strikes us as altogether impracticable. For if it were done, how would the water of the adjacent regions now draining into the river, then get over the dikes’ and into the river?