Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1900 — SYSTEM OF SWAMP DRAINAGE. [ARTICLE]

SYSTEM OF SWAMP DRAINAGE.

Gifford’s system of ditching is complete and furnishes an objectlesson for future operations in the Kankakee bottoms. When he bought the first swamp-lands, ten years ago, Mr. Gifford shipped in two great dredges from the East, put them up in the great morass and started them to work. They have dug their way out through 125 miles of riverways, feeding from all parts of the farm into a great, wide ditch that acts as a main lead and empties into the Iroquois River instead of the Kankakee. These large ditches are twenty, thirty and even forty feet across at the top, and fifteen, twenty, thirty and thirty-five feet across at the bottom. Into these leads he drains by smaller ditches, ten to twelve feet across, and into these feed still smaller ditches, that reach out in parallel lines about eighty or ninety rods apart, and leaving fields between them, Tile drains are used in these fields. The cost has been enormous. Mr. Gifford figures the cost of the outlet ditching at about 83 an acre, without, however, making allowance for interest on investments covering a time in which no returns are received. This does not include the cost of the small lateral, open or tile ditches which are necessary to conduct the waters to die present 125 miles of outlet ditches.