{"id":2562,"date":"2020-11-11T13:59:15","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T13:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/?page_id=2562"},"modified":"2020-11-11T13:59:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T13:59:15","slug":"the-battle-over-the-draining-the-kankakee-river","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/?page_id=2562","title":{"rendered":"The Battle Over the Draining The Kankakee River"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mourning the death of the Kankakee River near Baum’s Bridge<\/p><\/div>\n

The Kankakee River has justly been called \u201cThe River of History\u201d and in very large part of that history developed in Porter County.\u00a0 It was about 60 years ago second set of plans were drawn to drain the Kankakee swamps.\u00a0 The first had been in 1852 and resulted in the theft of great deposits of public funds, an event called \u201cthe Swamp Land Swindle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dredge<\/p><\/div>\n

The draining of the marshlands and the straightening of the crooked, wondering river had been restored to the state’s reclamation program about 1900, but continual and vehement opposition on the part of the trappers and hunters, the city sportsman and the clubhouse owners prevented the inauguration of the program, until, in the course of time the voting strength of the draining advocates was sufficiently greater than that of the opposition.<\/p>\n

As a part of the opposition certain newspapers reviewed the old scandal, and anticipated it would recur.<\/p>\n

It was in 1852 that officials, landowners, speculators, and plain ordinary crooks joined their muddy hands to dishonestly deplete the state’s entire reclamation fund.\u00a0 And they did it so smoothly that $700,000 was stolen, and although the perpetrators were eventually discovered, not a cent of the money was recovered.<\/p>\n

The Goodspeed History of Porter County says: The original scheme is for the government to give the state title to all marshlands.\u00a0 The state was required to reclaim them, and sell them, and the money to go to the school funds in the various counties.\u00a0 The arrangement was that that areas of high land within the boundaries of the marshes would be sold to farmers and that money could be used to drain and reclaim the land.<\/p>\n

Crooks bought up the highlands at $1.25 an acre, after having them declared swamps so the state had no income to apply on the drainage cost, but it had something over $700,000 in its reclamation fund.<\/p>\n

Contracts were let to numerous contractors to build ditches, but the so-called contractors only dragged a hoe line across the marshes and certified, with the aid of county officials, that they had built a ditch.<\/p>\n

For these fake ditches the ignorant state officials, some of whom were in on the deal, spent all its reclamation fund, and didn’t get a single decent ditch.<\/p>\n

This Swamp Land Swindle was blazoned across the pages of newspapers all over the nation, and the State of Indiana even published a booklet, naming names, and stating amounts.\u00a0 These booklets are very scarce, for the crooked officials got hold of them first, but enough were circulated to expose the deal and its perpetrators, and copies are still available in some libraries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dred<\/p><\/div>\n

All this unsavory history was reviewed in 1906, when after 54 years the state again had a reclamation fund, and planned again to drain the Kankakee Swamps.\u00a0 The opponents said more crookedness would prevail.<\/p>\n

One ditch in Porter County called the Breyfogle Ditch was dug at the cost of four cents a cubic foot, and the same county surveyor who had contracted for that ditch immediately contracted a ten cent per cubic foot \u201ccleaning cost,\u201d on a ditch that he had promised was sloped enough to be self-cleaning.\u00a0 The Vidette devoted columns to that affair.<\/p>\n

When W E Pinney got interested.\u00a0 With the delegation he made a boat trip 34 miles up and down the river.\u00a0 It took two steam launches and 10 rowboats, and upon receiving this delegation’s report the government finally agreed to again aid Porter County and the adjacent counties with funds.<\/p>\n

Many landowners along the river refused to submit to the ditch assessments, so they sold out and left.\u00a0 However there were many farsighted individuals who were willing to buy their holdings.\u00a0 Pinney bought every acre his purse could stand, and so did others.<\/p>\n

There were dozens of legal obstacles put in the way of the project.\u00a0 It was mentioned in the papers as the most bitterly contested, viciously fought battle of the century.\u00a0 Wealthy sportsmen poured money into the opposition fund, but when it got to the Supreme Court it was found that about 40 selfish individuals were opposing over 300 agriculturists, so the decision was in favor of the drainage group.<\/p>\n

Soon great dredges and steam shovels came into the valley.\u00a0 Scrapers and teams, men and machines accumulated along the river.\u00a0 The great machine mowed down the trees, and the dredges dug a deeper and straighter channel for the river.\u00a0 Steam shovels disinterred ancient Indian skeletons, and bones are prehistoric animals, and the work went on.<\/p>\n

Clubhouses were vacated.\u00a0 Sportsmen from afar no longer came to hunt along the Kankakee and even the migrating waterfowl found a new flyway.\u00a0 Twenty or thirty local \u201cpushers\u201d and guides found themselves without an occupation, so that finally took jobs with the drainage contractors.\u00a0 The river of history had become a straight ditch that carried the water and a direct route to the Des Plaines River.\u00a0 The waterway that had once seen the Indian canoes, the trappers dugouts, and the great fur boats take millions of dollars worth of furs from the Kankakee Valley, was now a deep narrow ditch between two high banks, speeding from the South Bend portage to the Wilmington junction without a sign that Marquette and La Salle had once traveled its old route.<\/p>\n

But according to the state treasurer’s report, since that great drainage project was completed, over $900,000 in taxes have come into the Indiana treasury that would otherwise have not been paid.\u00a0 Over 300,000 acres of one-time worthless land has been lifted out of the mud.\u00a0 Hundreds of farmers have found new homes along the new river and the incidence of tuberculosis, malaria, aqua, and swamp fever has dwindled to an insufficient figure.<\/p>\n

The state reclamation service said: \u201cDraining the Kankakee Swamp lands was the most profitable thing ever undertaken by the commission, and every man who own land along the river, and paid the drainage assessment, suddenly found his wealth far more than double.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just to the nation’s \u201cBattle of the Timbermen, and the \u201cWar with the Copper Interests,\u201d and the \u201cTennessee Valley Authority,\u201d and many other once opposed projects were at one time the subjects of several \u201cBest Sellers\u201d there probably will some day be an author who will write an equally truthful book, in an equally sensational manner to be called the, \u201cBattle of the Kankakee Swamps.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Kankakee River has justly been called \u201cThe River of History\u201d and in very large part of that history developed in Porter County.\u00a0 It was about 60 years ago second set of plans were drawn to drain the Kankakee swamps.\u00a0 The first had been in 1852 and resulted in the theft of great deposits of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":443,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"no-sidebar.php","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2562","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2566,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2562\/revisions\/2566"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}