Table of Contents
Prologue 3
Part I The Lay of the Land
Hollandale: An Introduction 7
Freeborn County: Home, but No Biome 17
Looking for the Big Marsh 20
Part II Life on the Big Marsh
No Empty Landscape 29
The Grid That Turned Land to a Commodity 36
Homing on the Marsh: The Speers 45
The Trip from Otranto Revisited 55
Claiming the High Ground: The Ostranders 59
Hazards 64
What Counts as a Lake? 67
The Evolution of the Drainage Ditch 74
A Watershed Year: 1877 79
A New Home on the Prairie: A Speculation 87
Fire on the Marsh 92
Part III The Big Ditch
The Alleged Conniver: Putnam Dana McMillan 97
The First Drainage 102
The Middle Man: William A. Morin 109
Robert Speer Travels through Time 115
Eighteen Yoke of Oxen 118
"The Great Ricelawn Ranch" 123
A Change of Hands Bodes a Change of Lands 128
What's Black and White and Grazes All Over? 132
The Second Try 135
New Man About Town: John Felix Dryden Meighen 140
The People Protest 147
How to Read a Flying Bundle of Twine 152
A Lone Voice for the Environment: Fred McCall 156
Counterarguments 160
The Moscow Farm Prospers 166
Meighen in Court and Courting 171
The Winning Strategy 178
Rice Lake and the Big Marsh Go Down the Drain 189
The Swamp Angel Plays Cupid 195
The New Model Farmer 202
The Victor's History 207
The Mysterious Fall of Bryant Barber and Other Endings 213
Part IV Restitution and Restoration From Booty to Beauty 225
Wo Wacintanka 229
For the Birds 234
Acknowledgments 237
Source Notes 241
Notes 243
Image Credits 272
