The Big Marsh: The Story of a Lost Landscape

by Cheri Register

Overview

Under the corn and soybean fields of southern Minnesota lies the memory of vast, age-old wetlands, drained away over the last 130 years in the name of agricultural progress. But not everyone saw wetlands as wasteland. Before 1900, Freeborn County's Big Marsh provided a wealth of resources for the neighboring communities. Families hunted its immense flocks of migrating waterfowl, fished its waters, trapped muskrats and mink, and harvested wood and medicinal plants. As farmland prices rose, however, the value of the land under the water became more attractive to people with capital. While residents fought bitterly, powerful outside investors overrode local opposition and found a way to drain 18,000 acres of wetland at public expense.

Author Cheri Register stumbled upon her great-grandfather's scathing critique of the draining and was intrigued. Following the clues he left, she uncovers the stories of life on the Big Marsh and of the "connivers" who plotted its end: the Minneapolis land developer, his local fixer, an Illinois banker, and the lovelorn local lawyer who did their footwork.

The Big Marsh, an environmental history told from a personal point of view, shows the enduring value of wild places and the importance of the fight to preserve them, both then and now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873519960
Publisher:	Minnesota Historical Society Press
Publication date:	05/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Cheri Register is the author of Packinghouse Daughter, which won a Minnesota Book Award and an American Book Award, and other books. She has taught creative nonfiction writing for many years.

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