Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/421

 HISTORY OP SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 361 While much has been accomplished in the matter of drainage, there still remain a num- ber of problems to be solved. The Charleston district has been levied and this protects from the overflow waters of the Mississippi river and it has been partly drained. It is possible that the levee will be extended to St. John's Bayou by which New Madrid and the lower part of this district will be drained. Two great problems remain to be solved — ■ the drainage of the Little river bottoms and the drainage of the basin of the St. Francois. The magnitude of the problem of the Little river is ajjparent when we consider the vast extent of these bottoms having an average width of from 12 to 15 miles and a length of nearly 90 miles. About 500,000 acres of land in these bottoms have been drained already by local ditches, but this drainage is to a cer- tain extent inadequate and the great problem now is how to increase the efficienc}' of the drainage and add to the system. Two prob- lems confront the engineers who would re- claim the remaining lands in the Little river bottoms. The bottoms receive an enormous quantity of watei,- from Castor and White- water and the other streams which have their source in the Ozark hills and pour their wa- ter into the upper part of these bottoms. Some efficient means is to be found for the distribution of these waters. Besides this, however, the local drainage must be cared for. The rainfall from such a great area as the St. Francois bottoms is very large and provision must be made for taking care of this rainfall. The problem of draining the St. Francois and Black river bottoms is a simpler one ; it seems that the overflow waters of these rivers can be cared for by leveeing the banks of the rivers and confining the streams within the banks and by digging drainage ditches to the south. It is estimated that 200,000 acres of land in these bottoms may be reclaimed. This period, along with many other changes which it has witnessed, has brought with it a very great increase in wealth. Land values have mounted up within the last few years to a height undreamed of by the people who lived here before the war. This increase in land values has been accompanied by a very great increase of other property. Perhaps in the first place the wealth of the district was enhanced by the cutting of the timber. Some of the most valuable timber in all the United States was found in Southeast Mis- souri ; great forests of cotton wood, of white oak, of gum, of cypress and poplar existed. For a long time this timber of the finest qual- ity was practically valueless. This was true because of the lack of facilities for manu- facturing lumber and in a large degree be- cause of the lack of facilities for transporta- tion. The price, too, was low because of the existence in other parts of the country of vast bodies of timber. First other parts of the countiy worked iip their timber, the price of lumber rose gradually, and there came to be more and more a demand for timber in Southeast Missouri. Those of the younger generation can hardly realize the vast extent of the forests that were once found here, nor can they appreciate the attitude which the eai'ly settlers and even of the settlors in the time immediately following the Civil war held toward this timbei-. It was looked upon. not as an asset, but rather in the nature of an encumbrance. A body of land covered with timber was not as valuable by any means as a body of land without timber. The finest forests of gum or cottonwood were cut down and the timber destroyed in any way in order to get rid of it. Trees which would