Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/586

 526 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI products of the county reached a total of $1,676,351 in 1910. The large items were flour, lumber, cooperage and cotton. The coimt.y has the following railroads: the St. Louis, Iron Mouutaiu & Southern, Cairo branch ; the St. Louis Southwestern and the 'Frisco. Most of the coiuity is well supplied with railroad facilities. The principal towns are Dexter and Bloom- field. The latter is the county seat, and is supported largely by farming interests since the removal of the wood-working plants. Dexter is now the largest to-'n, made so largely because of its superior shipping facil- ities and in part by the fact that large bodies of timber are still available near Dexter. The population of the comity is 27,807, and its total taxable wealth is $6,452,077. There are 107 school districts, employing 151 teachers, and the school system of the coimty is one of the best in Southeast Missouri. Washington county, one of the oldest in the state, is fifty miles south of the Missouri river and about forty west of the Mississippi. It is in the heart of the mineral district, and its principal industry is mining. The comity contains 780 square miles, or nearly half a million acres, and of this immense area only about 100,000 acres, or one-fifth, is farmed. The remainder of the county, amoimting to about 400,000 acres, is still timbered, the principal varieties being oak, yellow pine, hickory, maple and walnut. White oak is the most abundant timber and the most valu- able. It amounts to about 35 per cent of the remaining timber, and black oak, foiand chiefly in the western and southwestern parts of the county, amounts to about 25 per cent. There are three general classes of lands in the county. In the northeast part there is a table land where is to be foimd the most valuable of farming lands. The surface is gently rolling and well drained. The soil is gravelly clay, sometimes covered with rocks. The sub-soil is usually a red clay. This is fairl.y productive land and is well adapted to fruit growing. In the southeast part of the coimty there are also some high, rolling lands suitable for farming, while in the western part the land is broken, the only farm land in this county being foimd in the valleys of the .streams. There is scarcely a mineral known to South- east Missouri that is not found in consider- able quantities in Washington coimty. Of these minerals the most valuable and im- portant is lead. Lead mines have been oper- ated in the county from about 1780, when the mine known as IMine a Breton was discovered, near the present site of Potosi. This is the center of the lead mining district. Another is about Old Mines, and another is foimd at Palmer, in the western part of the coimty. In the early times, mines were worked on the Mineral fork of Big river. The production of lead is no longer as large as it once was, but in 1910 nearly 1,000 tons of lead ore were shipped from the county. Besides lead, barytes, zinc, iron, copper, clay, limestone and sandstone are found in paying quantities, and all of them are being mined and exported. In 1910, 25,000 tons of barytes were shipped from the county. In 1910 there were manufactured in the county products to an amount of $308,096. The large items were cooperage, floiar, mineral products and lumber. The only railroad in the coimty is the St. Louis, Iron Moimtain & Southern, which touches the western edge, and a branch of this .system extending from Mineral Point to Potosi. The coimty has a fine system of roads which extend in every direction from Potosi.