DOUGLAS COUNTY.

NATURAL FEATURES.

Douglas County is in the second tier west from Missouri. It is bounded on the north by Jefferson and Leavenworth Counties: on the east by Leavenworth and Johnson, on the south by Franklin, and on the west by Osage and Shawnee. The Kansas River runs along the northern boundary of Lecompton, a part of Wakarusa and Eudora Townships. The boundaries of the county as organized by act of the First Territorial Legislature, July, 1855, were defined as follows:

Beginning at the main channel of the Kansas River, at the northwest corner of Johnson County; thence south to the southwest corner of said Johnson County; thence west twenty-four (24) miles, to a point equidistant between the limits (embraced in the original plats) of the towns of Lecompton and Tecumseh.

The present boundary of Douglas County is as follows: Commencing at the northwest corner of Johnson County, in the middle of the main channel of the Kansas River, thence up the main channel of said Kansas River to the southwest corner of Leavenworth County; thence north on the west boundary line of Leavenworth County to the north line of Township 12; thence west on said north line of Township 12 to the middle of the main channel of the Kansas River; thence up the main channel of said river to the point where the line between the second and third tiers of sections in Range 17 crosses said river; thence south on the section lines to the corner of Sections 14, 15, 22 and 23, in Township 15 south, of Range 17 east; thence east on section lines to the southwest corner of Johnson County; thence north along the west line of Johnson County to the place of beginning.

The Wakarusa River runs through the central part of the county from west to east, turns to the northeast in Eudora Township and empties into the Kansas River. The county is well supplied with springs, good well water bring obtained at a depth of twenty-five feet.

About twenty per cent of the surface bottom land and eighty per cent upland, the general surface of the country being gently undulating but occasionally breaking into abrupt hills. The average width of the bottoms is one mile. Ninety-four per cent is open prairie, six per cent forest, the timber belts ranging in width from a few rods to one mile.

The principle varieties of native timber are the ash, cottonwood, elm, hackberry, oak and walnut. The principle minerals found in the county are an excellent quality of building stone in great abundance, and of fire and pottery clay. Coal is believed to exist in fair quantity and quality at moderate depth; but little or none has yet been mined. The area of the county is 300,160 acres and there is very little waste land. The soil is exceedingly fertile, and produces all the cereals, timothy, clover and prairie grasses and fruit and forest trees in great luxuriance.

POPULATION.

                                               1870   1880
                                               ----   ----
Clinton Township............................. 1,030  1,005
Eudora Township, including Euudora City...... 1,901  2,029
Grant Township...............................   583    576
Kanwaka Township.............................   913    919
Lawrence City................................ 8,329  8,510
Lecompton Township...........................   971  1,004
Marion Township..............................   879  1,417
Palmyra Township, including Baldwin City..... 2,431  2,478
Wakarusa Township............................ 2,401  2,388
Willow Springs Township...................... 1,163  1,374
                                             ------ ------
                                             20,592 21,700

Eudora City                                            572
Baldwin City                                           325

EARLY SETTLERS.

Previous to May 15, 1854, the county was not open to settlement by white people, being held by the Shawnee Indian as a part of their reservation under the treaty between them and the Government in 1825. On the former date a new treaty went into effect, by the terms of which the Shawnees reserved 200 acres to each member of the tribe, or 200,00 acres in all, most of it in Johnson County. The most of that lying in Douglas County selected by them under the treaty was embraced in Eudora Township, in the northeastern part of the county. As soon as the land was thrown open to settlement, "squatters" came in from Missouri and from the Western and Northwestern States to secure claims, the region, now Douglas County, having been long known as a desirable location, from the fact that one of the great highways of travel between the East and California traversed its entire width. It was also the route over which the Pottawatomie trade mainly passed, one of the great crossings of the Kansas River being at the trading post of Uniontown, in what is now Shawnee County. These, however, were not the first white men in Douglas County. In 1842, Gen. John C. Fremont, on his first tour of exploration to the Rocky Mountains, after leaving Cyprian Chouteaus's trading house on the Kansas River, six miles west of the Missouri line, on June 10, which trading house was in latitude 39 degrees 5' 57" longitude 94 degrees 39' 16", elevation above the sea, 700 feet - encamped near the present location of Lawrence on the 12th, and describes the spring near the residence of the late Bruce. He says of the location:

"We encamped in a remarkable beautiful situation on the Kansas bluffs, which commanded a fine view of the river valley, here from four to five miles wide. The central portion was occupied by a broad belt of heavy timber, and nearer the hills prairies were of the richest verdue."

On the Wakarusa, south of the road, Joel K. Goodwin settled in May, and William Breyman, July 18.

T. W. and R. F. Barber settled near the site of Bloomington in 1855, and Oliver Barber at the same place, June 1. 1857. During the same month, John A. Bean, N. Alquine and M. Albin settled a little further west, where now is the village of Clinton, and a store was opened by the latter. As early as May, Napoleon N. Blanton was at Blanton's Bridge, which crossed the Wakarusa four miles directly south of Lawrence, and G. W. Zinn, A. W. and A. G. Glenn, M. S. Winter and William Shirley, were among the settlers of 1854 on the site of Lecompton. In the southeast of the county on the present site of Vinland, Jacob Branson, Charles W. Dow, Franklin N. Coleman, George Cutler, F. B. Varnum, William White, Josiah Hargus and Harrison W. Buckley, took claims during the year, and a little further south, at Baldwin City, was Robert and Richard Pierson, Jacob Cantrel and L. F. Green. Douglas, two miles south of Lecompton, was laid out on the claim of Paris Ellison, G. W. Clarke and others being associated with him as town proprietor; and late in the year, William Harper and John Chamberlain settled at the forks of the California road at Big Springs.

The account of the arrival of the Eastern emigrants and the settlement of Lawrence is given in that sketch of that city.