TOPOGRAPHY.
NEMAHA COUNTY adjoins Nebraska on the south, and is the third county of
Kansas in the northern tier west of the Missouri River. It is bounded on the
east by Brown and Jackson Counties, on the south by Jackson and Pottawatomie,
and on the west by Marshall. Its size is twenty-four miles east and west,
and thirty miles north and south, its area comprising 460,800 acres of land,
247,117 acres of which is divided into farms in the counties; contains about
87 per cent. of prairie and 10 per cent. of bottom lands, the amount of
timber being estimated at about 3 per cent. The surface of the land, taken as
a whole, is sufficiently rolling to insure good drainage, and hence is
admirable adapted for both grazing and agricultural purposes. Good water is
abundant - in fact, it may be said of all of Northeastern Kansas, that very
few of the prairie States are so generously supplied with streams. The great
water-shed in the northern part of the State lied in Town 4, Range 13, in
Harrison Township, of Nemaha County.
The waters run southward, making the heads of Elk, Soldier and the Red
Vermillion, and northward, making the heads of the south branch of Harris,
Tennessee, Hickey, Illinois and Wild Cat Creeks, which find their way into the
Nemaha, the latter leaving the county in Town 1, Range 12. None of the
streams afford water power; but they pervade almost every portion of the
county, and no considerable amount of a prairie is far from timber. The
average width of the creed bottoms is one mile, of the soil is a dark, sandy
loam, varying in depth from one to six feet, with limestone, the latter, of a
quality suitable for building purposes, cropping out in various localities.
Sandstone is also found in limited quantities. Numerous coal beds about of
little value, except in Illinois Township, where two shafts are worked, the
product being used locally; and in Washington Township, where a vein eighteen
to twenty-four inches thick has been recently been discovered. The native
timber is hickory, oak, hackberry, elm, walnut, cottonwood, locust, sycamore
and ash; the agricultural products comprising all almost that are indigenous
to the temperate zone, the principal being wheat, barley, corn, oats and rye.
Of wheat the yield is from fifteen to twenty- five bushels to the acre, of
corn the average yield is about fifty-five bushels. Root crops, such as
potatoes, sugar beets and turnips do remarkably well.
Wild fruits are moderately abundant, particularly plums and grapes, while the
cultivated varieties of these may be found in every township in profusion.
Peaches do well if protected from the winter winds, and no better country for
the apple orchard can be found anywhere.
Artificial forestry has been carried to such an extent that the prairie farms
are nearly all embellished with one or more thriving groves, from one half an
acre to four, six and ten acres in extent. The growth of young trees, both
fruit and forest, is very rapid.
Nemaha County is pre-eminently adapted to stock raising, the highly
nutritious properties of the native grasses being best seen in the rapid
change which takes place when cattle that have been poorly wintered,
luxuriate on the young grass of May and June, their hair rapidly becoming
smooth and glossy, and the animals taking on flesh very quickly.
The climate is salubrious, mild winters and healthful summers being the rule,
for while the summer day may be such as is best for the great staple - corn -
the night atmosphere is certain to be cool and bracing. The average rain fall
for the past five years from 1876 to 1881, both inclusive, has been 44.03
inches per annum.
|