History of Saginaw county, Michigan; together with ... portraits ... and biographies ... History of Michigan ...

HISTORY OF SAGINAW COUNTY.

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rant the broad extent of farming improvements that had already
been vigorously inaugurated. This doubt, and the persistent misrepresentation in regard to Saginaw Valley as a land of swamps,
frosts and sterility, made previous to 1860, has seemed to keep the
farming interest, never too prone to prosper in a lumber country,
far behind what it should be at this time, and the loss in accumulations by reason of this delay may be counted by millions of dollars; but with all this slow progress these facts have been fairly and
firmly fixed.
In 1860 the number of acres of improved land in the county was
estimated at 18,048 acres, 10 years later at 33,383 acres, and in the
fifth decade after settlement at double the area reported as improved
in 1870.
As lands are cleared and opened to the light and heat of the sun,
they improve every year, and in the broader clearings untimely
frosts are so marked an exception to the general rule that there is
no further fear of that dread " bug-bear. " The soil throughout all
that range of counties drained by Saginaw river and its tributaries
is as a rule excellent for farming purposes, and among some of the
pine tracts, as is the case on the Cass, the Flint, the Tittabawassee,
Chippewa and other streams, are found some of the most productive
lands in the district.
The timber will not last for ever. Within a half century the
owners of these fertile lands will wish for a pine grove and find
none; in their rush after gain the forest will be leveled, and then,
in possession of rich and productive farms, the husbandman will
look back to the time when each quarter section held a mine of
fuel, and curse the want of foresight which led to its destruction.
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