History of Ottawa County, Michigan with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers.

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HISTORY OF OTTAWA COUNTY.

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Sand Creek, as along its course sand can always be found, which is
not the case a little distance from its banks. Deer Creek, passing
Cooperville, and entering the river onl the north bank, over a mile
below Lamont, is the next little branch. Then from the south,
across the north of Blendon to the west, through Allendale and East
Robinson, and again back to Allendale, enters onil the south the Bass
river. Crockery creek, over 20 miles long, rising in Muskegon, runs
south across the east of Crockery, and enters the Grand River above
Spoonville. The largest bayou is that of Spring Lake, in the northwest of the county, a fine, placid body of water, 6 miles long and
from one-fourth to three-fourths of a mile wide. It is a favorite
resort for pleasure parties, and fine orchards are planted on its
*banks.
Black River rises in the southeast corner of the county, and
flows in a direction generally westward for eighteen or twenty miles,
and falls into Black Lake at the city of Holland. This is the llost
important- stream south of the Grand River, but is far too sluggish
to be of much value as a mill stream.
Black Lake is the most important body of water wholly within
the county. It is of irregular shape, and from one-fourth of a mile
to near two miles wide, and about six miles in length. It has been
extensively improved by the General Government, and furnishes a
commodious and safe harbor for lake craft of large size.
SURFACE, SOIL, ETC.
No beds of metal or quarries of stone of great value have as
yet been extensively worked in the county, although valuable beds
of marble have been found in many places, and large quantities of
bog iron ore are known to exist in several of the townships. A mineral paint of an ocherous character, has for some years, been used in
a small way in Robinson township. Within a few miles of Holland
City, sandstone of a quality very suitable for some kinds of building
purposes is being quarried. Valuable clay for brick-making may be
had in almost all parts of the county, although in the west part of
the county it can only be found beneath the surface sand, and generally below the lake level. Excellent clay for the manufacture of
what are known as the Milwaukee brick is obtained by dredging in
one of the bayous connected with the Grand River.
SURVEYS.
In the case of Ottawa County the U. S. Survey seems to have
been made, on the south side of the river at least, in advance of any
public demand, as townships 5, 6, and a part of 7 in range 13,
which constitute Jamestown and Georgetown and a small portion of
Talmadge, were surveyed in the year 1831 by Lucius B. Lyon, when,
with the exception perhaps of Rix Robinson, there was not a white
man within the boundary of the county for three years at least.
Zeeland, Allendale, Grand Haven, and the west portion of Olive
and Holland townships were surveyed in 1832, anled Blendon in 1833,
while range 15, south of the river, comprising the town of Robinson and the east part of Olive-and Holland, was not surveyed until
1837, or five years after the range next to the lake shore, and the
range immediately east had been laid off. The lands north of the
river were not ceded by the Indians until 1835 or 1836, and were
not commenced to be surveyed until 1837, when Crockery and Polkton were surveyed. Spring Lake township was not reached till 1838,
and in the same year Talmadge, Wright and Chester were laid off
into sections and fractions.

The U. S. Surveyor was not always looked upon by the Indians
with a friendly eye, and when followed soon after by claimants in
advance of the land sale, the red man naturally regarded them as
intruders, though we were unable to-learn of any serious difficulties
with these original proprietors.

CLIMATE.
The climate of thlleeastern shore of Lake Michigan is an important factor in reckoning the value of Muskegon and Ottawa
counties as fruit-growing regions; and as the subject has been ably
handled in an address by that experienced fruit-grower, S. B. Peck,
of Muskegon, we cannot do better than to summnarize from it. The
address was delivered in February, 1872, before the Nomthwestern
Fruit-grower's Association. Mr. Peck claims that it is not any peculiarity of soil, nor any hygrometric condition of our atmosphere, nor
any lack or excess of rainfall that give us the superiority we claim to
possess. It is simply a climate genial to the tender fruits-the
peach, the nectarine, and the apricot. The presence of a great body
of water like Lake Michigan operates to prevent extremes of heat and
cold, as the water loses during the night less of the heat that it has
acquired from the sun during the day than the land. Water while
freezing throws off heat to the surrounding air, and while thawing
absorbs heat. It is well known that while Lake Michigan never
freezes, much of the snow that falls on the shallow waters of its
shores is carried to its border, the spray from the lake thrown upon
it, and the whole mass is congealed during the fore part of the winter, while the inland bays or lakes that border its eastern side freeze
to the depth of one or two feet. These, by throwing out heat while
freezing, lengthen the autumn, giving time for fruits to ripen, and
in some measure preventing the early, killing frosts of the interior.
In spring, or whenever these masses of ice begin to thaw, they cool
the air by absorbing a portion of its heat, preventing in a measure
the sudden occurrence of warm, almost summer heat, that occurs
in the interior, rousing the peach buds, and putting them in the
condition to be destroyed by the sudden cold which follows. It is
not so much the cold of the interior that destroys the buds as it is
the effect of the untimely heat of a thaw in winter or early spring.
Peaches have borne on the hills of the Grand River Valley, where
the previous January the mercury was down to 35 degrees below
zero.
All know that the western winds are by far the most prevalent
here. The trees of our forests, and of our orchards, the bluffs on
our east shore, the flatness of our west shore, the smoke of our furnaces, all furnish evidence of this.. True, we sometimes have a wind
from the east or northeast, but that is an "ill-wind that blows nobody good," as it is from the east that our killing frosts come, for
the winds from the west, having passed over 70 miles of a surface of
water, cannot possibly carry frosts on to our shore. This accounts
for the lake having so much greater effect on its east than its west
shore, and being so much more extensive in its effects than Erie or
Ontario, the length of which runs in an opposite direction. Again,
if the lower we descend into the bowels of the earth, the heat increases, it is probable that the water on the bottom of the lake is
warnmed and rises to the surface like the water in a kettle on a fire,
and thus heat is continually evolved
Another source of heat is that it is fed by streams coming from
the interior, where the waters are shallow, and a greater proportion
is exposed to the sun. Lake Superior lying so much farther north,
and fed by streams still farther north, and mingling its cold waters
with those of Lake Michigan at Mackinaw, will account for the fact
that Michigan is the warmest of the great lakes.
To sum up, the great capacity of water for holding heat, the
freezing and thawing of the inland bays and the borders of the great

lake, the prevalence of the winds from the west, the great depth of
our water, reachingc down to the heat from the internal fires, the
heat supplied through the summer from the shallow waters of the
interior and stored up in this great storehouse of heat to be given off
to us in mid-winter, all conspire to make this a favored region. All
this we find ready to our hands by the Great Architect of the Uni

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