Sac County Iowa, Townships

“Sac County contains sixteen congressional townships, west of the Des Moines River. It contains 369,640 acres, nearly a1l, of which is desirable land for either grain or stock farms, and the larger part available for either or both combined. The larger part of these lands are railway property and these can be purchased by home-seekers, who will occupy them at once, on the most liberal terms. Many of the private holders are also selling on nearly if not quite as easy terms as the railway land company. And as to the grasshopper an tornado bugbears, it is perfectly safe to say that the farmers of Ohio and Indiana are as much annoyed by them, and have as much prospect for annoyance from them, as the Sac County grower of grain and stock. Sum up these advantages, and the reader will readily see why the population has been rapidly on the increase ever since the opening of railway communication. Let those who have doubts give the county a visit and they will hesitate no longer.

Sac County has not even the drawback so common to these fertile counties of Northwestern Iowa. What this is,  too well understood by the early settlers who located in Northwestern Iowa before there were railways to deliver coal at every man’s door. Many counties in this section had little or no timber, Ida County, for instance, had less than a thousand acres within its borders. Sac County had many thousands of acres of oak, black walnut, hickory, ash, elm, maple, box alder, cottonwood, linn (basswood), and many other varieties native to the soil. The Coon River, which traverses the east part of the county, lies buried in woods for almost its entire course. Cordwood is delivered in Sac City at from $4 to $5 per cord according to quality. The timber culture laws of the State relieving land from tax for ten years in consideration of the culture of a certain portion of forest trees have also caused so extensive a growth of forest that there is probably more timber now in the county than before the first axe was struck on the banks of the classic Coon.

Sac County Iowa, History of Western Iowa, 1882

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