AN UNBLEMISHED LAND

The land of Iowa is predominately prairie, a name of French origin, that means grassland.

Our midwest prairie was a mystery to those who first laid their eyes on it. The forest through which they had threaded and hewn their way for two hundred miles give way first to meadows, and finally to the ocean of grass. It was a mystery that appears nowhere on earth but North America. No such prairies were or are found anywhere else in the world. There are deserts and steppes and pampas and llanos, but no great expanses of waving grass in a climate which seems perfectly adapted to the growth of forests.

Today it is a vanished mystery. The prairies have passed away forever. We now look out over the Iowa landscape and see a region of many tall groves of trees, plowed fields, farmsteads and towns. It has characteristics of its own which distinguish it from the lands once forested. The roads run in straight lines with the points of the compass.

The prairies are the result of their geological history which gave the grasses the advantage over the trees in the struggle for existence. In the remote time when the glaciers were beginning to recede the battle was waged between the grass and trees with the grasses winning. It was perhaps the prairie fire that kept the grasses winning over the years that followed.

We cannot imagine what the open prairie was like when our area was being first settled. At that time the only trees were near the river and on either side were miles and miles of open grasslands. Trees and groves were planted by the settlers around their farm steads as they were built and for many years only a few of these dotted the landscape, sometimes two to ten miles apart. In these early days of settling Clay township, it wasn’t unusual for a man to get lost in broad daylight, and quite common for it to happen at night.

It isn’t too hard to believe then, that when a person got caught away from home during a raging blizzard, the snow blowing with a violent wind so fierce that man nor horse could face the cutting storm and stay a straight course.

One man was within a mile and a quarter of his home about four o’clock in the afternoon when a terrible blizzard came up. He traveled around the prairie until it was nearly nine o’clock and finally came upon a house. He was so turned around that he didn’t know which direction he came from. The man of this house accompanied him and an hour later they saw the light in the lost mans house and came to his home. The man that had accompanied him stayed the night, and found his way back home the next day.

One night a stage driver and his passengers got lost in a storm, and drove around over the treeless prairie until two or three o’clock in the morning, when they caught sight of a light in a window that was always kept burning at night as a signal to stages and travelers. The stage drove to the house, where the driver and passengers spent the balance of the night, ate breakfast and continued their journey.

One dark night when the sky was absent of moon or stars a man was within a half mile of his home when he feared he had become lost. He traveled and traveled, and still did not know where he was. He finally decided to unhitch his team and wait until morning. It was so dark that he thought he would become hopelessly lost on the broad prairie. After unhitching his team and tying them to the wagon, he got ready to cover himself with what blankets and quilts he had with him and settle down for the rest of the night. He had not quite settled in when he heard a rooster crow within a few rods distance. On investigation he found that it was his own rooster crowing for morning (it was 4 a.m.). His family was grateful when he returned home unharmed.