Draining of Rice Lake….
Reported by R. E. Kincaid, early Grant resident
Taken from a Michigan State University Booklet – Michigan Muck Farmers Association.
Mr. R. E. Kincaid was born February 20, 1973 and was 94 years old when these notes were taken:
“I came to Grant October 4, 1899 and ran a drugstore for 13 years. I like to hunt and fish, and during duck season I spent practically every Sunday on the Rice Lake, east of Grant. The ducks were mostly black mallards that came in late in the evening so that most of the shooting was after sundown. During the day, I usually kept rowing around and got an occasional shot at a stray duck, a mud hen, a snipe, or a rail. Bust just before sunset, I would pick a likely place where I could blind that tall reed with open water to the west and put out my decoys so that I could shoot toward the western sky.
It was about 4 miles from Grant to where I keep my boat, and I usually walked both ways. Sometimes the livery man at Grant would come over to pick up a load of hunters and we would pay him 50 cents each for the ride back to Grant. My father-in-law, a drew Squire, who made his home with us, had acquired five 40s on the marsh several years before in some kind of a timber deal. One day he said he would like to go to the marsh and see what I looked like as he hadn’t seen it for some time. I got a team at the livery barn and we drove around the cast side on what was known as the “island.”
The land that Andrew owned had about 40 acres of tamarack timber on it. He said that if I could sell the timber for him for $300.00 that he would give me the five 40s as he didn’t want to pay taxes on the land. I sold the amber to Dick English, who had a mill near Casnovia for $600.00. He took the amber all off the first Winter. Andrew them gave me a deed to the five 40s but advised me to let it go for taxes or trade it to some duck hunters for anything I could get for it. He didn’t think the land was worth much. Instead of doing that, I bought more land where I could get it for about what the tax against it amounted to thinking that if I got enough that I could keep the hunters off and have better hunting myself. There was some timer left on the land after English took what he wanted.
One day while I was rowing my boat near the east side of the lake, I saw a man standing gat the edge of the marsh. He motioned to me to come to where he was. The man’s name was John Bildt and he wanted to cut the remaining timber for half. I told him go ahead. He then wanted me to walk over to his farm which must have been about a mile or so away. He showed me what he considered a nice crop of onions. I didn’t know anything about onions at the time, but they looked good and he said he thought that they would yield about 500 bushels to the area and were valued at $1.00 per bushel. He had three acres. He also said that the year before he had just as good a crop but a heavy rain flooded the field and he lost them all. Mr. Beldt wanted to know if I couldn’t get Rive Lake drained. He said that in the Netherlands they would drain such land and it would be valuable for farming.
That put a bug in my head on the possible development of the march. I didn’t do anything about it until several years later. By that time John Beldt’s crops had drowned out again and he said he wanted to go where it didn’t rain, eve, and moved to North Dakota.
Due to ill health, I sold my drugstore to Camby Reece in the fall of 1912, and spent the winder in Florida. Th next summer I went to Montana with my brother-in-law where we had some investments in farms. My health improved and soon, I got interested in farm work. In the fall of 1914 I had a chance to sell the land in Montana at a good profit and in one deal got a 200 acre farm south and west of Grant. I started then to buy more land in the Rice Lake Marsh and finally acquired 3,000 acres. Much of this land was bough form a company which made baskets from the willows.
I first thought of organizing a hunting club and selling shared in the club but reserving a right to hunt for myself. After talking with some of the hunters who might be interested, I gave up the idea. They seemed to think that because they had always hunted there any time and they could keep on doing so at no expense to them.
I then decided to drain the marsh, If possible, and hired a surveyor name Winfield Merrill to go with the and run levels to see if it could really be feasible to drain. We found that it could be drained to the north by Hess Lake or south to the Rogue River. The natural drainage was to the south so we decided to try that. I thought a private drain would cost more than I could adored so I petitioned the county drain commissioner to dig the drain.
In that way the cost could be paid in taxes over a period of years and the land flowing into the marsh would be taxes as well as the land drained. To make the petition legal, I had to have seven freeholder signatures who would be benefited by the drain. As I owned most of the land and so many were opposed to the project, I found it difficult to petition. I finally go size and the seventh deeded 40 acres to my niece. She signed the petition but after showing her the land later she said she wouldn’t pay taxes on such a “frog pond” and deeded it back to me.
The drain commissioner at that time was Orley Rhodes and after I presented the petition to him with the required signatures, he went ahead with the survey and letting of the contract for the dredge work. In about a year the drain was complete and was known as the Rogue River drain. Soon after that I sold 1,000 acres to a group of men from Muskegon for a muskrat farm at $8.00 an acre. W.L. Peterson was the principal manager, but after fencing the land, he found that it was too dry for muskrats. He quit making the payments and I foreclosed the mortgage. Later the same land was sold back to Mr. Peterson. The first land that I sold for farming was 80 acres to Cornelius KaKarp on a contract. He paid me $1.00 down to make the contract legal and I loaned him $800.00 to use for material for a house which he built on the 80 acres. The first year he came to me and wanted to give up his contract, but I induced him to stay by paying the taxes and postponing interest payments. The second year was the same but the third year he had a crop of onions and the price happened to be high so he was satisfied to stay. The fact that Karp did so well helped sell the other land. I sold most of it in small parcels to people from Ohio and from Hudsonville who had raised onions before. After the original Rogue River drain was dug, I found it necessary to dig other drains and got one acress the center of the lake and up the west side called the west side drain. Another drain was put up the center and was called the Center Line drain. I finally got the country to build a road running straight east from Grant across the center of the marsh and one on the east side and one on the west side. After these roads and additional drains were built, I had no trouble in selling all the land I owned and some of it at what I considered a high price. However the most I ever got was $450.00 per acre. Since then several parcels of land have resold for as much as $1,000.00 per acre–all from land that once was thought useless. At the time I came to Grant, the population was 200. It has increased to about 700 at the present, and there is a fringe of population of several hundred who have built around the town but outside the village limits. The majority of the increase in population can be attributed to the Rive Lake marsh and the wonderful crops of onions, celery, carrots, beets, and mint grown there.”
