Illinois Historic Land Use French and Jesuit priests founded towns in southern Illinois between 1699 and 1703 including Kaskaskia later to become State Capital in 1818 Total settlement population in Illinois is 1800 was 2 500 In 1810 it was 12 000 and by 1820 it was 55 000 Illinois Historic Land Use Steel plow was invented by John Deere in 1837 Steam engine in 1850s By 1900 the topsoil on many southern Illinois slopes had eroded away 1 2 Illinois Historic Land Use Erosion was so severe that the University of Illinois College of Agriculture purchased 18 acres of abandon land in 1906 in Johnson county to study land reclamation Results were published in 1918 Bulletin No 207 entitled Working of Soils and Methods of Preservation 3 4 Illinois Historic Land Use Regarding tillage it states Probably nothing that can be done to rolling land damages it more seriously than faulty methods of tillage This is a fact which the farmers of Illinois have not yet learned The direction of plowing planting cultivation is usually determined by convenience along regardless of the consequences Plowing is more frequently done up and down hill than any other way Making of dead furrows in this direction affords the best possible beginning for a gully 5 6 Illinois Historic Land Use Illinois Historic Land Use 1933 Dixon Springs Research Station The vast acreages of swamps and was started to learn how to improve crop yields and farm income on hilly and highly eroded soils Limestone from nearby was crushed and spread on the fields Rock phosphate was added wetlands in East Central Illinois were avoided by early settlers After a trip in the Vermilion River basin of east central Illinois Ralph Hay wrote Illinois Historic Land Use Illinois Historic Land Use When Illinois became a state in 1818 and They considered the land worthless An for a decade afterwards during which early settlers came in east central Illinois was a wide flat swampy expanse covered with bluestem and other swamp grasses Settlers described vast ponds covered with green scum swarms of mosquitoes cholera milk sickness and fever early resident 1818 refused to trade his riding horse and saddle for 640 acres valued in 2007 at about 3 000 000 Farm Drainage and Levee Act of 1879 helped change that 7 8 9 10 11
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