Across the U.S. Midwest lies an unseen network of cylindrical tiles that solved one of the biggest problems early settlers faced – drainage. In fact, a surprising swath of America’s most fertile farmland was once useless swampland, now transformed by drainage tile first introduced by European settlers back in the 1800s.
At the time of U.S. settlement, large proportions of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri were swampland unsuited for cultivation. Large areas in northeastern Arkansas, the gulf plains of Texas, and delta areas of Mississippi and Louisiana were also originally swamp and overflow areas.
This landscape is courtesy of the U.S. Midwest’s geological history, which is dominated by glaciers. For most of the past 2.6 million years, ice has covered all of the Midwest except for the extreme southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and a unique region called the “Driftless Area” that comprises southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa, and the extreme northwestern corner of Illinois.
These ice sheets scraped away and ground up whatever rock was at the surface. When the ice finally retreated some 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, it dropped its load of rock and dirt, leaving behind rich deposits that became some of the most fertile soil in the world. The last glacier also left behind heavily compacted ground and a lot of water with no place to go, contributing to the region’s extensive swamps and sloughs.
A man named John Johnston is credited as “the father of tile drainage in America.” Emigrating from Scotland in 1821, he came to the Finger Lakes seeking farmland. He purchased a small farm in Seneca County, New York. As he worked to improve his land, he decided drain tile would help.
Before Johnston, underground drains were filled with stones, wood and other found materials that would allow water to flow. In 1835 he wrote to Scotland for two pieces of clay drain tile that he could show to local potters to reproduce. At first, Johnston’s neighbors thought he was crazy for “burying crockery in the ground.” They thought the clay would poison the soil or break the first time a wagon went over the field.
Johnston eventually laid 72 miles of clay tile on 320 acres, which increased his yield of wheat from 12 bushels per acre to 60. Not surprisingly, his neighbors became drain tile converts.
The expansion of drainage systems was an important technical aspect of Westward Expansion in the United States in the 19th century. Although land in the United States was divided according to the Public Land Survey System that the Land Ordinance of 1785 instituted, development, especially of agricultural land, was often limited by the rate at which it was made capable for cultivation.
Many states offered governmental incentives to improve land for agriculture. For example, legislation in Indiana prompted a Federal statute in 1850 that provided for the sale of swamps at discount to farmers contingent on their drainage of the land and improvement of it for agricultural productivity.
Most of the drainage of the Midwestern wetlands occurred in the early 1900’s in response to federal and local government support for drainage districts and improvements in drainage technology. Despite the Depression, the federal government provided financial assistance in the 1920’s and 1930’s to maintain and expand drainage systems. Drainage of arid, irrigated lands in the west expanded at the same time.
