This sketch is intended principally as a pen picture of Sac County as it now is, and will include a short outline of its history and a few incidents of the life of the early settlers. "
    The soil of Sac County is a deep black loam, and in its nature is purely a vegetable decomposition. Its depth is from eighteen inches to five or six feet. In some parts of the county the surface is almost perfectly level for long distances, but in general it is of the genuine 'rolling prairie' description. The inexhaustibility of the soil is shown by the fact that farms which have been under cultivation for from twenty to twenty five years are now as fertile and productive as ever. More than that, the land may be plowed here when it is so wet that it is almost impossible to do work, and it will never bake
    As regards the productiveness of Sac County, perhaps as effective a way of showing whether the detractors of Northwestern Iowa, mentioned in Governor Campbell's letter, are
right or wrong, will be to give to our readers the benefit of some of the observations of the Hon. Eugene Criss, a pioneer and resident of Sac County for more than a quarter of a century. Judge Criss says that his average yield of corn in his twenty five years' residence has been from forty to fifty bushels to the acre, and the highest yield he has ever had was sixty five bushels. Average yield of oats, forty to fifty; highest yield, seventy six bushels. Average yield of wheat, fifteen to eighteen; highest yield, thirty bushels. This is his personal experience, and with fair cultivation only, no fancy farming; that he knows of at least two of his neighbors who have raised as high as forty bushels of wheat to the acre. Others, too, have raised, in more than one neighborhood in the county, from seventy to eighty bushels of corn per acre, and, it is said, without more than ordinary tillage. The principal agricultural products of Sac County and this section generally are corn, wheat, oats, flax, barley, rye and grass. Timothy, clover and blue grass grow readily and will make Sac, at an early day, one of the leading stock and dairy counties of Iowa. And Iowa is, with rapid strides, coming to the head of all the States in dairy products. We will put Judge Criss on the stand again in regard to the advantages for stock raising. "
    We have stated that the tame grasses grow rapidly. Besides that fact, it is also true that the Kentucky blue grass is rapidly coming 'of itself' in places where it has never been sown. Along fences, along paths made by cattle through the brush and in pastures, in spots where the timber and underbrush have been cleared, in door yards and other places, in some mysterious way that sweetest and best of feed for stock is making its appearance. It is a matter which the present writer does not understand, but it is a good thing, and we are glad to see that this section is so fortunate. Grass is always sufficiently high to turn out stock at a date varying in the different years from April 1st to April 30th. And now we produce Judge Criss's testimony. The Judge is a Virginian by birth, but has had some years' experience in farming in Maryland. After his many years' experience in the two States, it is his firm belief that both cattle and horses do better 'running out' during the winter months in this part of Iowa than they do in Maryland. This, our readers will observe, is not guess-work or the dictum of a traveler or chance observer, but the carefully considered verdict of experience.
    The location of Sac County is on the Great Divide, as the watershed between the Missouri and the Mississippi is called. It is in the west northwestern part of Iowa, being the fourth county from the northern line of the State, the sixth from the southern, the third from the Missouri River, and the tenth from the Mississippi. Sac City, the center of the government, and not far from the geographical center, is about fifty miles by wagon road west from Fort Dodge and about eighty five miles east from Sioux City.
    Sac County's only railway communication with the busy world outside is by means of branches of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. These branches are the Maple River Railroad and the Sac City & Wall Lake Railroad. The former has two stations in the County Odebolt and Wall Lake. The latter has, as yet, no other stations than its termini, Sac City and Wall Lake, which are twelve miles apart. Another station is now being put in which will be better entitled to the latter name than the town which now bears it, being situated on the shores of the Lake, while the present station of Wall Lake is some four miles distant. It seems to us that the present town will be obliged, in honor, to resign its name in favor of the baby town not yet christened. Sac City is situated twenty eight and eight tenths miles from Maple River Junction, on the main line (Chicago & Council Bluff's) of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway, and just thirty three miles from Carroll, the nearest town of any consequence in direct railway communication. Both these branches have been built within the past three years, and a large part of the present.
    [The additional station on the Sac City & Wall Lake Railroad was eventually christened Fletcher. An account of it will be found in the proper place.] " Sac County contains sixteen congressional townships, west of the Des Moines River. It contains 369,640 acres, nearly all 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 and 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, 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 of the classic Coon.
    "The early settlers of Sac, though they had the advantage of being able to try fruit raising under the protection of a considerable belt of timber, had small faith in the county as adapted to the growth of fruits. Consequently it was not until some ten or twelve years after the settlement of the county began that any attention was given to this important branch of the industries of the county. When proper attention was given to the matter, it was speedily demonstrated that Sac County was well fitted for fruit growing, and there are now many orchards, vineyards and fruit gardens dotting the fair surface of Sac-shire. Apples, grapes, plums, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, etc., grow rapidly and yield surely and abundantly, and the quality is unsurpassed anywhere. We are informed that pears are also successfully grown in parts of the county. In the line of vegetables there is nothing usually grown in a temperate climate which will not grow here and that in extraordinary perfection. This section is the garden of Iowa, as Iowa is the Garden
State of the Union. The dry. pure air of our unexcelled climate gives to trees and plants a healthy growth, and the fruits and vegetables are solid and delicately flavored and tinted, as far excelling the coarse flavor and blowzy coloring given to the same fruits by the hot and humid air of California and Oregon as the apple excels the pumpkin. You say the California fruit is larger than ours! Oh, well, the pumpkin is larger than the apple; but the pumpkin requires a good deal of cooking and spicing before it is eatable, and if you get a California apple you had better use that for cooking also. But our northern Iowa apples are of medium size, of the finest flavor and will keep longer than any apple grown in a warm climate. Therefore the Iowa apple is in the near future the apple of commerce, and it is not unlikely that the principal future industry of Iowa, may be fruit-frowing. Apples are not the only fruit which the Iowa soil and climate give a finer flavor than elsewhere. Nowhere does the Concord grape come to such perfection as in Iowa. And although our fruits and vegetables do not rival those of the Pacific coast in size, they are unsurpassed even in that minor particular by those of any other section in the Mississippi Valley or any section on the Atlantic slope. . "
    The first settlement was made by Otho Williams, who came from Michigan in the autumn of 1854. with his family, and took up a claim in the timber near Grant City, in the southeastern part of the county. He :md his family were the first white inhabitants of Sac county, but during the two succeeding years quite a number of settlers made their homes either in the same neighborhood or in the vicinity of Sac City, and Otho Williams, at the end of about two years, complained that ' folks are gittin' too thick 'round yer,' and he and his family ' folded their tent like the Arab, and silently stole away.' In other words, they sold their claim and disappeared in the direction of the setting sun. No one knows where they went. If they still live and preserve their aversion to near neighbors, they must be somewhere in the Rocky Mountain region. In the spring of 1855, Leonard Austin, F. M. Cory, Wm. Wine and David Metcalf, with their families, \V. M. Montgomery, with his mother and sister, and S. W. Wagoner and Henry A. Evans, single men, took up claims in the county. On the 5th of August Eugene Criss and family arrived in the county, and located near Sac City. A few days later William H. Hobbs located in the same neighborhood. During the fall the population of Sac County was augmented by the arrival and settlement of John Condron, Joseph Lane, Joseph Williams and S. L. Watt, with their respective families. This, so far as we can learn, is a complete list of the population of the county up to the close of 1855. "
    In the spring of 1858, the settlers in Congressional townships 87, 88 and 89, in range 36, now forming the townships of Wall Lake, Jackson and Delaware, thought that there was good reason to fear that all vacant land in those townships would be bid in by speculators at the annual land sale at Sioux City, thus preventing its immediate settlement. Nearly all the settlers, though not ready at that time to buy, wanted some of this land for their own use. They therefore met together and arranged matters, and when the day of sale came, the room in which the sale was held was packed full of settlers, and no others could make their way in. No bids were made, and the land was thus kept open' for preemption. "
    The first mill in the county was built by Wm. Lane, on the Coon River, near Grant City, late in the fall of 1856. That winter was so very severe that it has ever since been known as the  hard winter, but nevertheless, corn was hauled to the mill from Sac City and vicinity on hand sleds. Many families ground their own corn in coffee mills. Provisions, flour, etc., were generally brought from Des Moines. "
    In 1856, Sac County, which had previously been attached to Greene County for all administrative purposes, was granted a separate jurisdiction. S. L. Watt was the first County Judge and the County Judge of those days was an autocrat, performing the functions of the present Board of Supervisors and County Auditor, and also, in part, those of the Judge of the Circuit Court. H. C. Crawford was first County Clerk, and F. M. Cory was first Treasurer and Recorder."

Source: History of Western Iowa, Its Settlement and Growth Published 1882 [ submitted by: Barb Z. 2008]
 

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