There is a new biography of Louis Houck out by Joel Rhodes that is excellent and describes how he and Himmelberger and Harrison developed the cypress logging out of the swamp. Houck built nearly 500 miles of railroad in SE MO to haul the wood out. The Little River Drainage District history is fascinating to say the least, you can imagine the outcry today from the EPA and others if a private group of investors coerced a court to "give them wetlands" so they could drain it but that is kind of what happened. Just Google for LRDD history and you'll come up with some stuff. Of course Oran and Bell city were stops on the railroad and did not exist until the swamp clearing activities got started in ernest.

When you look at the picture you can understand why Crowley's ridge was the super highway of the day in 1862. It literally was the only consistent raised piece of geography in the area and stretched from just south of Cape near Benton MIssouri all the way to Arkansas, Oh did I mention that Bloomfield lays on the flank of the ridge. Essentially it provides the "road" to Chalk Bluff. The Swamps varied in depth from about 4 inches of water to chest deep, averaging 18 to 24 inches with a fair amount of up and down dependent on inflow from Little River and Castor River with St Francis River adding a bit. Many folks don't get the name "Little River Drainage District" because you have to hunt today to find the channel of the Little River and many folks don't even know it exists as it becomes what is now called the Diversion Channel (get it? Little River "diverted" to the Mississippi to stop the inflow into the lowlands that made swamp) There are literally hundreds of ditches and canals that then drain southward below the Diversion Channel, some reaching as far south as Osceola Arkansas to actually drain the swamp and handle rainwater runoff. Yes several fortunes were made from the wood harvested and then the sale of property that the government had esentially given away to a few folks.

John R