Michigan’s Swamplands and Michigan Agricultural College: Paul M. Harmer’s Career and Legacy in Muck Soils Research on the Corey Marsh

Abstract

Michigan’s Swamplands and Michigan Agricultural College: Paul M. Harmer’s Career and Legacy in Muck Soils Research on the Corey Marsh David E. Wright (bio), Patricia E. Norris (bio), and Jennifer C. Owen (bio) In January 1945, the Michigan State College Record ran an article, “Muck Yields Wealth,” about the Michigan State College (MSC) Muck Soils Research Farm on the Corey Marsh, located in Bath Township, twelve miles northeast of Lansing. Ten years earlier, the article claimed, the 200-acre plot had been “considered virtually worthless,” but by 1945, it was “worth millions of dollars to Michigan’s muck land farmers in the wealth of experimental findings it is spawning.”1 The Muck Soils Research Farm was located on a parcel that was part of the swampland acreage transferred to Michigan ownership by the federal government through the Swamp and Overflowed Lands Act of 1850, which was later given to Michigan’s fledgling agricultural college. At the time of its passage, proponents of the 1850 law echoed the view that “worthless” swampland might be redeemed through drainage and reclamation. According to the Congressional Globe, “the passage of this bill and the donation of these scraps of land, injurious as they exist to the States, and utterly valueless to this Government, is but the beginning of the work of reclamation; the State Legislatures must follow, appropriate money, and redeem them from the water—and the sooner the better for the health of the people and the prosperity of the country.”2 The benefits of draining swamplands were further described in a 1907 federal bulletin that provided an inventory of swamplands deeded to the states and a description of the feasibility of reclaiming the lands for productive use. [End Page 91] Swamplands, when drained, are extremely fertile, requiring but little commercial fertilizer, and yield abundant crops. They are adapted to the growth of a wide range of products and in most instances are convenient to good markets. While an income of $15 to $20 per acre in the grain-producing States of the Middle West is considered profitable, much of the swamp lands in the East and South would, if cultivated in cabbage, onions, celery, tomatoes, and other vegetables, yield a net income of more than $100 per acre. In addition to the immediate benefits that accrue from the increased productiveness of these lands, a greater and more lasting benefit would follow their reclamation. The taxable value of the Commonwealth would be permanently increased, the healthfulness of the community would be improved, mosquitoes and malaria would be banished, and the construction of good roads made possible. Factories, churches, and schools would open up, and instead of active young farmers from the Mississippi Valley emigrating to Canada to seek cheap lands they could find better homes within our own borders.3 The land on which the MSC Muck Soils Research Farm was located was unused by the college until Michigan’s Muck Farmers Association pressed MSC to expand agricultural research on muck soils. The college responded by creating the Muck Soils Research Farm in 1941. Paul M. Harmer, MSC muck soils specialist, was the first director of the farm. By 1945, the Record reported the muck farm was producing “1,000 bushels an acre in onions, and fantastic yields of mint, spinach, lettuce, dill, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, and other crops. Experimental findings by Dr. Harmer have enabled the state’s muck farmers to convert many acres of mediocre land into high producing soil.”4 In 2012, Michigan State University (MSU)—formerly MSC— closed the Muck Soils Research Farm because of financial and hydrological challenges that made continuing research there problematic. The land—the only state land grant to MSU that has remained in continuous ownership of the university—is now the MSU Corey Marsh Ecological Research Center (CMERC). Changing social views about the value of swamplands in their natural state are reflected in plans for CMERC. As the vision for the CMERC evolves, exploring the history of the land and its use figures prominently into plans for ecological restoration [End Page 92] on the site; studying that history has uncovered the legacies of Paul Harmer, his Department of Soil Science at MSU...