Maredosia

PARADISE LOST --The Maredosia

This information was originally published in Outdoors Editor, Sunday, May 25, 1968 by Fred Lorenzen. It was submitted by Mary Lou Schaechter. To protect copyright on this article I have chosen to summarize the information as follows:

The Maredosia was vast, perhaps as large as 60,000 acres. It consisted primarily of prairie grass and cactus and spread out between the Mississippi on the North, near Albany to the Rock River on the South and between the towns of Hillsdale and Erie.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the French would trap animals in this marsh in order to barter their furs with the Sauk and Fox Indians at Saukenuk, where the Rock joins the Mississippi and is now known as the city of Rock Island.

All marshes are based on water. The Maredosia Bottoms were often flooded at an inlet about a mile west of Albany and released into the slough east of Hillsdale.

This marsh was a paradise for waterfowl and shorebirds. Ducks, geese, curlew, godwit, plover, snipe, and yellowlegs came each spring and fall by the thousands. William Bruce Leffingwell of Clinton wrote of his experiences on the marsh in the 1880s: "There is no place where more ducks have been shot." He tells of mornings on the "Docia" when kills of 100 mallards and pintail were common.

The marsh also supported many species of fish--Grass pickerel, largemouth bass and bullhead. Wild life such as prairie chicken could be found in the marsh as late as 1925. There were also mink, muskrat, and beaver.

Very little remains today of this marsh. Drainage methods such as ditches, tile lines, and giant pumping stations removed the water so the land could be used for crops. The loss of the Maredosia is probably part of the reason we now have federal laws protecting our wetlands.

Submitted by Mary Lou Schaechter and summarized by Diana Alm