History, Winnebago County, Wisconsin: Its cities, towns, resources, people

              404 HISTOEY OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY.
This conveyance was acknowledged on January 8, 1847, and recorded February 20, 1847.
The following year the associates of Colonel Jones became interested in the enterprise of building up a rival town at Menasha and obtained an, act of the legislature which confirmed this act to Neenah alone and threw all the responsibility of the improvements on Harvey Jones. He employed a large crew of men to build a spar clam 450 feet long across the river on its present site and deepened the old canal or the original mill race, and set to work with great vigor and enterprise with all the means at his command to construct the lock. The enterprise was a great undertaking in those days on the frontier and was in¬ tended to supply the mills expected to be erected with power and the canal and lock for the water transportation, which would bring and carry for the millman and the settler.
In its natural state, as shown by the surveys of Captain Cram, the river was 7,720 feet long. The fall between the lakes was seven and a half feet. The depth of water at the mouth of the river was five feet, and at the lower rapids the deepest water was three feet. There w^ere three stages to the rapids, as shown on the Government survey. The upper rapids was just below the Grand loggery, the middle rapids about at the present dam and the lower rapids at the entrance of the river into the lower lake. A wide bend and enlargement of the river bowed way into the land above the mills nearly to Wisconsin street. Near the library a small creek ran across the village, now nearly ob¬ literated. On its banks there was a Menominee Indian village at the coming of the first white people.
At a very early time in the settlement of Wisconsin the sub¬ ject of a transcontinental navigation by a system of dams, canals and locks between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi was ad¬ vocated, and. the historic Fox and Wisconsin river route was selected as the most economical and practical route as early as 1839, when Captain Cram made his survey. When the state was admitted into the Union in 1848 Congress ceded to the state one- half of three sections along either side of the river "for the pur¬ pose of improving the navigation of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers" and the Portage canal. The work was placed under the control of a board of public works, and a land office was located at Oshkosh to sell the lands, the money to be applied to the work. Captain Cram in his survey of 1839 had stated the falls to be overcome at Winnebago Eapids at ten feet, and estimated