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         The deep snow of the Winter of 1836-7, with the Spring rains, caused a freshet the like of which has seldom, if ever, been equaled in the country. The banks of all the streams were overflowed, and the prairies were flooded. When occasion required the settlers to go from one cabin to another, they were obliged to cross the streams that happened to run between. If the occasion of the visit was not too pressing, it was deferred until the waters subsided. If of a pressing nature, they must either swim across or head the source of the stream by going around. The last alternative involved a jaunt of many miles. At one time, in the spring of 1837, Washington A. Rigby and Chesman, son of James M. Oaks, with whom Rigby boarded, were engaged in cutting logs on the opposite side of Rock Creek from the Oaks cabin. When they crossed the creek in the morning, going to work, the water was at an ordinary stage, and they had no apprehensions of a rise. Their work was some distance away from the creek, entirely out of sight of it, and they worked away until about 5 in the evening, never dreaming that Rock Creek was rapidly becoming a sea, over-spreading its banks, and completely flooding the low lands on either side. When the shades of evening began to fall, they started for home and were surprised to find themselves entirely cut off from the foot log on which they crossed to their work in the morning. The creek was a roaring, maddened torrent. There was but one alternative presented, and that was to head the stream, or at least follow it up until they could find a place sufficiently shallow to allow them to wade it. This, however, proved a long and a weary undertaking. On and on they went, in the midst of darkness and water. Rigby cut a small staff with which to feel the depth of the water as they plodded along. The night was cold, and the water began to chill and cover with mush ice. The boy became chill and numb, and it was with the utmost difficulty that Mr. Rigby could keep him moving. Artifice, persuasion and threats were used in turn. Tired, hungry, cold, discouraged, despondent, the boy dragged himself until at last they found a place where the water was so shallow they could wade across, when they turned their course and headed toward home, and reached the Oaks’ cabin a little after midnight, having traveled about twenty-five miles, the most of the distance through water knee deep. Mr. Oaks was absent from home at the time, and Rigby and his boy companion appeared to Mrs. Oaks, who had not gone to bed, more like persons risen from the dead than living beings, as she had confidently believed they had been drowned. When she noticed the creek beginning to rise in the morning, she went to the bank and tried to alarm Rigby and her son, but her voice failed to reach them. The creek rose rapidly, her fears increased with the rise of the flood, and when darkness set in she gave up all hope of ever seeing them again, at least until their bodies should be found after the flood had gone down. Neither Rigby nor the boy experienced any serious consequences from their watery tramp, but it was an occasion that has never been forgotten.

         The opening of the Spring of 1837 was the temporal salvation of the settlers of the year previous. To no people, in any part of the country, was the melting away of the ice and snows of Winter, the subsidence of floods, the return of birds, the blooming of flowers, and the genial smile of the sun, ever more welcome or received with greater joy than was that Spring to the pioneers who commenced the settlement of that part of Iowa whose history we are writing. When the frosted king retreated north, hope revived, and the languishing spirits of the people were reanimated. With the rigid experience of the . . .

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… “reign of terror” fresh in memory, they set about preparing for the coming Winter with a zeal that plainly evinced their determination to never again be subjected to similar trials and exposures.

         With the coming of the Spring and Summer months of 1837 there came a general rush of immigrants, and ere the first snows of the Winter fell the whole of the timbered sections of the county were interspersed with cabins and settlers. A large part of the lands bearing timber, and the smaller groves, were claimed, if not occupied, while the prairie, for the most part, was left untouched and unsought. The prairie land was regarded as worthless for purposes of agriculture, and considered as a useless waste. There were hundreds of men who honestly believed it would never be occupied. If any of the settlers of 1836 and 1837 had located a claim out on the prairie, he would have been regarded as extremely visionary, if not absolutely crazy. As a rule, the prairies were left undisturbed until about 1850, when they began to be occupied, and at the close of 1854 not a single acre was left as belonging to the Government. “But,” says R. L. R. in the Cedar Post, April, 1872, “the peopling of the county cannot be said to have been completed until quite recently; and it may be safely stated that Cedar County was thirty years in settling.”