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Chapter XXIV
Mariposa Township
Pg. 308
Location and Organization - Land Entries
- Personal Tax Valuations - Enterprising Spirit
Mariposa township is the
second from the east and lies on the north line of the
county, comprising congressional township no. 81, range 17
west. It is almost entirely a prairie township, having
a few small streams. Its soil in fertile and its farms
are among the most valuable and productive of any in the
county. To its north is Marshall county; to its east
is Hickory Grove township; to its south is Kellogg township
and on its west is Malaka township. Its population in
1905 was placed in the state enumeration reports as being
six hundred and twelve.
Mariposa was organized in the month of February, 1857,
by the county judge then in office. The record says,
"Ordered that there be a new township formed by the name of
Mariposa, bounded as follows: Commencing at the
northeast corner of township 81, range 18; thence west to
the northwest corner of said township; thence south to the
range line to the southwest corner of section 19, in
township 80, range 18; thence on the section line to the
southeast corner of section 24 in said township and range;
thence north on the range line to place of beginning.
Among the first to enter government land in this
township were: Benjamin Springer, in the
factional half of the northwest quarter of section 7, on May
15, 1854; Almond Bird, in the southeast of section
33, July 1, 1854.
The settlement prospered and the lands became equally
valuable to that of older and timbered portions of the
county. In 1878 the records show that this township
had a personal tax valuation amounting to $40,322, on which
they paid into the treasury the sum of $700. In
1877 the total value of all taxable property, personal and
real, was $218,239, which caused the taxpayers to deposit in
the county funds the sum of $3,365.13.
This township has always kept abreast with the average
township in Jasper county in the matter of roads, bridges
and schools, the people being fully up-to-date and possessed
of the true American spirit of "go-ahead." With the
advent of the rural mail delivery and the telephone system
in the county, Mariposa has been greatly benefited by the
these necessities, as viewed from a modern farmer's
standpoint.
The schools, churches, etc., connected with this
township are treated in general chapters on these topics,
hence need not here to repeated.
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