Settlers' Gap - Is it fact or fictiion?
By ROWENA PLETT
Staff writer
Just north of Brooker Plaza and Marion Historical Spring along the east side of Marion Central Park is a small gap in the side of the tree-covered hillside where the soil is worn down and rivulets of water can be seen after a rain.
According to some Marion historians, this is known as Settlers' Gap, the spot where the first pioneers found their way to the valley below.
When the first families came to the site in 1860 or 1861, it was just an empty spot on the prairie.
There were no streets, no buildings, and just a few clusters of trees along the waterways in the valley.
The settlers arrived from the east, coming to the edge of a cliff from which they viewed the beautiful Cottonwood River Valley. Just to the south, Mud Creek, later renamed Luta Creek, cut through the middle of the present Central Park from the west.
Some historians say the hillside was so steep the pioneers had to use ropes to lower the horses and wagons into the valley.
According to a firsthand account recorded by Mrs. T.B. Matlock in the 1920s, the settlers "went down the rock hill, drank from the spring, then forded the creek and pitched camp for the night."
Three families and four single, young men, a total of 23 people, built log houses with sod roofs in the river bottom between Mud Creek and the Cottonwood River. They formed the nucleus of a settlement which they named Marion, after Marion, Ohio, the hometown of one of the settlers, W.H. Billings. Ten more settlers came later that year.
(Some say the town was named after a southern general in the Civil War.)
In 1866, after Marion County was organized, a plat was filed with the Register of Deeds and the town became known as Marion Centre. The population grew slowly to approximately 175 by 1870.
Because the river bottom naturally was prone to flooding, in 1919 a deep diversion channel was completed which redirected the waters of Mud Creek along the west side of the park.
The contours of the park were changed in the process, and the place where the creek once ran is a choice, open spot for children's games during community events.
Visitors to the park can walk the nature trail which follows the diversion on the west and the old creek bank on the east.
If they look closely, they also can spot Settlers' Gap. Whether or not it is historically correct, the spot may stir one's imagination to reconstruct the view those first Marion pioneers had when they arrived at the site and the sense of wonder and anticipation that must have gone along with it.
