Truman

He says as he describes Independence, he says it was the land that the people came for, the high rolling fertile open country of Jackson County with its clear springs and two considerable rivers, the little blue and the blue. Every essential was at hand, limestone quarry, splendid blue grass pastures, ample timber where the creeks and the rivers ran, they counted hickory ash, elm, sycamore, willow, poplar, cottonwood, and oak in three or four varieties, walnut, the most prized and was the most abundant. It was land beautiful to see, rising and falling in broad swells and giving away to long horizons. Prairie grass was high and green, wildflowers, wild herbs, metal rose, turtle head, snake root, wolfberry, I don't know what any of these are, thimbleweed grew in fragrant profusion everywhere.

One more paragraph to cut through the grass with a plow took six to eight yoke of oxen, but beneath the crust the dark prairie soil could be two to six feet deep in places along the river bottoms, it was 20 feet deep.

This is McCullough quoting a guidebook author, he says Josiah Gregg, the guidebook author, having seen all the country from the Missouri to the Rio Grande, declared the rich and beautiful uplands in the vicinity of independence might well be denominated the garden spot of the far west.