map

...The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but trees. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods, Chapter 1.

You can print survey maps for Pepin County from the Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records site at glorecords.blm.gov. Many survey notes haven't yet been scanned and made available online. I printed out Pepin County's survey notes at the Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.

General notes for the township state that the land was very thinly timbered with oak. Undergrowth was oak, aspen, red root, fern, prairie willow, vines, etc. Soil was second rate.

Here's what Samuel Durkam, Deputy Surveyor, had to say about the area where Henry Quiner and Charles Ingalls would later call home:

This is a very rough, hilly, and broken township of land. On many of the ridges there is good oak timber. But in the aggregate it is thinly timbered and covered with brush. In some places the brush is very thick and in others so scattering but very little timber that it is almost entitled to the name of prairie - perhaps the term "brushy prairie" would convey the best idea of a portion of it. There are no settlers here yet and apparently but little inducement for them.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:22 PM