54 ANNUAL REPORT. 
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mails, paralizing business, and carrying desolation, suffering and 
death to an hundred households, it became patent to every thinking, 
intelligent mind that the only practical and permanent remedy, ne 
that would secure absolute immunity from such public calagalitae 
consisted in the energetic, persistent, patient and laborious execu- 
tion of a comprehensive, broad gauge system of forest tree culture. 
That great storm, although an unmitigated curse, from whose effects 
Minnesota yet suffers, had an excellent effect in calling the attention — 
of her people to the imperative necessity of tree-planting. Although 
many have been awakened to a true appreciation of this great inter- 
est, yet it is my candid impression that as a State, we need the 
chastening influences of just such a storm at least once a month, for 
six successive months to awaken us to a realizing sense of duty in 
this behalf. I have said years ago, I say now, and I propose to keep 
on saying it, until this fact is branded upon the memory of every 
Minnesotian, that our entire Western borders, from Manitoba to 
Towa is a vast treeless region, too destitute of timber to admit of 
successful agriculture ; without any protection from the wintry blasts 
which rake us fore and aft with the accumulated momentum of a 
thousand miles uninterrupted sweep—precipitating the climatic pe- 
culiarities and eccentricities of Alaska, Hudson Bay and Greenland 
upon the inhabitants thereof on short notice—that this region is the 
fairest portion of Minnesota, rich in all the elements of wealth except 
timber ; soil of unsurpassed fertility, bountifully supplied with run- 
ning streams, dotted with lakes of surpassing loveliness, and natural 
meadows of the most valuable grasses; crossed and re-crossed by 
seven different lines of land-grant railroads, convenient and accessi- 
ble to the markets of the world, capable when fully developed of 
furnishing food for a continent, yet still, comparatively speaking, a 
‘‘ howling wilderness” with railroad stations, embroyo town-sites, 
isolated farms, mixed up with any amount of government land to be 
had for the taking. 
The Big Woods stretching along between the densely settled por- 
tion of the State and the treeless region is fast disappearing, and 
what is being done to supply tle inevitable necessities of the not far 
distant future? As this is a question no one man is at present pre- 
pared to answer, I will endeavor to furnish my proportion to this: 
query, by picking up and resuming the report of work already done 
on the Main Line of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. 
Soon after the great storm of January, 1873, the president of the 
First Division of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company, deter- 
mined to try the experiment of tree planting along the Main Line 
more thoroughly and systematically than had hitherto been attempted. 
I was placed in charge of this work with instructions from the com- 
pany to go ahead in my own way and accomplish what I could with 
the limited amount at their disposal for this purpose; to remember 
the company was poor and bad no money to waste, but to deal fairly 
and liberally with all. This, if not the exact language, is at least 
the spirit and substance. I at once proceeded to Olmsted county, 
and purchased 500,000 white willow cuttings of John J. Repner, of 
Little Valley, Hon. Wm. Somerville, of Viola, John James, of Eyota, 
Harrison Waldron, of Byron, and Peter Kinney, of Pleasant Grove, 
