306 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
wool per head. Ample shelter has been provided in case of storms. 
These flocks consist chiefly of ewes. The owners expect to raise 
6,000 lambs and to shear 65,000 pounds of wool next year. These 
parties have about fifteen miles of fence, inclosing hay grounds, pastures 
for raising stock, and for other purposes. They have more than $300,000 
invested. Behind Sheep Mountain and directly under the white top of 
Mount Dodge, at the head of the Little Laramie, is a valley twenty miles 
long and ten miles broad, divided about equally by the north, middle, 
and south forks of that stream. These are rapid-running streams, that 
never freeze in winter. They have groves of timber on their banks and 
bottom lands, furnishing shade in summer and shelter in winter. This 
valley is a pocket in the mountains, having only a narrow point of in- 
gress and egress. Here are 2,900 head of cattle owned by Messrs. Lam- 
bard, Gray, Coates, and Latham. Three men are able to herd them, 
from the nature of the valley, and it is certainly a cattle paradise. Of 
this herd, there are 1,200 cows, 700 two-year-olds, 300 yearlings, and 700 
calves. This herd is Short-horn Texan, and is a good lot of stock cattle. 
Near Cheyenne, Wyoming, Mr. J. W. Hlitf has large herds. - His ¢at- 
tle range down Crow Creek to the Platte, a distance of twenty to thirty 
tiles. On this grazing ground he has 8,700 head of cattle, classed as 
follows: Three thousand five hundred beeves, 2,000 cows, 2,000 two- 
year-olds and yearlings, and 1,200 calves. The stock cattle are half- 
breeds, except the yearlings and calves which he has raised, and which 
show the Short-horn cross. The beeves are heavy fat cattle, averaging in 
live weight 1,200 to 1,400 pounds. The whole range down Crow Creek, 
from Cheyenne to the Platte, affords the best grasses, and the Creek 
‘bluffs shelter the stock completely from storms. Mr. lliff has been the 
owner of great herds of cattle in the last twelve years, and is firm in 
the faith that this is the place to raise beef for the eastern markets. 
His cattle have been sold in the Chicago market at 5 to 6 cents per. 
pound, live weight, this season. The whole 3,500 head of beeves will 
be shipped east this fall. In such acountry of boundless pastures, where 
the only cost of raising beef is that of herding the cattle, and where the 
facilities are so great for reaching markets by railroads, there is no rea- 
son why in the next ten years this region should not furnish beef and 
mutton at one-half the present market prices. What isnow most needed 
is a refrigerator in which slaughtered beef can be carried from the Rocky 
Mountains to the Atlantic coast, and be delivered as fresh as when it 
is started. When this can be done, the supply of good beef and mutton 
will be limited only by the demand. With the present stock limitetl as 
eompared with the great herds that are destined to graze on the great 
plains and in the thousand valleys of the great mountain ranges, there 
are beef cattle enough now west of the Missouri to materially lower the 
market prices in eastern cities, if beef could be transported at low 
rates and on time contracts. At several pointson the line of the Union® 
and Kansas Pacific Railroads there are parties who would contract to 
place on the cars the very fattest of beef at $6 to $7 per hundred pounds 
in the quarters, “all round.” This beef could be delivered in the Bos- 
ton, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington markets at $7 50 to 
$8 50 per hundred pounds, and be retailed to all classes at 12 to 15 cents 
per pound, 
WOOL-GROWING. 
This section is also adapted to the growth of all kinds of wool. We 
are importing large quantities of wool and woolens; and while our popu- 
Jation is increasing, the number of sheep in the United States has of late 
