Land for the Landless 



Montana Offers Today the Best Opportunities for Obtain- 

 ing Good Land from the National Government, 

 the State, or Private Individuals, at a 

 Moderate Price, that Can Be Found 

 Anywhere in the Union 



EN YEARS ago the man who came to Montana to make a home on 

 the land had a much greater opportunity than he has today 

 to make a choice of location. Where in 1903 +here were many 

 millions of cultivatable land open for settlement under the 

 national land laws, that area has been reduced in the interven- 

 ing time by half. This does not mean that all of the good land 

 open to homestead in Montana has been taken up but it does 

 mean that where a few years ago the homesteaders could go 

 into any section of the state and take up one hundred and sixty acres with little 

 or no difficulty, today it is a question of hunting out the land. It is not a great 

 many years since the lands in northern Montana were considered suitable only for 

 grazing cattle, sheep and horses. Within the past ten years these lands have dem- 

 onstrated that in the production of cereals there is none richer and none that yield 

 more bushels per acre in the state than these lands used only a few years ago for 

 live stock production. 



Illustrative of this changed condition it may be said that the number of elevators 

 in this former range section of Montana is now double the number in other por- 

 tions of the state. Where in the old days the homesteader could enter only one 

 hundred and sixty acres of government land, in order to insure him sufficient 

 land on which to grow independent, certain large areas were set apart for entry 

 under what is known as the enlarged homestead act, enabling the entryman to 

 take up three hundred and twenty acres. As a result of this, millions of acres of 

 the public domain were settled upon, thus reducing to a very great extent the 

 area of free lands. 



A great deal of this range land was held in private ownership by cattlemen 

 and sheepmen. The original settlers demonstrated that the lands of the same 

 character were much more valuable for producing cereals than for range purposes. 

 In consequence these large holdings have been cut up and sold at most moderate 

 prices to those who desire to farm the land. There still remains a very consider- 

 able acreage of what have been used for range purposes suitable for farming but 

 in the next ten years these tremendous ranges in private ownership will be a 

 thing of the past. 



Lands Owned by State. 



Another very large body of excellent land located in all these sections of the 

 state is owned by the State of Montana. These lands were granted the state by 

 the national government when Montana entered the Union for the support of its 

 public schools and for the benefit of its higher educational institutions. They have 



