182 MONTANA 19U 



To discover a new river, explore it and announce that it was navic^able 

 for a hundred or a thousand miles from the coast, meant new settlements 

 all along the stream up to the head of navigation and as far beyond as 

 an easy trail coukl be made inland. 



Seeking Then the railroad came, not only to connect the centers 



New Ave- of population, but the long lines of shimmtering iron and steel 

 nues of Corn-were thrown boldly out into the wilderness and across the 

 munication. prairies. The railroad in the United States has been the path- 

 finder and the juoneer. 

 There is no more graphic demonstration anywhere of the necessity of 

 "easy means of transporta'tion" and of the development which vAW follow 

 the blazing of a trail, than "out here in Montana," where »t)he railroads 

 were built in advance of civili;^ation, outrunning the settlers and beckoning 

 the farmer, the m,iner, the manufacturer, with their families to follow and 

 open up the new territory. 



It is a selfish statement for either the railroads or the men and women 

 who were the pioneers to say that either is tcjtallv responsible for the 

 remarkable growth and development of Montana. The railroads and the 



men and wonen who preceded or followed them have been the 

 Honors most intimate partners in the building of the American North- 



Have Been west, of which Montana is a considerable part. 

 Divided in Without the railroads, the state would have developed, but 



the March with the steam roads one single year has seen growth which 

 of Progress, would likely not have been realized in a decade — perhaps in a 



score of years. 



The Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers would have carried the traffic, 

 the towns and cities of the state would have been scattered along the banks 

 of these rivers or on well constructed v/agon roads, all leading tO'ward 

 the great waterways. 



But with the coming of the railroads, the towns and cities grew up 

 along these highways of travel, and year by year their mileage has been 

 increased. Perhaps the years in which the largest number of miles of 

 railroad have been built have been the years of greatest general prosperity. 



People of Montana are filled with visions of the place which this state 

 shall gain in the future; they are ambitious for its development; they want 

 it to be not only a fairer and more prosperous place for them to live, bur 



to hand down to posterity a state intensively developed. 

 The Splen- The expression is often heard that "Montana needs rail- 



did Progress roads as badly as a neglected garden needs a hoe," and there 

 of Montana's are various reasons given to show why such a vast mileage 

 People. is needed. 1"hose who have studied the necessities of com- 



merce, for instance, say: "A farmer cannot grow wheat at a 

 profit on land which is located further from a railroad than he can haul a 

 load to the market and return to his home in the same day." 



— Clearing an acre of Montana stump land is like paying $50 on an improved farm. 



