12 



THE IKRIGATION AGE. 



MORE ABOUT MONTANA. 



Billings and the Country Surrounding. 



The lust for land that since Adam was driven from 

 the Garden of Eden has dominated the human race has 

 turned the tide of emigration ever toward the setting 

 sun. "Westward Ho" has been the shibboleth of the pio- 

 neer for a thousand years and today opportunity still 

 beckons from the West and the men of the East are 

 nocking to the coast and the great intervening so-called 

 arid belt in greater numbers than ever before. 



Not until the enterprising citizens of Portland suc- 

 ceeded in floating their great enterprise for an exposition 

 that should eclipse anything ever before attempted in 

 the West has the Eastern man had an opportunity to see 

 gathered together the wonders of the Trans-Mississippi 

 country. It was in the line of education for the man 



dens that it is possible to conceive and to know that it 

 is the magic touch of water that for ages has gone its 

 uninterrupted course to the sea that has caused the 

 change made the visitor a convert to irrigation. There 

 is still a little of the old West left. When this is gone, 

 when the restless hordes from the East have swept over 

 this region and filled every nook and cranny that can 

 support human life, what then? Will the tide of travel 

 turn backward and sweep back over the East? It is a 

 problem for future generations to grapple with what is 

 of more vital interest to the present generation is the 

 fact that there is still room for thousands of homes in 

 this wilderness, there is still room for the manufacturer 

 in search of new markets, for the merchant with a stock 

 of goods, the practitioner who is seeking a location and 

 for the young man who wants to grow up with the coun- 

 try. In searching for a new home, it is the wisest plan 

 to follow the course of least resistance. The land that 



A Montana View. 



from the eastern or middle states to take advantage of 

 the cheap railroad rates offered by the trans-continental 

 roads and visit that fair. He passed through a sparsely 

 settled country where the homeseeker still has a chance 

 to take up land under the homestead act and carve a 

 home for himself out of the wilderness; he traveled over 

 mountain ranges of untold riches in mineral only await- 

 ing the blow of the prospector's pick; he passed over 

 plains that are gradually being transformed from sage- 

 brush deserts into vistas of emerald beauty ; he saw great 

 inland waterways that are being navigated by giant 

 steamers, and rode in trains that rival the finest the East 

 can produce, he observed cities and towns springing into 

 being where he imagined were merely Indian villages or 

 at best the crude trading posts of the early West. There 

 was much to be seen at the fair, but the observant trav- 

 eler who took plenty of time to make his journey and 

 note the conditions of the country just east of the 

 Rockies learned much that is overlooked in the chronicles 

 of the day the splendid growth and development that 

 haa followed the "irrigation boom" in the arid belt of 

 Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. To have seen these 

 beautiful valleys transformed into the most fertile gar- 



offers the greatest opportunity for the least money and 

 has the readiest markets will always get the settler. 



The tourist who traveled west via the Northern Pa- 

 cific was in a fairly well settled country until he reached 

 the western part of Dakota. There the landscape was 

 forbidding, the "bad lands" making an artistic back- 

 ground for a Western picture but hardly arousing en- 

 thusiasm in the breast of the born farmer. It was not 

 until the Montana line is crossed that the country took 

 on an interesting appearance. At Glendive the traveler 

 strikes the lower Yellowstone and from there to For- 

 syth one sees an occasional farm that is doing well un- 

 der a ditch, but the greater portion of the broad valley 

 is given over to the pasturing of immense flocks of sheep. 

 Near Billings a change for the better is noted, and if the 

 traveler made his trip in early summer he saw a valley 

 that was once covered with bunch grass dotted with 

 beautiful homes, surrounded with blossoming fruit trees, 

 corrals full of fat stock and fields of waving alfalfa and 

 grain stretching away to the bluffs that shut in the valley 

 on either side. It is one endless panorama of prosperity 

 and plenty and most marvelous of all the transforma- 

 tion has been made in less than a decade. Even today- 



