112 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



devoted largely to the raising of stock. The great Yel- 

 lowstone and tributary streams flow through valleys 

 which have the finest agricultural possibilities in the 

 Union, and while the present federal and private proj- 

 ects within the State command attention and admira- 

 tion, many more will ultimately be developed and pre- 

 sent still greater opportunities for prospective settlers. 

 Those who are looking for information concerning that 

 State should write the Boosters' Club, Billings, Mont. 



Concerning Montana and her possibilities, we quote 

 from a recent article by Mr. Buchanan, secretary and 

 mana-ger of the Boosters' Club of Billings : 



"Private enterprise has already accomplished a 

 great deal for the reclamation of the Northwest, and 

 that, too, in the face of untold obstacles. Within a 



covered with sage-brush. There are only a few thousand 

 acres of this great valley that is under cultivation just 

 now, but the crops on these have beeen enormous, and 

 experiments hare shown that it is adapted to general 

 farming and is particularly favored for fruit growing. 

 Along the Yellowstone River for three hundred and fifty 

 miles are dozens of ditches of lesser size, and land is 

 still comparatively cheap. Nothing has been done to 

 advertise the country; railroads have preferred to de- 

 vote their influence toward the settlement of the Puget 

 Sound country and other remote sections. Eastern 

 Montana and northern Wyoming are today the last of 

 the old frontier. For years past thousands of settlers 

 bound for the coast have passed through valleys more 

 fertile than those at their journey's end. These valleys 



Irrigation Scenes in the West Looking Down Fish Creek Canyon a Short Distance Below the Point Where the Phoenix Road Crosses the Canyon- 



In the Salt River Project, Arizona. 



radius of twenty-five miles of Billings there are seven 

 great irrigating canals, aggregating over two hundred 

 miles in length and watering over one hundred thousand 

 acres of land. The largest of these is seventy miles in 

 length. It pierces a bluff three hundred feet high, with 

 a tunnel through the solid rock for eighteen hundred 

 feet; it leaps over a chasm with a flume nine hundred 

 feet long, and waters forty thousand acres of the upper 

 portion of the Billings flats. The lower portion of this 

 valley, which is far prettier to the eye of the farmer 

 than its name would imply, is within the ceded strip, 

 and it is here that the government will construct its first 

 ditch, reclaiming thirty-five thousand acres that is now 



needed but the -magic touch of water to make them 

 blossom as the rose. Within the last few years private 

 capital has accomplished a great deal, and now Uncle 

 Sam, with his limitless wealth, will complete the work. 

 The opening of the Crow reservation will open the eyes 

 of the East to the fact that right here, at their very 

 doors, lies a region of undeveloped resources that will 

 in the course of time become the stronghold of the 

 nation. The towns that a few years ago were frontier 

 trading posts are beginning to live up to the possibilities 

 of the section, and are putting on eastern airs and 

 graces. In Billings, the trading center of a section half 

 as big as Missouri, new hotels have sprung up, new 



