THE DEVELOPMENT OF WHEAT CULTURE IN NORTH AMERICA. 235 
Kansas has a slight lead over Minnesota. She has had several greater 
crops than her rival, but is subject to greater fluctuation. The average 
annual total for these three States, 1897-1906, was 190,000,000 bushels. 
The States of Oklahoma and Texas represent an extension of this belt 
along the more southern parts of the prairies and Great Plains. 
Oklahoma has a record in 1894 of two million bushels, with a fluctuating 
rise to 18 and 15 millions in 1906 and 1908. ‘The crop is, of course, 
of longer standing in Texas, with report of nearly two million bushels 
in 1866 to a recent average of about 12 millions. It is an important fact 
that this belt, with its wide range of latitude, divides itself into a spring 
wheat region embracing the five States of Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, 
and the Dakotas, and a winter wheat section to the southward. In like 
manner Wisconsin and Washington, in the second and fourth of our 
major regions, raise spring wheat. 
The Cordilleran region offers an older development of wheat in the 
three Pacific States, and a more recent progress in the intervening 
regions of the Rocky Mountain plateaux and Great Basin. This is in 
harmony with the extraordinary leap of the frontier a half-century ago, 
followed by the gradual occupation of intervening territory. 
California reported 21,000,000 bushels so long ago as 1868. Her 
maximum crop of 45,000,000 bushels belongs to the year 1896. A com- 
parison of two twenty-year periods, 1868-1887 and 1888-1907, shows 
but slight decline ; but if two ten-year periods, 1888-1897 and 1898-1907, 
be taken, there is an important falling-off, due perhaps to the immense 
advance of horticulture and the progress of irrigation. California in 
39 years produced 1,149,000,000 bushels of wheat. Oregon has had 
a somewhat uniform range of 10 to 16 million bushels since 1880, 
rising. to 24,000,000 in 1898. Not quite 11 million bushels were pro- 
duced in 1908. Washington, on the other hand, has seen conspicuous 
progress, and since 1897 has ranged between 20 and 34 million bushels. 
The greatest thousand-acre yield ever reported is ascribed to Eastern 
Washington in 1881—viz., 51,000 bushels. 
Outside of the coast States there are no large producers in the 
Cordilleran region. Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Montana each grow 
several million bushels per annum, but in a general survey their chief 
interest has to do with their future possibilities under irrigation. The 
Cordilleran total for 1906 was 94,111,584 bushels. This is 18,000,000 
bushels more than was grown in the Atlantic coast States in the same 
year, but the western area is several times greater. 
The following table, from the twelfth census, gives the successive 
positions of the wheat centre of the United States for the half-century 
1850-1900 : 
Wheat ages U.S., 1850-1900. slag acy a 
Census Year | N. Latitude w. Hongitadls Approximate Location by important Towns 
1900 41° 39’ 94° 59! 70 miles W. of Des once, Iowa. 
1890 ogee | G80 OF 138 ,, S. by E. of Des Moines(in Mo.). 
1880 40° 36’ | 90° 30’ 69 ,, N.W. of Springfield, Illinois. 
1870 40° 39 88° 48’ 82 ,, N.K. of % 
1860 39° 59’ 86° 1’ 18 ,, N.E. of Indianapolis, Ind. 
1850 40° 14’ 81° 58’ 57 ~,, E.N.E. of Colngbns, Ohio. 
ASE Sal 
! Rep. Bureau of Statistics, Washington, 1903, p. 69. 
