250 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



the elements these become disproportionately prominent on the surface. Receding from 

 the mountains, it becomes gradually finer, until gravel and bits of broken stone are no 

 longer seen. Being made up from the wash and wearing away of the mountains, alka- 

 line earths enter largely into its composition, supplying inexhaustible quantities of 

 those properties which the eastern farmer can secure only by the application of plaster, 

 lime, and like manures. These make the rich, nutritious grasses upon which cattle 

 thrive so remarkably and to the constant wonder of new-comers, who cannot reconcile 

 the idea of such comparatively bare and barren-looking plains with the fat cattle that 

 roam over them. 



Besides the plains there is a vast extent of pasture lands in the mountains. Wher- 

 ever there is soil enough to support vegetation grass is found in abundance, to a line 

 far above the limit of timber growth, and almost to the crest of the snowy range. 

 These high pastures, however, are suitable only for summer and autumn range; but in 

 portions of the great parks and large valleys, most parts of which lie below eight 

 thousand feet altitude above the sea, cattle, horses, and sheep live and thrive the year 

 round. The cost of raising a steer to the age of five years, when he is at a prime age 

 for market, is believed to be about seven dollars and a half, or one dollar and a half 

 per year. A number of estimates given us by stock-men, running through several years, 

 place the average at about that figure. That contemplates a herd of four hundred or 

 more. Smaller lots of cattle will generally cost relatively more. The items of expense 

 are herding, branding, and salt — nothing for feed. 



The following extracts from an article by Dr. H. Latham, in the Omaha 

 Daily Herald of June 5, 1870, give a description of the grazing lands in 

 the North Platte district : 



The distance from the mouth of the North Platte, where it joins the South Platte on 

 the Union Pacific Railroad, to its sources in the great Sierra Madre, whose lofty sides 

 form the North Park, in which this stream takes its rise, is more than eight hundred 

 miles. Its extreme southern tributaries head in the gorges of the mountains one 

 hundred miles south of the railroad, and receive their water from the melting snows 

 of these snow-capped ranges. Its extreme western tributaries rise in the Wabsatch 

 and Wind River ranges, sharing the honor of conveying the crystal snow-waters from 

 the continental divide with the Columbia and Colorado of the Pacific. Its northern 

 tributaries start oceanward from the Big Horn Mountains, three hundred miles north 

 of the starting point of its southern sources. 



It drains a country larger than all New England and New York together. East of 

 the Alleghany Mountains there is no river comparable to this clear, swift mountain 

 stream in its length or in the extent of country it drains. 



The valleys of the North Platte. — The main valley of the North Platte, two hundred 

 miles from its mouth to where it debouches through the Black Hills out on to the 

 great plains, is an average of ten miles wide. Nearly all this area, two thousand 

 square miles, is covered with a dense growth of grass, yielding thousands of tons of 

 hay. The bluffs bordering these intervals are rounded and grass-grown, gradually 

 smoothing out into great grassy plains extending north and south as far as the eye 

 can see. 



Its tributaries. — The tributaries on the north side of the Platte are Blue Water, Cold- 

 water, Hill Creek, Raw Hide, Muddy Willow, Shawnee, Slate, and Sweetwater. On 

 the south they are Ash, Pumpkin, Larrons, Dry Horse, Cherry, Chugwater, Sybellie, 

 Big Laramie, Little Laramie, Carter, Cottonwood, Horse Shoe, Elk Horn, Rio a la Prelo, 

 Boisiee, Deer Creek, Medicine Bow, Rock Creek, Douglass, and North, South, and Mid- 

 dle Forks of the main Platte. 



These streams, with their smaller feeders, intersect in all directions a great pastural 

 laud, interspersing it with rich, fertile valleys, and draining at least forty million a,cres, 

 affording water for countless herds. Most of the banks of these streams are bordered 

 with timber. Cattle have been wintered on these streams north of Cheyenne, along 

 the base of the Black Hills, around Fort Laramie, for twenty-five years. 



Capacity for stoclc-raismq. — Of this country Alexander Majors says, in a letter to the 

 writer of this article : " The favorite wintering grounds of my herders for the past 

 twenty years has been from the Cache" a la Poudre on the south to Fort Fetterman on 

 the north, embracing all the country along the eastern base of the Black Hills." It 

 was of this country that Mr. Seth E. Wai'd spoke when he says: "I am satisfied that 

 no country in the same latitude, or even far south of it, is comparable to it as a graz- 

 ing and stock-raising country. Cattle and stock generally are healthy, and require no 

 feeding the year round, the rich 'bunch' and 'gramma' grasses of the plains and 

 mountains keeping them ordinarily fat enough for beef during the entire winter." 



All this region east of the Black Hills is at an elevation less than five thousand feet. 



The climate. — The climate, as reported from Fort Laramie for a period of twenty 



