* 
60 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
by an entry driven into the hillside. The workings extend 2,000 
feet or more into the hill, and the lignite is brought to the tipple in 
cars hauled by horses.! 
A few miles west of Lehigh is Dickinson, a district terminal and a 
thriving town in the midst of an extensive district of dry farms. 
This place was named for W. S. Dickinson, of Malone, 
. Y., a former State senator and an enthusiastic 
advocate of the value of the country west of Missouri 
River. The clay beds worked near Hebron are well 
developed along the valley of Heart River in the 
vicinity of Dickinson and are extensively worked a mile south of the 
town. The clay from this pit is manufactured into dry-press brick 
and fire brick near the railway just east of the town. 
The valley of Heart River is broad and shallow, and few exposures 
of rocks are to be seen in it, but here and there the bare side of a butte 
or a freshly cut ravine shows the yellowish sandstone or a bed of 
lignite of the Fort Union formation. 
The climate of the region about South Heart is marked by great 
extremes in temperature, the mercury ranging from 30° or 40° below 
zero in the winter to 100° or more in the summer, but 
these extremes are not so trying as they would be in 
a more humid climate. The total precipitation for 
the year in the part of this region west of Missouri 
River is about 14 inches, but nearly half of this falls in the winter, 
leaving only 8 or 10 inches for the growing season. Formerly this 
amount of rain was considered entirely inadequate for agriculture, 
but in the last five or six years it has been demonstrated that good 
crops of grain can be obtained here about three years out of four, 
if the ground is properly treated. This discovery has changed the 
activities of the country from stock raising on the open range to the 
cultivation of grain and the consequent fencing of the country into 
160-acre or 320-acre tracts. 
Dickinson. °* 
Elevation 2,430 feet. 
Population 3,678 
St. Paul 561 miles. 
South Heart. 
Elevation 2,499 feet. 
St. Paul 571 miles. 
The lignite as it comes from the mine | heat required to raise 1 pound of water 
contains about 42 per cent of moisture, 
but on drying parts with most of it, the 
per cont: ash, 10.6 per cent. Its heating 
value is 9.640 British thermal units. A 
British unit is the amount of 
| of the coal. 
1° F., or it may be considered as the ratio 
of weight of coal burned to the weight of 
water that will be raised 1° by the burning 
Thus the burning of 1 pound 
of air-dried Lehigh lignite would raise the 
temperature of 9,640 pounds of water 1°. 
C in their heating value from 
the amount given in this analysis, which 
is about the lowest, to as much as 15,500 
British thermal units, a value shown by 
the ba a and New River coals 
of Wes i 
