FORAGE CROPS IN NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS. 3 



From the days of the first rangers to the invasion of the dry-land 

 farmers, the region was one of the most extensive ranges in the 

 United States. The Belle Fourche country tributary to the Black 

 Hills; the Missouri Valley in the Dakotas; the several areas of Bad 

 Lands in Nebraska, Wyoming, the Dakotas and Montana; and the 

 Missouri, Yellowstone, and Milk River Valleys and the Judith Basin 

 in Montana were the big centers of range settlement. 



The history of the cattle industry in the Dakotas and Montana 

 includes many economic romances, not the least interesting and im- 

 portant of which was the effort of Marquis De Mores, in 1883, to 

 establish a packing industry in the Bad Lands of North Dakota at 

 Medora, a point just reached at that time by the Northern Pacific 

 Railway. A lone smokestack marks the remains of De Mores' folly; 

 but the project, though a failure in itself, contributed appreciably to 

 the development of the country. Cattle raising increased steadily 

 for some time afterward. 



The progress of grain farming westward from the Red River 

 Valley was characterized by a succession of waves. The largest wave 

 of homesteaders which invaded the last stand of the stockmen started 

 in 1908. Many good pieces of range land were broken up for wheat 

 and flax; but stock raising, although interfered with from the stand- 

 point of old range practice, has continued to be one of the chief 

 agricultural pursuits of that part of the northern Great Plains lying 

 west of the ninety-eighth meridian. That small-grain farming has 

 not been an unqualified success in much of this part of the region is 

 shown by the crop records of the past five years, but what effect 

 the results of these years will have on the agricultural development 

 of the region can only be conjectured. 



CLIMATE. 



The annual precipitation of the northern Great Plains ranges 

 from about 20 inches in the eastern part of the region to less than 

 12 inches in the triangle section of north-central Montana. About 

 three-fourths comes as rain during April to September, inclusive, and 

 the region is therefore regarded as one of summer rainfall. In this 

 respect it differs from the intermountain region. The dry farming 

 problems and practices of the two regions, therefore, are somewhat 

 different, owing to the difference in the season of maximum precipi- 

 tation. 



The extreme variability of the rainfall is the factor of greatest 

 hazard in dry-farming operations. Seasons with a precipitation of 

 only about half the normal occur occasionally. Comparatively wet 

 years and comparatively dry years singly or in series occur with no 

 regularity, and there is no way of foretelling when they may be ex- 

 pected. Generally speaking, the irregularities are more frequent and 

 more extreme to the westward. During the growing season the 

 rains are usually of short duration and more or less local. Single 

 downpours of rain sometimes exceed the average total precipitation 

 for the month. On the other hand, most of the precipitation for the 

 season may occur in the form of a series of showers so light that 

 they are of little benefit to the growing crops. 



