28 
BULLETIN 89. 
as deep as it is plowed and this through drying seems to lock up 
the plant food temporarily so that the wheat plants do not grow 
well. Sorghum before wheat is bad for the yield of wheat, in 
fact it seems that any crop which is not cultivated thoroughly 
during the growing season is a poor one to precede a wheat crop. 
It is probably true that if the corn is not thoroughly cultivated 
the yield of the wheat crop following it will be materially re¬ 
duced. One man has for a few years practiced listing his ground 
in the fall for the wheat crop of the next spring. He reports an 
increased yield of from one to two bushels per acre by using this 
method, as compared with the ordinary method of preparing the 
ground. One year a heavy rain came after a part of the ground 
was listed. The next year that part of the listed ground which 
was packed down by the rain gave no better yield of wheat than 
the ground prepared in the ordinary way. 
Crops Raised Outside the Main Districts. Wherever one 
goes he hears of the enormous crops of wheat raised in 1892. At 
Akron the visitor found wheat piled up everywhere during the 
fall of 1892. They could hardly get cars enough to carry it out 
of the country. Yields of 30 to 40 bushels to the acre were com¬ 
mon. At Thurman about the same yields were obtained. Set¬ 
tlers at Cheyenne Wells and Burlington also obtained heavy 
yields of grain that year. But outside the Vernon and Idalia 
divides, very little grain has been produced since. This may not 
be because it could not have been produced, but because the 
droughty years following caused nearly all the settlers who did 
not favor making a stock country of the region to become dis¬ 
couraged and leave the country, leaving its population sufficiently 
thinned to permit those remaining to have all the free range they 
could use. Under these conditions stock-raising was so profitable 
that the settlers could not afford to raise wheat. 
Soils and Other Influences. The soils of the Plains are 
quite well adapted to the growth of wheat. This has been proved 
whenever the rainfall has been properly distributed during the 
growing season. The soils near Vernon, Idalia and in the eastern 
one-third of Kit Carson county, are very much alike, and under 
similar conditions, would produce about the same yields of wheat. 
But the Vernon divide is protected from the ravages of hot winds 
by the groups of sand hills which lie 011 the northern and western 
sides of it, each of these groups being about twenty miles across. 
The influence of the sand hills dwindles rapidly as the location is 
farther to the south and east. The Idalia country is not quite so 
free from hot winds as is the Vernon country. By the time Bur¬ 
lington is reached the influence of the sandhills is practically 
nothing, while at Cheyenne Wells, one could not possibly know 
that the hot winds were tempered by any influence. These sand 
