Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1879 — THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH. [ARTICLE]

THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH.

BY ELI PERKINS.

The great Red River Valley of the North, about which so much has been written, is really about 500 miles long and seventy-five miles wide. It extends from about 100 miles south of Fargo and Moorhead, on the Northern Pacific, northward 400 miles to Lake Winnipeg, in Canada. About. 150 miles of the valley is in Manitoba. The river is about one-half as large as the Ohio. It is navigable from Fargo to Lake Winnipeg at all times. It forms the boundary between Minnesota and Dakota. It is into this valley, and farther on up into Manitoba, that the swarms of immigrants are now pouring. Trains are now running over the St. Paul and a south branch of the Canadian Pacific, from St. Paul to Winnipeg, in thirty hours. I took cne of the Red river boats, the Manitoba, at the end of the St. Paul and Pacific, on the Canadian boundary, and arrived in Winnipeg in thirty-six hours. Is this a wheat country ? It is really the wheat country of North America. At the south end of the valley, on the Northern Pacific, is the famous Dalrymple farm of 55,555 acres; and from Dalrymple’s farm to Winnipeg, in less than three years, Will be one continuous wheat-field, 400 miles long, and from fifty to eighty miles wide, containing more than 15,000,000 acres. The soil is rich and black. It is the black prairie-soil of Illinois in a spring-wheat latitude. Gov. Howard, of Dakota, tells me that the Red river valley and the prairie contributory to it will one day produce 250,000,000 bushels of wheat annually, and wheat worth $2 a barrel more than wheat grown in Illinois and Missouri. The Dakota side of Red river is the highest, and I advise settlers to go there. Are settlers filling up the country ? Yes. It is seldom, in riding the first 300 miles, that you are out of the sight of settlers’ huts. Beyond that the prairies are specked with emigrant wagons. I suppose I saw teams breaking up the prairie as often as once in a mile during the entire distance. One million three hundred and twenty-nine thousand acres of wheat land were taken up in the Red river valley in 1877-’B, and over 2,000,000 acres are said to have been taken np during 1878-*9. The present crop looks exceedingly good, and I suppose 6,000,000 bushels of wheat will be raised in this valley alone this year. The yield is always from twentyfive to thirty-five bushels to the acre. Where are the immigrants coming from ? On the train and Red river boats I saw people from almost every nation. There were Mennonites for the Mennonite settlements in Manitoba, Canadians from Quebec, Yankees from Vermont, and one party of Scotchmen who had come across the Atlantic. The Scotchmen had eleven horses and a full car-load of implements and furniture. How can a settler come to the Red River valley? I should advise him to come to St. Paul, and then report to the Land Office at Grand Forks or Crookston, which are about half-way up Red rive r —one on the Dakota and one on the Minnesota side. It is about Grand Forks that I think the best wheat land lies, and about here there is still Government land for sale. Crookston and Grand Forks are the very best points for a settler to come to in all the Northwest. The lands on the Minnesota and Dakota sides of Red river are about half taken up. For about fifty miles beyond Glyndon, where the St. Paul and Pacific railroad crosses the Northern Pacific, the best wheat land has been taken; then, for the next 100 miles, about one acre in four is selected; while, for seventy miles south of St. Vincent, on the boundary between Minnesota and Manitoba, the country is all a wild prairie. Many shrewd Canadians and Yankees return every day on the cars from Winnipeg, and settle on Minnesota and Dakota land in the Red river valley. Yesterday I met a party of Canadians in Winnipeg, who were going back up Red river into the States to locate; “Why do you go back there?” I asked. “Because the land is better there, sir Winnipeg is too far north.” “But you have 135 miles of the Red river in Manitoba,” I said. “Yes; but the Red river after it crosses into Manitoba from Minnesota is sett’ed up with half-breeds. We can buy their farms for $4 per acre, but we will be surrounded by semi-savages. There will be no schools in Canada for years. Over in Minnesota and Dakota the people are public-spirited. They build nice houses, and have schools and churches. Then there we do not have to pay 30 per cent, tax on our farm implements, and we do not have to pay 15 cents per bushel export-tax on our wheat when we send it to the Minnesota millers. No—the Red river from Crookston to the Northern Pacific suits us best.”