Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1891 — From Southwest Missouri [ARTICLE]

From Southwest Missouri

Saucoxie, Mo., April 20, 1891. Editor Republican.— As many of my friends requested me to give them a discretion of Southwest Missouri, after I became acquainted with its advantages, I will now state them as I sec and get them from old Indiana and Illinois settlers, as there are many of them here. The timber lands along vhe streams are covered with small broken rock, and look as though they had .been thrown up by some volcanic eruption as they have all been burnt. This iand has been very cheap until of late years; they find by picking and hauling the rock off if makes the best of fruit farms, and is easy of cultivation, and will raise the test grain of all kinds; can he planted earlier than bottom and terrace lands. There is plenty of this land 6 to 7 miles from town that can be bought from to §7 per acre, eovorrd with a tin# growth of Jack oak timber, which the fruit men are buying up ;|cutting off" the timber and planting with apple, peach and pear trees between the stamps. In three years the stumps have rotted out and it makes as line an orchard as if they had gone to the expense of grubbing and breaking. ”160 acres put in tins way in 8 years is a fortune. 1 They tell me the cost of 160 acres 1 treated this wav is about $3,000,

There are many orchards in this county, of from IGO to 300. acres, which brought for the fruit .on the trees the last season from $7,000 to $15,000. The prairie lands and bottom lands ! arc the finest I ever saw, I will not exequ the plains in Tippecanoe Co., 1 would like my friends in old Jas- ] per to see these tine farms for the last month. While they were wallowing in mud, we were plowing here, and ; if they came to town they brought loads of com, wheat, or hay, as the roads are never bad. Now these fine farms can be bought for the same money it will take to get a farm in your state, as there are many places in southwest Missouri, that gi>od lands are cheaper than here, and old residents would like to sell and back out further to cheap lands. The principal crop raised here is wheat, as it never, fails to make a heavy crop; the principal part of it is ground here, by three large flouring mills and shipped in the sack south. Our wheat fields are about as far advanced as yours would be the 20th of May, and all other vegetation the same. Lands will not be sold at present prices very long, as there is no doubt but that there is plenty of lead aud zinc lying beneath us; and Chicago parties alre now sinking three shafts close to our city, and have already struck zinc and are sure of striking pleauty of metal, as there has just been a shaft sunk 4 miles from here aud struck ore in large quantities. As soon as ore is struck land will anvance 30 per cent. The people here are kind and old fashioned, about 50 years behind—put on no style like the northern people. It looks good to see the ladies nearly all wearing the old fashioned sun-bonnets instead of postage stamps on their heads. It reminds me of our old grand-mother’s time when the home-spun was in fashion and we went in for sensibility and not the Almighty Dollar.

C. D. S.