Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 90, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1902 — THE BIG HORN BASIN. [ARTICLE]

THE BIG HORN BASIN.

]o6ntiriued from First Psge.) | valley the ‘‘Home of the Great Spirit,” while its wild, weird, aweinspiring mountain canons were with tqual justice termed the above of the Evil Spirit. For centuries untold, instinct led the ; Indians .to seek the Big Horn I Basin for perfect rest, purity of ■atmosphere, and to be cured of disease by the magic springs—the Great Spirits healing waters. There in the basin, tribes battled with tribes for the mastery, long ages before Columbus discovered this New Wcrld. Every acre of its soil hides a red man’s grave, and, if the bones of the Indian dead, gathered in the Big Horn Basin, were there formed in a mounment, the pile would rival the most commanding peaks in height There too, have the pale feces hunted the red man, and it is not a long trail to where Cue* er and his brave three hundred boys in blue went to death, fighting shoulder to shoulder, falling, bkeding, dying, until the last stand was made, and the gallant chieftain and hi/a men fell, to mark for ages the spot sanctified by the blood of heroes.

To the westward of Big Horn Basin lies Yellowstone Park, also a natural wonderland. In fact, the whole region seems to have been created in some won drous fancy of the Great Spirit. From the Big Horn Canon to its junction with the Big Horn river, the Shoshone runs through the valley, to which it has /givenits name, and thus aided by nature, man haffseized upon its advantages to irrigate, through the introduction of artificial waterways, the rich lands stretching away from its banks on either side to the beautiful foothills of the encircling ranges. Were such a magnificent work as the reclamation of this vast arid basin by artificial means attempted in Europe, the European Press would teem with articles calling.it one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of modern times The canals that irrigate this vast area lead down from the rivers fed by countless streams of melted snow, hence there is no overflow, and the supply is inexhaustible. Without these irrigating canals, no water could reach this vast expanse of the richest soil in the world. When farming by irrigation, one is assured of success; when depending on rainfall, all is uncertainty. There are no dams to break, for the mountains hold the water, hence there are no overflows, ue in other places where irrigation is used. i ——4These lands are not held by trusts, or sold to millionaire purchasers but to the “Man with the Hoe” who can buy and till his forty, eighty or one hundred and sixty acres, as the case may be for he is allowed to hold no more. To this garden spot of creation I went years ago, in the discharge of my duties as a United States army scout. I tdbk in the superb grandeur, the natural marvels, the wonders and the possibilities of the Big Horn Country. Like the Indians of long ago, who when they reached the present state of Alabama, cried:—‘Here we rest.” And like Brigham Young when he arrived upon the site of Salt Lake City and exclaimed, as he drove a stake into the ground,—‘‘Here we build the temple of Zion ” I could not refrain from the expression legardgsrding the Big Horn Country: “This is my chosen lands, here 1 want my bones to rest!” Today, in Big Horn Basin, there has already sprung up the nucleus of a future great city called Cody. Already farms are dotting the hills, valleys, and plains, and Cody, scarcely two years old, has a church, a public school, a court house and a newspaper, “The Enterprise,” not to speak of the stores, hotels and many pleasant homes. Near by is the DeMaris Spring, the largest sulphur spring in the world, to which invalids are already wending their way to be cured of all the ills to which all human flesh is heir. Nor is this mighty spring the sole curative power in the Big Horn Basin, for there lies Nature’s great laboratory in the form of hot springs—Vichy, Soda, Iron and other Medicinal waters, that are panaceas for many diseases.

Into this country two lines of railroad, the iron arteries of our land are now making their way and hence came the prediction, before made that the human tide will soon flow toward the Great Divide, coming from the Vestward across the Pacific and the eastward across the Atlantic, to behold the mighty heart of our country, which beats beneath the shadows of the Rocky mountains.