The Northern Pacific Railroad; Sketch of Its History: Delineations of the Divisions of Its Transcontinental Line ... with Descriptive and Statistical Exhibits of the Counties on and Near Its Line in Min

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 Excerpt: ...points of comparison Northern Dakota can not fairly claim superiority or special distinction. The impression has been thus created among the public at large who read the current publications referred to, that Northern Dakota (and Northwestern Minnesota is like it) is a country of very deep surface soil, of rank and luxuriant native vegetation, and that its cultivated farms show an unusually strong and dense growth of the cereals. So far is this from being exact that the merely surface soil, that which unites with its original elements decomposed vegetation, and takes on the dark color of vegetable loam, has generally an average not exceeding from 15 to 24 inches in depth. The native grasses, though sufficiently abundant and very rich in nutriment for grazing animals, are not of the rank, tall growth that was frequently found in the once Territories east of the Mississippi, nor in the trans-Mississippi countries below the 43d parallel, nor yet in parts of Eastern Kansas and Nebraska. It needs no concealment that many of those who first knew the Red River valley in its native state--and so late as when the Northern Pacific was about to be extended across it, some ten years ago--thought but poorly of it as a possible agricultural country. It was not then suspected by men who had heard nothing of its successful cultivation by the Canadians across the boundary, to possess the peculiar and extraordinary force and adaptation for the raising of wheat and the small grains which the last six or seven years have so well proved. Nor has experience shown the fields of the Red River valley, nor any of the cropped lands on the same parallels in Dakota, to yield uncommonly largely to the acre. The average production per acre through a series of years has, it is true, been ...