North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State

by Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota

Two new inventions added to the success of the wheat-raising bonanza farms. The first of these was the purifier, which made it possible to produce a superior grade of white flour from spring wheat. The second was a roller simplifying the milling of hard wheat, with the result that this grain was placed at a premium. In a single year, the value of the farms was raised from the original 40 and 50 cents to $5 an acre, and by 1906 the lands were worth from $30 to $40.

Because they raised a single crop, the managers of the bonanza farms found it easy to systematize and mechanize their work. The newest farm machines were common in this newly settled area long before they were introduced in the older States.

Eastern syndicates usually owned the bonanza farms, and resident managers were engaged to supervise the work. As long as only wheat was raised, the system was ideal. With the introduction of other crops, however, difficulties arose, principally because stockholders could not agree on a plan of operation. Almost all of the large farms were eventually broken into smaller plots and sold to the immigrants and easterners whom they had attracted to the West. Today, 51,149 of the 84,606 farms in the State are operated by their owners, 33,122 by tenants, and only 335 by managers.

Thousands who were attracted by the success of the bonanza farms and the low railroad rates came west to take up land, and were aided in their preparation by the Emigrant's Guide, published by the Commissioner of Immigration for Dakota Territory in 1870. This contained not only such valuable information as data on the land laws, farming methods, and transportation facilities, but also freight rates and a list of prices of staple commodities to indicate supplies which should be brought from the East and those which could be as cheaply purchased in the new land. Tea was one of the most expensive of pioneer commodities, ranging in price from $1.25 and $2 a pound. Sugar was also high—from 12 to 16 cents a pound. For light, the homesteader had a choice of candles at 25 cents a pound or coal oil at 80 cents a gallon. Furniture, too, could be purchased by those who did not wish to carry it across the prairies from their eastern homes. Extension tables sold for $2 a foot, washstands cost from $4.50 to $10. Ox yokes were $3, a double harness $45. So many homesteading necessities could be purchased at the pioneer settlements that after reading Dakota newspapers of this period a North Carolina editor announced that "the people are fully up to the highest notch of civilization."

As the lands of the Red River Valley and the Drift Plain were occupied, settlers were forced to go farther west into the farming-grazing belt of the Missouri Coteau. Influenced by the fortunes being made in wheat in the eastern part of the State, they too became wheat farmers. But although the soil of the Missouri Coteau is almost as rich as that farther east, it does not have the same advantageous rainfall during the growing season; and while it produced successfully, it did not have the spectacular production of the bonanza farms in the black-earth area.

Today, the farms in this region are somewhat larger than those of the more easterly belt, being from 450 to 600 acres in size, but the relative production is lower. Although grain farming still predominates, ideally the farming-grazing region is, especially in dry years, a livestock section.

To the west of this central region lies the Missouri Slope, which constitutes the grazing-forage belt. Originally the farms here were much smaller than those in other parts of the State—with the repeal in 1891 of tree claim and preemption laws, homesteaders were limited to 160 acres of free land. For a few years the settlers on the Missouri Slope were able to file on desert claims, receiving one section at $1.25 an acre with the understanding that they would improve the land by irrigation; but so many people throughout the arid regions of the United States filed on such claims fraudulently that the act was finally amended to include the requirement that at least $3 an acre must be spent for irrigation.

Despite this land limitation, many new settlers came to western North Dakota during the "back to the land" movement from 1900 to 1910. Besides the farmers who took up free land, there were many school teachers, laborers, and business and professional persons who followed that method, or took a commuted homestead by filing on land, staying there 14 months, and paying the Government $1.25 an acre. In this region, where it is estimated that 30 percent of the land is not suitable for cultivation, it was inevitable that many of these inexperienced persons should settle on worthless property. Experienced ranchers and farmers realized that only large farms could be operated profitably, and purchased homesteads from dissatisfied settlers. In this manner the size of farms increased, until now they run to 800 acres or more.

The most fertile soil of the western region is in the valley of the Missouri. It was here that Verendrye, Lewis and Clark, Catlin, and other early explorers found the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara women carefully cultivating their neat fields of corn, beans, squash, pumpkin, melons, and sunflowers.

Lack of rainfall is the chief drawback to successful agriculture in the grazing-forage belt; but with irrigation, field crops can be raised dependably. The value of irrigation has been demonstrated by the success of the 20,319 acres immediately west of the Yellowstone River in western North Dakota, an area irrigated by the Bureau of Reclamation project of 1906. Similar projects are proposed in the basins of the Knife, Heart, and Grand Rivers.