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Grove fruit farm is famous throughout the state of Montana, having one hundred acres in fruit and over ten thousand bearing trees. Last year they shipped fourteen cars of apples. The fruit grown in the valley is perfect in every respect, and the market is without limit. Thirty years of experience has demonstrated that fruit culture here is a most profitable enterprise. Only once during all of that time have the trees been seriously damaged by the cold. Land set with Alexander apples twelve years ago is now annually yield

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Root farm at Hamilton, owned by Marcus Daly, alone has 70,000 fruit trees, many of which are now bearing. Competent judges state that the best apples in the United States are produced here. It was a Bitter Root apple that won the second premium at the recent exposition at Omaha, and it certainly has no superior in size, flavor or keeping qualities. The growing of small fruits also attracts deserved attention at the hands of fruit growers. The strawberry, gooseberry, currant and raspberry are indigenous to the soil and yield abundantly. Hundreds of acres of strawberries are raised in the valley, and a ready market found for them. By means of irrigation the strawberry season is prolonged and from the middle of June until late in August this delightful fruit is found on the market. When the berries from the south and west, from the neighboring states of Utah, Or

THE BITTER ROOT VALLEY VEGETABLE EXHIBIT.

egon and Washington have long ceased to appear, the Bitter Root berries are still on the market, and the grower of these berries is without a competitor in the markets of the state.

The resources of the valley will not long be confined exclusively to those connected with the cultivation of the soil. Valuable mineral deposits are being discovered, and the time is not far distant when this section of Mon

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tana will add her quota of precious metals to the wealth of the world. At the headquarters of the West Fork of the Bitter Root river is the Mineral Hill district, covering an area of fifty square miles, proved by competent authority to contain surface indications equal in mineral richness to anything known in the west. The whole district is covered with a series of true fissure veins thoroughly mineralized, and carrying gold, silver and copper. In this district but few locations have thus far been made, and but little development work has been done, owing principally to the fact that the district is more than a hundred miles from the railway, and heretofore it could be reached only by a difficult pack-trail. This difficulty has, however, been overcome by the construction recently of a wagon road, costing more than twenty thousand dollars, to the Monitor mine, which is being rapidly developed, and is showing an amount and richness of ore that is a surprise to its owners. Prospecting and development work will now progress rapidly in the district. A concentrator and other mining machinery will be put up, and hundreds of other wealth producing mines will be developed. Hughes creek, on the west fork of the Bitter Root river, also lies in a very rich placer region which is but partially developed. Several claims upon which considerable development work has been done in the past are now yielding as high as twenty dollars to the man per day, and the extent and richness of the district is increasing as the work of prospecting and developing is pushed forward. In the same district is a vast section of country underlaid with coal measures varying in thickness from five to twenty-five feet, and containing a good quality of lignite coal, which has been pronounced by experts to be very valuable, and which will be a source of great wealth to those so fortunate to possess claims there, as soon as railway transportation reaches it. On the west side of the river near Victor are the Pleasant View mining district and the Curlew mine, which, under fair prices for silver has paid rich dividends, and has a concentrator and much high priced machinery; the Whip-poor-will and Last Chance mines adjoin the Curlew and give promise of equal richness. On the east side of the river in the main range of the Rocky mountains on Claremont creek is an extensive system of copper bearing ledges, and placer locations have been made and profitably worked on Burnt Fork and Three Mile creeks, while the White Cloud mine on Eight Mile creek has an expensive concentrator, and has been worked for several years.

The immense tracts of timber covering the mountain sides and lining the numerous streams breaking through the mountain wall on either side of the valley at the present time support one of the chief industries of the valley, and a large amount of capital has been invested in it. The lumber business here furnishes employment for about five hundred men the year round, and creates the largest pay-roll of any business in the valley.

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Real, $4,507,964; personal, $1,541,065; railroads, $493.715; total, $6,542,740.

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Gallatin County.

One of the Richest Agricultural Counties of the State, Reaping a Rich Reward Each Year as a Return for the Investment of Labor on the Farm and the Range.

Journeying westward from St. Paul on the Northern Pacific railway the first mountains that are encountered. by the railway grade is the Gallatin range, which is the dividing line between Park and Gallatin counties.

Laboriously the west coast limited train, drawn by one Mogul engine and propelled by a second, makes its way up the eastern slope for a distance of 15 miles, through some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in a state noted for the majesty of its peaks and ranges.

Well nigh to the summit of the Muir (sometimes called Bozeman) tunnel is reached and passed. This tunnel, nearly a mile in length, lined throughout its entirety with brick laid in cement, is a grand tribute to negineering skill, cutting off, as it does, nearly three miles of the heaviest grades on the Northern Pacific railway. Once the tunnel is passed, the second engine is dropped, and the train speeds on its way, dropping nearly 1,000 feet in the first eight miles from the mouth of the tunnel.

The canyon traversed is known as Rocky canyon, and well known it is truly, so narrow and precipitous is the canyon, that when the railway was granted the right-of-way through this canyon it was necessary to use the public highway for its roadbed, and to blast out and excavate a new highway along rocky ledges and narrow shelves, far above the original site. On either side of the train views are to be had of scenery of the wildest and most picturesque character imaginable.

At the mouth of the canyon the railway passes through old Fort Ellis, where barely two decades ago were stationed in the interests of peace and harmony, four companies of United States troops, whose hands were full in repressing the raids and outbreaks of the hostile Sioux, who, by the right of possession, owned the valley of the Yellowstone. As one passes Fort Ellis, far to the northwestward, 50 miles as the crow flies, is to be seen the Tobacco Root range of mountains, while to the northward, and farther still, are to be outlined the Boulder mountains. Swinging to the right a little the Bridger mountains, the Eastern boundary of the county, are seen and skirted, while to the north the Horseshoe Hills fill the gap intervening between the Bridger and Big Belt mountains. Never did so beautiful a valley have such wondrous setting as is given to this exquisite dimple on nature's face by the encircling and protecting ranges.

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