Great Falls and Cascade County. Precious Metal and Coal Mining, Smelting, Water Power, Agriculture and Stock Raising, Some of the Resources that Make This One of the Foremost Counties of the State.-The Greatest Available Water Power on the Continent and One of the Most Modern and Largest Copper Refining and Reduction Works in the World.-A Wealth of Resources and a Multitude of Opportunities That Are Yet to be Taken-Great Falls to Become the Manufacturing Center of the West. Cascade County was created in 1887 from parts of Meagher, Lewis and Clarke and Choteau counties, its area at that time being about 2,600 square miles. Since it was formed, there have been added to it from the northern slope of the Belt mountains 800 square miles, mostly mineral country, thus making a total area of 3,400 square miles. It has a population of 25,777 as against 8,755 in 1890, and is now the second county in the state. It is made up of mountains, table-lands and valleys. Besides the Missouri river, its principal streams are the Sun, the Smith, the Belt and the Highwood, all of which discharge their waters into the Missouri near Great Falls. Its altitude below the lower falls of the Missouri is 2,800 feet, while the altitude of Neihart its most elevated town, is 5,600 feet. The annual rainfall over the table-lands between the Missouri river and the base of the Belt mountains is from eighteen to twenty inches. Standing upon almost any plateau in this county, one can see five distinct ranges of mountains all of which are more or less heavily timbered with fir and mountain pine, while the broad-leaf and pin-leaf cottonwood grow luxuriantly in its valleys. . The water in all its rivers as well as that which comes from its springs is pure and healthful. Its climate in summer is delightful as it is seldom excessively hot, while its winters, though sometimes cold, are of short duration, as this county appears to be in the direct path of the chinook winds. The natural resources of Cascade county consist of rich agricultural and pastoral lands, water-power, coal, iron, gold, silver and lead. To these may be added fire-clay, cement rock, gypsum and lime of great purity, mountain masses of almost pure silica and building stone in many colors. Twelve years ago, scarcely half a dozen men in this county believed that any of its lands could support a farming population without a system of irrigation, but there were one or two men who were willing to try the experiment and so successful were they in growing crops of wheat, oats and barley on the tablelands, that others at once began to make settlement upon these high-lands and to engage in farming. To-day, there is a large and thrifty population of farm ers occupying much of the table-land country between Great Falls and the Belt mountains, and between Smith river and the eastern boundary of this county. The men who have cultivated these lands the past decade have never failed to secure profitable crops of grain and potatoes, the yields of the past year having been the smallest on record. The average annual yield of wheat per acre for the ten years in which farming has been carried on here without irrigating ditches is conservatively placed at twenty bushels. The farmers who have summer-fallowed their lands and have plowed deep, have annual average records of twenty-eight to thirty bushels of No. 1 hard wheat carrying from fifteen to sixteen per cent of gluten. While excellent crops of timothy are grown upon much of these lands, they appear to be especially adapted to the production of alfalfa and Austrian brome. Although alfalfa under irrigation will yield from three to four crops in Montana between June and the first of October, one or two heavy crops can be grown yearly upon these uplands without irrigation. Since 1890 sufficient experimental work has been done in fruit culture here to clearly prove that not only many kinds of small fruit can be grown abundantly in Cascade county, but that apple orchards may be successfully maintained in many parts of the county. Horticulture which has hitherto been entirely overlooked in this part of Montana will in a few years become an important branch of farming. The ability of the farmer to raise excellent crops here is largely due to the fact that the lands of this county consist of a mellow, sandy loam of about eighteen inches in depth, resting upon clay which acts as a reservoir in holding moisture. This friable soil easily permits the roots of grain to penetrate The great to a great depth, and to support crops during periods of drouth. advantage of deep plowing and of thoroughly pulverizing the surface soil has been well demonstrated by some of the farmers of this part of Montana who claim that thorough and careful farming amply compensate for lack of rainfall in this country of cool nights. Damp, hot weather and consequent blight which often destroy or greatly reduce the yield of wheat in the upper Mississippi valley are never known on the eastern slopes of the Belt mountains. Among the foothills and on the table-lands that skirt the Belt and High wood mountains the most favorable conditions exist for the prosecution of the dairying business. In no part of the world can be found sweeter or more nutritious native grasses and water carrying less impurities, while unlimited. facilities exist here for growing root crops and for the production of forage plants suitable for the maintenance of the soil. Here nature has provided everything for the successful prosecution of this most important branch of husbandry. All that is required to place it on a firm basis and to make it a most productive source of wealth to Cascade county is the establishment near to its mountains of colonies from Denmark, Switzerland or Holland. The large and rapidly increasing demand for dairy products in this county is now supplied from dairy farms in the Mississippi valley. This means that a suri not less than $350,000 is taken out from the yearly earnings in Cascade county for the benefit of dairymen in other states. The rapidly growing industries of this county will alone furnish a permanent market for a large part of its dairy products, however extensive they may become. Bitumious coal underlies a large part of Cascade county, the principal centers being Belt, Stockett, Sand Coulee, Smith river and Hound creek. The districts where coal mining is actively carried on are Belt, Stockett and Sand Coulee. But little thorough prospecting has been done here to ascertain the extent of the coal measures, but from what is already known, the supply is sufficient to meet the demands of this region for a long time to come. Iron ores are closely associated with the coal measures of Cascade county. They are found in different qualities extending from the Missouri river to the apex of the Belt mountains. The iron ores which generally underlie the coal measures according to the analyses of Prof. Dodge are partly spathic and partly hematite, and closely resemble the clay iron stone of England. These ores generally carry about forty per cent of iron. In the foothills and extending into the Belt mountains immense leads of red and brown hematite ore are found from the Smith river country eastward to the forks of the Judith river. Many of these leads are very wide and contain ores ranging from fifty-eight to sixty-eight per cent of metallic iron and are so low in phosporous as to give them great value for steel making by the Bessemer process. All the essentials for steel making, such as Bessemer ores, manganese, coai, silica, lime and fire-clay are found here in abundant supply. That part of Cascade county which carries its precious minerals extends from the Big Belt mountains eastward along the slopes of the Little Belt mountains to the north fork of the Judith river, a distance of sixty miles. This area includes the mining camps of Tenderfoot, Logging Creek, Dry Wolf, Running Wolf and Yogo, besides the well-known silver-lead mining towns of Neihart and Barker. Neihart is the most prominent town in Montana that produces silver ore almost exclusively. Although the demonetization of silver has greatly restricted the output of ore in this district for several years past, recently, owing to greatly improved concentrating methods, silver mining here is assuming new importance. The ability to successfully concentrate the low grade silver ores of Neihart has resulted in the establishment here of a concentrator of six hundred tons of ore daily. This concentrator has been built by the owners |