Daily press and Dakotaian. [volume] (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1875-1880, 1878-09-23
THE MISSOURI RIVER.

The Benton Business this Year -Improve.
mcnt OF the Great Falls Future Trade.
Omaha Daily Bee, Sept. 10.
The indications now are that by another
year or two the upper Missouri river will be
improved to that extent that steamboats,
will be enabled to run with safety to its
source at the Three Forks. The rapid ad-
yancement Of the country at the head of the
Missouri seems to demand this. With the
improvements the government has made to
the river by removing obstruction from the
several rapids below Benton, has come an
impetus in the boating business, and more
than the usual number of steamboats, have
landed at Benton this year, diecharging in
all in the neighborhood of 10000, tons
of freight, and carrying back nearly as
much. Benton, rom a small landing and
trading post, has grown to be a large and
busy town, and a noted steamboat landing.
From thence to Helena, $50 miles, goods
are carried by wagon, over a tedious road and
this year, owing to much rain it has heen
next to impossible to get goods through on
anything like seasonaDle time. Lately the
board of trade of Helena have been moving
in the matter Of constructing q narrow
gauge railroad around the Great Falls of
the Missouri, located about forty miles above
Benton. This far above Benton the river is
navigable, but owing to the high banks and
no freight is brought there. Above the
can be navigated with ease by good-sized
steamers, to the mouth of the Prickk Pear,
some twelve miles from Helena, and during
the spring and summer to the Three Forks.
On each side of the river, from Helena up,
are some Of the best farming and grazing
lands in Montana, and they are being rap
idly settled up, while in the mountains ad-
jacent are brisk mining camps and towns.
The surveys and estimates of the cost of
the railroad around the fal 8, a distance Of
twenty-nine miles, gives the cost at Sill, 900,
a very insignificant cum when compared to
the great advantages to be derived to Hele-
ma, and the territory at large. The
steady growth OF that part of Montana will
naturally increase the boating business,
which since boatmen have become better
acquainted with the river, has rapidly
grown tn an important business. The
board of trade of Helena, as we'll as busi-
ness men in other parts Of the territory, are
in earnest in this matter of improving the
Upper Missouri, and if the counties and
territory do not lend them aid, private en-.
terprise will take it in hand and proceed at
once to the preparatory work. This will
add several hundred miles more of ma
vigable capacity to the Missouri, making
the whole boating length of the much ma.
ligned Big Muddy to nigh on to thirty.fve
hundred miles, which lays out the Mis-.
sissippi by several hundred miles. The
boats to be used above the falls will be oil
Pittsburg manufacture, bottoms steel, trans
ported in sections, and put together at the
head of the Portage. The local trade it.
self, along the new route. would, no doub,
prove remunerst;ve, and with the carrying
of the freights to and from the Portage
could not fail to make the enterprise in
every way successful.