The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1879-01-14
Agricultural Resources Of Wyoming.

is at once a part of the Rocky Noun
tains and of the Great American des-
ert, that its general surface is nearly or
quite as high as the timber line on the
Alps, and who forgets the climatic pc
culiarities of this region, and that, in
fact, it is remarkably watered, will
doubtless need a considerable array of
facts to establish him in the faith that
it possesses important agricultural ca
liabilities.
We may admit at once that agricul-
ture is nowhere possible here
without irrigation. 1t is a fact
that during the last season 1 have
seen some magnificent crops growing
without a drop of water artiHcially ap-
piled; potatoes, for example, yielding
300 bushels per acre. But after all,
that is not usual thing. They were
planted with the expectation that they
would require irrigation. But the rains
soon came and continued to fall SO very
often throughout the season that the
need of irrigating them never came.
Admitting the practical necessity for
irrigation, we may as well go farther
and concede that there are some crops
successfully grown in the same lati-
tudes farther east hat cannot be pro-
duced here. Indian corn and the lar
ger fruits, such as apples, and peaches,
are not often attempted. But we can
grow and have actually produced ex-
cellent crops of about every other pro-
duct of the soil commonly grown in the
northern states. There are now in
this Office some as fine samples of wheat,
oats, clover, timothy, red-top,, and
other grasses, gathered by my W
hand in the valley of the Big Popo Agile
Lander Valley, Is miles this side of
Camp Brown, as can be found in any
state in the union. And they were not
the product of garden culture. They
were gathered off a farm Of 100 acres
all in cultivation, and itself but one of
a number of farms in that immediate
neighborhood of 1,500 acres under thor
ough and very successful cultivation,
whole fields of wheat standing over 3
feet, and so thick that l walked
through it with difficulty; oats, also
5 feet in heighth, us heavy as they
could stand and nodding with weight of
grain; timothy, 4 feet and of fine quail
ty; clover, 81 feet, standing erect; the
other grasses equally luxuriant, and all
promising to mature a most abundant
harvest. Mr.. Meigs, the farmer from
whose fields the samples were gathered,
has since sent me word that his wheat
more than fulfilled the pledges given
him that it would yield so bushels to
the acre.
There are also here before me rare
samples of ripened wheat and ripening
oats produced by Mr.. j. G. Ferris, on
the Little Popo Agie, whose yield was
no less great. So, likewise, in very
many localities-in the valleys of the
Little Laramie and the Big Laramie,
in the valleys of Bear river, Platte riv-
er, and on a multitude of little streams
in all settled portions of the territory
successful agriculture is a fact. AS for
garden culture, its products are simply
marvellous for size and yield. The soils
are remarkably well suited to produce
vegetables of superior quality and enor-
nous yield. AT Fort Fetterman, in
the great garden belonging to the mill
tary post and cultivated by direction of
the very enterprising and capable COM
mandant, Capt. E. NJ. Coates, were
found results that would do credit to
any locality and to the most experience
ed professional gardner; potatoes, beets,
onions, asparagus, beans, peas, Lettuce,
radishes, turniPs, carrots, parsnips, cab
bage, cauliflower, cucumbers, squashes
and melons, all most excellent and of
extraordinary growth. Near Chey-
enne, at Laramie, and in many places,
like enterprises are succeeding quite as
well.
1t may be considered as settled that
the extent of our agriculture depends
solely on the amount and availability
of the water supply. Let us look the
territory over a little, therefore, with
reference to this question.
Calculating with carefulness the
length and average width of the prin-
cipal valleys proper, adding something
to this for the great number of lesser
streams, and something for the advan-
tage gained from'the rapidity of current
of many streams Ia circumstance which
greatly increases the economy of use,
where the volume of water is largel,
and the aggregate area of lands that
can be brought under cultivation is
probably not less than eleven thousand
square miles, or say eight million
acres. 1t may even be ten million
acres.
In view of the entire success of re.
cent undertakings in agriculture and
the remunerative prices paid for farm
and garden products, we may quite
confidently expect this branch of indus
try, too long neglected, to make such
progress as will very soon render ouI
population self-dependent, SO far as
the food staples are concerned.
An experiment has just been com
menced on the Laramie that will dc
much to give agriculture an impetus,
II successful. Prominent citizens have
] nnifad In fha nurchnca of larna tracfs