The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-03-17
PROSPEROUS KANSAS.
The Bright and Growing City of Lyons.

If the readers of THE TRAVELLER would bless their good eyes with the sight of country that gives no sign of decadence, but is everywhere radi- ant with tokens of progress and prom ise, they should take the first train for
 CENTRAL KANSAS,
 and after a weeks stay here, try to measure the material, moral, mental and commercial forces which are working out for this beautiful region a great destiny. Out here in the heart of
 THE MIDDLE ARKANSAS VALLEY, POO miles southwest of Kansas City; 400 miles east of Denver and the foot hills and 100 miles north of the famed and fabulous Indian territory, within two hours ride of THE GEOGRAPHICAL CENTRE OF THE
 UNION,
 and the exact geographical centre of Kansas, at an elevation of 1,S00 feet above tide water, is district of coun- try that for general agricultural re- source, agreeable and economic farm- ing, pleasant, equable and healthful climate, the volume and purity of its water supply, the depth, fertility, quickness and availability of its soils, the grace of it's landscape, the marked rapidity of it's development, and the enterprise of it's people,
 CHALLENGES COMPARISON with any purely agricultural country in the Union. The evidently we'll studied efforts of certain eastern journals to misrepresent the agricul- tural, financial and climatic conditions of Kansas during the past winter, have moved the writer to series of Kansas letters to THB ARKANsAw TRAVELLER, covering counties in the western, cen tral and eastern divisions of the state. With your permission, MT. Editor, have selected the representative coun- ties of Ness in the west, Marion in the east, and Rice in the central portion. Having no material interests in either, I am free to give you the naked facts concerning these counties and their central and capital towns.
 RICE COUNTY,
 from which and of which 1 write my maiden letter to TIE TRAVELLER fam fly, is briefly located and character ized in the foregoing notes. It has an area of 20 square miles; is made up of graceful rolling prairie and valley with an easy southerly incline to the Arkansas river, and comes as near to being
 MODEL COUNTY
 of clean, available and almost uni formly fertile farm and pastoral land as any district of equal extent in the western country. It is drained by the Arkansas river and a dozen tributa- ries, fed by hundreds of springs; abounds in pure living we'll water at an average depth of twenty five feet ; embraces some 5000 or 5000 acres of native ash, elm, hackberry, box elder, walnut and cottonwood timber which is found in narrow fringes along the streams; has warm, flexible, highly fertile, dark and mulatto soils of un- usual depth, and from end to end is practically tcithout q quarter section of Udste ld1ad.
 ITS RAPID GROWTH
 in agriculture, population and wealth is the marvel of all visitors. The pio- neers ''stuck their stakes" filled" on their homestead or pre- -emption claims, and constructed their rude sod cabins and dug outs in 1870, and in 1871, while yet thousands of buffalo were ranging over these wild savannahs, the county was organized with a few hundred settlers and the first furrow broken in the native green sward. To- day the county has
 EIGHTEEN THOUSAND PEOPLE, representing the best enterprise, expe- rience, skill, business capacity, brain and heart of the old states, provinces and Europe. It has 200, ,000 acres of land in cultivation to mixed crops, and an- nually grows more wheat than all the New England states; more corn than Maine, and more oats than three of the older states that might be named. 1t grows, in perfection, wheat, corn, broom corn, oats, rye, sorghum (sugar cane), millet, Irish and sweet potatoes and nearly all the products of the mid dle attitudes, and has recorded
 FEWER CROP FAILURES
 since 1874, than central Iowa, cen- tral Illinois or central Ohio. The scrub and scalawag is we'll eliminated from its herds, which now number 7,1ss horses, 1,260 mules, 2S,lo5 cat tie, 6,S71 sheep and 30 ,501 swine. Its
 LIVE STOCK INTERESTS
 gre led by accomplished breeders in every department and well bred horses, cattle, sheep and swine are up