River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1904-01-14

est, is 65 miles long and from one
to twelve miles. wide. 1t is thickly
wooded, for the most part, but the
timber is not nearly as large as
| that on the mainland, and much of
the best timber has been logged off.
Much of the land is sandy or
gravelly. Some of it is excellent.
| Land can be bought there for from
$40 to $500 an acre. Around Coupe
vile. the county seat of Island
county, there are several townships
of native prairie. This land is
mostly black loan and highly
productive. Here one man with
| 20 acres into wheat raised 1850
| bushels, 118 bushels to the acre, the
past year. This is certified to by
the government inspector, while
| another man raised an average of
ITO bushels to the acre from 40
| acre field. This wheat is a soft
grade, and only used for feed.
WILDLY island is great fruit coun-
try-that is to say, fruit can be
| readily raised here, but little is
raised for the market. Enquiring
the reason whythe people did not
go more extensively into the indus
try the reply was that it did not
pay. They could not get enough
for apples to pay for the care of the
trees. We saw orchards of thou
| sand trees where not bushel had
been picked for export, the ground
being literally covered with the
fruit. Select apples were bringing
but As cents box and the most Of
these old orchards-and some of
them are forty years old-are large
| ly composed of trees that bear an
inferior variety of apples. We sug-
gested that they make cider and
vinegar of the fruit. If we do we
can get nothing for it." The island
is thinly settled, although colonies
located here before any permanent
| settlement was made on the main
| land. Houses are standing here
that were built fifty years ago, the
lumber all split from the tree, and
planed into boards by hand. The
government gave each of these set
lers $40 acres of land and of course
they selected the best. The people
are way-back lot-old fogies,
with no enterprise. They do not
invite immigration, or innovation.
II is astonishing that there are so
few people on the coast who en-
gage in farming or have desire to.
The most of the people live in
cities and are engaged in trade or
| numbering. The few who farm"
it are mostly small farmers. !"
They get few acres, clear up what
they can-enough to raise a few
vegetables for which there is ready
sale to sea-going people or in the
cities-and they set out few fruit
trees, some blackberry and rasp-
berry vines and patch of straw
berries. Some few keep one or two
cows and occasionally there is, in a
| favored locality, man who keeps a
sufficient number of COWS to oper-
ate a milk route, or make butter for
| the market. There are, except for
teaming, very few horses here.
Roads are infrequent and so bad
that there is little inducement for
keeping driving horses. This is as
it looks now. Perhaps in the sum-
mer one might have occasion for
different expressions.
Business is. dull on the coast.
The lumber and single mills are
about all idle. This, because the
market is overstocked with the pro-
duct of the mills and it is the inten-
ton to restrict the output to main
tain prices. Shingles are especial
ly low and there is little encourage
ment at present for running a
single mill. Single timber is
high and shingles are low-from
$1.25 to $3.50 thousand, with no
prospect of rise for some time to
come. Lunbermen profess to be-
lieve that there will not be anything
like so much building in 1904 as
there was the past year and conse-
quently not SO great demand for
lumber. The railway managers ex-
pressed the opinion in a recent con-
ference that travel from the east
way next year will be light as COM
pared with that of the last two
years. There are several reasons
for this-the presidential election,
the St. Louis Exposition, and, "a
fact they did not mention, the land
boom is over. Residents of the
state claim an accession of ESQ, 600
to the population since the census
year. If this claim be valid the