Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1905-07-17
OREGON NOT ALL STOLEN.

Richard Lloyd Jones, writing in Col
lier's on Our North Coast Empire,
says: Oregon has for years been al
fiicted with cancer known as the
land conscience. 1t has fastened it.
self upon it's highest as well as its
humblest citizens But there is yet
good land in Oregon that has not been
stolen, and the judicial disinfectant
which the United States government
is now applying is fast retaining
much of the land that was appro-
priated. The patriarchaI boards were
wise enough to lay claim to a good
thing. Oregon is great state. AS an
agricultural state it is as old and we'll
tried as Minnesota, Kansas, or Ne
braska. The Willamette River Val
ley is a matchless farming land Tt
was the Mecca of ambitious agricul
turists before gold was discovered in
California. The dairy products of
that one valley alone amount to seven
million dollars a year, and the prize
beef at st. Louis last year came from
there It's a country where the
farm hands get well fixed so fast
there is no one left to milk the cows.
Coos county, Oregon, is typical OF the
enterprise, industry, and thrift of all
the northwestern states. There is a
county Of farmers AMI lumbermen with
one hundred and twenty-five miles ly-
ing between it and the nearest rail-
road, and yet they erect at the Port
land fair twenty-five THOUSAND dol
lar building in which to exhibit their
wares. What say you, Pike county,
Indiana, to this? The banks of Ore
gon have deposits to the amount Of
$4,000 to every man, woman, and
child within it's borders, AMI Oregon
is not the greatest of these states.
Referring to the future of irriga-
tiontion in the North Coast States, Mr..
Jones says: "The greatest industrial
conquest that has followed the trail
Of Lewis and Clark is the conversion
of wasting mountain waters to the
parched lands of the deserts. Irriga-
ticn is king. Ten years ago it was
an experiment. Today it is employing
more than a billion dollars, and,
though a giant, it has just begun to
grow. It is the Antaeus of American
industry, doubling in power with every
touch to earth. The hopeless interior
of Oregon and Washington, as we'll as
the great stretches of Idaho, are begin
ming to bloom. Wealth is being
created from the great storehouses of
water, sunshine, and soil. Five hun
dred thousand acres Of Oregon's arid
land will be transformed to garden
this year alone. The United States
will learn that it has a bigger use for
it's money than buying gold braid for
tin soldiers; that it has yet room for
dare. Prosperity lies waiting on the
desert. Where once roamed the
savage half-starved Yakima, today
stands a community more thickly set
tied by far than the farm regions of
Rhode Island. Wenatchee, Ritzville,
KennewicE, Lewiston, Missoula, and
other horticultural centers are monu-
ments to the maryels of the most
ancient agricultural system which has
been demonstrated in western Amer
lea. When ten acres of land can yield
profit under this system which two
hundred acres will refuse to do in
either New Jersey or Connecticut, the
power of the ditch is proven, and
either irrigation will go east of the
Mississippi or the people of the east
will move to the Pacific coast 1t has
been said that had the Pilgrim fathers
sailed into Puget sound New England
would he goat pasture today. Certain
ly with intensive farming under the
'water-wealth'' system there would
have been little inducement to seek
the stony Berkshire hills"