The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-23
PIKE, ITS FINE FARMS;
 TROY, ITS CAPITAL CITY
How the Cultured Little City on the Ridge Met the Changes lnaugurated by the
 Extension of the Railroads
nv WILL n. sisEHAN.

Troy. Feb. E22.-(special Correspon- dent )--The farming country which IS to the south and east of Troy clear across Pike County Is as neat and clean as Dutch garden.
 1t ls more like a we'll cultivated gar- den than any strip in the whole Of Southeast Alabama. Naturally as fer tie as any farming soil in the whole of Alabama, with the exception per- haps of the thick black acres of the Blackbelt 1t has been improved and improved year after year. It is no territory for the soil impoverisheF, the slip-shod farmer who has no whole and complete barn, no upright and tn- dependent fences and who takes every thing from the soil and returns noth- ing sto it, Such q man would be out of place in this rich agricultural ter- ritory. He would be put to shame by a hundred neighbors. He would be out of harmony of the whole scheme of things.
 This is the territory of the white painted farm houses, large rambling and one-storried, with broad piazzas. The front yards are full of flowers, lace curtains are in the windows, piano in the parlor and a creaking windmill over the big barn. The farm lands are clean of all bushes. all washes and all unsightly heads. On the hin sides there are terraces and the low lands are ditched for the preven- tion of standing water and bad washes.
 The most independent farmers of the State, some of them, make their homes on these farms. They are people who have money In the bank, who do not ind 1t necessary to move to a city to get into touch with culture and whose children are given the best the State can afford in the way of education. Why, there are two banks in the lit- tie town of Brundidge both of which are supported by the deposits of farm CTS and most of whose stoc kholders are said to be farmers.
 Storing uD Soil Riches.
 The original richness of these soils has been conserved and enriched from year to year by thrift, by intelligence and by energy. It is said that this section of Pike County has finer and better fed mules, handsomer and more comfortable homes, higher and better educated class of farmers than any other section of it's size in Alabama.
 1t is said too that for the amount of acreage in cotton in Pike County more bales were produced than by any other county of Alabama. Tn other words it is said acre for acre, Pike County produced more cotton than apy other county of the State. The state- ment is made by patriotic and enthu- siastic citizens of Troy.
 But the man who has made day. light trip from Montgomery to Jack sonville, Fla. on the Atlantic Coast Line, if he be an observant citizen, has not nor is he likely to forget that agricultural garden through which he whizzed, and which he holds to be the prettiest piece of country on the whole trip.
 It. has for years and years, this strip of territory, been the garden of Troy. Troy has fed upon it and thrived, both in the old days when the towns mer- chants sold goods as far east as the Chattahoochee River and as far south as the Florida line, as we'll as in the later days when tine towns territory was cut up and part of 1t taken away. by the continued advance of the rail- roads through Southeast Alabama. Now, then, and forever. it has been the mainstay of Troy's country trade.
 Changed Trade COndItIOns.
 Troy underwent the surgical opera tion, familiar to other of the older towns of South Alabama, the operation of having strip after strip of its busl- Eess territory Topped off. and like a
 
 many others. Troy survived the oper- ation and grew strong. The business the capital of Pike was doing a quar- ter of a century, ago was different sort of business from that which the town Is doing now, Troy had one raAl- road then, a branch of the Central out from Columbus, Ga. The Alabama Mid land, now the Atlantic Coast Line, had not been built from Montgomery through Southeast Alabama to the Georgia line. The Central of Georgia had not extended its Eufaula and Clayton branch of Ozark. nor did it's officers dream of throwing out it's smithville and Columbia branch from Columbia to Floraia, for Florala itself was un- dreampt of. Branch lines of the At lantic Coast Line to Abbeville and Elba were undivined things of the future. The Louisville and Nashville had not formed the purpose had not even con- sidered the idea of building miles and miles of a new Eoad from Georgiana through Geneva and on into Florida. And least of all there was no purpose