The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-01-21
(By Will T. sheehan)

Magnolia springs, January sV.-NSpo- eial Correspondence)- )--They sell round trip tickets from Chicago to Baldwin County and return for s165O They call these low rate tickets Home seeker tickets and the excursions for which they are sold are the same sort of an excursion that the railroads have been running and continue to run 60 Texas from various Southern States
 The excursions come in every two weeks One of them got in last night. There were III people fin it and near 1y all of them were heads of family. The land company people say that they sell land to about half the people who come down on the Homeseekers trip.
 This one excursion with it's 171 peo- pie shows how people come into Bald win County during the winter months. still the excursions by no means rep resents all the Northern prospectors who come down. They come in on near 1y every tSein. The day we went down the t,ay Mipette and Fort Nor gan road there were three families aboard.
 The Homeseeker crowds are mainly prospectors. The others are those who have been and who have seen. They are coming down to take charge of 70 or SO acre farm bought from one of the big land companies On this Bay Minette and Fort Morgan household good form perhaps the most common class of freight.
 The New Towns.
 New towns have come up almost in d night along this road. They are not considerable towns now, but they are growing rapidly. year ago we rode fn a buggy over what is now the town of RobertsdaIe The railroad which is now so important factor in the de- velopment of Baldwin County had not %Am~> kSl tz,tflN q ing the road then. There was nothing at Robertsdale then. not even a cabin. Today there ase perhaps 800 people living there and every time the train comes in the population is increased The town now has a reduction plant. for getting out the by-products of yell low pine lumber. number of homes several stores. handsome little de- pot and what a member of our party called evidences of civilization" two saloons.
 A little further South is the town of Summerdale and little further North Is the town of Loxley. new places but smaller than Robertsdale. All of this town building. all this developments along the railroad as far as 1t has gone. has come within the past five months The Bay Minette and Fort Morgan Railroad. where it was started was built along 8 ridge. which was the center and the backbone of Bald win, s1oping to the East to Perdido River and to the west to Mobile Bay. There was not then single town, not even a collection of houses along the entire road. The most thickly settled portion of Baldwin was the older DOT ton a section north of Bay Minette and to the South along Mobile Bay. where stands the older towns of Daphne and Bontrose, and the uniuue af
 So whatever has been done along the railroad has been done in the past six months.
 I'm the Southern Portion.
 The majority of the immigrants who have come into Baldwin County. the great majority, have settled south of line drawn through the county cutting if evenly in half. It is in this section the section south of Daphne, which is hlling up with Illinois citizenship. In the part of the county which is west of Florida the big land and immigra- ffon companies are operating It is to this section that the hundreds of homeseekers arriving every two weeks come and look around It Is to this section that the cattle and household goods are shipped. ..r.
 Still the country is thinly settled It is such an empire. such A domain, that I shall be as populous as Southeast Ala bama, which was built up on the same sort of pine lands. One has but to know its magnificent distances to un derstand this. From Monroe County. where the big county starts to where 1t slopes off into the Gulf of Mexico is a distance of seventy miles. roughly speaking. And from Mobile to the Florida line there is a stretch of thirty J the entire county there is not a single considerable town. when even now with all the immigrants who have come ir he can ride at times mile after mile without seeing a house, he begins to get some idea of the splendid field which Baldwin offers for the working out of the immigration problem
 The entire county to the south of Bay Minette is "cut over" land. It was first the empire of the saw mill man and the turpentine man. They have not yet finished their work but their reign is practically over. The amount of yellow pine timber that ha: been shipped out Is appalling The statement may be safely made that Baldwin County has sent out more vel low pine than any other county of Alabama It may be doubted if in all the United States there has been any
 
 feet of yellow pine lumber. For many, many years the work has gone on. It is such fine location for the business. Mobile with its big export business is only a few miles away. There are flowing through the county to Mobile Bay and the Gulf half dozen lumber carrying streams.
 It costs but little to put the lumber and the timber upon the waters of Mo bile Bay where the outward bound steamers and schooners can take it to the markets of the world. Therefore, the big county of Baldwin offered the richest and surest rewards to the push ing and energetic lumbermen.
 And they have done their work thoroughly. The whirring saws have been ruthless and remorscless The woods gang have been persistent and energetic. Today the marks of their labor are before ones eye in every portion of the county. The stumps arc interminable. The tree tops. blackcn- ed by age and slowly decayinE fill the county for miles and miles.
 The till covered land is broken now. here and there. The piney woods road winding through the wire grass passes here. a fruit orchard, nearly always of peaches. Some distance on it bends by a typical home of an immigrant with it's woven wire fence, its small and boarded house, it's neat barn and yard and the new, neat and carefully tended farm of forty Hcres. They are all small farms. not often more than forty acres in extent and rarely if ever, more than eighty acres in ex- tent.
 Delivering the Goods.
 And here Is this county's claim 10 distinction. They are actually settling