The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1907-04-26
FARM LAND VAL LIABLE.
Northern Minnesota Soil Among the
Richest and Most Productive In
the United States.

the United States.
Farm lands within a radius of so
miles of Duluth range in value
from So to SIS an acre with possibly
$25 or little more for few extra
select garden patches almost in the
suburbs. Farm lands within the
same radius of Des Moins, Iowa,
St. Joseph, Missouri, and Lincoln,
Nebraska, western cities of the
population class of Duluth, but
without its. appointment commercial
advantages and it's unrivaled loca-
ton, are easy sales at from 500 to
$3.50 an acre or even more.
Beyond the 50-1nile radius of Du-
luth, all through St. Louis county,
good farm lands are almost going
begging at S. an acre. In the coun-
ties in which the three other cities
named are situated, lands that are
little, if any better, are considered
| bargains at from $50 to $50 an acre
and are rising in value year by
year. Indeed, the prediction is be-
ing made with the utmost con-
tidence, that by 1910 there will not
be an acre of good farming land in
Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri or Kan.
sas that will not command a mini
mum of 500.
| Further, it IS strange but true,
that scores of Northern Minnesota
farmers have given up rich, we'll
wooded and never parched lands,
in order to buy at 81 an acre more
unwatered upland tracts in the
seni-arid, treeless and sandy plains
of the "short grass" regions of West.
ern Kansas and Eastern Colorado
And still others have abandoned
their Northern Minnesota farms to
go on to the intensely cold prairies
of Manitoba.
And what are the reasons for
these most unjust conditions?
In the first place, the farmers who
have left Northern Minnesota for
the arid plains of Western Kansas
and Eastern Colorado and the
prairies of Manitoba have done so
simply because they are not of the
strenuous, self-reliant class of the
pioneers who cleared the lands of
Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Mis-
souri, and Eastern Iowa of even
more difficult timber. No, they
prefer either preCarious chances of
rain on the plains or the intense
cold of winter OF Northwest Canada
to the labor of clearing off timber
that may in itself be turned to pro.
fit.
In the second place, Northern
Minnesota's great advantages have
never been exploited in any way
whatsoever. On the contrary, what
little has ever been said about this
section has been grossly unjust. II
is the belief among many, if not
most, farmers of even the southern
part of the state that the northern
portion is either swamp land or is
good for nothing but the timber
Farmers of the east and of tie mid
die west, if they think of Northern
Minnesota at all, consider it about
as inhabitable as lands in the Arc
tic circle.
It is certainly time for the people
interested in the future greatness
and development of Northern Min
nesota to take steps to correct these
false impressions. All St. Louis
county, outside Of the iron ranges
should be converted into farms while
lands near Duluth and the range
towns should be richly productive
garden patches and dairy farms
And all can be made so if the right
steps be taken to attract the right
kind of people to this sectjon.-Du
1uth Herald.
| Should RI, Cleaned