The Norfolk weekly news-journal., 1909-02-26
Reasons for the Yankton-Norfolk.

Reasons IOr IFG IdHhlOI-INOIlO WIN
Yankton Press and Dakotan: Today
the people of Yankton are deeply in
terested in the suddenly revived hope
of the immediate completion OF very
old project, that of the construction
of a bridge across the Missouri river
and a railroad running south to Nor
folk, Neb, ultimately to be carried to
the Gulf of Mexico. Some people
seem to feel that the promoters of the
enterprise are not in earnest and that
it will not be carried to completion.
This feeling prevails probably because
of lack of understanding of the
sound business reasons which exist
for the construction of the line; rea-
sons so substantial that they admit of
no possible doubt of the success of
such a line and the return of hand
some profits to any capitalists who
might invest in it. Even superficial
examination of these reasons cannot
fail to convince the most skeptical of
the feasibility Of he proposed railway,
whatever they may think of the
chances of its immediate completion,
and make it clear why capitalists, pro
viding they have had the matter prop
erly put before them, may have been
far from averse to investing money
in it.
In the first place, as regards the
initial portion of the line, from Yank-
ton to Norfolk it has been facetiously
suggested that no reason can be
found for it's construction because,
from a railroad standpoint lit begins
nowhere and ends nowhere" This
may be amusing but it is hardly true.
The line both begins and ends at
points having great possibilities OF
traffic development and passes
through a country well settled
throughout and rich in agricultural
productions. The six Nebraska coun-
ties which the road will penetrate are
Knox, Cedar, Pierce Madison, Stan.
ton and Wayne, According to the
figures of the Nebraska state bureau
of statistics for 1907, these six COun-
li'p III Nllol gNul lllu a NONul pcpulo-
ton 69,052, or an average of near
ly nineteen peop'e per square mile.
The most pOpulous county is Madison,
in which Norfolk is located, which
has population of 1876, or thirty
per square mile. The six counties
have ,449,S SOS acres under cultivation,
60 per cent of their area. They pro-
duced in 1907, 19175,24O bushels Of
corn, an average yield per acre of
319O bushels, whereas the average
yield for the whole state of Nebraska
in that year was only 25,75 bushels
They produced 54G,4S5 bushels of
wheat, S321,792 bushels of oats, and
42,9lS tons of alfalfa and had within
them 253,44O head of cattle, 252,82
head of hogs, and 5S,524 head Of
horses a total including a compar-
atiyely few sheep and mules, of l49
head Of live stock per square mile,
as against an average of only 50 head
per square mile for the whole state.
Is there anyone who can believe
for a moment that a railroad running
through such a rich region will not
pay, especially in view of the fact
that only two trunk lines now cross
the territory, the balance of the POI
miles of railway now embraced with
in the six counties being mere stub
lines and all even the trunk lines,
giving access only to the markets at
Omaha and Sioux City? The Yankton
and Norfolk road would open up the
entire region to the great primary
wheat markets of Duluth and Mime
apolis, placing it 46 miles nearer to
those cities, via the Greath Northern's
Direct Yankton-Duluth line, that it is
now 1t would also place Norfolk
that much nearer to those centers
and divert a great part of the freight
now carried through that city on the
Union Pacific, to the Minnesota mark
cts via its short line. The line of the
Great Northern in Nebraska, now OPP
- II