Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1918-03-07
MAKING EXTENSIVE VISIT
AT POINTS IN TEXAS

townsville, Texas, Mch. /, 1918
Mr.. Hoogenakker
Audubon, Iowa,
My Dear Sir:
Since my last letter i have been
sixty-five miles up the river. Spent
nearly week looking over the towns
and country adjacent to San Benito,
Harrington. Tiocona, BiXby. Mercedes.
Donna, san Juan, Phan, McAllen and
Mission. 1t is all nice country for
miles around these towns. However
in some sections the country is much
more extensively settled and under
cultivation than others. San Benito
Is fine town with a cplendid, well
developed country for miles around
it. So is the town and country of
Harrington. The largest and most in
tensively cultivated section is in the
McAllen and Mission districts. The
country looks like a perfect level,
with canals full of water a plenty;
a vast sea of onions. cabbage. beets,
tomatoes and other truck, broom
corn, Indian corn. cotton and young
citron orchards. travelled eight
miles each way from these towns
and it has all been the same every
where. The highways are one half
mile apart and believe will average
one house to every forty acres and
perhaps more. Some of them very
fine modern homes, painted in the
height of fashion Each of these
towns have very fine country club
buildings and golf grounds about
five miles out with very wide, we'll
kept roads leading to them, growing
palm trees alongside much of the
way. The whole country looks like
the outlying suburbs of a large city
in the number of houses. | inter-
viewed a number of the bankers as
TO the amount of deposits and found
il very large, many of them running
four and five hundred thousand dol
lars. The prices the farmers are now
receiving for their products make the
total income of the country immense
However, their business requires
woodwork all the time, twelve
months in the year. They raise
crops the year round and a person
to farm successfully must be willing
to work part of the time with rub
Der boots in the mud and water with
a supple, elastic, Indian back for the
other work. If you are endowed with
these qualifications your success is
assured, provided you look well after
the selling end of truck farming.
Some of them raise three crops of
broom corn per year, or claim they
do. The people use the canal water
for drinking and all other needs.
Many of them have windmills, ele-
waited tanks. water systems in their
houses and yards. The water pipes
are slightly under ground and oc-
casionally on top exposed to the sun.
Ice plants furnish all the ice neces-
sary for the towns and country at
about the price it is sold in Audubon.
The main canals are very large. /
saw one that looked to be eighty to
100 feet wide full of water They
cost more to build than to grade a
railroad in this level country. The
land companies have been doing big
business this winter bringing land
seekers from the north, selling much
bench land to them at two hundred
and fifty dollars per acre. Lately. |
understand the price has been raised
to two hundred seventy-five and
three hundred dollars per acre. The
land companies have two side tracks
l know of and probably others with
dining halls and sleeping apartments
for several hundred people. with
about forty automobiles at each place
TO carry the northern people to their
lands. One of the places they call
Ebenezer and the other Sharryland.
Their prices are high but they will
sell with small payment down and
the balance on long time giving the
buyer chance 10 make the payments
from the crops grown on the land.
1t is very warm here now Decid-
uous trees are out IN leaf. and where
corn has been planted it is up five
or six inches high. Roses are in
bloom and have been all winter. Or
ange trees with ripe fruit and green
fruit on them at the same time. l
think now that | will come to Iowa
with the next equinox and bring
some warm weather with me to Viola
township and Audubon county.
j. c. BOnwell.