The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1923-03-02
SPOKANE WRITER
LAIIDS OIL FIELD
TELLS OF THE WONDERFUL DE-
tELOPMENT THAT Is OCCUR
RING IN THE NORTH
impressed With BuIging Bank Cof-
fers and Sharp Advance in Realty
Values; Counted 80 Derricks OF
Oil Wells.

Bank Golfers are bullying and rea
estate booming in that good ole
SHELBY town, according to Dan G
Batchelor in the Spokane Spokes
man-Review, as result of the oil
fields of less than one year old.
Eighteen months ago, land could
be bought on Main street of this town
at $40 front foot, says the Batchel-
or story Today it is snapped up al
800.
AT that time, you could rent the
best building on Main street at $50
month. Here today building with
central entrance and a one room
office on each side was lease at
$3.50 a month.
Folks in Spokane who have wor-
r1ed at high rents and lack of suit
able property for homes should see
Shelby, says Bachelor. Two years
ago, three ramshackle hotels on a
good day would have occupants
enough to fill one of them, perhaps,
II the transients were all assembled
under one roof. Today, these hostel
ries have all been enlarged and i'm
proved, and there Is now being fin
1shed two story brick hotel-the
New Rainbow-which will soon be
opened and will double the hotel ca
pacity of the town. There isn't
house in town that can be rented at
any figure within reason and realty
men are doing literally a land office
business in disposing of city lots that
lie IN some cases nearly mile from
Main street.
Bunks in Rear Offices
Consider the predicament of the
transient visitor. Until recently, the
Pullman company had two sleepers
on side tracks of the Great Northern
railway, and every night each berth
had its tenant. Every office has its
back room filled with double-decker
bunks, and every night every bunk
Is slept in. Tents and tepees may be
all right in the summer, but you
cant use when blizzard sweeps
across the prairie. SO Shelby is do
ing the best it can.
AS to housing conditions, things1
are just the same in Sunburst, some
22 miles north, and at Sweet Grass,
which lies against the Canadian line
also in Toole county.
A visit to each of these towns gives |
you some idea of the boom that is on
AS you walk down the streets your
footsteps are kept time with by the |
5taccato beats of the hammer, or the |
whine of the handsaw. Buildings are |
being lifted from their foundations |
On nearby farms and moved into |
these towns. Other buildings in the |
towns are being bodily transported,
1ither and yon.
Bank Golfers Full
The Sunburst State bank In its
Attest statement listed $4,000 CAPT
al, and resources of within a few
dollars of $154,000. And its adver-
isement, signed by Nat Taylor, it's
closes with this statement:
The assets of this bank are such that
can pay every depositor in full at
ny time" This is true of this bank
nd, according to DR.. Henry Beaupre,
IS president, it is true of every one
t the other half dozen banks in the
hree towns.
This is a condition which, of
curse, ought to be, and therefore it
! the more remarkable when, as I
ave been repeatedly told here in the
lst two days, nearly every one of
ne banks in question was in bad
nape just two years ago.
The delinquent tax list of Toole
ounty for the year 1920, printed in
le Sweet Grass Advocate in Decem-
or, 1921, contained IA solid pages
names, and the amounts involved
Y the list aggregated more than $2,-
100000. Last December the same
ewspaper published the delinquent
st for 1921, and the names occu-
ed seven pages, just half the space
'quired the previous year.
Able to Pay Mortgages
James A. Johnson, mayor of Shell /.
Z, says that in the last eight months
ore than 200 mortgages have been :