The Kevin review. [volume] (Kevin, Mont.) 1922-1929, 1923-03-01
WRITER
LAUDS OIL FIELD
TELLS OF THE WONDERFUL DE-
VELOPMENT THAT is OCCUR
RING IN THE NORTH
impressed With Bullying Bank Cof-
fers and Sharp Advance in Realty
Values; Counted 80 Derricks OF
Oil Wells.

Bank Golfers are bullying and real
estate booming in that good old
Snelby town, according to Dan C.
Bachelor in the Spokane Spokes-
man-ReV1ew, as a result of the oil
fields OF less than one year old.
Elghteen months ago, land could
be bought on Main street of this town
at $40 a front foot, says the Batchel-
or story. Today it is snapped up at
800.
At that time, you could rent the
best building On Main street at $50
q month. Here today a building with
a central entrance and a Que room
office on each side was lease1 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
enough to fill one of them, perhaps.
if 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
ished a 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 a
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 a mile from
Main street.
Bunks in Rear Offices
Consider the p~redicament 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
hunks, and every night every bunk
is slept in. Tents and tepees may be
all right in the summer, but you
can't use when a blizzard sweeps
across the prairie. So Shelby is do
ing the best it can.
AS to housing conditions, things
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.
you walk down the streets your
footsteps are kept time with by the
beats of the hammer, or the
whine of the handsaw. Buildings are
being lifted from their foundations
nearby farms and moved into
.hese towns. Other buildings in the
owns are being bodily transported,
lither and yon.
Bank Golfers Full
The Sunburst State bank in its
atest statement listed $4,000 CAPT
al, and resources of within q few
of $154,0O0. And its adver-
isement, signed by Nat Taylor, its
asher, closes with this statement:
The assets of this bank are such that
t can pay every depositor in full at
ny time" This is true of this bank i
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 I
) the more remarkable when, as I :
ave been repeatedly told here in the
asst two days, nearly every one of :
be banks in question was in bad =
hape just two years ago.
The delinquent tax list of Toole
ounty for the year 1920, printed in /
be Sweet Grass Advocate in Deem :
er, 1921, contained IA solid pages :
f names, and the amounts involved
y the list aggregated more than $2,- !
$1,000. Last December the same
ewspaper published the delinquent
st for 1921, and the names occu-
led seven pages, just half the space +
the previous year.
Able to Pay Mortgages :
James A. Johnson, mayor of Shell :
Y, says that in the last eight months I
lore than 200 mortgages have been :