The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1927-11-09
Old and New Northwest
(St. Paul Pioneer Press)


We who speak now of the northwest, know
ing full well that the term will be understood
to include Minnesota, Montana, North and
South Dakota, with parts Of contiguous states
this side of the Rocky mountains, might not
speak with such assurance were we to remem-
Der that it once applied to quite another re-
glon, which now no longer lays claim to the
appellation. The name northwest, like the
star of empire, moves westward.
There is movement afoot in Illinois. In
diana and Ohio to celebrate the birthday of
George Rogers Clark on November 10. 1t will
be the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary
OF the settlement of that first and older north
west, and the one hundred and seventy-fifth
anniversary of the birth of the explorer who
led the way to the settlement of those middle
west states and through whose activity their
territory was retained to the colonies in the
final settlement with Great Britain.
Viewing these states now with their indus
trial and agricultural development it is diff
cult to visualize them as a wilderness, where
buffalo abounded, where log cabins housed the
early settler and where the hardships of pio-
neering were met-and that so recently as $50
years ago. Yet it was into such an UNEMPLOYED
country that George Rogers Clark came at the
age of twenty and opened the way to settle
ment.
There is another assumption that we who
granted. William Clark, who opened the states
from Minnesota westward to the Rocky noun
tains, partner with Captain Meriwether Lewis
in the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of
1903, was not the only adventurer into the
wilderness. We have no monopoly of the
name. George Rogers Clark and William Clark
were brothers.. The former born in 1852,
opened the old northwest of Illinois, Indiana
and Ohio. The latter, born in ITO, opened the
new northwest from Minnesota westward
So, not only do we claim kinship by inheri-
lance of the name, northwest, with the middle
west region that first bore it, but we are, as
| it were, the heirs of these two brothers who.
forty years apart, led the van of civilization
first into the old and then into the new north
vests.
The old northwest is the elder brother of
the new. Sixty years is perhaps as fair fig
ure as can be set between the ages of the two
The elder has had the advantage Of that time
to reach its mature growth, to build rich and
great cities, to develop it's seemingly endless
resources and to become dominion that COM
pares with any on the globe in wealth and
prosperity.
What of the younger son? He has been
eating the husks of depression. But when was
1t otherwise that the younger son did not have
to take q little the worst of it, until he came
to manhood's estate and could assert his rights
and privileges?
The northwest Of today will be as great and
rich and populous as the northwest of yester-
day. Nor will it require the sixty years of
difference in age. The speed of this day is not
that of the ox-cart of 1772. This is the gaso-
line age and it moves on wings.
There still lie untouched millions Of tons of
iron under Minnesota soil; billions of tons of
Ignite in North Dakota; likewise untold stores
|of coal. copper and silver in Montana; and of
portland cement, silver, mica, gold and copper
under the frowning brows Of the Black Hills
is superior in fertility to that of-the old north
west furnishes sure foundation for the SUI
perstructure to come.
Men now living will see their three-quarters
|of million population rise, busting with the
industry that must supply the population Of
the plains. The smaller cities win grow, as
they have grown in the old northwest, from
their Thousands e their hundred thousands.
The inhabitant Of the new northwest han only
to turn his gaze eastward and zee ii the old
lnoEthvest IT, future 81 the new northwest.