%523.  The New Northwest.%—­When the census was taken in 1860, so few people were living in what are now Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho that they were not counted.  In Dakota there were less than 5000 inhabitants.  The discovery of gold and silver did for these territories what it had done for Colorado.  It brought into them so many miners that in 1870 the population of these four territories amounted to 59,000.  Between Lake Superior (where in the midst of a vast wilderness Duluth had just been laid out on the lake shore) and the mining camps in the mountains of Montana, there was not a town nor a hamlet. (There were indeed a few forts and Indian agencies and a few trading posts.) Northern Minnesota was a forest, into which even the lumbermen had not gone.  The region from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains was the hunting ground of the Sioux, and was roamed over by enormous herds of buffalo.

%524.  The Northern Pacific Railroad.%—­But this great wilderness was soon to be crossed by one of the civilizers of the age.  After years of vain effort, the promoters of the Northern Pacific began the building of their road in 1870, and pushed it across the plains till Duluth and St. Paul were joined with Puget Sound.  As it went further and further westward, emigrants followed it, towns sprang up, and cities grew with astonishing rapidity.

%525.  The New States.%—­Idaho, which had no white inhabitants in 1860, had 32,000 in 1880; Montana had 39,000 in 1880, as against none in 1860.  Kansas in twenty years increased her population four fold, and Nebraska eight fold.  This was extraordinary; but it was surpassed by Dakota, whose population increased nearly ten fold in ten years (1870-1880), and in 1889 was half a million.  The time had now come to form a state government.  But as most of the people lived in the south end of the territory, it was cut in two, and North and South Dakota were admitted into the Union as states on the same day (November 2, 1889); Montana followed within a fortnight, and Idaho and Wyoming within a year (July, 1890).  The four territories, in which in 1860 there were but 5000 white settlers, had thus by 1890 become the five states of North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, with a population of 790,000.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Colorado was admitted to the Union in 1876, Washington in 1889 (November 11); and Utah, the forty-fifth state, in 1896, under a constitution forever prohibiting polygamy.]

%526.  Wheat Farms and Cattle Ranches.%—­Such a rush of people completely transformed the country.  The “Great American Desert” was made productive.  The buffaloes were almost exterminated, and one now is as great a curiosity in the West as in the East.  More than 7,000,000 were slaughtered in 1871-1872.  In lieu of them countless herds of cattle and sheep, and fields of wheat and corn, cover the plains and hills of the Northwest.  In 1896 Montana contained 3,000,000 sheep, and Wyoming and Idaho each over 1,000,000.  In the two Dakotas 60,000,000 bushels of wheat and 30,000,000 of corn were harvested.  Many of the farms are of enormous size.  Ten, twenty, thirty thousand acre farms are not unknown.  One contains 75,000 acres.