Even at the end of the nineteenth century, after agriculture was well advanced and stock and sheep raising introduced on a large scale, minerals continued to be the chief source of wealth in a number of states.  This was revealed by the figures for 1910.  The gold, silver, iron, and copper of Colorado were worth more than the wheat, corn, and oats combined; the copper of Montana sold for more than all the cereals and four times the price of the wheat.  The interest of Nevada was also mainly mining, the receipts from the mineral output being $43,000,000 or more than one-half the national debt of Hamilton’s day.  The yield of the mines of Utah was worth four or five times the wheat crop; the coal of Wyoming brought twice as much as the great wool clip; the minerals of Arizona were totaled at $43,000,000 as against a wool clip reckoned at $1,200,000; while in Idaho alone of this group of states did the wheat crop exceed in value the output of the mines.

[Illustration:  Photograph from Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.

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=Timber Resources.=—­The forests of the great West, unlike those of the Ohio Valley, proved a boon to the pioneers rather than a foe to be attacked.  In Ohio and Indiana, for example, the frontier line of homemakers had to cut, roll, and burn thousands of trees before they could put out a crop of any size.  Beyond the Mississippi, however, there were all ready for the breaking plow great reaches of almost treeless prairie, where every stick of timber was precious.  In the other parts, often rough and mountainous, where stood primeval forests of the finest woods, the railroads made good use of the timber.  They consumed acres of forests themselves in making ties, bridge timbers, and telegraph poles, and they laid a heavy tribute upon the forests for their annual upkeep.  The surplus trees, such as had burdened the pioneers of the Northwest Territory a hundred years before, they carried off to markets on the east and west coasts.

=Western Industries.=—­The peculiar conditions of the Far West stimulated a rise of industries more rapid than is usual in new country.  The mining activities which in many sections preceded agriculture called for sawmills to furnish timber for the mines and smelters to reduce and refine ores.  The ranches supplied sheep and cattle for the packing houses of Kansas City as well as Chicago.  The waters of the Northwest afforded salmon for 4000 cases in 1866 and for 1,400,000 cases in 1916.  The fruits and vegetables of California brought into existence innumerable canneries.  The lumber industry, starting with crude sawmills to furnish rough timbers for railways and mines, ended in specialized factories for paper, boxes, and furniture.  As the railways preceded settlement and furnished a ready outlet for local manufactures, so they encouraged the early establishment of varied industries, thus creating a state of affairs quite unlike that which obtained in the Ohio Valley in the early days before the opening of the Erie Canal.