valley when properly cultivated, excluding from the calculation the advance in price of land, and that the valley is one of the best in the United States for profitable farming.

Moorhead was the terminus of the Northern Pacific railroad for a period of two years, and a large amount of freight was transferred at that point for transportation down the Red river to Winnipeg and other places. At that time nine steamers were plying on the river, and a number of flatboats were used in connection. An eye witness has informed me that he has seen as many as eleven hundred Mennonite immigrants camped at Moorhead and bound for Manitoba and the Northwest Territory, who pitched their tents on the banks of the Red River, awaiting transportation by boat down.

In May, 1871, there were a few settlers at Glyndon, Muskoda, and Hawley, and a few along the Red river within the present limits of Clay county. The very earliest settlements were made at Georgetown by Adam Stein, R. M. Probstfield, and E. R. Hutchinson, who became husbandmen and tillers of the soil. We have the gratification of knowing that they are still livfng witnesses of the fertility of the Red River valley soil and the healthfulness of the climate, and moreover of the fecundity of mankind when under the influence of both these. Mr. Hutchinson is the father of seventeen children, Mr. Probstfield of thirteen, and Mr. Stein of eight.

It may be of interest to my hearers to learn the particulars as to how it happened that these three pioneers drifted into what is now one of the most famous agricultural regions in the world, but which was then a dreary waste uninhabited save by Indians and roamed by wild beasts. In March, 1859, a party of capitalists, consisting in part of Messrs. Peter Poncin, Welch, and Bottineau, of Minneapolis, and Barneau, John Irvine, and Freudenreich, of St. Paul, explored the Red river country; and their investigations convinced them that a point at the mouth of the Sheyenne river, about fourteen miles north of the present site of Moorhead, was the head of navigation of the Red river, and they judged that it was the natural point for a townsite. They therefore covered a plot of land at the point named on the Minnesota ̧ side of the Red river with scrip, and laid out a town which they named La Fayette, and they sold a great many shares in this

townsite to parties east. On the site they built a large log house, which they intended for a tavern. At this time Mr. Probstfield was in business at St. Paul in partnership with George Emerling, and the townsite owners induced Mr. Probstfield to go up to La Fayette. He remained there for a year or more and soon after preëmpted a claim on the south side of Buffalo river, not far from Georgetown. In 1864 he went into the employ of the Hudson Bay Company at Georgetown, where they had a warehouse and trading post.

Mr. Stein was induced in July, 1859, to go to La Fayette, and he afterwards preêmpted a claim near Georgetown. His first work was in cutting prairie grass and making hay, which he sold to the Hudson Bay Company; and later he worked in erecting buildings at Georgetown for that company. In December, 1861, Mr. Stein enlisted as a soldier in the Fourth Minnesota regiment and served through the Civil war. After his return from the war, he settled on land near the Hudson Bay Company's buildings at Georgetown, and has been a farmer there ever since.

The first steamboat on the Red river was built at La Fayette, the materials for which were transported across the country from Crow Wing on the Mississippi, where the steamer North Star was broken up for that purpose. The new boat was named the Anson Northup. With the party who came across the country with those materials was E. R. Hutchinson, who helped to build the boat, and for a number of years he was engaged in boating on the Red river and building boats thereon and also on the Saskatchewan. Mr. Hutchinson afterward became a farmer and preëmpted land not far from the old site of La Fayette, where he now lives. I have related in another place how Mr. Probstfield became one of the first farmers in the valley. Besides these three men on the north of the line of the Northern Pacific railroad there were on the south Jens Anderson and his brother, about three miles south of Moorhead. Ole Thompson made settlement about the same time on the river about eleven miles south.

Early in the spring of 1871 Henry A. Bruns went from St. Cloud to Brainerd, which was then the western end of the Northern Pacific railroad track. From Brainerd he rode to Oak Lake, at the engineers' headquarters of the road, where he met Gen. Thomas L. Rosser. The Northern Pacific had surveyed its line

to the Red rivei a point some twenty-eight miles below Moorhead. Mr. Bruns was prospecting, looking for business chances. He then returned to St. Paul, bought a load of provisions and ready-made clothing, and hauled them to the Red river. Where Mr. Probstfield's house now stands (about three and a half miles north of Moorhead), he found an encampment of tents, and here he met H. G. Finkle, J. B. Chapin, and John Haggert. This was about June, 1871. Mr. Bruns opened out his goods in a tent, and formed a partnership with Mr. Finkle. They remained at this point (Oakport) until September, when, the townsite of Moorhead having been staked out, all those at Oakport removed thereto. At Moorhead they did business in tents all winter. In March, 1872, Mr. Bruns went to McCauleyville and bought a lot of lumber, hired teams, and hauled it to Moorhead. Bruns & Finkle then erected a frame building, of 21 by 50 feet. They continued to do business in this building until 1877, when they built a large brick store.

We have given this somewhat lengthy introduction of Mr. Bruns into this history for the reason that he was a pioneer in promoting the industry of wheat raising in the Red River valley. In the winter of 1871-2, Mr. Bruns purchased 500 bushels of seed wheat, which he gathered along the Minnesota river and farther south and east, and transported it hundreds of miles by sleds, which wheat he distributed among the farmers of Clay and Norman counties, Minnesota, and Cass and Traill counties, Dakota. The facilities for raising wheat that year being poor and the grasshoppers very destructive, there was no surplus from the harvest in excess of the amount required for seed the next year. Early in 1874, Mr. Bruns organized a stock company which erected the first flouring mill and sawmill. This mill soon demonstrated that the wheat of the valley was of superior quality for making strong flour and excellent bread. The flour was awarded the first premium at the Minneapolis and Minnesota State fairs two consecutive seasons. The sawmill cut timber for the construction of the steamboats, the Minnesota and Manitoba, built at Moorhead in 1875, by the Merchants' Transportation Company, of which James Douglas, brother of John Douglas of St. Paul, was president. They were the best boats ever on Red river. This assisted in opening up Manitoba and the Northwest Territory markets.

Later the Upper Missouri and Black Hills countries were secured, and later still the Yellowstone country, as markets for the flour of this mill. It created a market for the wheat produced within a wide radius, and for a number of years took all that was offered, rarely giving less than $1 per bushel.

In 1878, Bruns and Finkle, seeing the necessity for more storage for the rapidly increasing production of wheat, erected a large steam elevator at Moorhead, with a capacity of 110,000 bushels. It was the first steam elevator built in the Red River valley. Mr. Bruns informs the writer that in the fall of 1873 he shipped the first carload of wheat from the Red river to lake Superior, which, by personal hard work in cleaning, was graded No. 2, though it certainly was No. 1, none like it ever having been shipped in the history of the world before. Mr. Bruns, in a personal letter, says: "In the fall of 1874 I commenced to grind about all the wheat then grown in the Red River valley, and in the fall of 1875 I gathered wheat and other grain, not as before by the thousand but by the tens of thousands of bushels, and with wheat and flour of my own grinding supplied the Canadian government and Mennonites with seed and bread throughout Manitoba."

Of the pioneer farmers who broke land extensively and opened farms in Clay county are John and Patrick H. Lamb, Franklin J. Schreiber, G. S. Barnes, Lyman Loring, George M. Richardson, Capt. W. H. Newcomb, A. M. Burdick, W. J. Bodkin, and Charles Brendemuehl.

EARLY WHEAT RAISING NEAR FORT ABERCROMBIE,

Wheat was grown near Abercrombie, on the east or Minnesota side of the river, in what is now Wilkin county, about as early as anywhere in the valley, except in the Selkirk settlement and in Pembina county, North Dakota, then the Territory of Dakota. Probably the first man to sow and harvest wheat in the upper or southern part of the valley was Hon. David McCauley. I append herewith his narrative just as he has given it to me.

"I came to Abercrombie July 17, 1861, to act as post sutler, postmaster, and agent for the Northwestern Transportation Company. In the spring of 1862, I sowed a few acres of barley,

planted potatoes, and opened up a garden, which were destroyed by the Indians in August. In the spring of 1864, I crossed over on the Minnesota side of the river opposite to the fort and commenced farming. In 1865 I sowed some seventy-five acres of oats and planted a few acres of potatoes, and continued to sow and plant the same crops until 1871. There was no market for wheat until that time, nor until the railroad reached Moorhead or Breckenridge. In the spring of 1872 I put in a few acres of wheat, and have continued the same up to the present time. This season (1899) I raised 10,000 bushels of wheat. In the earlier years the yield of wheat was about the same as now. The land that I cultivated in 1865 has been cropped every year since except three, and the yield in 1899 was as good as I have known it. I know of no wheat being sown in the valley earlier than mine. The following are some of the men who sowed wheat soon after I did: Edward Connolly and Mitchell Robert, Breckenridge; Loure Bellman, J. R. Harris, and J. B. Welling, McCauleyville; Frank Herrick and John Eggen, Abercrombie. In the early days the only market for oats and potatoes was Fort Abercrombie.”

DEVELOPMENT BY RAILROADS.

Prior to 1878 there were no settlements away from the Red, Red Lake, and Pembina rivers, in the lower or northern portion of the valley, so that, in treating of the Minnesota side north of the Northern Pacific railroad, it is apparent that no wheat was grown on that side (except near Moorhead) until the completion of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba railroad (now the Great Northern) to St. Vincent, when immigration set in, bringing settlers to many stations, who at once began to break land and sow it to wheat. The district between the railroad and Red river was first settled.

It is a fact, which none will dispute, that the building of railroads into and through the valley has been the most important factor in settling the country and developing the resources of this fertile plain. Without these it would today be practically unpopulated and undeveloped, as it remained for fifty years after the Selkirk settlers had demonstrated its adaptability to cultivation.