The Church on the Changing Frontier Part 3

The capital was removed to Virginia City in 1865, but not until 1882 did Dillon become the county seat. The boundaries of Beaverhead changed very little until 1911, when 938 square miles of Madison County, 600,320 acres in all, were annexed. Men began settling on the land west of Bannock as early as 1862; stock men mainly with herds. A few farmers also began to take up choice bits of land along the rivers. The railroad, then the Utah Northern, entered from the south in 1879. As it was being built, tent towns were established every fifty miles. One of these towns was never moved and grew into the present town of Dillon.

The first attempt to open up to the white man the land along the Powder and Lower Tongue Rivers, in what is now Sheridan County, was made by General Patrick E. Conner on August 29, 1865, and was eminently successful. He attacked the Arapahoe Indians with a force of 250 regular soldiers and successfully routed seven hundred warriors. The next effort ended, however, in disaster. On the twenty-first day of December, 1866, at a point on Sheridan's southern boundary now known as Ma.s.sacre Hill, eighty-two officers and men sacrificed their lives to the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes in attempting to open a road across the country from Fort Laramie to Montana.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LONELINESS IN UNION COUNTY

The black spot in the center of this not very attractive picture is a squatter's hut.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AFTER SOME YEARS

In contrast with the top picture is this one of an attractive farmhouse which shows what can be done on the plains of New Mexico.]

The first claim ever taken up in this region was in 1878, on Little Goose Creek, near Big Horn, and the first irrigation ditch was constructed the next year. Big Horn was laid out in 1880, and the first store opened. The first newspaper in the county was the Big Horn _Sentinel_, and the first agricultural fair was held in Big Horn in 1885. The first cabin was built on the present site of Sheridan City in 1878. Sheridan was laid out in 1882 and incorporated as a city in 1884. Until 1881, the territory contained in Johnson and Sheridan Counties was unorganized and had no county government, but lay within the jurisdiction of Carbon County courts. It became Johnson County in 1881. In 1887 it was divided by popular vote, the northern portion being named Sheridan County in memory of the gallant General Phil Sheridan, whose army, in the 1881 expedition, camped on the site of Sheridan City.

Union County, in centuries past the camping grounds of vanished tribes, is now white man's country, but it did not become so until the Santa Fe trail opened the great Southwest. With the Rabbit Ear Mountains to guide settlers the old trail came across Union County, untravelled until 1822, and finally, two years later, the first wagons crept slowly westward, facing in that pioneer mood now become historic the hards.h.i.+ps of climate and the perils of hostile redskins. In Union County the story survives of a ma.s.sacre by Indians, which accounts for the tardy white settlements in this region.

In 1870, there were about a dozen homes of white settlers in the whole area. The railroad, in 1887-88, encouraged development which began with Clayton a year later. In February, 1893, the Territorial Legislature incorporated into Union County parts of Colfax, Mora and San Miguel. The original boundaries of Union County were not changed until 1903, when 265 square miles were added to Quay County. Beginning in the northern part of the county and gradually working southwards, stockmen took up claims close to water and used public land for grazing. Up to about 1900, most of the territory remained open range land in which cattle were raised on a large scale, but since that time, it has gradually been homesteaded.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO COMMUNITY CENTERS

The local store and the school of De Grey community, Hughes County, S. D., the only meeting places for widely scattered "neighbors."]

The section around Pierre, in Hughes County, was the oldest settlement in the State of South Dakota. Fort Pierre, across the river from Pierre, was established in 1817, and there was continuous settlement after that. At the conclusion of the Red Cloud War of 1866-68, the Laramie Treaty with the Sioux Indians established a great Sioux reservation embracing all the land west of Missouri, from the Niobrara River on the south to the Cannon Ball River on the north and northwest, to the Yellowstone. This reservation lay unbroken until 1876, the year when the Indians surrendered the Black Hills. When the gold rush to the Black Hills began, Fort Pierre was the nearest settled point and the traffic center. Because the railroad had no right of way through the reservation, the line could not be extended to the Black Hills.

The first permanent American settlement in Hughes County was made in 1873, when Thomas L. Riggs established the Congregational Indian Mission at Oahe, where he still continues a church. When the railway reached Pierre in 1881, there came the first "boom" in the history of the county. All sorts and conditions of people took up half sections, and Hughes County was almost homesteaded between the years 1881 and 1883. The second boom came in the years 1899-91, later followed by a reaction and slump. About the year 1903, Pierre was selected as the State capital. All sorts of efforts were made to steal the honor for some other town until in 1905 a bill provided for a capitol building at Pierre which was completed in 1913. The railway began in 1906 to extend to the Black Hills. Thereafter, until 1910, all the region west of Missouri was settled, and practically all of these new settlers came through Pierre. In 1911 the construction was finished, people were out of work, and there came another slump. There was also a drought during the period 1911-12-13.

Transportation and Roads

There is practically no compet.i.tion between railroads in any of these counties. Each has one main line running through it, along which are located the county seat and other smaller centers. Beaverhead has the Oregon Short Line; Sheridan the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Hughes the Chicago & Northwestern; and Union the Colorado & Southern. Three counties also have small sections of branch lines, and Sheridan has twelve miles of trolley line giving city service, and reaching all but one of the mining camps to the north of Sheridan City. None of these counties has really adequate train service. The distance from markets thus becomes an acute problem in certain parts of all four counties, but especially in Beaverhead, Sheridan and Union on account of their greater distances.

Each county has at least one good stretch of road. A large proportion of the crossroads have never been improved. Many of them are only trails.

Beaverhead has 2,365 miles of roads, of which 1,500 miles are improved and 865 are unimproved. Approximately $278,147.00 has been spent on roads in the last five years. The combined length of public roads in Sheridan County is 796 miles. Five miles are hard-surfaced, five are red shale, seventeen are gravel, 150 are State Highway and 410 are legally established traveled roads, sixty-six feet wide and dragged when necessary. There are also 200 miles of unimproved roads known as "feeders." During the last five years, approximately $310,000.00 has been spent on county roads, not including the amount spent on State roads. Both Sheridan and Beaverhead are fortunate in their location on highways leading to Yellowstone Park; Beaverhead is on the Western Park-to-Park highway, and Sheridan is on the Custer Battlefield highway.

During the past four years roads in Union County have improved. The Colorado to Gulf highway from Galveston to Denver, enters the county at Texline and continues for seventy-five miles to the Colfax County line northwest of Des Moines. This is graded road and it is maintained partly by the Federal Government, which pays 50 per cent., and partly by the State and county which pay 25 per cent. each. There are 180 miles of State highways in the county for which the State and county each pay 50 per cent. Two Federal Aid projects are also under way in the county at present. Something over 650 miles of roads are maintained by the county, and there are about 2,000 miles of community roads which are dependent upon local care.

The total road mileage of Hughes County is 978, with no hard-surfaced but with four miles of gravel roads, and 175 miles of other improved roads.

There are also 799 miles of unimproved road. Forty-five miles of highway have been built by the State between Pierre and Harrold and are maintained by the county.

The People

All these counties were settled chiefly by homesteaders who came from all over the United States, but chiefly from the Middle West and Southwest.

Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma are the states most widely represented. A great many are children of original homesteaders.

The breathless haste with which settlers occupied and developed this great primeval region of the West, rich in natural resources, is shown by the following figures of population:

Beaverhead Hughes Sheridan Union 1870 722 1880 2,712 262 1890 4,655 5,044 1,972 1900 5,615 3,684 5,122 4,528 1910 6,444 6,271 16,324 11,404 1920 7,369 5,711 18,132 16,680

The greatest period of growth for Beaverhead was from 1870 to 1880; for Hughes from 1880 to 1890; but both Union and Sheridan made their largest increase from 1900 to 1910, while Beaverhead during those years has made a slow, steady gain.

Hughes has had "booms," and has gained and lost population in succeeding decades. Sheridan and Union, the newer counties, have forged rapidly ahead of the others in population. Sheridan, on account of her city, has made a rapid urban increase, but her rural increase has been slow and steady.

Union is a large county with no Forest Reserve area and has been homesteaded rapidly. Although, in 1903, 265 square miles were taken away from Union, the population in 1910 was 11,404, or an increase of 151.9 per cent. during the decade from 1900. The density of rural population per square mile in Beaverhead is 9.8, in Sheridan 3.5, in Hughes 3.3 and in Union 3.

The West has a smaller percentage of foreign-born population than the East or Middle West. In three of the states represented, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, the percentage of foreign-born has decreased in the last decade. In Montana, it decreased from 24.4 per cent. to 17 per cent.; in Wyoming, from 18.6 per cent. to 13 per cent.; and in South Dakota, from 17.2 per cent. to 12.9 per cent. New Mexico, with the smallest proportion of foreign-born of any of the four states, went from 6.9 per cent. in 1910 to 8 per cent. in 1920.

Sheridan, with 15.9 per cent., is the only one of the four counties studied whose foreign-born population remained constant. In Beaverhead, the proportion fell from 18.1 to 14, in Hughes from 11.4 to 8.1 and in Union from 2.2 to 1.7. The total number of foreign-born in all four counties is 4,670, or 9.7 per cent. of the total number of people. Germans predominate in Union, Hughes and Sheridan. In Beaverhead, the predominating nationalities are Danes, Swedes and Austrians. The New Americans in Beaverhead, Hughes and Union are largely on the land; in Sheridan County, the majority are in the mining camps.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SPANISH-AMERICAN TYPE AND A TYPICAL ADOBE HOUSE IN NEW MEXICO]

Less than one hundred Indians are reported in the combined four counties, and the number has been diminis.h.i.+ng in every county except Union.

Sixty-nine of the eighty-one reporting are in Hughes County, a small section of which is included in the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. But Hughes had 169 in 1910. Spanish-Americans in Union, a cross between Mexicans and Pueblo Indians (the Spaniards brought no women with them for 400 years), equal between one-fourth and one-third of the total population. They live chiefly in the south-central and southwestern sections of the county, and together with their habitations remind one of picturesque Mexico. Sheridan County has the largest proportion of negroes of any of the four counties--147 out of a total of 214; but these western states in general have only a small percentage of negroes in their population, varying from 1.6 per cent in New Mexico to 9.7 in Wyoming. The Chinese and j.a.panese in the four counties number, all told, less than 150.

Wide s.p.a.ces and Few People

County areas ordinarily group themselves into so-called "communities,"

where individuals share common social and economic interests centering in a definite locality. In this country, with its scattered pioneer population, community groupings are less definite and permanent than in the East or Middle West. Here they are usually determined by topography, and especially by the rivers and creeks and the railroad. Along the railroad are trade centers which serve the entire county. The majority of these communities are of small population and large area, with a small trading center containing stores, hotel, school, possibly a church or two and some houses huddled together. The county seat largely centralizes the life of each county.

Outside the trade centers and the open country area included within their community boundaries, the counties fall into certain social groupings.

Where the land is good, and is being intensively developed, there are well-defined permanent communities. Some have even grown staid and conservative. In other sections the story is pathetically different. One lonely family, a forlorn row of claim shacks along the horizon, are all that is left of a real social life that existed only a few years before. A woman standing at the door of the only habitation in a round of sky and stretch of plain, tells how "all the good neighbors are gone and us left grieving for the fine times we once had." Transiency is usual in homesteading country, many people only remaining long enough to homestead their land. In Beaverhead and Hughes, which have been longer homesteaded, there is a larger proportion of residents of more than fifteen years than in the other two counties. But in all four counties, there are temporary groups of people with some social life at present, which may or may not have significance in the future. On the whole, present development tends to be permanent because most of the desirable land in Beaverhead, Sheridan and Union, and all of the land in Hughes has long since been taken up. All community limits are more or less indefinite. For example, a rancher living near the boundary of two communities may go to two or more centers for trade. And a dance or barbecue will bring people from any number of the communities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE MAIN STREET MIGHT HAVE RUN

The hut of a lonely homesteader.]

County interests tend to become concentrated in increasing proportion in the county seat. Dillon, the Beaverhead County seat, is fairly well located in the central eastern section. It is considered one of the best business towns of the state, drawing trade from every point in Idaho.

Dillon is a retired ranchers' town, conservative and wealthy. Community spirit is not manifest. The old settlers run the town and are not friendly to the ideas of others. Even a Commercial Club has found it hard to survive in Dillon. Sheridan City, the county seat of Sheridan County, with a population of about 10,000, is wide-awake and progressive. Although there are a number of growing industries and it is a division point on the railroad, Sheridan is also dependent to a large extent upon farming.

Clayton, the county seat of Union, a town with a spirit of "boost,"

informs travellers by means of a bill board that it is "the smallest town on earth with a Rotary." Clayton's large proportion of transient population is at once typical of the frontier in its nonchalant spirit, in its cowboys with sombreros, jingling spurs and high-heeled boots that click along the pavements; it typifies the Range country in the canvas-covered wagons, coming in provided with camping outfits and rations to last for several days because "home" is far away. But all this is gradually changing, and Clayton is becoming more of a farming center, less like the frontier and more like the Middle West. Pierre, the Hughes County seat and State capital, is a busy town. It has a number of industries and is the center for an extensive farming and stock-raising region, but the capitol overshadows the rest of the town in importance.

Means of Livelihood

Cattle were once raised on a large scale in this country. That was the day of the cowboy. But with the coming of the homesteader and his fenced land, stock has had to be raised in smaller herds and more restricted areas. In the old days, there was a great deal of open range land. Most of this has now been homesteaded. Naturally the rancher has resented the steady appropriation of his "free range" by the farmer.

While cattle raising is still the chief source of income, there has been a steady gain in the relative value of farming, especially since the introduction of irrigation and dry-farming methods. About half the farm land in both Beaverhead and Sheridan is under irrigation, and there is some irrigated land in the northern part of Union, but practically no irrigation in Hughes County. Some dry farming is carried on in every section of each county. General farming and dairying rank next to stock raising. Hay and forage are the chief crops. Considerable farm land is fit only for range land for cattle; it is too broken or dry for crops.

Dairying is comparatively a new development.

Forest Reserve land in Beaverhead and Sheridan is allotted to ranches for cattle range. In Beaverhead National Forest, 10,530 acres have been homesteaded and seventy-five claims have been listed, chiefly in 160 acre tracts. Very little homesteading has been done in the Big Horn National Forest because the entire area is above the practical range of farm crops, and killing frosts occur every month in the year. In the entire forest, only about a dozen tracts have been taken under the homestead laws, averaging a little over one hundred acres each; all have been abandoned, except a few used as summer resorts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WYOMING RANCH

The home of a well-to-do rancher in Sheridan County.]

As is usually the case in frontier country, a large majority of the farms and ranches are operated by owners. South Dakota, at the threshold of the West, has a larger proportion of tenancy than any of the other states represented. The percentage in South Dakota is 34.9 per cent., in New Mexico it is 12.2 per cent., in Wyoming it is 12.5 per cent., and in Montana it is 11.3 per cent. In Beaverhead tenancy has decreased from 10.2 per cent. in 1910 to 7.2 per cent. in 1920. In Sheridan, it has remained about the same, 20.5 per cent. in 1910 and 20.4 per cent. in 1920. Hughes has had a marked increase--from 16.6 per cent. in 1910 to 30.9 per cent.