Some excellent alfalfa fields are in this part of the valley, and a sugar factory is one of the early anticipations after the advent of the railroad. It takes a long time to realize dreams, but the west was built by dreams.

There are living and active in business in the state capital, Lincoln, Nebraska, men who sat in the shadow of sod houses, and dreamed that some day there would be a railroad builded to the Salt Basin, and Lancaster Hill, now the city of Lincoln. It was then inland, and reached by trail wagons and stage.

Fifty years ago there lived in North Platte a dreamer by the name of J. B. Park. In 1870, he advocated through the columns of the Lincoln County Adventurer, the planting of sugar beets and lucerne. From France he imported some sugar beet seed which was the beginning of that crop which now runs to ten million dollars a year, in western Nebraska alone.

He also imported several bags of Chilian clover seed, thus planting the first alfalfa in Nebraska. In that day it was known as Lucerne, Chilan clover, or California clover, the name alfalfa coming into general use later on. It is difficult to estimate the value which Colonel Parks initiation has been to our community and commonwealth.

During the campaign of 1920, the output from the four sugar mills at Scottsbluff, Gering, Bayard and Mitchell will be approximately one thousand pounds of refined sugar every minute of the day and night, a total of some one hundred and fifty million pounds.