Among the settlers there was practically no money and all business was carried on by barter. Posts, wood, or the bones of dead animals were traded for groceries and supplies, as the merchants of the early days took anything for which they could find a market. Out on the north divide, there were hundreds of people in the same condition, among them Herman Kuehnn, Anton Hatterman, August Fonnarder, Syver Johnson, John Elmquist, Peter Soderquist, Frank Johnson, and many, many others. They had to haul water from ten to eighteen miles, from Big Springs, or Ash Hollow, for family use and stock because they did not have the money for a well or equipment after they had one; the water supply on the tables being two hundred or more feet clown in the ground.

Jim Pindell had a well drill but he could not operate without money and though willing to work for the people who needed water could not do it for nothing. However, occasionally a settler would trade around or "jockey" and finally get a well, and when this was done the owner would try and make up for the cost by charging for the water. However, water for domestic uses was rarely denied if a person did not have the pay for it, but stock water was sometimes as high as seventy-five cents a barrel. One time Adam Zimmerman went to Colorado to work to earn some money and in a month had earned twenty dollars, but his expenses going and coming cost seventeen dollars so he was not much better off. Another time a neighbor hired him for a day and gave him a rooster for pay, which died on the way home.