Now, however, the "big noise" of the sugar beet is heard in the land and the old order is changing. In 1918, automatic beet dumps were constructed at Oshkosh and Perm and numerous tracts of from twenty to two hundred acres were planted, to beets. The yield was so satisfactory that in the year 1919 the acreage was greatly increased, and the sugar beet industry is with us to stay. The 1919 crop was about 15,000 tons.

The favorite crops for rotation with beets are alfalfa, oats, corn, millet, cane, and potatoes. The people here are rapidly learning ir-

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

rigation. and some of the same freeholders who were formerly content with a crop of less than a ton of wild hay per acre, now grumble if the same acre produces less than twenty tons of beets. Of course the new industry has brought in many new settlers of many kinds and nationalities, and it has boosted the price of land until it looks as if a man must needs be rich before he should think of buying a farm.

No doubt most of the whole valley of the North Platte is good, but if there is any place more worthy to be called the garden spot of the great plains, than Garden county's irrigated belt, we know not the name of that place.

"Where once the redskin to the death. Fought pioneer and scout, The Swede with non alcoholic breath. Sets rows of cabbage out."

However our champion cabbage raiser is Japanese, Mr. I. Ibata, and he makes a success of it every year. As a side issue he raises a few car loads of potatoes. His farm lies n short distance northwest of Lewellen.