Cheyenne county had all of the river frontage within her limits well marked and covered and wherever a land owner or the land owners under any completed canal gave proper attention to the cultivation of the land and the irrigation of their crop, most satisfactory results were obtained. Railroads were quick to see the possibilities and they paralleled and crossed the valley. Towns sprang up. Manufacturing industries were established and many towns have been founded whose prosperity is evidenced by stores, schools and churches, followed by the establishment of electric lighting plants and city pumping stations. These features

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

astonish and challenge the admiration of persons from eastern states, who perhaps have lived in or else are familiar with towns of four times the population, whose inhabitants still grope their way home in darkness and go to their pumps for water. Science, too, has shown the settler beyond the valley, that many crops can be grown under proper attention that will pay the farmer as well here on land which can be purchased for one-fourth the price as does the farmer receive in the humid region. These results have attracted another set of homesteaders until practically all government land has been filed upon and our farmers as a class are as prosperous as those in the older sections of the state. With this renewed influx of home-makers and new railroads, came the feeling that we in the northern half of old Cheyenne county were too far removed from the county seat and as early as 1907 a properly signed petition for a division of the county was presented to the count}- commissioners, and when submitted received the requisite majority. The county was divided and a little mere than half of the original territory was organized into Morrill county.