From this it is easy to be seen that the owner of an irrigated farm in the North Platte valley will soon be rated among the most independent classes of our citizen's. From what has been said of the irrigated section, however, it must not be inferred that the farmers beyond or above the line of canals are not making good. It has been conclusively demonstrated in recent years that there are certain crops adapted to "dry land" farming, and which can be grown every year regardless of the scarcity of rainfall during that particular season. And the farmers who practice the method of soil culture conserve the moisture falling in the early spring or in the shape of snow during the winter, smile at dry seasons and are only glad of an opportunity to prove to the world that crop failures are unnecessary.

So kind has nature been in the matter of climate, sunshine and soil that in spite of periodical failures and the return of many a discouraged homesteader in early days the territory formerly known as Cheyenne county has long been spoken of as the "poorman's paradise." Many of those who abandoned the country because of the crop failures of earlier clays, returned later to say that there was a fascination which forced them to return and that they fared better here than they did after revisiting their earlier homes, and it can be said without an exception that the earlier settler who weathered the storms and retained his holdings here has become independent. In fact, there are no poor men in this country. Cheyenne county never had a poor farm. Morrill county has no need of an alms house and there is not a pensioner on the bounty of the county today. By cultivating a portion of the section of land which Uncle Sam in his bounty bestowed upon him. and by pasturing milch cows on the remainder of his land, the homesteader has attained a degree of independence which a landless man in the older sections of the country would labor years before reaching.