Albuquerque Citizen

ARE GATHERING FOR BIG LAND RUSH

Rosebud Reservation Will be Opened Monday and Thousands Seek Homes There.

Dallas, S. D., Oct. 2.—By thousands and by tens of thousands the homesteaders are gathering here for the "land rush" to the Rosebud Indian reservation tract.

Between next Monday, October 5, and October 17, some 838,000 acres of farm, pasture and timber land will be offered at $6 an acre. For many days the seekers have been coming to Dallas. Trains have been crowded. Many have scorned steam, toiling across the plains in prairie schooners, living the nomad life.

The nomad life must continue for thousands after they arrive here. This town has a population of about 2,000. It is a matter of history that 160,000 people registered at El Reno, Okla., in 1901, for the lands opened there. Four years ago 106,000 registered for the Gregory county lands near those now sought.

So it is that Dallas is today a city of many times 2,000 people, of whose inhabitants are living in tents or shacks, cooking in the open, eating under the blue sky, and, some of them, sleeping out of doors.

From comparatively nearby towns comes family after family, its household goods loaded on wagons, whose weary horses crawl to some appointed spot on the outskirts of this city of a day, where the travelers disembark and wait patiently.

Applications may be filed at Dallas and at Gregory, S. D., from October 5 to 17. On October 19 the lottery drawing will be held, to determine who of the pilgrims may enter claims and who—a vast majority—have had their journey and their hardships in vain.

All those who draw numbers lower than 4001 will be notified to appear at some future date, probably in March, 1909, when each of the fortunate ones will be permitted to enter one quarter section, or less, at $6 per acre. Those who draw numbers from 4001 to 6000 will report later, to enter any left-over lands, at $4.50 per acre.

That part of the Rosebud reservation to be opened for settlement is known as Tripp county, and is 62 miles long by 34 miles wide. In round numbers there will be about 5,000 farms of 160 acres each.

The soil is a deep, rich black loam, founded on a subsoil of clay of usual depth. It is very fertile, easy to cultivate and produces every cereal and vegetable indigenous to the climate and soil of the middle states, and also grows a luxurious, native buffalo grass that fattens cattle on the range for market.

The county is threaded with streams and running springs providing water in abundance for all necessary purposes. Pure well water is found in sufficient quantity at a depth of 20 to 30 feet, and several artesian wells secure an excellent flow of water at 700 feet.

There are several quarter sections subject to entry that have houses, barns and outbuildings which were formerly the property of the ranchmen who leased the land from the government for grazing purposes before it was divided into farms for settlers. The farmer who draws one of these quarter sections will have a prize in buildings, in addition to his land, worth all the way from $1,000 to $2,000.

The government has laid out a number of town sites, and the person who draws a quarter section adjoining a town will secure a prize worth a small fortune. Miss Miller, who drew No. 1 at the Lawton, Okla., drawing in 1901, was offered $20,000 for her quarter section, which joined the city limits of Lawton. It was platted into town lots and brought a fabulous price.

And the homeseekers by hundreds and by thousands sit at the gates and wait and hope.

Timber is found along the White Moccasin creek, Cottonwood creek and Willow creek in sufficient quantities to provide the settlers with fuel, which is quite an item of expense in a new country, where the coal man charges the settler $13 per ton for hard coal, $9 per ton for soft coal, and $35 to $39 per thousand for lumber.

Government land is becoming scarcer every year. These South Dakota acres are much more valuable today than the price Uncle Sam asks for them.