The Cheyenne Daily Leader

Across the Big Horn.

A Ride Over a Fertile and Picturesque Country.

A Racy Description of Many Points of Interest.

Geological Formation of the Basin Described.

Special Correspondence.

Hyattville, Johnson Co., Wyo., Aug. 21.—Jack Donahoe, deputy sheriff of Johnson county for the Big Horn Basin; Dick O'Sullivan, Frank Bull and a Leader correspondent left Buffalo about 4 o'clock Thursday afternoon to ride across the Big Horn Mountains. Eighteen or twenty miles brought the horsemen to the foot of the mountains, at a point close to the north fork of the Crazy Woman Creek. Then after a hard climb of a mile or two the road winds through a country more level than the plains below across beautiful parks, mountain streams and through fine groves to Mr. Grant's road ranch on a branch of the Crazy Woman 30 miles from Buffalo.

The ride from there made in daylight through the same kind of country 30 miles to the "Hay ranch" on Spring creek in the basin was a pleasant one. On the mountains we passed the round up of the Bay State outfit. They are gathering beeves which will soon be shipped from Suggs. The "Hog ranch" used to be kept by Phil DaFran. Cameron Bros. own it now and it is a granger ranch and stopping place combined. It is 9 miles from there south to the main Spring creek where Bob Walm, Joe Eroge and others have fine ranches. Five miles north over the main stage road is Canyon creek where Frank Simmons and partner have a fine ranch and Milo Burke has six or seven hundred acres of hay land. On this ranch a number of teams and men were busy putting up hay. Canyon creek is a curiosity in one way; it comes through a canyon out of the mountains, runs two or three miles and then through another and more rugged canyon runs back into the mountains to Ten Sleep creek. Ten Sleep creek, five miles north of Canyon creek is only three or four miles long from its canyon to its junction with Nowood and there is only about half a dozen ranches on it. The Ten Sleep valley is half a mile to a mile wide. Here is the home ranch of the Bay State Land and Cattle company, the only big cattle company now in this section. In size the ranches on Ten Sleep vary considerably. A. S. Austin owns 80 acres and Milo Burke 700 acres. The creek is said to have gotten its name from the fact that it took the Indians ten days to reach there from the Yellowstone. It is 20 miles from Ten Sleep to Hyattville, making this town 50 miles from Buffalo by the road though it is on a line just 51 miles west and a mile north.

Location and Formation.

Col. Sam Hyatt, who first settled here and for whom the town was named, has presided at the junction of Medicine Lodge and Paint Rock creeks for six years. At this point the two creeks are one-fourth of a mile apart and eight miles from the mountains. In fact most of the Basin settlements are around the outer edges of the basin and close up to the foot of the mountains. The soil so far as seen has a reddish cast, from the gypsum and triassic rocks through which the elements of time have woven their way, leaving great red ridges skirting the mountains and forming divides between the hundreds of crystal torrents that flow out of the mountains at intervals of only a few miles, are manipulated by the irrigator coursing the otherwise desert, to produce crops equal to any on earth.

Wyoming's Garden Spot.

The Big Horn basin farms and gardens are a surprise. Here one sees the regular old yellow dent corn and yellow pumpkin, the same as in Iowa or Missouri. Mr. Hyatt has raised sixty bushels of dent corn to the acre here, and 10,000 pounds of potatoes on half an acre of ground. On Ten Sleep they are using ripe tomatoes now, and here are onions, radishes, beans, peas, potatoes and roasting ears in abundance. This morning your correspondent walked through Mr. Hyatt's garden, and there saw radishes a foot long, good sized watermelons and muskmelons, and hills of potatoes where the ground was matted with great mealy fellows as large as a man's fist. Col. Hyatt, who has traveled quite extensively, says that nowhere that he has ever been has he seen vegetables equal in size and yield per acre to those raised in the basin. Here they raise pumpkins weighing 45 pounds, beets 24, turnips 17, radishes 5, and tomatoes 1 pound and over.

There is now a field of forty acres of oats near here which every one who has seen them says will go eighty bushels to the acre, and many say 100. Sugar cane, cabbage and in fact everything a person may plant, including small fruits and apples, yield abundantly. Wheat does well, but there is not a flouring mill in the basin. That this county cannot be beaten for raising all kinds of live stock goes without saying. There are plenty of trout in the streams, great quantities of timber, and game in the mountains, and in the basin thousands of acres of land yet unclaimed.

The Union Pacific is selling tickets to Chicago for $23.15.