The News And Herald

A PROPOSED TERRITORY

A bill is pending in Congress to erect the Black Hills country into a territory called Lincoln. It will be between the twenty-thirds and twenty-eighths meridians, and the forty-third and forty-ninth parallels, absorbing the western half of Dakota, and portions of Montana and Wyoming, and will contain 108,000 square miles, three times the area of South Carolina. The Black Hills proper are being rapidly developed. The gold mines yielded $2,000,000 in 1876, $5,000,000 last year, and the estimated yield for the present year is $10,000,000. Three thousand gold bearing lodes and three hundred silver lodes have been located and recorded. Coal, iron, copper and lead have also been found, as well as petroleum and saline springs. There are also within this eighty miles large placer mines which have heretofore yielded about one-half of the gold product of this country. Along this mineral region more than twenty thriving towns have sprung into existence, where all kinds of business are profitably being carried on. Banks, hotels, stores and many kinds of manufactories usually found in western cities and towns, are not wanting in the settlements of the Black Hills. Churches and school-houses already exist in considerable number and are being rapidly provided to meet the wants of the population. The country is covered with magnificent forests, and the soil is said to possess great fertility. "California Joe," an old miner and scout, remarked of this region, "There's gold from the grass-roots down, but there's more gold from the grass-roots up." The Black Hills are hundreds of miles from any other settlement, while the Black Hills delegate to the Dakota Legislature has to travel a thousand miles to reach Yankton, receiving two hundred dollars for mileage alone.