The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

(COPY)

North Platte, Nebr., March 5, 1900.

Mr. Charles F. Manderson,

Omaha, Nebr.

My Dear General:

I have spent most of the past winter and fall in the Big Horn Basin. In October General Miles and a party of eastern gentlemen were my guests. They went wild over the beauties and possibilities of the basin and the mountains; in fact, they were so well pleased, that General Miles and five of his friends bought ranches and will stock them with cattle and horses. When such a man as General Miles selects a home for himself in any one portion of our great west, it speaks volumes for that favored location, for no one knows our great west better than he.

I have lately been all over the basin with both of the delegations sent there by the Mormon Church. They were immensely pleased with the country for agricultural and stock raising. The Mormon colony that settled in the basin five years ago has been the most prosperous of any Mormon colony settling in the far west. Apostle Woodruff, who was the leader of the last delegation said that if a railroad was built into the basin that many thousands of their people would move at once to the basin, and go to farming and stock raising, but without a railroad, only a small number would come as it would take a railroad to move the crops for any great number of farmers.

Mines are being discovered: copper, gold, lead, coal, and every kind of building stone from the finest marble down. The mountains and canyons are covered with splendid timber. The Shoshone River alone, a tributary of the Big Horn River, will furnish water enough to irrigate four hundred thousand acres of the richest farming land in the world, and the very richest portion of American only waits a railroad. There is still room for many thousands of cattle, horses, and sheep. Stockmen will graze their stock on the grasses during the summer and fatten them for market from hay and grain raised by farmers, then the railroad moves it east. The very richest sugar beets has been raised in the Big Horn Basin; sugar beet factories are waiting to build there; brewery syndicates are waiting to build malt houses there; cities and towns will spring up; it will be by far the nearest route into the great National Park. There will be a good wagon road build from the town of Cody into the Park soon. The great hot and cold springs will attract thousands as soon as there is a railroad.

What are the stockholders of the Burlington thinking of?

Sincerely yours,

(Sgd.) W. F. Cody

Banner image: Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, U.S.A.; Original Buffalo Bill Museum Collection, P.69.118