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PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. An Intereiting Review by the Father of Great Falle. (By I'aiiis (tibhon.) In May, 1882, I first saw the upper fulls of the Missouri river nn<l wimt is now the townsite of Great Falls. I ap proached it from the east, and when I reached the summit about two and a half miles from the mouth oi Sun river, the view presented impressed me more than any other I have ever seen. The beauti ful Sun river valley, with the Rocky mountains in the distance, the plain which gradually descended to the water's edge, the Missouri, widening into a broad expanse at the head of the falls and re sembling a lake rather than a river, form ell a picture never to be forgotten. The scene impressed me, perhaps more strong ly from the fact that, save a solitary sheep herder, not a human being was visible in any direction. I rode forward to Prospect hill, opposite the mouth of Sun river, and then followed down the river bank to Black Kugle falls, the < liant spring and Rainbow falls. I then re turned to a point just below the railroad bridge and camped for the night. Except Lucas Connanz, who occupied a cabin on the west side of the river,there was NOT A SETTLER WITIII1T 10 OK 12 MILES of the Missouri falls: and this spot was the same in all respects as Lewis and flaike found it eighty-three years before, except that the buffalo herds had left it forever. I may be pardoned for staling that what I saw tin the first day of my visit to this place satisfied me beyond a doubt it was destined to become at no distant day A fillKAT INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS. I knew that there were near this spot fields of bituminous coal stretching for miles to the east and to the west, and I looked with wonder upon an available water power tar greater than any I had ever before seen. Having traveled over the surrounding country for three years previous, 1 knew something of the min ing resources and of the fertility of the country tributary. From that day I de cided to devote myself unremittingly to founding a town on this favored spot. •I A MES .1. IUI, I, INTEliKSTKII. If I was fortunate in coming to («rent Falls then, I was more fortunate in finding a mini to co-operate with me, who had the means at his command and wiews of the great west sufficiently broad minded to permit me to acquire this im mense water power and lands adjacent sufficient for a great city. This country was a wilderness then, the nearest rail road being gt least five hundred miles distant; and yet James .1. llill, the man to whom 1 owe my support, in my judg ment, from his office in St. Paul, saw more clearly than any other living man at that time, the advantages possessed bv this place and the possible development of this great western empire. To him I owe lasting gratitude for constant and liberal financial support in carrying out plans tor two years before he set foot up- j on this'phieo. CHOI ; HESS MADE. Let us pass over the intervening period of seven years, which have been devoted mainly to the preliminary work of estab lishing a town, and, looking at Great Falls as we now find it, ask the question if any other town, east or west, has made more rapid and substantial progress dur this short tune. It is today the western terminus of the Manitoba or Great North ern railway and the eastern terminus of the Montana Central railway. An im portant branch of the Montana Central connects Great Falls w ith the Sand Coulee coal fields; and another branch, known as the Great Falls mid Belt Mountain rail road, with two termini in the mountains is being rapidly pushed to completion. The close of the year 1800 will witness the extension of the Great Northern rail way from Great Falls to tide water on the Pacific, and the coming year will hardly close before two other railway lines will be completed to this town. UNKqUAt.l.F.D ADVANTAGES FOR TREAT ING ORE. The unequalled advantages possessed by Great Fulls for the treatment of ores have been fully recognized by mining and smelting men, and as the result, we have the costly and extensive plant of the Montana Silver and Lead Smelting com pany, while tlie Boston Consolidated Copper and Silver Smelting and Ketining company are now breaking ground for works at Black Eagle falls, scarcely sec ond in importance to those of the great Anaconda company. As Great Falls, from her resources in coal and water power, has no peer in the western coun try for works of this kind, we may con fidently rely upon the location here of other great enterprises for the treatment of ores within the next two years. THK GREAT DAM. at of vast Importance to our of the dam , ; j j falls. Ibis important and co"*ly work has already been commenced, under the direction of Engineer Fanning, and will be carried forward to completion as fast as four or five hundred men can execute it. When completed, it will tie one of the best works of the kind on the eonti lient and will afford ample power for ali the varied manufacturing industries that may he attracted here. It Al'lll 1'ROGRESS, The river, at the head of the rapids, is spanned by two bridges, and another bridge is about to lie built across Sun river near its mouth. The City lias the Holly system of water works, built the present year at a cost of nearly 8100,000. and two electric light plants, while a Boston coin)'any r , the present year, will connect the west end of the town with a -?.' 1 m & » tz. m* r--' ««■Xfe flits èJi rWiii £,Jm KNKIiAL MANAGER'S RESIDENCE, MONTANA SMELTING COMPANY. produein Black Eagle falls, the Giant Spring and Rainbow falls liy an electric railway, de riving its power from dynamos located at Black Eagle falls. The population of Great Falls, now about three thousand, is increasing with such rapidity that build ings are not being erected fast enough to supply the demand. It is safe to state that, with the impulse of the great smelt ers under construction and the increased railway communications now assured,the population of Great Falls will reach ten [ thousand during the present year. the advantage of descending grades from ; every direction. The chief engineer of j the Montana Central remarked t > me re i KAVOKARl.E LOCATION. No town could he more favorably lo fated as regards coal supply and the ore g sections of Montana, as it Ins OFFICES AND LAHOHATORY OF THE MONTANA SMELTING COMPANY. ceiitiy that a car turned loose at Neihnrt, the terminus of the Great Fulls and Belt Mountain railway, would run to Great Falls, except for a short grade leading up front Belt valley to the table land. The same may be said of a railroad from the Rocky mountains, sixty miles away. The altitude of Great Fails is 3,250 feet, while that of the mining districts of the Rocky mountains, ranges from five to eight thousand feet. This is a most important consideration in estimating the advant ages of any town as a centre for treating ores cheaply. AN INDUSTRIAL CITY. While the industries that must, in the future, give especial prominence to Greet relia gold, silver and copper ores and the man facture of steel and iron, we must not forget that this is a favored spot for the establishment of many manufacturing in dustries. Our superiority over other towns in this part of the west as regards cheap coal, extensive water pow er and agricultural resources, estaldi-h this fact beyond question. The advantages afford ed by nature for the employment of large forces of laboring men are greater at this place than any other I know of in the west, and it is my firm belief that this will he fully* demonstrated to everyone before the close of the present decade. Those who live to see Great Falls in 1000 will doubtless see the Missouri river,from Black F.agle falls to Rainbow falls LINED WITH THE MOST EXTENSIVE WORKS for treating the raw material of this rich ly endowed state. They will also see here a city made beautiful by industri oils, intelligent men and containing with in its limits a hundred thousand people, If this growth seems too rapid to the read ers of this article, I would remind them that we are living in a wonderful period for the growth and development of great natural centres like tin*. The popula tion of the United States is now fully sixty-five millions, railway lines are being built from all points in Montana, and all >f them will surely he extended to Great Falls, because it will he pre-eminently a freight producing town. Cities are lmilt much faster now than they were some years ago; and when investors are satis lied a town possesses superior resources and advantages for growth, they seize upon them, and populous towns are créa ted with a rapidity unknown to the world twenty-live years ago. The creation of the cities of Denver, Kansas City, St. Paul aud Minneapolis in so short a time, tells us what * 8 uot inferior to any of these cities MAY BE EXPECTED OF GREAT FALLS, in natural resources for the concentration of population and capital. Montana, by common consent, ranks first of all the statea in the production of precious met als and of copper. Her coal and iron fields cover thousands of square miles and are almost inexhaustible. Her graaing lands already yield an unfailing revenue of many millions annually from the sale of horses, cattle, sheep and wool, while her rieh farming lands cover an araa of sixty To crown the whole, Montana has a cli mate unsurpassed by any other section of the world in those qualities that make man strong ijud energetic. As Great Fails, so wonderfully endowed w th local advantages, is situated in the centre of this great state, can anyone doubt that lier irrowth will he as rapid and substantial as any of tie tinned? western cities I have inen GKKAT FA 1.1.8 WATER WORKS. These works are located on the east bank of the Missouri liver, about one mile above the central part of the city and just above the mouth of bun river. They- were lmilt by the Great Falls water company. Work was commenced about April 2ôth, and the works were completed August 1st, lssff. The buildings consist of pump house, «2x8« feet: holler house, 30x82: coal shed, 18x80; and u five room cottage for the engineer. The buildings are all made of brick and stone and have good, hiirh ceilings and are of neat design as will he seen by tl ecut. There are two 75 horse power steel tubular boilers and two Gordon compound duplex pumps, each with a daily capacity of one and one fourth million gallons. There are seven and one tenth miles of mains, ranging from 6 to 12 inches in diameter, and 71 fire hydrants. The ordinary water pressure for do mestic use is 55 pounds, and 100 pounds for firs duty. The pumps will easily luruish ten ne inch fire streams at once with the above pressure. There are 95 laps in the mains for private consumers, truite a number of extensions of the mains are talked of early in the spring. The works are complete in every detail and the system is one of the best in the west. The works were built at a cost of $95,000. The incorporators of the com pany are T. E. Collins, Ira Myers, E. G. Maclay, Paris Gibson and A. E. Dicker man. John A. Cole of Chicago is con sulting engineer and E. W. King super intendent North Montana owes her steady pros perity largely to diversified industries. Wool growing, stock raising, tillage, mining and manufacturing keep her peo ple employed. Dull times in any one pursuit is offset by progress in another. This diversity develops the people's aptitudes and increases the demand for HINTS TO EMIGRANTS. Some Good Advice to Prospective Citizens of Montana. I By F. W. Axdkhhox.J During the year 1890 thousands of eastern farmers and others will migrate to one or another of the four new west ern states. Many of these are family men and will have on hand t. big lot of household goods of all descriptions, to say nothing of plows, harrows, reapers, mowers, wagons and other farming im plements. They must either dispose of all these goods and chatties, in many cases for a mere song, or, else, charter a car or two and bring the goods to the new country. "NE VIEW OF IT. Some will say to themselves, well, we have broken tip the dear old home; we've burst the hotels of kindred, old friend ships, old associations and are about to enter a land new to us; we shall have to begin ni 1 over again; learn new ways, make new friendships and even perhaps exchange many of our present ideas and ways of thinking for newer, broader, more liberal and more comprehensive ideas than it is possible for us to hold now, bourn', as we always have been to the comparatively narrow sphere of New England life. Seeing that we must make all these changes and that we must tear away from these sacred ancestral ties why, we'd better leave everything behind but our clothes aud household goods and stuit quite anew in the home before us.— Mark you, reader! Many do think and act on just this line and in the average case they are thankful for it in the end. TOE OTHER VIEW. Othere there are who do not think exactly in tins wise, but say to them selves, we think we can do better out west. We are going to try it. it will cost us a great deal to get there, and from all we can learn it will cost us a great deal to live there, at least until we are well established in the home we have yet to find. All kinds of implements and tools are even more expensive propor tionately than food and clothing. We'll have to sacrifice a great deal in every way by going there; but we'll take all our goods with us aud he sure of having something to start with when we arrive. Their plan in theory sounds very wise and full of forethought, tut the man who leaves all behind and begins to accumu late from almost the very beginning again usually comes out tlie winner. Why this is so we'il see later. Again there are * other men fortunate enough to have re liable triends in the west to advise them what to leave and what to bring; but it is not for the benefit of these favored ones that this article is written. GOOD ADVICE. lu tlie first place, friend, if you intend coming west, don't try to bring your bouse and its contents with you; no, don't even try to bring the hulk of its contents. Bring only what you know will certainly he needed by your family the first few months after your destination is reached, flmt is if you ure a poor limn, or at most in but medium circumstances. You might bring clothing, blankets, sheets and other linen, table ware,chicks not. too long to he packed in a trunk, a few of your children's toys, tlie choicest of your books and pictures, but not too many nor too bulky. By the time these are selected and packed, you will have enough to make you sweat before they are finally lodged in tlie new house on the farm you have yet to find. Bring no bulky furni ture of any kind. Storage rates are high and storage often insecure and further you are likely to be unable to find a place to store your goods fn till you can build a little home of your own. Moreover, pray do not bring any of your farming implements, unless you have some fine horses and cattle to bring and will have part of a car space un occupied, because such things are apt to be a burden to you and cost you more in worry and expense than it would take to replace them by new implements in the west and the new will be better adanted to the work here. If you have any really fine horses or cattle, that is, females, or registered males, bring them along, for they will bnng you much more in the west than they would in the east during the same given time. COME TO MONTANA. 1 have nothing to say about the lands or the climate, nor other existing condi tions in other states than Montana. I urge no man to come here; the simple, yet overwhelming merits of this state are now so well known, that people are glad to come without b«ing asked, or urged. I say nothing of the conditions in other western states because I have not made a special study of their natural features as I have of Montana during the past seven yearn. Many who read this Tribune Annual will be preparing to come to Montana. Dome will have the means to ■tart Into the sheep, cattle, or hone busi ness on a more or leaa extensive scale t away. Othen I