Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/337

 History of the Pacific Northwest

ducing the size of ranches has brought neighbours nearer together. Often a fertile river valley is well settled with families each of which owns hardly more land in the valley than would make a farm of reasonable size, range land being occupied outside. Such a valley makes a pleasant rural community, with all of the social facilities of the usual farm neighbourhood and with something additional but indefinable due to the free, joyous, untired spirit of ranch life as contrasted with farm life. Moreover, the comparative opulence of the ranchers, the scale of their business operations, their frequent trips to large towns, their outside social and business connections, all contribute to lend interest to the life of these communities.

An ideal ranching community. A present day example of a delightful plan of ranching came to the writer's attention recently. A group of eight individuals and families selected a location in a pleasant valley some sixty miles from a railway. Here they took up dry land homesteads, which under a recent act of Congress may reach a maximum of 640 acres. The group have expended money in the construction of good automobile roads, have an irrigating system and artesian water supply. They are building modern houses, barns, sheds, etc. Co-operating in this manner they will create not merely a good ranching business, bringing liberal returns, but an ideal community from which the old isolation and crudeness have disappeared.

Fruit growing districts; social advantages. By