Land Crazy in the Big Bend: A Dollar an Acre and a Warning
A traveller back from the Columbia's Big Bend reports farmers who owned nothing a year ago now signing for quarter sections as the railroad unloads its land — and predicts many will live to regret it.
Dr. Thomas, who has just come back from the Big Bend country, says that scores of farmers over there are land crazy. The railroad company is selling thousands of acres of lieu lands at from $1 to $2.50 per acre. Farmers who hadn't anything a year ago are now contracting for quarter sections, having been able to make their first payment on account of good crops last fall. He thinks that many of them will see their mistake later. Mr. Thomas says in the Tekoa Times that he would not give ten acres in the Palouse country for 160 in the Big Bend. There are yet thousands of bushels of grain unthreshed. Immigration is heading that way at a rapid pace.
“Farmers who hadn't anything a year ago are now contracting for quarter sections... He thinks that many of them will see their mistake later.”
The Big Bend land rush was the railroad's land grant turned into a sales campaign: cheap acreage, easy first payments, and buyers who had almost nothing to lose. Dr. Thomas's sour prediction — that the newcomers would 'see their mistake later' — is the same argument heard whenever a hot market sells dry country as paradise. Eastern Washington's dryland wheat towns were built on exactly these bets, some of which paid and some of which blew away.
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