When, in 1889, the first of these tracts, nearly two million acres,
was to be opened, twenty thousand people were waiting just outside its
borders--some on swift horses, some in wagons or buggies, and some in
railroad trains. When the signal was given there was a race across the
border and a scramble for farm sites; and on the part of the passengers on
the trains, for town lots, when the trains had reached the predetermined
sites of cities. At the close of the first day the future capital of what
has for many years been a State had a population of several thousand
inhabitants living in tents, and within a hundred days a population of
fifteen thousand people, mostly men, an electric system in operation, a
street-railway under contract, streets, alleys, parks, boulevards, stores,
and bridges, four thousand houses under construction, five banks, fifteen
hotels, fifty grocery stores, six printing-offices, and three daily
papers--about as striking and unpleasant a contrast to that peaceful life
on the St.
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