There were less dramatic fluctuations on the roads east of the Missouri. The Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley, which was controlled by the Chicago and Northwestern, increased its shipments of animals from 93,626 tons for 1885-86 to 159,356 for 1886-87. The traffic in animals fell for the Chicago and Milwaukee from 372,699 tons (5.69 percent of total traffic) to 343,014 (4.67 percent); for the Chicago and Northwestern it rose from 407,443 (4.78 percent) to 418,098 (4.25 percent); for the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, the least important livestock road, it remained stationary at from 21,126 tons (1.5 percent) to 21,138 (1.2 percent).
John Clay remembered that by the spring of 1888 there was plenty of water and that reduced cattle numbers meant that "[i]t was a virgin range we had to stock up."
Clay, My Life on the Range, 92-98, 146.
Clays account of resurrecting the Dickey Cattle Company on the Little Missouri gives some support for an increase in cattle shipments to the West. Although restocking took place, the timing and details in Clay are far from clear.
Robert Higgs, "Railroad Rates and the Populist Uprising," Agricultural History 44 (July 1970): 29198
Mark Aldrich, "A Note on Railroad Rates and the Populist Uprising," Agricultural History 54 (July 1980), 42432.
Aldrich says rates relative to crop prices fell in the 1870s but rose through the 1880s and mid-1890s.
This comparison excludes the fertile Red River Valley lands along the Minnesota border of North Dakota because they were anomalous in their fertility, the speed of their settlement in the 1870s, and their access to river as well as railroad transportation along the St. Paul and Pacific, which became part of Hills St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway. Hill claimed his road had carried 20 percent of the spring wheat crop of the entire United States in 1884 and would do better in 1885.
By June 30, 1882, growth in the counties along the Northern Pacific had spilled over the 99th meridian and even edged across the 100th. In Barnes County, which was east of the 99th meridian, population tripled in two years, to 4,500, but in Stutsman, which was bifurcated by the 99th meridian, it increased by a multiple of seven to 7,007. Kidder County, whose western boundary edged over the 100th meridian, went from 87 people in 1880 to 2,087 in 1882, and even Burleigh County on the Missouri showed substantial growth.