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.

For these lines see Albro Martin, James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1991), 116-40, 146-63, 177, 190-98.

St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Ry., Timetable Map (Buffalo: Matthews, Northrup & Co., 1886).

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, David Rumsey.

For Red River Valley, Stanley N. Murray, "Railroads and the Agricultural Development of the Red River Valley of the North, 1870-1890," Agricultural History 31 (Oct. 1957): 57-66.