The Texas Almanac for 1872, and Emigrant's Guide to Texas. Page: 59
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NORTH-EASTERN AND NORTHERN TEXAS. 5U
secured in most desirable neighborhoods with the expenditure of but little
money.
The counties of Red River, Lamar, Hopkins and Hunt are about half prai-
rie and half timber, whilst the remainder of the counties-Fannin, Grayson,
Dallas, Collin, and the others further west, are essentially a prairie region.
Grayson, Fannin, Lamar and Red River are bounded on.the north by the
Indian Territory, and their whole northern slope is washed by Red River for
a distance of over two, hundred miles by the windings of the stream, forming
a broad extent of rich bottom lands of the most inexhaustible fertility, cov-
ering an area in the four counties of over a hundred thousand acres of tillable
lands on the river alone, capable of producing a hundred thousand bales of
cotton, or four million bushels of corn, when the same shall all be brought
into cultivation. These four counties, with Dallas, Collin, Hopkins and Hunt,
form a portion of the celebrated wheat region of Texas, whose lands, under a
proper state of cultivation, have in times past produced an average of eigh-
teen to twenty bushels of wheat to the acre, and in later years, when planted
in cotton, have yielded three-fourths of a bale to the acre. The soil is gen-
erally of a black sandy, or black waxy nature, remarkable for its depth and
its great capacity, yielding abundantly of all the productions of the temper-
ate zone upon the most ordinary cultivation, and giving every promise that,
by proper tillage and the right application of the modern improvements in
agricultural machinery, it can be made to yield far more largely than ever.
returning a mine of wealth and prosperity to all those who will properly and
industriously use it. There is generally a sufficiency of timber for fencing
and fuel, but of a class unsuited for building purposes, the latter being pro-
cured from the timbered regions and extensive pineries in the counties of
Wood, Titus, Upshur, Bowie, etc., etc. At present the transportation is by-ox
and mule wagons, but very soon, as we will hereafter show, this great want
will be amply supplied by the building of railroads. Since the war wheat
has been but little cultivated in the counties referred to, owing, as it is sup-
posed, to the depreciation of the seed by constantly sowing in the same fields
of the same seed from year to year, and the great difficulty in procuring fresh
seed from other sections, so as to make a change. The completion of the
railroads from St. Louis to Texas will remedy this great evil, and in another
year or two the industrious and enterprising population of that most inter-
esting region will doubtless again return to the cultivation of that important
cereal, for which their soil and climate are so peculiarly adapted, and very
soon Texas flour will take a place in the markets of the world. The eight
counties above named form only a small portion of the great wheat region of
Texas, the whole area covering a territory nearly equal to the entire State of
Tennessee. These eight counties, however, are equal to any in productive-
ness and eligibility of location, and present as great inducements for immi-
gration as any other eight counties in the State, or, perhaps, in the United
States. They comprise an area of seven thousand square miles, or four and a
half millions of acres, nearly the whole of it susceptible of cultivation, capa-
ble of sustaining with comfort a population of two hundred and fifty thousand
souls, with a soil rich enough to produce, with only one-fourth of it in culti-
vation, eight million bushels of wheat, ore hundred thousand bales of cot-
ton, four million bushels of barley, three million bushels of corn, besides
oats, hay, potatoes, vegetables, and other small productions, in profusion.
This calculation is based upon the future cultivation of one million of acres
out of an area of nearly five millions, comprising the territory of the eight
counties named, giving five hundred thousand acres to wheat, one hundred
and fifty thousand tecotton, one hundred thousand to barley, one hundred
thousand to corn, and the remaining one hundred and fifty thousand to mis.
cellaneous crops. To those who are unacquainted with the region referred to
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The Texas Almanac for 1872, and Emigrant's Guide to Texas., book, 1872~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth123777/m1/75/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.