The Last Bonanza Farm

Perhaps the greatest example in the Old West of making lemonade out of lemons is what happened in Dakota Territory in the 1870s. That’s when the Northern Pacific Railway, planned from Minnesota to the Pacific Ocean, got to Dakota and financially collapsed, leaving investors holding worthless railroad bonds. But the federal government had given land grants to promote the railroad, so investors swapped their bonds for that land, selling it off to Easterners who envisioned farms. But not just