The "Bonanza" State, young as she is to-day, has more towns and cities than such old and well developed States as Wisconsin, Illinois, or Minnesota had at a period in their history at which they might easily have expected to be far better developed, as regards population, than Montana could reasonably expect.

A half-century marks the time when the great Chicago of to-day was Fort Dearborn, planted, as it were, on a boundless prairie to watch a few blanketed Indians and traders at the mouth of the Chicago River. This was the nucleus of the great city—the second in rank of the many wonderful cities of the United States. Fifty years ago the pioneers of the Badger and Prairie States were doing what the old-timers and pioneers of Montana are doing to-day, building towns and founding cities. In the Eastern pioneer States where a few straggling hamlets were first fashioned by the efforts of the early emigrants, there are thousands of towns and cities, where the unpretentious log cabins and town sites were no more inviting than those of the early settlers of Montana.

Dating the first settlement of our State at twenty eight years ago, it may be said, without contradiction, that no Eastern State from its foundation to the twenty-eighth year of its age was half so marked or half so prosperous as Montana, with her hundred towns and cities at no greater age. If the State of Illinois has produced a Chicago at fifty years of growth, and Wisconsin a Milwaukee at a less number of years, and Minnesota the dual cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in a much shorter time, what may not be expected of Montana, whose boundaries embrace probably the richest country in the world, and whose area equals that of the New England States and New York combined?

We see with open eyes what a half-century of American genius and Western enterprise has wrought; may we not see by a prophetic vision a grander half-century's work as the future of Montana? As certain as history repeats itself, the prospector's wickie-up will become the mining camp, the corral of the round-ups will furnish the location for rustic villages, the villages will become towns, and scores of towns will become cities, each one of which must be larger than the other, and one of which must be the great metropolis of the Northwest.

Following is a list of the towns and cities of the State, arranged in counties, together with the assessed valuation of those counties:

Beaverhead County.—Assessed valuation for 1890, $3,175,949. County seat, Dillon; Bannack, Glendale, Redrock, Spring Hill, Barratts.

Cascade County.—Assessed valuation, $12,383,864. County seat, Great Falls; Sun River, Cascade, Sand Coulee.

Choteau County.—Assessed valuation, $5,364,264. County seat, Fort Benton; Chinook, Choteau, Harlem, Shonkin.

Custer County.—Assessed valuation, $6,350,915. County seat, Miles City; Rosebud, Forsyth.

Dawson County.—Assessed valuation, $3,025,332. County seat, Glendive; Glasgow.

Deer Lodge County.—Assessed valuation, $7,359,589. County seat, Deer Lodge; Anaconda, Beartown, Blackfoot, Drummond, Phillipsburg, Elliston, Granite, Helmville, New Chicago, Pioneer, Warm Springs, Stuart.

Fergus County.—Assessed valuation, $4,186,555. County seat, Lewiston; Cottonwood, Utica, Maiden, Neihart.

Gallatin County.—Assessed valuation, $6,170,381. County seat, Bozeman; Three Forks, Gallatin, Galesville, Madison.

Jefferson County.—Assessed valuation, $4,917,382. County seat, Boulder; Jefferson City, Radersburg, Basin, Placer, Elkhorn, Whitehall, Alhambra, Clancy.

Lewis and Clarke County.—Assessed valuation, $31,081,030. County seat, Helena; Marysville, Unionville, Rimini, Cartersville, Augusta, Dearborn, Harlow.

Madison County.—Assessed valuation, $2,948,046. County seat, Virginia City; Fullers Springs, Sheridan, Twin Bridges, Laurin, Silver Star, Pony, Red Bluff, Meadow Creek.

Meagher County.—Assessed valuation, $5,239,882. County seat, White Sulphur Springs; Neihart, Castle, Martinsdale, Townsend, Clendennin, York.

Missoula County.—Assessed valuation $8,815,854. County seat, Missoula; Demersville, Kalispel, Stevensville, Columbia Falls, Ashley, Grantsdale, Corvallis, Horse Plains, Thompson Falls, Camas Prairie.

Park County.—Assessed valuation, $4,936,451. County seat, Livingston; Red Lodge, Cook City, Cokedale, Big Timber, Melville.

Silver Bow County.—Assessed valuation, $32,426,794. County seat, Butte City; Melrose, Silver Bow, Divide.

Yellowstone County.—Assessed valuation, $3,823,140. County seat, Billings; Park City, Stillwater.

Wealth of Montana.—Nothing speaks louder for the future of Montana than the figures that tell of her wealth and of the rapid increases which the last few years, as they rolled along one by one, have shown.

The increase during the last year has been no exception to this rule.

From a total assessable valuation of $116,767,204 in 1890, her wealth has increased to a total of $142,205,428 for 1891, a gain of over twenty-five millions. The valuation of the State, given by counties, is as follows:

But even this vast sum does not tell the whole story, for Montana's additional real wealth is not included in the assessable property of the State, as the vast millions of the intrinsic value of the silver, gold, copper, coal, and lead mines, and their precious output, are not assessable for taxation—only the improvements. So if the value of all of Montana's mines were put in the calculation of her wealth, what a vast amount of money-value would be placed to her credit. Of the hundreds of her gold and silver mines, two are valued at $25,000,000 each.

The above assessment value of $142,205,428 is made up of real estate, acre property, town lots, railroad rolling stock, road-bed and improvements, and personal property.

Montana's present ratio of population is not quite one person to the square mile, so with an assessment of over $142,000,000 with a population (according to the census of 1892) at 140,000, what will be the value of the State when its population shall have increased to ten persons to the square mile? The calculation is easily made—so within the next decade Montana's population may reach 1,440,000, and if the assessed value then is equal to the present wealth per capita of her citizens, the assessed value will reach the prodigious volume of $1,203,000,000—a calculation not unreasonable, since Montana's population in the last ten years increased 235 per cent.