Harper’s Weekly Magazine, July 30, 1887, published this image and a story titled The Wheat Fields of Dakota. Below are excerpts from the article.
“First in area comes Texas, then California, and third the Territory of Dakota. Climatically Dakota presents great diversity. In many parts of it are wide areas consisting of a dark loamy soil of considerable depth—a land particularly adapted to the growing of cereals. Within the last twenty years great attention has been paid to the cultivation of wheat in Dakota. From a product of only 945 bushels in the whole Territory made in 1860, in 1880 the harvest was 2,830,289 bushels. It is probable that in 1890 this product will be much more than double in quantity. The Northern Pacific Railroad carries a large proportion of the wheat, and it finds its principal market in Duluth. Wheat farms of enormous size are found within the Territory, there being one of not less than 100,000 acres. On such a vast domain as this, economy in labor is everything. The flat prairieland allows the most improved mechanical appliances, and in harvest-time innumerable reaping machines are used. Nothing can be more startling than to see approaching a huge battery, as it were, of those reapers, drawn by their three horses yoked abreast. As far as the eye can see, over a vast frontage, the line advances, and even at a long distance the revolution of the blades of the mowers can be heard. The golden wheat falls in huge windrows, sometimes to be taken by other machines and made into sheaves, or to be handled by the harvesters. Mounted ‘bosses’ ride from point to point a superintend the work. In ploughing, harrowing, sowing, the best and most approved labor-saving implements are used. A Dakota wheat farm of size seems to be rather a factory where cereals are to be produced than a tract of land dependent on ordinary agricultural methods.”