The Fate of Oliver Darlrymple

Oliver Darlrymple was an expert Minnesota wheat grower in the 1870s when fate came to call.  After the Panic of 1873 the Northern Pacific Railroad was on the verge of bankruptcy.  It needed to sell off enormous land grants so the rail line project could be completed.  Part of these holdings lay in the fertile Red River Valley in western Minnesota and the northeastern part of the Dakota Territory.

Two directors of the Northern Pacific called on Oliver with a proposition.  If Oliver would farm 11,520 prime Red River Valley acres he could keep 1/3 of the profits plus acquire some of the land as he own in a few years.  Their idea was simple:  harvest bumper crops of wheat over the vast acreage and word would travel to create land rushes to Dakota and solve their financial dilemma.  They could dispose of the properties and then provide a ready made freight business to support it.

Darlrymple was both an agricultural genius and an inventor.  The land was perfectly level, unobstructed and highly fertile.  He set out to prove that huge yields of wheat could be produced with modern machinery - mechanical seeders, self-binding reapers, and steam powered threshers.  He hired seasonal workers and gave the world it first lesson is modern corporate farming.

Cultivation costs were $9.50 an acre with 25 bushels to an acre.  Wheat sold at 90 cents a bushel.  Oliver's profit was 100%.  The railroad sold their bonds for Dakota acreage, bringing excursion trains of settlers to see valued wheat harvested on farms along the rail line.  Between Darlymple's success and the railroad's publicity, by 1878 nearly all the farmland had been bought.

By 1878, Oliver himself employed 1,000 workers to seed and harvest his 4,000 acres acquired from the railroad.  He is legend for having harvest 600,000 bushels of wheat on one of the largest American farms.  Not a bad fate!

Next Time...Factory Farming
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 29, 1858, the first store opens in a small frontier town in Colorado Territory that a month later will take the name of Denver is a ploy to curry favor with Kansas Territory Governor James Denver.