George Batchelder Promotes Dakota Territory, (1870)

Think of  it young men, you who are “rubbing” along from 
year to year, with no great hopes for the future, can you 
accept for a little while the solitude of nature and bear a
few hard knocks for a year or two? Lay aside your paper 
collars and kid gloves. Work a little. Possess your soul with
patience and hold on your way with a firm purpose. Do this, 
and there is a beautiful home for you out here. Prosperity, 
freedom, independence, manhood in its highest sense, 
peace of mind and all the comforts and luxuries of life are 
awaiting you. The fountain of perennial youth is in the 
country, never in the city. Its healing, beautifying and 
restoring waters do not run through aqueducts. You must 
lie down on the mossy bank beneath trees, and drink from 
gurgling brooks and crystal streams.... 

Formerly the individual was the pioneer of  civilization; now, 
the railroad is the pioneer, and  the individual follows, or is
only slightly in advance. Before the flowers bloom another
year, Dakota will have her railroads; they will bring more 
towns, villages, churches, school houses, newspapers,
and thousands of new and free people. The wild roses are
blooming today, and the sod is yet unturned, and the 
prairie chicken rears her brood in quiet and safety, where, 
in a two will be heard the screech of the locomotive and the 
tramp of the approaching legions, an other year will bring 
the beginning of the change; towns and cities will spring into
existence, and the steam whistle and the noise of saws and
hammers, and the click and clatter of machinery, the sound 
of industry will be heard. The prairies will be golden with the
ripening harvest, and the field and the forest, the mine and 
the river, will all yield their abundance to the ever growing
multitude.