took its execution. His plan was also adopted by his great rival, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway, and more than two thousand miles of new railroad were quickly built out into the unsettled part of Dakota, furnishing convenient access to every portion of southern Dakota east of the Missouri River.
Mr. Hughitt's faith was more than justified. Almost in a day, population spread all over the broad land, towns were built, farms opened, schools established, churches erected, and in the briefest possible time the wilderness was converted into a thriving, prosperous, productive, well-settled American commonwealth, having all the conveniences and comforts and institutions of the older states. This period, from 1877 until 1883, is known as the great Dakota boom. History has no other instance to compare with it.
When this period began, Sioux Falls was but a little village of three or four hundred people, and was the northernmost point of any consequence within what is now South Dakota. Within five years Brookings, Madison, Mitchell, Huron, Pierre, Watertown, Redfield, Aberdeen, Webster, and Milbank had become important cities. When the boom began, of course, no one had any information as to which were to become the important cities, and which were to remain simply way stations and country trading points. Ambitious men, men of great ability, settled in about equal numbers in each of these villages, and each set out to make his town the chief city of the locality. The rivalry between the various towns, therefore, became very strong, and re-
