The Orchards Look Greener in Montana and Oregon, But Don’t be Mislead by Railroad Agents, 1914

If you've worked on your family history, you've probably wondered what lead a person to move to a certain location. Sometimes, it was a railway agent who came to town, showed pictures of an area, and encouraged folks to immigrate westward. In this article, the editor of the Watauga Democrat in Boone encourages readers to remember be realistic and stay in Watauga County, "the best country to be found." 

“Two Railroad Agents in Town” From the Watauga Democrat, Thursday, Feb. 12, 1914

Watauga has been treated at various points to a very interesting and extremely beautiful picture show, the admission being free by Messrs W. E. French, Traveling Passenger and Immigration Agent for the Great Northern Railway, and W.T. Vardaman, for the Burlington and other lines, and their mission here was to show our people by illustrations the beauties of and the great advantages to be fund in the States of Montana and Oregon, and the minimum prices that now prevail over their lines.

They are intelligent, entertaining to a high degree, and, of course, are well up on their work. They exhibited beautiful illustrations of the immense orchards, the extensive farming, the flowers that luxuriate there, irrigation, etc., as seen by those States which is calculated to make some of our people think that they too might go there and soon become owners of broad acres and laden orchards of the finest fruit, not thinking that all this costs “big money” and years of toil for hired labor, and is now owned by rich landlords, and not one acre of it could be bought, even if a Wataugan could land there with a reasonably well-filled purse.

There are numbers of men here in dear old Watauga who have tried their fortunes in those much-advertized states who were more than willing to come back and cast their lots here. It would be an easy matter to make photographs of mountain orchards, etc, that would excite the fruit-growing world if brought before them on canvass, and our advantages explained so fully as was done by these learned gentlemen in behalf of the states beyond the Rockies. These lines are not written to reflect in the least upon the country these urbane and shrewd gentlemen are boosting, or upon their business, but what we want to impress upon our people is the fact that we have the best country to be found, everything considered, and we hope they will bear this in mind when the thought occurs to them to sell out and locate in a strange and untried state. Only this and nothing more.