Keeline: Our Progressive Town: A Brief Sketch

Keeline Courier, December 6, 1913

OUR PROGRESSIVE TOWN, A Brief Sketch of Keeline and the Surrounding Country

In response to the numerous requests from our subscribers we are again running this sketch of our town written by Frank Kelley.

The permanent prosperity of a town depends almost entirely on the character of the surrounding country and the people inhabiting the same. In this respect the location of Keeline is most fortunate.

On all sides it is surrounded by one of the best agricultural sections of the state of Wyoming. This is no idle boast, but an actual fact attested by more than a score of settlers who before locating here traveled over various portions of the state as well as Colorado, Montana and other much advertised sections and finally decided to make their homes here.

Far to the north, northwest and west, homestead lands have nearly all have been entered, while to the south for more than twenty miles, there are very few tracts that have not been filed upon and on many of them good, comfortable houses and other farm buildings have already been erected.

It has been estimated that by next May, when nearly all of these entries will be actual settlers, over one thousand families will be residents of the territory contiguous to Keeline and will naturally buy their supplies here, and this will be the market for their produce.

Farming in the vicinity of Keeline is no longer an experiment. The older settlers have fully demonstrated that it is a success, just as the stockmen who preceded them proved to be the finest stock country in the world for horses, cattle and sheep. In any direction from Keeline may be found comfortable farm homes, well filled granaries and great stacks of straw, showing what actually has been done. In the line of dairying also, which is just commencing, our settlers are meeting with the most gratifying success, the rich native grasses giving excellent yields of milk, while prices for cream and butter are higher than those received by eastern dairymen on land worth $100 an acre.

Few lands are so favored as our own in regard to the purest of water and an abundance of it, cheap fuel and the richest of native grasses. And nowhere can be found a better class of settlers than in the vicinity of Keeline. Wide awake, progressive, moral and upright the most enterprising people from the east.

Keeline is a new town. Its real growth commenced less than three months ago, when A.A. Spaugh, proprietor of the town site, finished the survey of the town plat and put the lots on the market. He succeeded in interesting in the new town the veteran builder, Tom Blair who once put in a lumber yard and got busy in the building line with a big force of workmen. The first building commenced was a store to be occupied by D. W. Freeman, the pioneer merchant. This building, now nearing completion is 24x70 with a full basement, and will cost $3,000.

Orin Lee has built a residence and put up the first livery and feed stable.

A new hotel building will be erected at an early date, and here is a most excellent opening for a food hotel man, for the building will be for sale or lease. Write. T.H. Blair, Keeline.

T.H. Blair will put in a stock of hardware as soon as D.W. Freeman moves from his present location to the big store.

BUSINESS OPENINGS

As we go to press there are business openings here for the following:

Drygoods store, furniture store, clothing store, drug store, meat market, bank, restaurant, a hotel man, a physician, a barber, a real estate dealer and a number of other lines.

Get in on the ground floor. Come in and get busy with your building plans. Just the time to buy a good farm before the big advance in price that is sure to come.

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