Railroad-driven immigration
Railroads also worked tirelessly to attract tourists and homesteaders from the eastern states. The Northern Pacific was especially aggressive, creating elaborate exhibit cars and promoting tours of Montana and North Dakota to expose curious easterners to life in the west. Richer Americans were encouraged to visit, spending money and bringing back stories, while poorer farmers were offered discounts on land and train fare if they agreed to settle on railroad land.
The railroads had a vested interest in populating the American West. Unlike eastern railroads, the tracks through the west had preceded demand for them, and so railroad companies had to create that demand. Furthermore, railroads were financed in part by the mortgaging of their land grant lands, and sought to entice settlers into their lands in order to further fund the railroad projects
Railroad companies built a series of almost identically-laid out railroad towns dotting the west. These were then filled with hopeful immigrants, eager to start a better life. Some of these towns, such as Livingston or Glendive, took off, building thriving communities that still exist today. Many more, however, never became more than isolated settlements, and eventually turned into ghost towns.
Meanwhile, the farmers flocking to Montana found conditions much more difficult than they anticipated. Dry land farming techniques had been advertised as the future of agriculture. At first, the promises seemed completely true. However, farmers slowly realized that dry land farms could not withstand multi-year droughts. The 1893 drought left many farmers destitute. Their abandoned claim shanties and farmhouses still dot the landscape of eastern Montana.
Despite these difficulties, the efforts of the railroad companies to populate the west paid off. Enough people were able to settle and thrive to build a robust customer base, particularly as the railroad was the only thing anchoring most western towns to the rest of the country.
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