LARAMIE PLAINS, in Wyoming territory, lat. 43°, long. 106°w. from Greenwich ; an elevated basin of undulating prairie having an average elevation of more than 7,000 ft. above the sea, bounded on the e. by the Laramie mountains and on the w. and s.w. by the Medicine Bow mountains or main divide of the Rocky mountain chain; with an area of 4,000 to 5,000 sq.m.; and drained by the Big and Little Laramie and Medicine Bow rivers. The surrounding mountains are less high and rugged than those of the same range in Colorado, and its climate is remarkable in permitting the growth of the most nutritious grasses on so elevated a plain. Grazing is the great business on these plains. The usual winter snow-fall is not heavy, so that it is not only an admirable pas turage in summer, but a place where it is possible for cattle to live through the winter on the dried grass which they find where the snow is blown off the swells of the prairie. Here for many years the herdsmen of the w., n., and s. have been accustomed to drive their half-starved stock from the far interior valleys and fatten them for the fall market on the growing grass from•June till Sept., when they would drive eastward. Now graziers have pre-empted or bought the springs, or sections of land along the water courses, and even large tracts of the plains, which are fenced with barbed wire in three strand fencing; so that private ownership and jurisdiction have largely taken the place of the roaming system of herding. Laramie City is the home of most of these owners, many of whom th.f.. men cf education and represent a large eastern non-resident owner thao f much of the' capital used to buy stock, land, and fencing. The
it increase of cattle is about 40 per cent. The business is uniformly profitable on these plains, but ownerships change often, the lonely character of the business giving the successful a desire to remove to more populous regions again. Cattle form by far the greater part of the stock on these plains, and the old Texas wild long-horned cattle are rapidly giving way to crosses with the finest Durham and other blood, adding to the weight and fattening qualities of the stock, and to its docility. Sheep are being intro duced into the hills; but, requiring more care than cattle. and being subject to loss from wolves and cayotes, that branch of herding is in its infancy. It is a remarkable pecu liarity of on these plains, and also on those e. of the Laramie range, that after the fall " round-up the cattle are left to wander at will for hundreds of miles to pick a living for themseives• anu the owner may spend his winters in the east and find the animals just.as well at the spring "round-up" as if they had been watched and herded.
Although the cereals may sometimes and in some places be grown on these plains, the season is too short between severe frosts to make a crop reasonably certain; and as to vegetables like potatoes, although they are grown at fort Saunders, and other points an the plains, it is only as an experiment, and not as a profitable culture. Three succes sive months without a se', ere frost are unusual, notwithstanding genial spring, summer, and autumn weather is experienced through eight months.