small farms devoted to fruit and berry raising, and beyond the area of
small farms lay larger tracts that were immensely productive and that
raised huge crops of wheat, corn, and cabbage.

When Hugh was a boy sleeping away his days in the grass beside his father's
fishing shack by the Mississippi River, Bidwell had already emerged out of
the hardships of pioneer days. On the farms that lay in the wide valley to
the north the timber had been cut away and the stumps had all been rooted
out of the ground by a generation of men that had passed. The soil was easy
to cultivate and had lost little of its virgin fertility. Two railroads,
the Lake Shore and Michigan Central--later a part of the great New York
Central System--and a less important coal-carrying road, called the
Wheeling and Lake Erie, ran through the town. Twenty-five hundred people
lived then in Bidwell. They were for the most part descendants of the
pioneers who had come into the country by boat through the Great Lakes or
by wagon roads over the mountains from the States of New York and
Pennsylvania.

The town stood on a sloping incline running up from the river, and the Lake
Shore and Michigan Central Railroad had its station on the river bank at
the foot of Main Street. The Wheeling Station was a mile away to the north.
It was to be reached by going over a bridge and along a piked road that
even then had begun to take on the semblance of a street. A dozen houses
had been built facing Turner's Pike and between these were berry fields and
an occasional orchard planted to cherry, peach or apple trees. A hard path
went down to the distant station beside the road, and in the evening this
path, wandering along under the branches of the fruit trees that extended
out over the farm fences, was a favorite walking place for lovers.

The small farms lying close about the town of Bidwell raised berries that