Alberta ranks next to Ontario in the production of natural gas, which is found chiefly about Medicine Hat and in the Viking field, which supplies Edmonton. Oil in small quantities is produced south of Calgary, and new wells are being drilled in the southeastern part of the province near the Saskatchewan border, and even north of Peace River. The Peace River Valley, the southernmost part of which is four hundred miles above Montana, is the northern frontier of Alberta. It has been opened up largely within the last ten years. Across the British Columbia line, part of the valley has been set aside as the Peace River Block, where the settlement is controlled by the Dominion government. The basin of the Peace River consists of a vast region of level or rolling land, much of which is thickly wooded with fir, spruce, pine, tamarack, and birch. The forests are full of moose, deer, and bear, and the beaver, lynx, marten, and muskrat are trapped for their furs. There are vast stretches of rich black loam that produce annually about a million bushels of wheat, three or four million bushels of oats, and almost a million bushels of barley. Considering the latitude, the winter climate is moderate, and in summer there is almost continual daylight for the space of three months. This district is dotted with settlements along the route of the railway from Edmonton. It has telephone and telegraph connections with southern Alberta, and a half dozen weekly newspapers are published in its various towns. There are all together a hundred or more schools. The largest settlement is Grande Prairie, near the British Columbia border, but the oldest is the town of Peace River, which lies in a thickly wooded region on the banks of the Peace. It is two hundred and fifty miles northwest of Edmonton. The trip, which was formerly over a wagon trail and took two or three weeks, can now be made by rail in twenty-six hours. Steamboats ply up and down Peace River for hundreds of miles, the route downstream to Fort Smith being used by many trappers and prospectors bound for the far Northwest. The trip takes one past the historic old post of Fort Vermilion, two hundred and fifty miles beyond Peace River town. To the northeast of Vermilion is said to be a herd of wood buffalo, probably the last of their species roaming wild. A shorter route from Edmonton to the Northwest, and one that has grown in popularity since oil has been found along the Mackenzie, is down the Athabaska River, through Great Slave Lake, and down the Mackenzie to Fort Norman, the trading post for the oil region.