A half-century marks the time when the great Chicago of to-day was Fort Dearborn, planted, as it were, on a boundless prairie to watch a few blanketed Indians and traders at the mouth of the Chicago River. This was the nucleus of the great city--the second in rank of the many wonderful cities of the United States. Fifty years ago the pioneers of the Badger and Prairie States were doing what the old-timers and pioneers of Montana are doing to-day, building towns and founding cities. In the Eastern pioneer States where a few straggling hamlets were first fashioned by the efforts of the early emigrants, there are thousands of towns and cities, where the unpretentious log cabins and town sites were no more inviting than those of the early settlers of Montana. Dating the first settlement of our State at twenty eight years ago, it may be said, without contradiction, that no Eastern State from its foundation to the twenty-eighth year of its age was half so marked or half so prosperous as Montana, with her hundred towns and cities at no greater age. If the State of Illinois has produced a Chicago at fifty years of growth, and Wisconsin a Milwaukee at a less number of years, and Minnesota the dual cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in a much shorter time, what may not be expected of Montana, whose boundaries embrace probably the richest country in the world, and whose area equals that of the New England States and New York combined? We see with open eyes what a half-century of American genius and Western enterprise has wrought; may we not see by a prophetic vision a grander half-century's work as the future of Montana? As certain as history repeats itself, the prospector's wickie-up will become the mining camp, the corral of the round-ups will furnish the location for rustic villages, the villages will become towns, and scores of towns will become cities, each one of which must be larger than the other, and one of which must be the great metropolis of the Northwest. Following is a list of the towns and cities of the State, arranged in counties, together with the assessed valuation of those counties: BEAVERHEAD COUNTY.--Assessed valuation for 1890, $3,175,949. County seat, Dillon; Bannack, Glendale, Redrock, Spring Hill, Barratts. CASCADE COUNTY.--Assessed valuation, $12,383,864. County seat, Great Falls; Sun River, Cascade, Sand Coulee. CHOTEAU COUNTY.--Assessed valuation, $5,364,264. County seat, Fort Benton; Chinook, Choteau, Harlem, Shonkin. CUSTER COUNTY.--Assessed valuation, $6,350,915. County seat, Miles City; Rosebud, Forsyth. DAWSON COUNTY.--Assessed valuation, $3,025,332. County seat, Glendive; Glasgow. DEER LODGE COUNTY.--Assessed valuation, $7,359,589. County seat, Deer Lodge; Anaconda, Beartown, Blackfoot, Drummond, Phillipsburg, Elliston, Granite, Helmville, New Chicago, Pioneer, Warm Springs, Stuart. FERGUS COUNTY.--Assessed valuation, $4,186,555. County seat, Lewiston; Cottonwood, Utica, Maiden, Neihart.