In 1910, newspaper headlines announced that agricultural products had surpassed mining in Montana for the first time, a change driven by the settlement of more than one million acres of land. By 1922, claims had been filed on over 40% of the entire state. This immediate area saw a major influx of homesteaders between 1900 and 1910, including many Fins who settled the benchland northeast of here, later called Finn Bench. Many of them first established themselves in Montana as coal miners in Sand Coulee, Belt, or Stockett, or as silver miners in Neihart. Judith Basin, once on the freight and stage route between Great Falls and Lewistown, had been occupied mainly by a few stock growers before the homestead boom. The arrival of the Great Northern Railway in 1908 ended the isolated range and brought active promotion to attract farmers, with claims of high wheat yields and a new future for home builders. Great Northern sought settlers in part because it needed return freight for its eastbound boxcars and saw the government's free land as a way to bring in farmers whose crops would be shipped to eastern markets.