<P> Most bonanza farms were owned by companies and run like factories, with professional managers . The first bonanza farms were established in the mid-1870s in the Red River Valley in Minnesota and in Dakota Territory, such as the Grandin Farm . Developers bought land close to the Northern Pacific Railroad, for ease of transport of their wheat to market . Investors also organized bonanza farms farther west . </P> <P> Many bonanza farms were established in this period in North Dakota; a number have been preserved . </P> <P> Bonanza farms were encouraged by John Wesley Powell who, by the 1870s, had found that the land he studied needed larger - scale irrigation systems that would lead to larger areas of land being taken care of . Powell, a geologist, asserted that family - owned farms that had been in use in accordance to the Homestead Act of 1862 did not quite give the land the type of help required to keep it fit . Though less numerous than family farms, the Bonanza operations began to be competitive with the smaller operations . </P> <P> Bonanza farmers pioneered the development of farm technology and economics . They used steam engines to power plowing as much as 41 years before the modern farm tractor made its first appearance . Plows and combine harvesters drawn by steam tractors were used in the West in the 1880s and 1890s, well before dramation of the smaller midwestern farms . The division of labor was applied in bonanza farms generations before family farms adapted to these modern ways . Farm boys from the midwest, working on bonanza farms in the early 20th century, transplanted these ideas to Corn Belt homesteads and built larger farms as the century progressed . (An example is Fred Geier, of Lynn Township, McLeod County, Minnesota and Boon Lake Township, Renville County, Minnesota . Migrating to the Dakotas in the early 20th century, he became a progressive farmer; he performed custom threshing and milling at a time when others in the townships were farming with horses on a very small scale . In addition, he invented the Geier Hitch . </P>

Which of the following describes many of the bonanza farms of the late 1800s apex