State Agricultural Society. 435 



FARMERS' IRRIGATION COMPANY OP MERCED. 



The Farmers' Irrigation Company of Merced was formed to bring 

 down water from the Merced River, at a point near Snelling, for irriga- 

 tion upon the plains between that river and Bear Creek, and from the 

 foothills to the San Joaquin River. Among the leading parties con- 

 nected with the enterprise are William G. Collier, the Messrs. Cressy 

 Brothers, Upton, Fowler, Douglas, Morrison, Gray, Elliot, Jolley, Fitz- 

 gerald, and Rogers — all farmers within the district to be improved. 

 The company has succeeded to the water rights of the Robla Canal Com- 

 pany, an organization formed in eighteen hundred and seventy, to carry 

 water for irrigating purposes into the Bear Creek country, which took up 

 the water claim on the Merced River, referred to above. Under the 

 rights of the Robla Company, twelve miles of uncompleted canal have 

 already been constructed, at a cost of twenty thousand dollars, between 

 the Merced River and Bear Creek — dimensions, bottom fifty feet; top, 

 eighty feet; height, three feet, to be increased to five feet. As rapid a 

 descent as can be safely allowed in grade is one foot to the mile, giving 

 a velocity to the water of about two feet per second. At this rate the 

 discharge of a canal of the above dimensions will be four hundred 

 cubic feet per second, sufficient to give during the season a depth of 

 twelve inches of water over eighty thousand acres. Upon much of this 

 Merced and Bear Creek land it is thought that one good wetting, with 

 four inches of water, after the crops are well started, will suffice to 

 mature them, and would render the supply of the Merced Farmers' 

 Canal adequate to the actual necessities of over three hundred thousand 

 acres. 



The proposed canal will start from the Robla Company's water claim 

 above Snelling, and follow down the foothills a distance of five'and one 

 half miles to a point on the divide between the Merced and the Bear. 

 Here the canal branches, one part earring one fourth of the water, 

 going into the channel of Canal Creek, which it pursues some distance, 

 and is then taken out and carried across to the Bear above the point 

 known as the Roblas, whence the original enterprise takes its name. 

 From the fork of the canal the second and main branch, carrying three 

 fourths of the water, makes a long sweep around the tongue of the 

 divide, keeping well upon the flank, until it crosses the Bear at a point 

 nine and one half miles east from the Town of Merced, and passes in a 

 broad sweep southwestwardly into the San Joaquin. The lengths of 

 the several portions of the proposed works are: from the head to the 

 fork of the canals, five and one half miles; thence, by the line of the 

 main fork to Bear Creek, thirty-three miles; thence, to its debouchment 

 in the San Joaquin, twenty-two miles — total length, sixty miles. Final 

 surveys have not yet been made for those specifications of construction 

 that determine the cost. The head-works, it is stated, will be inexpen- 

 sive, which, perhaps, means that they will cost less than ten thousand 

 dollars. South of Snelling, in order to come out upon the divide, the 

 water will have to pass through a fifteen-hundred-foot tunnel. If this 

 tunnel be given an inclination of twenty feet per mile, or five feet eight 

 inches in the one thousand and five hundred feet, and be six feet wide 

 by five feet deep, it would discharge the quantity of water carried by 

 the main canal, which would have a velocity in the tunnel of thirteen 

 feet per second. It is thought that this tunnel, or a part of it, at least, 

 can be safely left without timbering. The material is a lava, which 



