NEWS AND NOTES 



311 



business in a short time. This will greatly 

 simplify land office business for the settlers 

 and eliminate the delays resulting from for- 

 warding their papers to the office at Rapid 

 City. 



At present there are only ten farm units 

 on the project open for entry. The large 

 ranches are being subdivided and the recent 

 sales show that land values are steadily in- 

 creasing. A great many inquiries from pros- 

 pective settlers are being received and it is 

 probable that about August I additional farm 

 unit plats will be filed and lo.ooo acres of 

 Government land will be opened to settle- 

 ment. Quite a colony of Wisconsin people 

 are congregating on this project, bringing 

 their stock and household goods. 



The farmers are receiving good prices for 

 feed, oats bringing $2 per 100 pounds and 

 hay from $8 to $16 per ton. The contractors 

 on the works state that although they can 

 procure feed shipped in from other states 

 at a lower rate it does not compare with the 

 grade of the Belle Fourche produce and 

 they find it cheaper in the end to purchase 

 on the ground. 



&' ^ «? 



The Klamath Project 



The reclamation of the North Poe Valley 

 Canal, Klamath irrigation project, Oregon, 

 has been completed. The Keno Canal has 

 been operated continuously for several weeks. 

 The upper four miles of the South Branch 

 Canal are completed, the laterals excavated 

 and the small structures finished so that the 

 system is practically ready for operation. 



During March the water was removed 

 from the surface of the marshes on the dem- 

 onstration farm and in the drainage trenches 

 around the tract to a depth of from three 

 to four feet below the surface. Careful levels 

 have been taken over the marsh at intervals 

 of 200 feet, in order to study the amount of 

 settling, and wells are being put in to deter- 

 mine the gradient of the water table in the 

 soil. Careful observations are being made 

 in connection with precipitation and evapora- 

 tion. 



The people of the district have decided to 

 construct a highway from Klamath Falls to 

 Lakeview, Oreg., a distance of no miles, 

 which shall serve as an outlet for supplies 

 into the Lake country. A county dairy as- 

 sociation has also been formed with the in- 

 tention of fostering this industry and build- 

 ing it up from proper foundations. One 

 creamery has already been established and 

 another will soon be opened. 



The S. P. Railroad has closed the Klamath 

 Strait to navigation by building the railroad 

 trestle across it, connecting the two ends of 

 the embankment. It is expected that the rail- 

 road will reach Klamath Falls by June i. 



Scrub Pine for Pulp Material 



The long-neglected and despised scrub or 

 Jersey pine, growing on the abandoned farms 

 and cut-over lands of the East, seems des- 

 tined at last to have reached its rightful 

 place as a material of value, according to 

 the results obtained through recent pulp and 

 paper-making tests at the United States For- 

 est 'Service laboratories in Washington. 



While there is a considerable amount of 

 this wood standing as timber, it has hereto- 

 fore been used only in a very desultory 

 fashion, and then mostly as fuel. About 

 500,000 acres, or twenty per cent., of the wooded 

 area of Maryland, and about 130,000 acres, 

 or ten per cent., of that of Virginia, is cov- 

 ered with fairly dense stands, while the 

 broad range of the tree extends along the 

 Atlantic seaboard from southern New York 

 to South Carolina, and back over the Ap- 

 palachians to central Indiana, where its 

 largest specimens are found. 



While a number of mills have used scrub 

 pine for the manufacture of soda pulp and 

 ground wood, no plants have ever operated 

 the sulphite process. Scrub pine might have 

 been used to good advantage long ago, but 

 for the fact that it did not seem to the 

 practical paper-maker even worthy of trial. 

 By only slight changes of the regular cook- 

 ing treatment which is ordinarily accorded 

 pulp wood in the sulphite process, however, 

 it has now yielded a pulp product which has 

 been favorably commented upon by nu- 

 merous members of the paper trade as a 

 substitute for spruce sulphite in the manu- 

 facture of news paper. 



When a forest of scrub pine is matured, a 

 fully-stocked stand will yield thirty to forty 

 cords per acre, when economically harvested 

 according to the practical forestry methods. 

 At the present time there is practically no 

 general use for the timber, outside of fuel, 

 although a coarse lumber is made of it and it 

 is sometimes used for fencing. An evidence 

 of the low esteem in which this pine is held 

 is the price which the Maryland wood brings 

 when delivered — $5-75 per cord. The wood 

 itself is of a light yellow color, with a 

 white sap-wood. It is light in weight, is 

 brittle, and coarse-grained. While it is 

 fairly durable in contact with the weather, 

 its weak structural properties offset any ad- 

 vantage this might give. 



Practical paper-makers who have seen this 

 product are almost unanimous in claiming 

 it to be a strong, long-fibered, and hard- 

 wearing pulp, which seems especially desir- 

 able for making bag, news, and wrapping 

 papers. Several even went so far as to say 

 that it would make fine bank or ledger 

 papers when properly handled, and that this 

 wood gave one of the best fibers which has 

 been prepared from pine wood. 



