402 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



States could be assured that our Cana- 

 dian brethren would not gobble up all 

 of the flow of both streams. In view 

 of the fact that we could keep the 

 entire flow of the St. Mary River in 

 our own country and that it was the 

 more valuable of the two streams, 

 Canada was obliging enough to enter 

 into a treaty with the United States 

 guaranteeing an equal division of the 

 combined flow of both streams and giv- 

 ing us the right to utilize the channel 

 of Milk River in Canada as a carrying 

 canal for the waters we shall use in 

 Milk River Valley, Montana. Accord- 

 ingly, active work was begun on St. 

 Mary River to impound its floods, a 

 great canal is being excavated across 

 the divide to wed the waters of these 

 streams and a comprehensive canal sys- 

 tem with numerous diversion dams is 

 being constructed in the Milk River 

 Valley between Glasgow and Havre. 

 When completed nearly 200,000 acres 

 of excellent land will be served. 



The utilization of electricity devel- 

 oped by the Reclamation Service has 

 become an important adjunct to the 

 irrigation work. On several of the 

 projects a large amount of power has 

 been developed principally for lifting 

 water to lands above the gravity canals. 

 A surplus, however, has been made 

 available for the municipalities and has 

 been an important factor in their prog- 

 ress and growth. On the Minidoka 

 project, Idaho, the power is so cheap 

 that its use is general in the towns for 

 lighting, heating and cooking. Recently 

 a new school house at Rupert was fully 

 equipped with electricity, heating, light- 

 ing, power for machinery in manual 

 training, and heat for the cooking 

 stoves in the domestic economy class. 

 It is the only school house in the world 

 so equipped. Groups of farmers are 

 now making plans to utilize this cheap 

 and useful force on their farms and 

 we may soon record the fact that farm 

 houses are lighted and heated with 

 electricity while the housewife utilizes 

 the same force in preparing the family 



meals. This seems almost inconceiv- 

 aljle to those of us who remember this 

 region in 1904 as a barren waste, remote 

 from transportation and absolutely un- 

 inhabited. 



On the Williston project, North Da- 

 kota, power developed from the Gov- 

 ernment's own coal mine is sold to the 

 town of Williston. On the Strawberry 

 Valley, Utah, and the Truckee-Carson, 

 Nevada, projects power generated on 

 the canals is leased to several munici- 

 palities. On the Salt River project, 

 Arizona, a very large power develop- 

 ment has taken place at Roosevelt dam 

 and all the surplus power when avail- 

 able has been leased for a term of years 

 to a large mining corporation at Globe. 

 The valley towns and large manufac- 

 turing plants are being furnished a 

 steady supply from additional plants. 

 These power plants will probably aft'ord 

 an opportunity at an early date to wit- 

 ness an interesting experiment in com- 

 munal operation of valuable public 

 utilities with the farmer as the active 

 agent in charge of the property. 



Up to June 30, 1913, the Reclama- 

 tion Service had constructed about 

 8,000 miles of canals, several of which 

 carry whole rivers. It had built four 

 of the great dams of the world. Its 

 wagon roads have a mileage of TOO, 

 telephones 2,331, transmission lines 

 351, railroads 51. It has purchased 

 1,533,544 barrels of cement and manu- 

 factured in its own plant 433,887 bar- 

 rels. The total excavation of rock and 

 earth on that date amounted to 99,- 

 245,768 cubic yards. It employed, on 

 an average, 7,616 men during the year. 

 In the past season its canal systems 

 were prepared to irrigate 1,193,374 

 acres and 641,397 acres were actually 

 watered. The crop returns amounted 

 to nearly $15,000,000 or an average of 

 $25 per acre. The total net investment 

 at the close of the fiscal year, June 30, 

 1913, was $75,174,283. The total irri- 

 gable area under present projects is 

 slightly more than 3.000,000 acres. 



Fire Losses Small 



Last year the fire loss on the Canadian timber reserves was the smallest ever known, 

 only one-fiftieth of one per cent of the area being burned over. 



