TRANSACTIONS OF STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 89 



WATER DEVELOPMENT, AND IRRIGATION FROM 

 DEEP WELLS IN CALIFORNIA. 



By A. T. AMES, of Galt. 



Irrigation in California a few years ago was considered practical and 

 profitable only when a gravity system could be constructed and carried 

 out on a large scale, utilizing the water, from mountain streams and 

 conducting it in open ditches to the orchards and gardens on lands so 

 located as to come under a gravity flow. This left a greater portion 

 of the richest and most fertile land dependent entirely on winter rains 

 for moisture, which, generally speaking here in California, particularly 

 in the southern part of the State, is only sufficient to grow a crop of 

 grain in the early spring, and grazing for stock. On land that only a 

 few years ago was considered good for nothing else, and could not be 

 depended upon for* even that purpose, it was not thought possible to 

 develop sufficient water in wells to irrigate "more than a garden patch, 

 and even if water ^in sufficient quantity to irrigate could be obtained 

 from wells, it was supposed that the cost of pumping would make it 

 impracticable, which was true to a great extent at that time. 



The past five years, however, have wrought wonderful changes. It 

 has been proven beyond question that an inexhaustible supply of water •: 

 underlies almost the entire country. Hundreds of wells have been 

 bored or dug; crude oil has been found, and utilized for generating a 

 cheap pOwer in connection with gasoline and steam engines. 



Great improvements have been made in deep-well pumps adapted to 

 this class of work (viz: pumping- an irrigating head from deep wells of 

 small diameter), and I believe it to be a very conservative estimate that 

 during the past two years more than a million dollars a year has been 

 expended in deep-well pumping machinery for irrigation purposes. In 

 Southern California alone there are now many thousands of miners' 

 inches continuous flow pumped out of the ground from deep-bored wells 

 for irrigation. Indeed, they in Southern California are getting very 

 much more water out of the ground by pumping it from bored wells 

 than they get from above. They get it at much less cost than from the 

 gravity system, and get it just when they need it besides. The man 

 with an improved pumping plant is independent of any one else; when 

 his erop needs water he simply starts his pump. 



Pumps that are used in California for irrigation are divided into two 

 classes: Where large quantities of , water can be obtained near the sur- 

 6*— AS 



