8 DRY FARMING IN THE GREAT BASIN. 



settlements may be gradually extended, but any wholesale attempt to 

 colonize large areas of this arid land with people accustomed to farm- 

 ing only in humid regions or not accustomed to farming at all is 

 almost certain to result in disastrous failure. 



The region just east of the Rocky Mountains has already been the 

 scene of some large booms in arid lands. One of the first of these, 

 which occurred from 1880 to 1885, was partly the result of a series 

 of years of relatively high precipitation and partly the result of 

 very extensive railroad building. A series of drier years following 

 drove back many of the new settlers after they had lost all their pos- 

 sessions while waiting for a rainy season to come again. There have 

 since been a number of smaller booms, which have affected different 

 parts of the region at different times, as a result of temporary periods 

 of increased rainfall or some other local cause. One of these, in the 

 two or three years following 1890, began to assume large proportions 

 when the financial crisis of 1893 and the severe drought of 1894 com- 

 bined to drive back most of the new settlers. As each of these early 

 waves of settlement receded, it left behind some few pioneers, who, 

 by dint of harder work, by the use of better judgment in selecting 

 land, or by turning to stock raising and using as range land the farms 

 of their less persistent neighbors, succeeded in holding out through 

 the dry years. 



The region just west of the Rocky Mountains, particularly that 

 portion of it lying within the State of Utah, was first settled by 

 farmers who depended exclusively upon irrigation for crop produc- 

 tion. The extensions of their settlements were naturally made along 

 those streams from which the diversion of water for irrigation was 

 possible. These first settlements were made about 1850, and for the 

 next thirty years irrigation farming and stock raising on the open 

 range constituted the only agriculture of the region. 



In the decade of 1870-1880, some pioneer attempts were made to 

 grow crops without irrigation in and around some of the valleys of 

 the Great Basin. These attempts finally showed the way to the 

 utilization of large tracts of fertile land for which no irrigation water 

 could be had. The first efforts were relatively few and unimportant, 

 but as the country became more thickly settled and new irrigation 

 enterprises became scarce and expensive more attention was directed 

 to the development of these nonirrigable lands. 



This development was begun by growing crops to supplement those 

 grown on the irrigated land. Almost no attempts were made at first 

 to establish farms on the dry lands, so that the first failures, by which 

 the methods of success were learned, were not so disastrous as they 

 might have been had it been necessary to build homes and make other 

 improvements independent of any irrigation opportunities. It is 



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