MAKING A HOME ON THE DRY LANDS. 37 



tion in rainfall from year to year is very great, so that one must 

 expect to experience occasional or even frequent dry j^ears, when 

 even with the best of care the ordinary garden crops Avould fail, and 

 there might even be a shortage of forage for the stock. 



It is therefore highly important in selecting a farm on the dry 

 lands to secure provision for some irrigation, at least for the garden. 

 The larger part of the dry lands of the western United States have 

 underground water within reach. Some of them, indeed, overlie 

 artesian basins, so that deej) Avells supply an abundance of water. 

 In other cases water can be. had by lifting, and with windmills or 

 small engines it is considered quite feasible to lift Avater 200 feet or 

 more for domestic uses and for garden irrigation. 



A garden of some kind is almost a necessity for a farm home on 

 the dry lands, as elsewhere, and the means and methods of providing 

 it should be among the first considerations of a new settler. 



It is sometimes possible to maintain a garden by taking advantage 

 of the surface run-off after torrential rains, which may be collected 

 by intercepting ditches and run into broad, shallow trenches in the 

 garden until it settles into the ground. A view of a garden in which 

 this method is used is shown in Plate IV, figure 2. 



Where ground water lies very deep the expense of reaching it is 

 often too great to be borne by a farmer individually, especially 

 by a new settler, and it is then necessary to attempt a solution of the 

 problem on a community basis. There are vast areas of land in the 

 western United States with enough rainfall for dry farming, yet 

 without any easily available supply of ground w^ater even for domes- 

 tic use. In some such regions it is often possible to collect rain water 

 from buildings and store enough in cisterns for culinary purposes, 

 but this is sometimes out of the question for a new settler in a tree- 

 less country, where building material is scarce and high priced and 

 where he must be content to live for the first few years in' a tent 

 house or a small shack. In such situations the water problem must 

 be solved by a community action. 



In some instances the extension of dry farming around irrigated 

 centers is limited only by the distance w^hich farmers can afford to 

 haul water to supply the horses or engines required for the farm work. 

 In other cases large tracts of land that are well suited to dry farming 

 are remaining undeveloped because of the absence of springs and the 

 uncertainty as to the presence of an underground supply of Avater 

 within reach and, if found, as to the proper location of wells. 



One of the most urgent needs for the further development of dry 

 farming in the Great Basin is a hydrographic survey for the purpose 

 of determining the location and extent of the underground water 

 resources. Without the information that such a survey might fur- 



103 



