632 EXPERIMENT STATION RECQRD. 



more imperative every year, and the amount now required for rent 

 makes serious inroads upon the revenues. 



The rapid progress of irrigation in this country, and the present 

 magnitude of the systems and enterprises involved in irrigated agri- 

 culture, constitute one of the most remarkable features in the history 

 of agricultural development in the world. Although the statistics 

 regarding it were presented by the Census in 1899, its growth is so 

 rapid that Congress last year ordered these data to be brought down 

 to the close of the crop year of 1902, and this has been done in a 

 bulletin recently issued by the Census Bureau, entitled. Irrigation 

 in the United States, 1902. This bulletin brings out many striking 

 facts regarding the number and extent of the irrigation enterprises in 

 the Western States, the enormous amounts of money involved in their 

 construction, and the trend of development. 



Beginning, as far as English speaking people are concerned, with 

 the use of water in rice culture about the year 1700, and confined for 

 a century and a half to the coast of the Carolinasand Georgia, the bul- 

 letin traces the successful application of irrigation in the arid region 

 by the Mormons in 1817, and by the pioneers of California who util- 

 ized abandoned mining ditches for watering small tracts. Gradually, 

 with the increase of irrigation and of population, large systems became 

 necessary, and the construction of these led to an extension not only 

 of the area but the scope of irrigated agriculture. The success of the 

 Greeley Colony in Colorado, established in 1870, gave a great impetus 

 to irrigation throughout the arid region. During the past twenty 

 years there has been an awakening to the opportunities afforded in that 

 region and a remarkable transformation in many parts of it. At 

 present approximately 10,000,000 acres are irrigated in the arid and 

 semiarid regions, upon which crops valued at a hundred million dollars 

 a year are grown. 



In the year for which the data w r ere gathered for the recent Census 

 bulletin, irrigation was practiced on 131,036 farms in the United 

 States, an increase of more than 20 per cent over the returns for 1899. 

 This increase represented an addition of about 1,705,000 acres, which 

 has been brought under irrigation systems at a cost of nearly 

 $22,000,000. 



The total area under irrigation is reported as 9,187,077 acres. Colo- 

 rado is placed at the head of the list with 1,751,761 acres, which is nearly 

 equaled by California. Montana stands third in irrigated area, with 

 over a million acres, Wyoming fourth, and Idaho and Utah fifth, 

 with approximately 713,600 acres each. The construction cost of the 

 irrigation systems for supplying the necessary water aggregates 

 $93,320,152, or $9.81 an acre for the whole country. The main canals 

 and ditches for carrying the water to the land, exclusive of those for 

 rice irrigation, have an aggregate length of 59,311 miles, which would 



