210 WESTERN GRAZING GROUNDS AND FOREST RANGES 



notably Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City, Utah, where 

 it was considered advisable absolutely to forbid the use 

 of the range to all kinds of stock. Again on the Manti 

 National Forest in Utah the little city of Manti, before 

 the creation of the forest, had been repeatedly damage^ 

 by heavy floods which swept down the canyon from the 

 mountains above them. A study of the situation by the 

 Manti people led them to believe that the seriously 

 overgrazed condition of the mountains about the head 

 of the canyon was the cause of these floods. The grasses 

 and other vegetation were all gone and the ground was 

 bare and packed hard by the constant trampling of the 

 stock. Due to their wishes, the Forest Service prohib- 

 ited all grazing upon an area of considerable extent, arid 

 after four years' experience the people of Manti are 

 unanimous in the belief that the effect of this has been 

 practically to eliminate the floods. 



On several of the National Forests where large irri- 

 gation works are being erected under Government super- 

 vision, the Reclamation Service has seen fit to prohibit 

 the grazing of sheep about the heads of all the water 

 courses which flow into the reservoirs being built. The 

 best example of this exclusion is in Arizona, where the 

 Government has erected at a cost of more than 

 $9,000,000 the great Roosevelt Dam with a reservoir 

 capacity sufficient when once filled to irrigate 200,000 

 acres of land for at least two years without being replen- 

 ished. 



The region about this reservoir is one of the best win- 

 ter sheep-grazing areas in the Southwest, and at the 

 time the Government took charge of the irrigation 

 project probably carried during at least four months of 

 the year 300,000 sheep, besides fully 100,000 cattle. The 



