156 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



Young led the Mormons through the passes of the Wasatch. He 

 stopped before the great plain which surrounds the Great Salt 

 Lake, and announced, "This is the place." 



The desert was not exactly a garden spot, but by wise use 

 of irrigation in the flat land, the Mormons soon made it into 

 one. They had learned to manage their land wisely in New 

 York and Ohio and Illinois. But although they understood the 

 use of valley land, they were not equally wise about the use of 

 the hillsides where they grazed cattle and sheep. 



With overgrazing much of the original perennial cover of 

 the soil was killed. Then, when the torrential rains of summer 

 lashed against the sides of the Wasatch, the water ran off in 

 floods. It concentrated in the narrow canyons between the ribs 

 of the mountains, gouging and cutting away the sides of the 

 canyon and depositing everything from fine silt to huge boulders 

 on the fields of the fanners below. 



Farmington is another Mormon settlement in northern New 

 Mexico. It is a sleepy little town shaded with great cotton wood 

 trees and Lombardy poplars which the Mormons always 

 planted on their homesteads. The neat brick houses that line 

 the wide street could well have been in a New York or Illinois 

 town. For water to irrigate their fields the people of Farming- 

 ton depend on the San Juan River which flows into the 

 Colorado. 



The San Juan flows through range country. On its south 

 bank lie the huge Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations. The 

 old traders will tell you that when they first came to that 

 country a quarter of a century ago they used to drive their 

 wagons from Gallup to Farmington through grass that scraped 

 the bellies of their horses. Today you can drive that hundred 

 and twenty miles from Gallup to Farmington and see range 

 with grass so short it would hardly scrape the belly of a cater 

 pillar. And your trip will not be made any more pleasant 



