PUBLISHER'S DEPARTMENT. 



KERN DELTA COLONIES. AN OPINION WORTH HAVING. 



ONE of the best judges of land values and coloni- 

 zation opportunities in the West is Hon. C. C. 

 Hutchinson, founder of Hutchinson, Kansas. He has 

 devoted a lifetime to the study of these things, and 

 has been notably successful in developing new coun- 

 tries. He recently visited the property of the Kern 

 County Land Company, at Bakersfield, Cal., and 

 there contributed to the local newspaper a statement 

 of his opinions. It will be read with very great in- 

 terest by thousands of people in the West who have 

 confidence in Mr. Hutchinson's ripe judgment. The 

 following is what he wrote: 



THE RICH LANDS OF KERN DELTA. 



Editor Californian SIR : You ask my opinion as 

 to the resources and prospects of Kern county, and I 

 gladly note down my first impressions. Although 

 occasionally passing through the county during the 

 eight years of my residence in the State, it never 

 came convenient to stop over until now. I am very 

 much surprised at some things, as I think would be 

 many Californians if they could ride over the valley 

 as I have done the past week. 



Of course, one expects to find rich land in every 

 county in the great valley of the San Joaquin, but the 

 most remarkable feature of your country is its excel- 

 lent drainage. Your enormous water system and al- 

 most innumerable canals, winding for miles through 

 the country like rivers or creeks, and in every direc- 

 tion, apparently, amply vindicate your claims to the 

 largest irrigation system in the United States. It is 

 well known too that your Kern river, the source of 

 all this water, has the best water shed of any of the 

 many irrigating streams which pour their prolific 

 waters into the San Joaquin valley. 



IMPORTANCE OF NATURAL DRAINAGE. 



But it is not generally known that your irrigable 

 lands*have so remarkable and uniform a slope from 



the head of your canals to the western side and 

 drainage outlet of your Kern river valley. This 

 slope varies from four to fourteen feet per mile in 

 the irrigated portions of the valley, being least as we 

 go west, and over the half million acres under your 

 irrigation system the character of the land is such as 

 to permit perfect sub-soil drainage to very much 

 the greater portion of this vast area. 



The inestimable value of drainage in any irrigable 

 region is now appreciated in California, especially 

 in places where the people have heretofore ignored 

 the question. 



The heavy, water-logged, unproductive condition 

 of the soil in some regions, and the upward move- 

 ment of the heretofore unknown alkali in other regions, 

 painfully remind irrigators of their failings. If they 

 use more water than enough to supply vegetation 

 with needed moisture, the surplus must be removed 

 or it will greatly injure the productive capacity of 

 the soil. 



I do not know any other large area in the State 

 which is irrigated by open canals and yet so well 

 drained as your Kern valley. To arrive at this con- 

 clusion it is not necessary to examine the engineers' 

 plats of these irrigation systems as I have done. 



" HALF A MILLION ACRES." 



A short ride alongside one of your twenty-seven 

 main canals, or any of the hundreds of laterals, will 

 convince the most skeptical of the literal truth of 

 those statements. The solidly constructed restraining 

 " drops " over which the water falls from one to four 

 feet are seen in every direction, and if you ride across 

 the country, the sheen of the falling waters as you ford 

 or cross a canal or ditch every few minutes is exhila- 

 rating in the extreme. Every cascade is a forcible 

 reminder of the enormous waste of water power all 

 along your irrigating systems. 



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