WINDMILL AND RESERVOIR NEAR GARDEN CITY, KANSAS. 



IRRIGATION IN SOUTHWEST KANSAS. 



EXPERIENCE TEACHES PRACTICABILITY OF PUMP IRRIGATION. 



BY J. W. GREGORY. 



I RRIGATION sentiment has made greater progress 

 [ in western Kansas during the past two years than 

 in all the previous history of the country. From 

 the inception of the first experiments in this line, up- 

 ward of fifteen years ago, up to the present time, there 

 have been more or less systematic efforts to put this 

 region on a practical irrigation footing. But that ter- 

 rible thing which the editor of THE AGE tells us once 

 occurred in Nebraska, dampening irrigation ardor 

 which a dry season had aroused, has happened here 

 also it has rained. If it only would, each time, rain 

 enough, and often enough, that would be well enough. 

 On the other hand, if the seasons were uniform as to 

 lack of rain, people would not have been so slow to 

 adapt themselves to the actual condition of things, 

 and irrigation would have speedily been made to so 

 supplement precipitation, when settlement was at- 

 tempted at all, that but few acres of the land ever 

 would have been settled upon in vain. But the 

 annual rainfall, which averages about twenty inches 

 in that part of Kansas west of the 99th meridian, is 

 so unevenly distributed that in some years we have 

 only eleven inches, while others receive as much as 

 twenty-eight inches. One great advantage attaches 

 to the fact that three-fourths o f the annual rainfall 

 occurs in the six months beginning with April; but 

 even this most obvious advantage, which gives a 

 larger proportion of moisture to growing crops than 



the records of annual precipitation would appear to 

 warrant, and makes the winter season* dry, is marred 

 to a considerable extent by a midsummer drouth 

 period, which never fails to be in evidence during 

 the early half of July. So that, whether the season 

 be one of medium, maximum or minimum rainfall, it 

 is all the same. There is sure to be one portion of 

 the crop-growing time in which irrigation is the sure 

 and only key to success. 



TAKING CHANCES. 



But people have been slow to realize this fact. 

 The promise of the spring is always so alluring, and 

 that dry time in midsummer so short, and the later 

 rains bring out the late crops, and it always seems 

 that the farmer "came so near it" that he certainly 

 can succeed next year. Then, there is often a fair 

 wheat crop, and occasionally a very heavy one what 

 is called "a steam winder, 1 ' by a 'steemed friend, 

 who is more emphatic and picturesque than accurate 

 in his characterizations. And so it has been that the 

 people, being unacquainted with the methods and 

 practical value of irrigation, have been slow to adopt 

 new ways and have taken chances, year after year, 

 which have not eventuated to the advantage either of 

 country or people. It has required a long series of 

 the most emphatic lessons of experience to make 

 anything like a general beginning at realizing that he 



