THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



who expects to make a steady business of living in 

 western Kansas would better prepare to irrigate. 



A certain ward tough, in a western city, about the 

 time of the recent election, was quoted as asking a 

 friend, who seemed slow to take a hint about an im- 

 portant matter, " If he would take a tumble if a brick 

 house fell on him." It has taken hints just about as 

 forcible to cause our people to "take a tumble," but 

 they seem to have pretty nearly taken it, of late. 



ON THE SKIRMISH LINE. 



In the evolution of irrigation processes and results 

 in Southwest Kansas, the people in the vicinity of 

 Garden City have had the fortune to serve as pio- 

 neers and exemplars, both as regards irrigation from 

 streams and by the more recently utilized pumping 

 methods. From several systems of ditches network 

 a body of land in Finney and Kearney counties, 

 comprising about 150,000 acres of irrigable land. But 

 a minor Fraction of this area is under cultivation, 

 however, largely for the reason already referred to 

 that people continually risk trying to get along with- 

 out irrigating and also in large part because of the 

 continued failure of ditch managers to so construct 

 headworks and prepare ditches and reservoirs as to 

 supply the necessary water to insure the success of 

 those attempting to irrigate. The purveyors of water 

 in this region, no less than those who should have 

 used it upon their crops, have had to learn by expe- 

 rience. 



It was uncertainty of ditch supply, growing out of 

 inexperienced and inefficient management, which led 

 to the employment of the pumping plant in the first 

 place, the latter method having been inaugurated 

 but five years ago, but it is proving a most important 

 factor indeed in the problem of settling the Great 

 Plains with a permanent population. In cost, as 

 compared with ditch irrigation under the most favor- 

 able circumstances, "figures'" would make it appear 

 less economical, the cost of installing a plant for irri- 



fation by pumping, on valley lands where the lift is 

 fteen to twenty-five feet, being about $ 15 per acre ; 

 but, as an available aid to the man who is seeking to 

 make a living.out of the soil of the semi-arid portion 

 of the Great Plains, it is rapidly being demonstrated 

 as the practical and popular method for obtaining 

 quick and sure results. It is a means within the 

 reach of the individual, can be employed without 

 delay by the isolated settler and embroils the irrigator 

 in no complications either with ditch company or 

 with other users of water. It may be used exten- 

 sively, or in a small way, to a most beneficial end, 

 and supplements and is supplemented by other fea- 

 tures of the farm in so many ways that the appar- 

 ently high cost per acre of an installation counts for 

 little when the benefits and profits are reckoned. For 

 example, the same pumping outfit which waters the 

 ranchman's cattle may be made to irrigate a garden 

 which will furnish his table with small fruits and veg- 

 etables. The pump and reservoir which irrigate only a 

 small tract of ground, thus insuring a supply of food 

 for the family table, will, in multitudes of cases, make 

 it possible for the family to subsist through drouth and 

 crop failures on the umrrigated lands and thus bring 

 them around to the years of abundant rainfall when 

 big crops are raised big enough to make up for lost 

 time. This has been demonstrated as a fact, already, 

 and it applies to so large a proportion of the tracts of 

 land which have been settled upon in Western Kan- 

 sas that the remarkable success of those who have 

 employed pump irrigation in the vicinity of Garden 



City the past five years, has given a great stimulus 

 to development along this line. Furthermore, it has 

 proven an aid instead of a rival to the ditches, be- 

 cause there is all the upland, readily accessible to 

 water, which the latter can possibly supply, and the 

 pumping plants in the nooks and valleys operate as 

 an insurance of success and a stimulus to effective 

 effort whose influence extends to and benefits 

 the lands where water is too deep for economical 

 pumping. 



jEGYPTA! 



The season of 1894 has done more than had all of 

 its predecessors to bring pertinent and practical facts 

 forcibly to the notice of the people concerned in the 

 development of Western Kansas. The drouth and 

 crop failures upon unirrigated lands were so wide- 

 spread that a good deal of country ordinarily reliable 

 for farming by the ordinary processes produced very 

 little. The irrigation farmers about Garden City had 

 their customary big crops of vegetables, fruits, alfalfa, 

 etc. Before the season was well into its latter half, 

 wagon loads and caravans of the products of the irri- 

 gated small farms were going out to all points of the 

 compass, beside the far greater proportion which 

 found transportation by rail to more distant markets. 

 Consignments of sweet potatoes, for example, were 

 shipped to Pueblo, Denver, and as far as Ogden, 

 Utah. Wagons came across the country, in several 

 instances from distances of upward of 150 miles.loaded 

 with grain, broomcorn or stock hogs, to sell in order 

 to take back loads of vegetables. Farmers came 

 singly, in pairs and in companies, some of them 

 bringing their wives along, to stay from a couple of 

 days to a couple of weeks among the small irrigated 

 farms, getting information that would enable them 

 to "go and do likewise.'' At one time a passenger 

 coach load of fifty-two farmers came, by special 

 arrangement, from Sherman county, in Northwest 

 Kansas, necessarily coming a long way around, and 

 were shown all that the Garden City people could 

 show them in the way of demonstrations of practical 

 and paying results. Another party of twenty came, 

 at another time, by excursion rate, from Pawnee 

 county, for the same purpose. 



EVERYBODY WELCOME. 



One feature of the conduct of the farmers and 

 people in general about Garden City deserves special 

 mention, and that is the fact that, whatever success 

 they have secured, whether by ditch irrigation, by 

 pumping, by the introduction of new crops, or what- 

 ever has contributed to their advancement, they have 

 not sought to keep it 



" A close monopoly by patent right " 



or otherwise, but have continually placed their infor- 

 mation, the results of their work and experimenta- 

 tion, at the service of their neighbors and visitors, 

 taking the time and teams necessary to show 

 around the parties of information-seekers, not 

 to sell them land, or to influence them to settle at 

 Garden City, but encouraging them to carry the irri- 

 gation gospel to other localities and showing them, as 

 far as possible, how to succeed on their own lands. 

 There may be an occasional grumpy, selfish indi- 

 vidual who " isn't working for other people," but the 

 writer does not know of a solitary irrigator in Finney 

 county who has not willingly furnished all the infor- 

 mation at his command to enable any one, in any 

 locality, to start right on the road to the successful 

 establishing of a home of his own. Hundreds of 



