BY C. D. PERRY. 



AN adequate supply of water being the 

 first requisite for successful irriga- 

 tion, I will first mention the four sources 

 of supply in Western Kansas in the order 

 of their relative value as I consider it 

 after eight years of close study of the 

 question. 



First, and by far the greatest source is 

 from wells sunk into the sheet water, 

 storing this water in reservoirs, using wind 

 or mechanical power according to the 

 quantity needed. The amount of water 

 that can be obtained in this manner ex- 

 ceeds many times the supply from all 

 other sources combined, and it will be 

 especially valuable because it will always 

 be under the control of the owner of the 

 plant. 



Second, the surface flow of rivers, con- 

 veyed through canals and ditches, is per- 

 haps the next largest source of supply but is 

 closely followed by the third source, the 

 underflow of rivers and streams. I should 

 not be surprised if this source would even 

 exceed in quantity the surface supply of 

 rivers. 



Fourth, the storage of storm waters by 

 damming ravines and draws. This last 

 source, owing to the unreliable rainfall of 

 our section, is not of very great importance. 



Only small strips of land along the 

 streams can ever be irrigated by their 

 waters, but the bulk of our best lands, the 

 second bottoms and uplands, will forever 

 depend upon wells, and the value of the 

 lands will be in proportion to the depths of 

 the wells. 



1887 was a dry year, as many of my 

 farmer friends remember. This was the 

 third year that I, a city chap, had been 

 on that ranch of ten thousand acres and 

 those three years comprised the total ex- 

 perience of my life in farming. In that 

 time I had seen the seed o f three crops 

 planted in soil that I prided myself was 

 as good as any. Of those three seedings 

 not one matured a crop. Beginning with 

 that year, the discouraged farmers about 

 me left the country, one by one. 



That was the summer of the fateful July 

 winds that parched the magnificent corn 

 crop, everywhere approaching matur- 

 120 



ity from Englewood to Topeka. That 

 summer, also, the Santa Fe, the road which 

 has been such a factor in the upbuilding 

 of the State, and which as a corporation 

 has had its boom and its collapse un- 

 equaled by that of any other institution 

 within our limits, was engaged in running 

 a preliminary survey southwest from 

 Englewood. 



This work brought to light the fact that 

 the bed of the Cimarron river, six miles 

 south, was thirty- two feet above the level 

 of the ranch. Realizing the futility of dry 

 farming, we determined about the middle 

 of July to build a gravity canal of suffi- 

 cient capacity to irrigate their farming 

 lands. 



By October . such a canal was completed. 

 It was ten feet wide on top, five feet wide 

 on the bottom, and eighteen inches deep, 

 with a fall of two feet to the mile. It 

 was eight and a half miles long, three and 

 a half miles squarely away from the river 

 to the south line of the ranch and five 

 miles around the western and northern 

 rim of that beautiful valley comprising 

 three thousand acres of irrigable land in 

 the eastern half of the ranch. 



At first it was attempted to take water 

 out of the river without a dam. The 

 wide channel and shifting sands rendered 

 that impracticable. A stone dam was 

 therefore built but was soon washed out. 

 After two and one half years of struggle 

 and disappointment it was decided to put 

 in a sheet piling dam 422 feet long; 2x8 

 x 12's were driven down, leaving eight 

 inches above the bed of the river. Timbers 

 were bolted on each side and 600 loads of 

 rock thrown in on the lower side of the 

 dam and finally an apron eight feet wide 

 was bolted on to lower part of 160 feet of 

 dam where the main channel was. 



The first time the water was turned in, 

 a stream, one foot deep and sixteen feet 

 wide, was fourteen days going through the 

 eight and a half miles dry ditch. Now it 

 takes but seven or eight hours. 



Faulty engineering had to be contended 

 with in laying out the canal, the natural 

 contour of the land not being followed 

 closely enough. 



