THE ART OF IRRIGATION. 



167 



splendid sun, for growing almost anything 

 that can be grown at that elevation, are 

 alkalied almost to the point of being worth 

 less ; thousands more have the crops 

 drowned or overgrown with weeds that 

 grow while the crops are held back by the 

 drenching. Everywhere in the irrigated 

 sections you find bog holes and sloughs in 

 the roads made by the water wasted from 

 the fields. In some places the crops on 

 well drained ground are good enough to 

 show what they might be if properly 

 treated. Nowhere are they better than 

 that. Everywhere there is waste and muss 

 and ruin enough to sicken anyone who 

 knows what good irrigation is and knows 

 what that fertile valley could yield if water 

 were properly used. 



THE EXAMPLE OF PASADENA. 



The case of Pasadena is almost as bad 

 on the other extreme. I know places 

 where even less water than a foot to two 

 thousand acres is used, but they are scat- 

 tered patches and do not afford as good an 

 instance as Pasadena, because that is under 

 a land owners' company where the dis- 

 tribution is well managed and is a solid 

 and nourishing city of some fifteen thou- 

 sand people. It is instructive, not as an 

 example to follow, but for the principles 

 involved in the showing it makes on so 

 small an amount of water 



Pasadena started some twenty years ago 

 as a small settlement for the growing of 

 oranges and other fruits, some nine miles 

 from Los Angeles, California. A small 

 but quite reliable supply of water was 

 flowing all the year in Arroyo Seco above 

 the settlement, but not supposed more 

 than sufficient for a thousand acres or so. 

 The beauty of the situation and the suc- 

 cess that attended the cultivation of the 

 orchards before the great boom set their 

 owners crazy and made them cut many of 

 them into town lots, increased settlement 

 and extended the area very rapidly. The 

 water supply has been constantly increased 

 at times, but was entirely unable to keep 

 pace with the rate of settlement, which 

 went ahead in spite of the collapse of the 

 great boom. It is now a beautiful city 

 with hundreds of fine places, and though 

 it can no longer be called a productive 

 place, as compared with other settlements, 

 there are still hundreds of orchards that 



would produce very well with a little 

 more care. At a time when its water sup- 

 ply was not over a foot a second to fifteen 

 hundred acres, measured by the year, or 

 an inch to thirty acres, the orchards repaid 

 their care, though by no means as profita- 

 ble as they might have been with more 

 water. They looked fine, and to the eye 

 of a stranger there was nothing lacking. 

 To the eye of an expert or fruit buyer 

 there was a considerable shortage of the 

 higher grades. Nevertheless they were 

 unquestionably profitable for several years 

 where carefully managed, and especially 

 where the owner did as much of his own 

 work as possible. Now, with even less 

 water, the orchards look well to a stranger's 

 eye, and most of them now pay interest on 

 a valuation of several hundred dollars an 

 acre, where the owner takes good care of 

 them and does his own work. 



MOISTURE RETAINING SOIL. 



But it must be remembered that the 

 winter rainfall is here heavy enough to 

 raise good crops of corn on the upland, 

 with every grain planted after the last 

 rain, and the soil is so retentive of moist- 

 ure that with cultivation alone good crops 

 of deciduous fruits are a certainty in most 

 years. The general yield is much in- 

 creased by irrigation, which is indispens- 

 able to any marketable crop of oranges, 

 but it is still so far short of what it should 

 be as to prove it folly to try to work the 

 soil for profit where the water is so limited, 

 when there are so many other places where 

 there is plenty. If you want profit go 

 where the water is. Yet this place proves 

 plainly the folly of drenching the ground 

 continually. 



It is certain that with double the amount 

 they now use, or three-quarters of an acre 

 foot, instead of about three-eighths, they 

 could raise everything except oranges, 

 lemons and alfalfa with the highest suc- 

 cess. With an acre foot they could raise 

 these three very well, and with a foot and 

 a quarter make a fine success of them, 

 reaching very near the highest with a foot 

 and a half. Two feet for the oldest and 

 most heavily laden trees would be ample. 

 The irrigation is now generally limited to 

 basins, because there is not water enough 

 to give heads large enough or long enough 

 for flooding or furrows. By good culti- 



