THE IRRIGATION AGE. 219 



the homestead act and the cost of improving varied according to location, 

 uses to which it was put and the plans of the owner. But i'ew Utah far- 

 mers live on the farms. They reside in the towns and work their farms, 

 raising grain and potatoes on the cultivated area, and wild hay or alfalfa 

 on the meadows. The exceptions to this rule are chiefly in Weber, Davis, 

 Salt Lake and Utah counties, where maiket gardening and sugar beet 

 growing are extensively engaged in by the more thrifty farmers. The 

 small farm idea has prevailed everywhere and the average cultivated 

 area of the 20,000 farms now owned, is less than 40 acres, many having 

 all they can handle in a 20 acre tract. 



About 85 per cent, of the farms are irrigated, the remainder being 

 cultivated as dry farms, the water coming near the surface and supplying 

 the requisite amount of moisture. Irrigated lands produce from 35 to 50 

 bushels of wheat per acre while the dry lands seldom average over 25 

 bushels to the acre. Some farmers have harvested 85 bushels from an 

 acre and Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon church, claims to 

 have cultivated his 20 acre farm for 44 years, harvesting no less than 40 

 bushels of wheat, except one year, and one crop threshed 70 bushels. 

 Wheat is the leading crop of most sections and of the state, followed by 

 potatoes, oats and barley. Alfalfa produces from two to four crops 

 of hay under irrigation, the yield being governed by altitude. The low- 

 est valleys are about 4,000 feet above sea level, while the higher culti- 

 vated fields of dairies and potato patches: reach 7, 000 feet. Rainfall is on 

 the increase and every season adds something to the precipitation of 

 moisture over preceding years, due no doubt to increased cultivation of 

 soil, greater diversion of water and necessarily more evaporation from 

 the earth. 



Water rights are known as primary and secondary, the farmer giving 

 the shareholder an interest in the water at all seasons, while the latter 

 merely amounts to a pro rata use of the surplus in early summer and 

 when there is a volume running to waste after the primary claimants 

 have used all they desire. Seven years continuous usuage insures a 

 primary right even though the original claim might have been only sec- 

 ondary. An acre water right under the co-operative farmer ditches, 

 when not an appurtenance to the land, usually sells at from $25 to $50 

 varying with the location. The corporations having water for sale 

 charge from $10 to $25 an acre for perpetual right, agreeing to deliver 

 enough water for the area to be irrigated during the irrigation season, 

 forever, upon the payment of a rental varying from $1.00 to $2.50 per 

 acre annually. The rates vary with the kind of crops grown, thus wheat 

 and alfalfa require less water than small fruits and lawns or gardens and 

 the charges are correspondingly more or less. 



Corporation or speculative canals have not proven successful invest- 

 ments in this state for many reasons. The companies furnish only the 

 water at stipulated yearly rentals which must be paid regularly whether 

 the crops yield much or little. New land sometimes shows alkali in such 



