THE TRIUMPH OF IRRIGATION. 



WEST RIVERSIDE. 



BY T. S. VAN DYKE. 



Nothing in California is more wonderful than the quiet, steady 

 progress made South of Tehachapi during the last six years. Start- 

 ing with the collapse of a real estate boom that would have laid any 

 other land flat on its back for twenty years, it plunged headlong into 

 the hard times that begun in 1893. Before that, Providence had 

 smiled upon the whole section, through ten winters of rainfall so am- 

 ple that thousands believed tree- planting and electric wires had 

 changed the climate of over two thousand miles of coast. The dis- 

 enchantment was the most painful any country ever had to endure. 

 Six winters followed, of which only two were up to the average, and 

 two scarcely a fourth of it. And two of the worst came in succession 

 and upon top of the series. 



It was freely predicted that the water supplies of the mountains 

 would give out, and this was greatly feared by many who dared not 

 predict it. The failure of the irrigating water was supposed certain, 

 and every one knew what the result would be, although it was certain 

 that in most sections the trees could be kept alive with cultivation 

 only, while in all others there would be water enough to save them 

 even if the crops were lost. But the loss of crops was apparently cer- 

 tain, most people believed even the trees would be lost, while thou- 

 sands more believed the climate had changed the wrong way, and 

 capital was scared. 



Under such circumstances, who could expect a country to grow? 

 Yet Southern California not only has grown, but has done better than 

 any other part of the Union in the same time. It has surpassed all 

 records but its own, and in places has even done that. The dozens of 

 feet of decayed rock and soil in the mountains, and the hundreds, even 

 thousands, of feet of gravel and coarse sand in the valleys, the great 

 washes and slides at the feet of the mountains, have proved vast 

 sponges, holding untold stores of water in the grip of years, and let- 

 ting it down slowly to supply the needs of the land below. None have 

 been more surprised at this than those who thought they knew the 

 country best and none so much as the most experienced engineers. 



The consequence has been a continuation in most places of that 

 substantial growth that sprung from the wreck of the great boom, 

 quiet, unostentatious, and looking only to business-like cultivation of 

 the soil. As an object lesson of this kind of prosperity and good 



