TRE IRRIGATION AGE. 115 



cost is thus counterbalanced by the attendant disadvantages of 

 location. The building of individual ditches is, therefore, largely a 

 thing of the past. 



EVOLUTION OF THE COMMUNITY DITCH. 



The evolution of irrigation on the majority of streams has 

 followed the same successive steps. Frequently the ditch of the 

 pioneer was so located as to be conveniently and economically 

 enlarged and extended to cover the lands of the subsequent settlers. 

 In such cases arrangements were often made with the original owner 

 by which such enlargements and extensions were made and the later 

 settlers became part owners in the ditch, which has often been 

 enlarged and extended many times and thus grown from the small 

 ditch constructed and owned by the first settler to a large partner- 

 ship or community canal, in which each owner of lands irrigated by 

 it has purchased or worked out an interest, and contributes to its 

 annual maintenance in proportion to the amount of water used 

 by him. 



After the available lower lands near the stream have been taken 

 up and rendered irrigable by the individual or partnership ditches, 

 larger and longer canals are often projected to cover the mesas and 

 benches above. These are also often built, owned, and operated by 

 the owners of the lands to be reclaimed by them, the principal outlay 

 being their own labor. These partnership or community canals have 

 generally proven successful and satisfactory, and have been a most 

 important factor in the development of the agricultural resources of 

 the arid region. Their construction and operation are usually simple, 

 and their value represents wealth created by the people who live 

 under them. The operation and maintenance of such canals is 

 generallv satisfactorily accomplished through mutual agreement, by 

 proportionate assessments of labor or money upon the various 

 owners. The annual expense of operation is generally very small, 

 and the value of land under such canals (which usually includes a 

 proportiooate ownership in the canal itself) is usually greater than 

 that of similarly situated land under corporation cinals. In many 

 respects, where it is applicable, this individual or partnership system 

 of canal ownership is an ideal one. 



Although partnership and community canals, especially those 

 which have grown up by the enlargement and extension of smaller 

 individual ditches, are usually unincorporated mutual associations as 

 above described, yet it often happens that a closer and stronger 

 organization than one department upon mutual agreement is desired 

 by the irrigators, and the result is the formation of the community 

 irrigation stock company. In sucb a corporation the stockholders, 

 as a general rule, are the farmers who expect to use the water thus 



