374 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



We doubt if there are any other sections of country in the United 

 States that have a reservoir site that can show equal possibilities for 

 immediate returns to the government for outlay in building a reservoir. ' 



"The outlook for general interest," said Chief Hydrographer 

 Newell at Denver recently, "in irrigation is brighter than ever 

 before in the history of the work. A year ago it would have been 

 impossible to have induced congress to have passed the bill which 

 was passed by both houses at the recent session. A great interest 

 has been awalrened in the east, and friends of the movement consider 

 the law as only the entering wedge. If the first of the reservoir pro- 

 jects are successful, we may expect a continuance of the good feeling 

 which has been aroused, and additional legislation. Large business 

 men of the East recognize that the development of any part of the 

 country means much to their enterprises, and are heartiiy in favor of 

 federal assistance in extending the irrigated area. I consider the 

 Pawnee Reservoir site, near Sterling, well adapted to the purposes of 

 of my work. Cheesman Lake will be a great success." 



"The Pawnee Reservoir," says Geo. R. Caldwell, a well known 

 writer on agricultural matters, "will be nine miles in length; 

 will average over three miles in width and 100 feet in 

 depth. It will be the second largest actually natural res- 

 ervoir in the United States in point of area, and the first in water- 

 storing capacity, its great California rival, while of larger surface 

 area, being of lesser depth. 



"The Pawnee storage capacity runs high into the billions of cubic 

 feet, and its scarcely to be comprehended immensity can perhaps be 

 best expressed by the statement that one filling of the reservoir will 

 furnish enough water to cover to the depth of one-acre foot, 284,000 

 acres of land the acre-foot being the accepted water amount for the 

 season irrigation of one acre of ground. 



"A quarter of a million acres 150,000 acres in Logan county and 

 the great bulk of the remainder in Sedgwick county are immediately 

 tributary to the reservoir, while the full development and operation 

 of the great storage basin will add immensely to its irrigation area, 

 the reservoir's properly conserved capacity being estimated as high 

 as 750,000 acres a prolific factor in final reservoir covering lying in 

 the fact that its waters will also heavily reinforce the already estab- 

 lished canal irrigation systems of the region. 



"The big basin will be filled twice each season once during the 

 fall and winter, from the ninety mile long feeding canal, to issue from 

 the South Platte River at Hardin, in Weld County, and once from the 

 flood flow in the spring of the great Pawnee watershed the latter 

 filling being for summer use. 



"The Pawnee watershed has an extent of seventy by fifty miles, 



