RESERVOIRS, WELLS, ETC. 



It seems evident that the reservoir or storage system, for supplying 

 water for irrigating purposes, will enter into the agricultural economy of 

 this country to an extent not thought or dreamed of as possible to-day. 

 Not only will the Great Plains "the possible homes of fifty million 

 people" be supplied from mountain and upland storage, but the system 

 will extend, in one form or another, through the broad acres of the Great 

 Northwest, and even to all sections of our land. The waters will be con- 

 served, "led captive," and utilized in a hundred ways, of which we have 

 not, perhaps, the remotest conception. 



China is said to have one irrigating canal a thousand miles in length, 

 and other nations of the Old World are close rivals. The extent to 

 which storage is practiced there can hardly be realized by us, but it is 

 sufficient for us to state here that the most sagacious minds of all those 

 lands early saw the importance of a certain and ample system of water 

 storage to the permanent welfare of the people. 



Storage, then, with improved methods of conveying water, will be a 

 leading problem in the agricultural development of this nation for the 

 century to come. 



Much can and will be done, in a limited way, by means of artesian 

 wells, wind-mills, steam pumps and hydraulic appliances for raising water 

 connected with distributing pipes. 



In Syria, extensive vineyards are irrigated from large wells dug for 

 that purpose. And in portions of the southern San Joaquin Valley, Cali- 

 fornia, irrigation from artesian wells is relied on largely. One well, bored 

 to the depth of 310 feet in 1879, was made to water successfully a 40-acre 

 tract of land set to forest trees, and it is claimed that some of the wells in 

 Tulare county, with an average capacity of 247 gallons per minute, will 

 water thoroughly 160 acres of land. The average flow of the wells in this 

 county (Tulare) are given as two and one-half inches above the casing. 

 These instances serve to show the possibilities of irrigation by artesian 

 wells in specially favored regions, where geological and surface formations 

 are favorable. 



