THE IERIGATION AGE. 



305 



The old times were the days of free cattle and 

 sheep ranges, when the river bottoms, the benches above 

 them, the railroad and government lands were either 



DEEP FURROWS ARE BEST, SAYS PROFESSOR 

 FORTIER. 



Fig. 6. Lifting Device for Small Wheel. 



absolutely free or subject to leases at low rentals. The 

 Wilson bill schedule, whatever its cheapening effect to 

 the consumer, put an end to the sheep industry in Mon- 

 tana. The lesson it brought was the fact that practically 

 the only men who survived the blow were those 

 who had, to some extent, engaged in alfalfa 

 growing. These men managed to pull through 

 the crisis and when better times came were equipped 

 to re-engage in the stock business, while the range men 

 failed to survive the wreckage. Dating from that time, 

 as a result of the object lesson, Eastern Montana, or at 

 least that part of it in the Yellowstone valley, turned 

 its attention to farming. 



RAILROAD STARTED IRRIGATION. 



In 1882 the Northern Pacific reached Billings and 

 the town was named after the president of the road at 

 that time. Coincident with the building of the road, 

 President Billings gave orders that an irrigating ditch 

 should be constructed, tapping the Yellowstone River 

 some forty miles west of this place, and the road and ditch 

 were contemporaries in the progress and development 

 of the valley. The ditch made it possible to grow crops 

 and the road carried off the surplus production. It was 

 years, however, before the land owners of the valley 

 awakened to a realizing sense of the value of their pos- 

 sessions. The Billings ditch, as it is still called, was 

 the first attetmpt made at irrigating in Montana, and 

 its early day success was only lacking because of a fail- 

 ure to use it for farming purposes. When the time ar- 

 rived that the stock ranges were abandoned and winter 

 feeding adopted its utility and incalculable value be- 

 came apparent. Today not only is the old ditch in use, 

 but another canal has been constructed by the Billings 

 Land & Irrigation Company which carries the water 

 of the Yellowstone miles farther down the valley, and 

 reclaims thousands of productive acres. 



North Dakota's irrigation "congress" made suf- 

 ficient fuss to get half a million dollars of the reclama- 

 tion fund set aside for irrigating works in that State. 

 Now the money will not be spent because the farmers 

 who own land along the proposed ditches refuse to give 

 the right of way for ditches, from which their own 

 land may be- irrigated, without being well paid for it. 

 If there were not this universal habit of getting all one 

 can out of the Government these farmers might be 

 severely censured. As it is, they are simply doing what 

 others do. They have, however, no complaisant secretary 

 of the interior to deal with now. St. Paul Dispatch. 



The work of the irrigation department of the agri- 

 cultural college for the year 1905 is the subject of a 

 lengthy bulletin written by Prof. Samuel Fortier of 

 California and printed by the department of agriculture 

 at Washington. 



According to Professor Fortier the irrigation work 

 which is of most interest and importance is that to 

 determine the effects of evaporation on surface land, 

 shallow furrows and deep furrows. Ezperiments have 

 been conducted at the Pomona station, where soil from 

 various parts of southern California were treated by the 

 various methods used by farmers in their irrigating, the 

 result going to prove that surface flooding is the most 

 wasteful and that deep furrows conserve much more 

 water than do shallow furrows. 



Experiments have been carried on at Berkeley to 

 determine the effect of temperature on the rate of evap- 



ELEVATION 



Fig. 7. Wheel Near Morgan City, Utah. 



