THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



375 



Mr. Hernsheim is in the East interesting a few 

 friends in the enterprise. In this he will doubtless suc- 

 ceed. The reservoir is therefore almost a certainty. 



BOWEN. 



IRRIGATION DITCHES. 



LEWISTON, IDAHO, Sept. 15, 1905. 

 EDITOR IRRIGATION AGE: 



Through filing of condemnation proceedings in the 

 District Court here today for land on Craig Mountain, 

 news became public of a big irrigation project thai is 

 under way for this section of country. 



The project is of vast importance to this community 

 and involves the expenditure of a large sum of money. 

 Hartman, Thompson & Powers, well-known investment 

 bankers of Portland, are at the head of the enterprise. 

 Suits just filed involve the condemnation of lands which 

 will be the initial reservoirs of the project, and plans 

 for early work on canals and laterals which will bring 

 water over land comprising 40,000 acres south and east 

 of Lewiston are being rapidly pushed. 



Mr. Powers, who has been looking after the enter- 

 prise, has been in Lewiston many times, but his plans 

 have been worked out so quietly that up to this time no 

 statement has been issued by him or by his associates. 

 With Mr. Powers are strong capitalists of Portland, 

 San Francisco and Lewiston, and no stock is being sold 

 nor any company organized to handle the project, the 

 financing of the same remaining in first hands. F. D. 

 Warner, of Portland, is manager here for Mr. Powers, 

 but could not be seen today relative to plans of the en- 

 terprise. 



There is perhaps no finer body of land in the entire 

 Northwest than that which lies in the district south and 

 east of Lewiston, and while these lands are semi-arid in 

 nature, there has been no year when a crop failure has 

 been recorded. 



The promoters have quietly secured a large area of 

 land. The plans are understood to be to convert the 

 lands into orchard tracts, making it the largest irrigated 

 district adapted to deciduous fruits in the entire Co- 

 lumbia and Snake River Basins. BOWEN. 



GREELET, COLO., Sept. 14, 1905. 

 EDITOR IRRIGATION' AGE : 



J. H. McColl, a member of parliament from Vic- 

 toria, Australia, was in the city today looking up irri- 

 gation methods in this section with a view to applying 

 them to Australia. McColl's father was the father of 

 irrigation in that country. He is traveling at his own 

 expense, but expects to apply his newly acquired knowl- 

 edge for the benefit of Australia. He leaves for Fort 

 Collins tomorrow. 



Mr. McColl comes from the Murray River Valley, 

 where, he says, there are 20,000,000 acres of land that 

 is readily irrigable. They hare some physical difficulties 

 to overcome that are not found in Colorado. There the 

 streams have only three to four inches of fall to the mile, 

 while here it is several feet in most instances. 



Another peculiarity of the country, he says, is that 

 the water would flow away from the river through the 

 canals instead of toward the river, as in Colorado. The 

 reason for this, said McColl, is that the greater part of 

 Australia was at one time an ocean bottom, there being 

 simply a range of mountains extending in a semi-circle 

 clear around the island from 100 to 180 miles from the 

 coast. The erosion of these hills gradually filled up the 

 shallow ocean. 



Uncle Sam is taking hold of several pretty big 

 projects just at present. The Panama canal, which is 

 destined to become the most important waterway in 

 the world, is talked of more than any other owing to 

 its magnitude. Engineers predict that it will take 

 twelve or fifteen years to complete the canal and that 

 it will cost in the neighborhood of two hundred millions 

 of dollars. 



But while this great American work is going on, 

 or rather its preliminary surveys and excavations, Un- 

 cle Sam is doing another engineering work which prom- 

 ises even greater results than the Panama canal. The 

 truth of this becomes manifest to the most unthinking 

 upon a little reflection. The Government has now under 

 consideration one is already completed seven great 

 irrigation projects in the west involving the reclama- 

 tion of some million and a quarter acres of desert land, 

 at a cost of about thirty million dollars. A half dozen 

 more are in the course of survey and commencement of 

 work. 



The fund for this work is constantly growing from 

 the receipts of all the sales of public lands; moreover 

 as every dollar expended by the Government must be 

 returned to the fund by the settlers taking the land, 

 the fund becomes a revolving one and is capable of use 

 over and over again for building new works. 



It is estimated that there are over seventy million 

 acres of irrigable land in the west and it is admitted 

 that an intensively cultivated irrigated agricultural com- 

 munity would people the western half of the United 

 States with 'nearly the present population of the entire 

 country. 



The cost of this great work would amount to two 

 billion dollars a work the vastest ever entered into 

 by any country in any time, yet costing the Government 

 not one dollar, for every dam and canal constructed 

 is paid for by eager settlers who flock upon the rich, 

 irrigated desert lands. Misscmlian, Mlissoula, Mont. 



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