THE IKKIGATION AGE. 



15 



The owners, who in the main had obtained their 

 lands from Spanish grants, were not disposed to sell. 

 Their decision was impelled by two causes: first, that 

 it did not pay them to sell a small corner from their 

 estates, as the land could be more profitably farmed in 

 wholesale operations; and, secondly, that the natural 

 rainfall, while amply sufficient to care for grain, was 

 not so distributed as to encourage diversified and con- 

 tinuous farming throughout the year. 



Today the amazing development ol irrigation proj- 

 ects renders the cultivation of small tracts most feas- 

 ible, thousands of settlers are pouring into the state, 

 the vast reaches of the San Joaquin and Sacramento 

 Valleys are dotted with hundreds of new homesteads. 

 Little farms are springing up everywhere. 



The big land holders are subdividing, millions of 

 dollars are being added to California's annual produc- 

 tion. The movement is striking not only throughout 

 the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, but through- 

 out the State of California as a whole. 



One example in Stanislaus county will give some 

 idea of the rate at which the country is growing. Five 

 years ago a tract of less than seventeen hundred acres 

 of land known as the Wood Eanch, situated four or five 

 miles west of Modesto and in Modesto Irrigation Dis- 

 trict, had but one house upon it and this was not occu- 

 pied save during the grain harvesting season. The land 

 was subdivided and with some adjoining land sold in 

 small tracts to settlers. Within a year a school district 

 was created for the benefit of these settlers and two years 

 ago it was fond necessary to build an addition to the 

 school house and to employ a second teacher. Four- 

 year-old improved places in this tract, now known as the 

 Woodland Colony, have a market value of $250 and 

 higher per acre. There are a score or more of like 

 colonies in the district in various stages of advance- 

 ment. They are uniformly prosperous, the land yield- 

 ing abundant crops and prices uniformly high. 



As early as last autumn fourteen new school dis- 

 tricts had been created and twenty-three teachers added. 

 Seven rural delivery routes have been installed, and free 

 mail delivery has been instituted in Modesto. The school 

 system of the county ranks sixth of the fifty-eight county 

 school systems of California. Fourteen teachers are 

 employed in the grammar grades of the Modesto schools 

 and five in the high school. Graduates of this latter 

 institution are admitted to the State University and 

 to Sanford University on their diplomas. 



Stanislaus county is acknowledged to rank among 

 the first of the state in its public high and grammar 

 grade schools. It has four high schools, one being at 

 Turlock, in the Turlock Irrigation District, one at 

 Modesto, in the Modesto Irrigation District, one at Oak- 

 dale and one at Newman, and grammar schools at con- 

 venient places throughout the county. In the Turlock 

 and Modesto Districts there are twenty-three grammar 

 schools properly and conveniently located. Our high 

 schools are accredited to the State University. 



The people of Stanislaus county are enterprising, 

 intelligent and progressive. The new conditions which 

 have awakened the new era in the annals of the old 

 province have attracted a class of settlers who may be 

 said to have every reauisite for active citizenship. 

 Stanislaus county is now a modern county with a mod- 

 ern set of people in charge of its affairs, and the natural 

 sequence will be rapid modern progress. 



GARDEN CITY KANSAS 



VICINITY 



BY R. H. FAXON. 



THE IRRIGATION AGE has requested the above named to write 

 something each month for this publication concerning Garden City, 

 Kansas, conditions there and in western Kansas generally, something 

 touching the work of reclamation and development there, and what is 

 being done to make western Kansas attractive to people throughout 

 the country, especially in the Middle West and in the West. 



Properly to write on this subject one must have a 

 knowledge of it, and must impart that knowledge to the 

 reader. Hence a few introductory words concerning Gar- 

 den City, first of all, and later of western Kansas, to 

 those readers not already familiar with these places, may 

 be pertinent. 



Garden City is the most important point in southwest- 

 ern Kansas. It is a city of nearly 4,000 inhabitants, located 

 on the main line of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Tail- 

 road, sixty-five miles east of the Colorado line. It is the 

 capital of a rich kingdom, which a political writer in Kan- 

 sas years ago termed the "shortgrass country." Con- 

 ditions make this section homogenous and sui generis. 

 There is no other section in the country quite like it, with 

 respect to topography, physical conditions, natural re- 

 sources and spirit and psychology. Having gone through 

 an experience calculated to try out men and find the stuff 

 of which they were made, during the days when irrigation 

 and applied agricultural science were, respectively, a lost 

 and an undeveloped art, the people of this section have 

 been bound together and have been welded into a com- 

 pact body that is peculiarly its own. Infected by the 

 bigness of the country, their minds are broad and their 

 thoughts are liberal. They are manly and womanly to the 

 highest degree. They are successful, for the tried ones 

 who went through the "boom" period know what it meant 

 to play with edged tools and have not since been lost to 

 either caution or cunning. They are hospitable, kindly, 

 prosperous and contented. 



Garden City holds a place essentially its own. Located 

 200 miles west of Hutchinson, Kas., the commercial cen- 

 ter of middle Kansas, and 200 miles east of Pueblo, Colo., 

 the dominating commercial center of south-central Colo- 

 rado, Garden City is not approached in any way by any 

 other town or city. As all roads led to Rome in the olden 

 days, so did all the cow trails, years ago, lead to Garden 

 City; and now all the automobile and wagon roads head in 

 there, wherever there is not a railroad to bring the peo- 

 ple to this common center of southwestern Kansas. To 

 that great country southwest of Garden City, comprising ' 

 five Kansas counties without railroads, Garden City is the 

 metropolis, the commercial center, the hub, the capital. 



Irrigation was born, so far as this section of the 

 country is concerned, in the Arkansas valley, and Garden 

 City was its cradle. Many years ago, the ditches and 

 canals ran out like spider's legs from this town. In Gar- 

 den City lived a band of men who preached and believed 

 in irrigation from the start. They practiced what they 

 preached, and the wonderful fertility of western Kansas 

 soil, unsurpassed plus the water, soon made the town 

 even in those days the acknowledged mistress of the great 

 southwestern Kansas. Proudly and uninterruptedly and 

 seldom disputed, it has held sway ever since. 



Garden City has, then, nearly 4,000 inhabitants; is the 

 hub of southwestern Kansas; and was a prime factor in 

 irrigation in its infancy. Its name does not belie it. It 

 has physical beauty in addition to commercial impor- 

 tance. It is a veritable garden for, in the beginning, 

 these wise pioneers did what few western communities 

 did; they planted trees. And then, fearing they had not 

 planted enough, they planted more. There were the cot- 

 tonwood, that father of all Kansas trees, the poplar, the 

 ash, the locust, and many other varieties, but principally 

 those named. The big. broad main street of Garden City 

 is flanked with great shading branches that make a pleas- 

 ing sight to the traveler on the Santa Fe Limited, who 

 rests his eye in hot summertime on the grateful foliage of 

 these green giants that throw their protection and comfort 



