16 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



over this western town in a manner seldom seen in the 

 smaller communities. 



The residence streets are so dense with shade that 

 there has ever been a thinning process, at times, some- 

 thing almost unheard of in a western community. The 

 lawns and the flower beds supplement the work of the 

 trees, and the "Garden" City is no misnomer. 



Garden City is a modern town in every respect. Its 

 commercial importance and the character of the country 

 surrounding it, with the fact that it is on the main line 

 of a great railroad system have made it necessary for the 

 town to keep pace with modern requirements and not to 

 become provincial in any sense. For instance, it had elec- 

 tric light and telephones before any city in western Kan- 

 sas. It has had for years the largest hotel in the state, 

 west of Wichita and Emporia. It has an opera house that 

 is a credit to the town. It has sidewalk and street-clean- 

 ing ordinances that put it in the city class. It has ice 

 plants, storage establishments, water works, and that 

 sort of thing. Its supremacy is due to the initiative and 

 force of its people, and the fact that it is no mere strag- 

 gling small town. 



What is called the "Garden City spirit" is a factor well 

 known in the development of the west. The incentive 

 to progress is greater here, proportionally, than in almost 

 any other town or city of the west. The citizenship is of 

 the highest possible character, and energy and public spirit 

 abound. Thirty thousand dollars was raised in no time to 

 get the big sugar factory. The Industrial Club of Garden 

 City is one of the best known bodies of a commercial na- 

 ture in the west. Only a few days ago the town, which 

 has a vote of nearly 1,000 voted aid to the Kansas-Colo- 

 rado electrical railroad and transmission project, which 

 will be treated later at length in this page, in the way of 

 bonds, with but thirteen votes in the negative. Less than 

 a week ago as this is being written the town enter- 

 tained several hundred guests when ground was broken 

 for this project, gave a formal breakfast to 100 prominent 

 visitors, had band and orchestra, a smoker and supper in 

 the evening, and paid for all the entertainment of these 

 people during their two-days' stay in the town. These 

 few things are mentioned to show the resourcefulness and 

 energy with which the town proceeds in any public mat- 

 ter, or anything that may serve to bring it before the 

 public. 



Another instance of this very thing was seen at Albu- 

 querque during the recent Irrigation Congress. The Gar- 

 den City delegation, calling itself the "Boosters," went the 

 several hundred miles in a special Pullman car, with ban- 

 ners flying, with large badges reading "Garden City 

 Boosters," took a prominent part in the congress, and 

 conducted for Pueblo the campaign that was made for 

 that large city's desire to be the meeting place for next 

 year. That Pueblo lost was by no means the fault of 

 Garden City. 



Garden City has a number of good things of which any 

 city of greater size might well be proud. It has a beet 

 sugar factory, independent, costing more than a million 

 dollars. It is the seat of the government reclamation 

 plant, costing $350,000. It is the seat of the Garden City 

 national forest, which contains more than 200,000 acres. It 

 has a joint government-state dry-farming experimental 

 station. It will have, next spring, the quarter-million-dol- 

 lar pumping plant, now building, of the United States 

 Sugar & Land Company, which owns and operates the 

 sugar factory. It has been chosen as the site of the first 

 of the three big powerhouses of the Kansas-Colorado 

 Electrical Railroad & Transmission Company, for which 

 ground has been broken. 



Briefly, and in a word introductory, the writer has 

 essayed to give some idea of the town of Garden City 

 and establish in the reader's mind its location and im- 

 portance. In future will appear more general stories of 

 various great industries and public works, and more con- 

 cerning the development of the country tributary. 



GOODING, IDAHO. 



An Eleven-Months-Old Child of the Desert Showing What 

 Human Energy, Aided by Irrigation, May Produce. 



EDWARD F. BARBER. 



Send $2.50 for The Irrigation Age, one year, and : 

 the Primer of Irrigation, a 260-page finely illustrated X 

 work for new beginners in irrigation. 



Nowhere has the struggle of the human race been 

 more severe in its conquest of nature in her wildest and 

 most formidable forms than in the desert regions of the 

 earth. Nowhere does nature respond more generously to 

 the demands of the conqueror than in these same regions. 

 As the reward for the effort is correspondingly high so the 

 incentive to action is correspondingly increased. 



The great Snake river valley of Idaho has since its 

 first discovery by the white man presented desert nature 

 in her most iniattractive form, by reason of its vastness 

 and the extremely arid conditions existing. Yet through 

 this great desert flows one of the mightiest rivers of the 

 continent. The Snake river has its source in the high 

 mountains of the region of the Yellowstone park amidst 

 the eternal snows of the Bitter Root and the Teton ranges 

 of the Rocky Mountains. It enters the southern rectangle 

 of Idaho at its northeast corner, flows in a crescent shape 

 sweep to the south and west, leaving the desert portion 

 of the state at the northwestern corner of the rectangle 

 which constitutes southern Idaho. 



This valley is about the size and shape of the state 

 of Kansas and the Snake river, with its tributaries, makes 

 it by far the best watered section of the whole of arid 

 America. The millions of money necessary to the subju- 

 gation of this great desert region has been made available 

 through the U. S'. Reclamation laws and the Carey Act, 

 which donated to the state of Idaho 3,000,000 acres of 

 desert land to be irrigated by the state. 



The great irrigation projects operated under this most 

 beneficent law lie in the middle Snake river valley. If 

 you will look at a map of Idaho you will find the Oregon 

 Short Line railway threading the desert from Pocatello 

 to the western boundary of the state and along about the 

 middle of the route you will see the name of Gooding. 

 At the time the map was made, Gooding was a passing 

 switch and a water station for transcontinental trains. But 

 irrigation, under the Carey act, has changed all this during 

 the past eleven months. Full 80,000 acres of these lands 

 lie in the immediate vicinity of Gooding and the magic 

 touch of water has wrought the wonders of the ancient 

 magician during the past eleven months. A young city of 

 800 people has sprung up. And these people have under 

 construction at present $200,000 worth of substantial fire 

 proof buildings. Among these is a fine white brick hotel, 

 a $25,000 white brick school house, a beautiful cement 

 block church of the Presbyterian denomination, a printing 

 office of cement blocks, two stories high, with a 50-foct 

 front, in which is being installed a plant costing $10,000. 

 a cement block building three stories high with a 150-foot 

 frontage, in which will be a modern opera house capable 

 of seating 1,500 people, two banks are in active operation, 

 a splendid furniture store, a hardware store and a number 

 of general merchandise establishments. Gooding has a 

 commercial club of forty active members who are out 

 after business for Gooding. There are three large lumber 

 yards in the town, all doing an immense business. Brick 

 for the buildings have been burned on the townsite and at 

 a short distance from the town are found fine beds of 

 sand and gravel suitable for all sorts of concrete work. 

 Contracts have been let for three blocks of cement walks 

 now under construction and an ordinance has been passed 

 authorizing three more blocks to be put in at once. 



Aside from being on the Oregon Short Line main line, 

 it is the junction of an electric line with the Short Line. 

 The electric line is now graded twenty-five miles to Jerome 

 and there are on the tracks at Gooding rails and ties suffi- 

 cient for five miles of new track. 



City waterworks are under construction. The pumps 

 are now supplying the town from the city standpipe, but 

 the pipes have not yet been placed. This will be done 

 within the next month and Gooding will justly boast of 

 another step accomplished towards becoming such a city 

 as her magnificent surroundings will justify. 



