THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



GARDEN CITY KANSAS 



VICINITY 



BY R. H. FAXON. 



The assured approach of the time when cheap elec- 

 trical power will be brought to this Arkansas Valley and 

 distributed to farmers for irrigation and other 'purposes 

 gives to this section of Kansas the greatest hope it has 

 had for twenty-five years, and may mean its complete 

 regeneration. 



Garden City and this portion of the Arkansas valley 

 already has acquired, in recent years, many benefits and 

 advantages peculiarly to be desired in a section lacking 

 regular rainfall, but the completion of this new project will 

 put into the hands of the small farmer, as well as into 

 the towns and larger plants, the power with which at a 

 low figure to develop land declared by experts, from those 

 of the United States Department of Agriculture down, to 

 be as fine as any that lies out of doors. 



The management of the Kansas-Colorado Electrical 

 Transmission Company has agreed to erect at. this point 

 one of its three large power plants, the other two being 

 located at Florence and La Junta, Colo., having a capacity 

 sufficient to give 200 persons sufficient horse-power to 

 irrigate from sixty to eighty acres, depending on the na- 

 ture of the soil and the lift that is to say, the distance 

 J;he water has to be brought to the surface. It must be 

 understood, also, that this one plant at Garden City is to 

 be built in the first place on the unit plan and that it will 

 be added to as rapidly as the demand increases. 



The Kansas-Colorado Electrical Transmission Com- 

 pany is chartered in both states. Work already has begun. 

 The line proposes to run from Canon City, Colo., to 

 Dodge City, Kan., with a branch from Garden City to 

 Scott, a distance in all of 367 miles. The primary pur- 

 pose is to establish electrical transmission for the purpose 

 of furnishing cheap power, and cpincidentally to establish 

 a line of electric railroad for freight and passenger pur- 

 poses. The railroad already is building. The manage- 

 ment has set the date of the completion of the Garden 

 City power plant at not later than March 1, 1909. 



In the Arkansas valley is the underflow a vast under- 

 ground river that was known to exist many years ago, 

 but has come into use but recently, and more generally 

 through the successful establishment and working of the 

 United States reclamation project, known as the Garden 

 City project, three years ago. This underflow appears to 

 be inexhaustible, and it was on this theory, now borne out 

 by experience, that the reclamation service established the 

 Garden City project. In this underflow lies the hope to 

 all development, present and future, of this section of 

 Kansas. 



The Arkansas valley proper, in Hamilton, Kearny and 

 Finney counties, Kansas, is three miles wide, on an aver- 

 agegreater in some places, less at others and com- 

 prises at least 100,000 acres of land, unexcelled anywhere. 

 Fifteen thousand acres of valley now is irrigated, one way 

 and another, by several canals or irrigation ditches, as fol- 

 lows: The Alamo, with head-gates at Syracuse; the 

 Amazon, at Hartland; the Southside, at Hartland; the 

 Great Eastern, at Hartland; the Garden City, near Deer- 

 field; the "Farmers, or Government, at Deerfield. Also 

 there are various private plants irrigating small acreages 

 and making up this total of 15,000 acres irrigated. 



In addition to the 100,000 acres in the Arkansas valley 

 proper are the uplands, under the ditches and irrigated or 

 irrigable. The total irrigable acreage of these uplands is 

 75,000, and about 25,000 acres of this already is under 

 irrigation, 10,000 acres being under the Garden City re- 

 clamation project the government project perhaps 65 to 

 70 per cent of which now actually is irrigated; and from 

 15,000 to 20.000 acres more under the various other ditches, 

 including the Great Eastern and Amazon. 



This leaves 50,000 acres of uplands not irrigated, but 

 all under the ditches at present. The reason this acreage 



is not irrigated is because it depends on the water in the 

 river, the ditches taking water direct from the Arkansas 

 and not from the underflow, as it would with the cheap 

 electrical power. 



There is a third subdivision of land adjacent to the 

 valley and part of this section; what is known as the 

 shallow-water area," lying north of Garden City, between 

 here and Scott, Kan., and practically all of it in Finney 

 County. Water is there from fifteen to thirty feet below 

 the surface, and the character of the land is excellent. 

 This area awaits cheap power to lift this water and place 

 it on these lands. The "shallow-water area" is underlaid 

 with an underground river, supposed to come from the 

 Whitewoman, a stream in Wichita and Scott counties, and 

 emptying, at last, into the Arkansas River below Garden 

 City. It undoubtedly is the basin of an ancient river. 



Water for irrigation usually is measured by the "sec- 

 ond foot," which equals 450 gallons of water per minute 

 of time. In other words, a second foot of water means a 

 cubic foot of water flowing past a given point every sec- 

 ond, as generally known. 



A second foot of water flowing in a canal will cover 

 two acres of land to a depth of one foot every twenty- 

 four hours. 



Under the Kansas-Colorado electrical project it is esti- 

 mated by the engineers that the cost to the farmer per 

 acre foot will not be greater than $1.50, where the lift is 

 not more than thirty-five feet. 



An acre foot is the amount of water necessary to cover 

 one acre of ground one foot dee" Two acre feet is neces- 

 sary for irrigation in an ordinary season. 



The first known effort to develoo irrigation in this 

 locality was in the latter '70s, -'-"n Armentrout, Wilkin- 

 son and Landis plowed a furrow from the Arkansas river 

 into the old Santa Fe trail, in the south part of what is 

 now Garden Citv. and threw the water from the river onto 

 their lands. 



The first systematic effort along irrigation lines was 

 when, November 8, 1879, the charter of the old Garden 

 City ditch was filed. This ditch still is in existence. 



This was known as the Garden City irrigating canal. 

 It was a mutual company. Then came the Farmers' ditch 

 the Kansas, then it was known; it is the government 

 canal now whose charter was filed March 1, 1880. The 

 third was the Southside, the only one on the south side 

 of the river in the three counties, known then as the Min- 

 nehaha, whose charter was filed July 20, 1880, closely fol- 

 lowed by the Great Eastern, filed October 8, 1880. The 

 fifth ditch in these parts, the Amazon, was promoted by 

 Charles J. (Buffalo) Jones, and its charter was filed No- 

 vember 29, 1887. 



Some of these ditches were mutual concerns. All be- 

 came, at one time or another, stock companies. Most of 

 them went into the hands of receivers, and had a more 

 or less precarious and useless existence at different 

 periods. 



The Farmers' ditch now is the outlet from the Garden 

 City reclamation project. The Southside and Great East- 

 ern now are owned by the United States Sugar and Land 

 Company, with headquarters here, this company owning 

 the new sugar factory at this point. The Garden City 

 ditch also was later acquired by this company. 



The first windmill pumping plant was erected by 

 Henry Grace, east of Garden City, twenty or more years 

 ago. There now is a windmill on every farm in the val- 

 ley that does not have other power for irrigating purposes. 



There are, at this time, more than 200 private pump- 

 ing plants in this part of the valley, irrigating from ten 

 to forty acres, and pumping from 300 to 1,000 gallons per 

 minute. The horsepower is from five to fifteen, in each 

 case, depending on the lift. 



The largest private pumping plant in the valley is that 

 on the big Holcomb ranch west of Garden City, which 

 has been in operation for four years. Its horse power is 

 seventy-five, and 500 acres are irrigated. The lift is twenty- 

 five feet. Another large private plant now being installed 

 is that of the Lombards of Kansas City, near Kendall. 



The Garden City reclamation project was constructed 

 by the government in 1905-6. There are 10,000 acres in 

 the project, and 60 per cent of this is irrigated. The other 



