52 



THE IBBIOATION AQE. 



The North Platte Project ultimately contemplates 

 to supply about half a million acres with water, and is 

 divided into five divisions, all to be supplied by the North 

 Platte River, supplemented by storage waters in the 

 Pathfinder reservoir. This reservoir will hold over a 

 million acre feet and is formed by a natural basin at 

 the junction of the Sweetwater and North Platte rivers. 

 A dam of steel, concrete and masonry 215 feet high 

 and about 300 feet long fills a narrow gorge in the 

 granite outlet from this basin, and the flow of the 

 river below is to be regulated by steel gates set in tun- 

 nels through which the water must pass. 



This dam is more wonderful in proportion and use- 

 fulness than the famous Assouan dam, on the Nile, and 

 will cost, when complete, about one and a quarter mil- 

 lion dollars, which is charged against water users pro- 



tance of ninety-five miles, and the lateral systems are 

 nearly complete. The main canal is builded most sub- 

 stantially, with concrete headgates, flumes, waste-ways, 

 and siphons, wherever required. The intricate net- 

 work of lateral systems are supplied in like manner 

 with concrete "drops," headgates, flumes, siphons and 

 culverts, and convey the water to each land unit. 



Land units were fixed at eighty acres of irrigable 

 land, that being, in the opinion of the service, the 

 maximum amount needed for a family, or that one 

 could competently care for. With intensive farming, 

 such as must ultimately come, this acreage will be 

 ample, for when in sugar beets, onions, cabbage, or 

 fruit, ten to twenty acres will keep a person comfort- 

 ably busy and profits will be abundantly large. With 

 alfalfa, potatoes, and the like, eighty acres will leave 



King's River Canyon, California. 



portionately to the acreage supplied. The present 

 height of this dam is about 130 feet. 



However, a broader view of the work which this 

 dam performs in preventing floods and damage along 

 the Platte, Missouri and Mississippi rivers, its aid to 

 navigation in holding flood waters in check until low 

 water periods, its preventing strain upon the levees and 

 retarding sediment, renders a conclusion that this cost 

 as well as the cost of other reservoirs, really belongs 

 to river and harbor improvements, or inland waterways 

 appropriations. 



Five canal systems are eventually to be supplied 

 from this fountain head, namely, Casper, Douglas, 

 Goshen Hole, Laramie and Inter State. The Inter 

 State is the first, having been constructed for a dis- 



but little idle time for the prudent husbandman. Al- 

 falfa now produces three cuttings, or five to seven 

 tons per acre per annum, and finds ready market at 

 six to eight dollars per ton. Potatoes yield 200 to 400 

 bushels per acre, and usually bring a cent a pound or 

 better now about one and one-half cents per pound. 

 Sugar beets are four dollars and a "half per ton and 

 yield twelve to thirty tons per acre. Oats yield sev- 

 enty to one hundred and fifty bushels per acre. A 

 single oat head in the writer's possession contains one 

 hundred 'and ninety-nine well developed grains. 



The advantages which the North Platte project 

 possesses over most other projects are its latitude, 41 to 

 42 degrees north; its altitude, 3,800 to 4,200 feet; its 

 railway connections, and its nearness to the principal 

 markets. 



