THE IRRIGATION A E. 



85 



GARDEN CITY KANSAS 



VICINITY 



BY R. H. FAXON. 



The complete regeneration of the Arkansas Valley, of 

 which Garden City is the capital, was largely accomplished 

 when the sugar beet factory came to town, and the United 

 States Government established the reclamation project 

 under the reclamation act of 1902. 



It will be my purpose to treat in a future writing of 

 the reclamation project, which is an institution of which 

 the entire valley and particularly Garden City is immensely 

 and naturally proud. The main discussion in this present 

 writing has to do with the beet sugar factory, and what has 

 since happened, following its establishment. 



Though there is a string of beet sugar factories in the 

 Colorado-Arkansas Valley, the one at Garden City was the 

 first to be built in Kansas, demonstrating by two success- 

 ful years the wisdom of the men who went behind it, and 

 of Garden City in encouraging it and reaching out after it. 

 That beets can be successfully cultivated has been made 

 apparent to anyone, and the systems of irrigation, includ- 

 ing the government project and the sugar company's own 

 system, with the numerous private systems and the big 

 new electrical plant the sugar company is now engaged in 

 building for use next season, have swept aside every 

 obstacle to the growth of the beets. As to the rest, the 

 sugar content is constantly increasing, and the richness 

 of the beet in the Garden City territory this past season is 

 above that of the season before. That this condition will' 

 keep up yearly progress and improvement and grow 

 with more care and intensified farming, is certain. 



The name of the beet company is the United States 

 Land & Irrigation Company. It is composed largely of 

 Colorado men. Its principal holders, well known in the 

 Kansas-Colorado-Arizona field are R. P. Davie and J. R. 

 McKinnie, of Colorado Springs. This company has large 

 holdings in Finney and Kearny Counties, Kansas, and 

 Mr. Davie and Mr. McKinnie are largely interested in 

 other factories and kindred ventures in Colorado and 

 Arizona. 



The Garden City beet factory was completed and 

 opened for its first season in 1907. It is six stories in 

 height, and important changes and additions have been 

 made in the past year. The 1907 crop was something 

 more than 7,000 acres, and that for the past season some- 

 thing less. The reason for this was the delay in the com- 

 pletion of the Garden City reclamation project and the 

 fact that it was an unusually dry season with little water 

 coming down the river. Private plants and later the gov- 

 ernment project; however, furnished water in abundance 

 the latter part of the season and the beets raised were of a 

 splendid character, full of sugar content, and the grade of 

 tests higher than ever known in this valley. 



To furnish material for the factory, the beet sugar 

 people are dividing their holdings, 33,000 acres, into 80- 

 acre tracts. On each side is built a house, barn and wind- 

 mill. The tenants have good terms, and the company 

 agrees to furnish all the labor for weeding the beets at 

 $20 per acre, if the tenant does not wish to do it himself. 

 Mexicans and Japanese do this character of work. The 

 tenants themselves are about equally divided between 

 Americans and foreigners of the German-Russian type, 

 largely Mennonites, though there are some Catholics and 

 a few of the orthodox Greek church profession. As a rule, 

 these foreigners are good citizens, thrifty, and are an addi- 

 tion to the citizenship of this section not at all undesirable. 



When the United States Sugar & Land Company en- 

 tered the valley and decided to locate at Garden City, it 

 bought, as stated above, 33,000 acres of land. Much of this 

 lay in Kearny County just west of Garden City, though a 

 very large proportion of it is in Finney County, running 

 west from Garden City, and all tributary to this town. 

 The factory is located just one mile west of Main street 

 in Garden City, on the main line of the Atchison, Topeka 



& Santa Fe Railroad, and is the pride of the town. Mod- 

 ern to the extent of no other factory in the country, its 

 care and maintenance are given the most scrupulous atten- 

 tion. The superintendent, E. E. Brysselbout, a French- 

 man, who is most skilled in practical management of a big 

 institution of this character, a chemist and a man of wide 

 experience in Europe before coming here, gives attention 

 to the most minute details. The general manager of the 

 company, F. A. Gillespie, is a skilled executive, formerly 

 from Colorado, and the affairs of the company, both as to 

 factory and land, are a marvel of success. The dumps, of 

 cement construction, as is much of the building, are per- 

 fect, and of easy access from the near-by fields and the 

 several roads leading to the factory. The equipment of 

 the factory and appurtenant apparatus is of the very finest, 

 and systematized to the highest degree. 



Immigration, due to the great development of this 

 section and especially to the successful beet-raising and 

 the big new factory, is very marked at the present time. 

 Thousands of homeseekers are wending their way in this 

 direction each year. Not long ago one land man at Gar- 

 den City brought in a special train, consisting of three 

 Pullman cars, filled with men from Illinois and Iowa who 

 wanted land. These men had sold, or are about to sell, 

 their good land in those states at prices that are so high 

 they felt it would not be fair to sell, and consequently are 

 looking about for land at lesser price on which to estab- 

 lish their homes. Land that was worth $10 to $20 per acre 

 two years ago is now selling for $50, $75 and $100. Lands 

 under the ditches can be cultivated for $30 per acre, and 

 they raise 20 or 25 tons per acre. At the ranging price of 

 beets per ton, $5, the figuring is easy and the result at- 

 tractive. 



The statement has recently been made by a careful 

 writer who has the habit of closely investigating his facts, 

 that twenty years ago New England and New York capi- 

 talists lost half a million dollars trying to irrigate the 

 Arkansas Valley in Western Kansas. This was before the 

 ''boom," and before the days of now when intelligence, 

 education, science and caution are the ruling and predomi- 

 nant factors in cultivation. They dug, in this 20-year-ago 

 period, about 200 miles of irrigation ditches. They thought 

 they could irrigate 200,000 acres of land. Then Colorado 

 began to grow Rockyford cantaloupes and such stuff, water 

 refused to come down the river, speculation stood still, 

 then values went down, and things tumbled generally. 

 The ditches were dry, the land cheap and largely unculti- 

 vated, and the valley discouraged and nonprogressive. Yet 

 all the time there was the spirit of the indomitable West 

 and the desire and insistence on the part of a small body 

 of men that things would get better again must get bet- 

 ter; and they stayed with the job and began to use their 

 heads about their work. It was an uphill struggle, but it 

 finally panned out all right, as witness the results of today. 



Twenty months ago came the rebuilding. The beet 

 sugar company bought 33,000 acres of the rich valley land 

 at $15 an acre. It undertook a new system of irrigation 

 the utilization of the "underflow." The Arkansas River 

 breaks through the mountains above Pueblo, and is a 

 tumbling, noisy, narrow flood as it passes the foothills. 

 Then it spreads to a wide, slow stream, and finally, as the 

 eastern border of Colorado is reached, the river bed, a 

 quarter-mile wide, is, during much of the summer, drifting 

 sand. 



But the water exists. It is flowing toward the sea. 

 seeping its way 10 to 20 feet below the surface through 

 a vast sand deposit. From this subterranean stream, the 

 "underflow" is being pumped the water for irrigating the 

 sugar beets. Square cement buildings stand at intervals 

 over the fields. Within, day and night, week in and week 

 out, work gasoline engines, each running from four to six 

 pumps which, combined, send 10-inch streams out upon 

 the thirsty land. Then a great natural reservoir on the 

 uplands has been constructed at a cost of $100,000. It is 

 over a mile wide and eight miles long, and in places 50 

 feet deep. During the spring the water will be bank-full, 

 and the reservoir will become a lake. The water will be 

 utilized next summer when the beet crop needs it. 



There was a time when the builders of this great 

 empire that centers at Garden City counted very much 

 on the suit brought by the state of Kansas against the 



