144 



THE I BRIG ATI OX AGE. 



fruits of their vision, but some of them did. and to them 

 and their children and the more advanced and intelligent 

 followers came the problem worked out and ready for 

 inspection of him who might go to see. 



The Garden City region of today, with its vast forest 

 reserve, over which there is rapidly creeping the tree- 

 planting of the government; the splendid government rec- 

 lamation project pouring out its column of smoke to the sky 

 and its volume of water to the thirsty acres; the dry- 

 farming experimental station that is teaching men how to 

 farm intelligently and scientifically; the half-dozen private 

 irrigation canals; the vast sugar factory, into whose hun- 

 gry maw go annually thousands of tons of beets; the 

 alfalfa that sells at top notch, and whose seed is the 

 marvel of this country ; the fruit and the vegetables, the 

 fat cattle and hogs, the fine horses, the growth of intensi- 

 fied farming all these in the year 1909 in the Garden 

 City vicinity bespeak the realization of the dream of the 

 Commissioner of the General Land Office of 1868, and the 

 visions of the hardy pioneer all these dreams and visions 

 and yet more. 



"The production of a thriving forest at some point 

 west of the one hundredth meridian . . . would con- 

 tribute to the value of that part of the domain," said Com- 

 missioner Wilson in 1868. 



In the year 1905 the president of the United States, 

 at the extreme solicitation of United States Senator Ches- 

 ter I. Long of Kansas, who had personally visited this 

 region many times, and had been interested by one of 

 the energetic citizens of Garden City, Mr. F. H. Evans, 

 issued a proclamation setting aside some 97,000 acres of 

 tlu- public domain for a forest reserve. 



The region embraced that portion of the Garden City 

 vicinity lying south of the Arkansas river, beginning at a 

 point just east of Garden City, and extending westwardly 

 across Finney county and a portion of Kearny, following 

 the winding of the river. This region was largely sand 

 dunes. The shifting winds had piled the sand in little 

 hills and had swept out little valleys. In more recent 

 years had come the grasses, overgrowing the sand and 

 making a pasture for cattlemen. There was very little 

 agricultural land in the proposed reserve. For any other 

 purpose than afforestation, the land was practically 

 worthless. 



In the year 1908, by still further investigation, the 

 western boundary of this reserve was extended to the 

 Colorado state line, still taking in the territory just south 

 of the Arkansas river, and now embracing an acreage of 

 some 225,000 acres. The name of the forest reserve was 

 changed from the Garden City forest reserve to the Kan- 

 sas national forest. 



In due time the Kansas national forest was made 

 what the Forest Service calls a "unit," and headquarters, 

 with an acting supervisor, was established at Garden City. 

 Later, when it was found that the transfer of young 

 nursery stock from Halsey, Neb., was not only expensive 

 but entirely unsatisfactory, a nursery was established at 

 Garden City and thereafter the young trees planted by 

 the tens of thousands were grown there. That is the 

 situation today. 



In the first season of the history of the Kansas na- 

 tional forest, a full section of this sandy land was planted 

 to trees, mostly young pines of the Western yellow vari- 

 ety. This was a modest beginning less than 1,000 acres 

 out of a total of 225,000. But it was a beginning, and it 

 made a nucleus that led to greater and ampler results. 

 The planting has continued during all the good weather 

 since, and the most extensive plans are being made for 

 the coming season. 



The young trees have grown and thrived, and while 

 the development of the Western yellow pine is exceed- 

 ingly slow, the situation is encouraging to both the gov- 

 ernment representatives and the local pride. 



Revenues are also derived from the grazing permits, 

 as in all national forests, and ten percentum of the yearly 

 income goes to the state and into the school and road 

 funds. 



While the pine is the favorite variety for planting, 

 others are put out, including locust and Russian mulberry. 



The situation in Kansas, a prairie state, is of course 

 much different as to the relation to that portion of the 

 government known as the Forest Service, than in well- 

 forested states, where abuses have crept in, and there has 



been much criticism of the encroachment on the settler 

 and the home-maker. It must be remembered that while 

 Kansas is a state not by any means lacking in its clumps 

 and groves of trees, its well-shaded farm houses, and its 

 wood lots and small plantations for the trade, it is not a 

 forested state by any means. Hence there is not the criti- 

 cism and objection to the government's forest policy, be 

 that criticism and objection real or fancied, as the case 

 may be, as in states like Colorado. Idaho, Wyoming and 

 other portions of the west. Kansas wants trees, and is 

 glad of any aid and assistance that may be rendered, be 

 it government, state or private. 



And there is that aid, not only on the part of the 

 government, but by state and private enterprise. There 

 is this much that may be said, then: That the local work 

 done years ago in a small and disconnected way, that has 

 made the Garden City region far from being a treeless 

 waste, and the later work by the government at Garden 

 City on the Kansas national forest, has acted as an in- 

 centive to the entire state. In other words, Garden City 

 has paved the way, set the pace, furnished the incentive, 

 and there is an awakening towards forestry all over the 

 state. 



Having a modest but efficient forestry law. and an ad- 

 ministration that has not been efficient or effective, Kan- 

 sas set about this year to remedy these evils, and as this 

 is being written the state legislature at Topeka bids fair 

 to put into effect a forestry law that may not be entirely 

 satisfactory to those conducting the campaign, but will 

 be an improvement on the present condition. 



Hence the observation by the Commissioner of the 

 General Land Office in 1868 that "whether an enterprise of 

 the kind, under the auspices of the government, would be 

 likely to realize the expectations of its projectors, would 

 depend very largely upon the character of the persons who 

 might be charged with the duties and responsibilities of 

 the undertaking," has created a situation that would lead 

 to no doubt on the part of the speculative mind of the 

 man who uttered it if he could see the work today in 

 -western Kansas, due to the initiative of Garden City and 

 vicinity. 



Private enterprise has also accomplished much. There 

 is scarcely a farm house in the Garden City region that is 

 not sheltered and protected by its little grove of fine trees. 

 Where once the buffalo and the Indian trod not so long 

 ago in the memory of man ire now the comfortable 

 houses of the progressive farmer, his sightly outbuildings, 

 his grove of trees. The latter are planted for various pur- 

 poses. Some plant for mere shade, others for effect on 

 climatic condition, others for wind-break, others for use, 

 and all are satisfied with the result. 



In the city of Garden itself are trees so thickly 

 planted, so overlapping in sweep of limb and bough, that 

 a veritable arbor is created. There is no need of observa- 

 tion of Arbor Day in Garden City, unless it be to replace 

 the frequent poplar and the rapidly-thinning cottonwood 

 with the more substantial and modern variety of ash, 

 mulberry and maple. No barren desert in respect of trees 

 is the city of Garden. 



And along the irrigation canal, up and down the beau- 

 tiful valley and the gently-sloping upland, where grows 

 the luxuriant alfalfa, the sugar beet for the nearby factory, 

 the fruit and vegetables for the hungry towns, are trees, 

 trees, trees. It is a beautiful sight in June, and still more 

 beautiful and grateful in August. The once barren valley 

 is a garden. Fields are fringed with trees, and happiness 

 and prosperity reign in the Valley of Contentment, which 

 is another name for the vicinity of Garden. 



Now go back and re-read what the Commissioner of the 

 General Land Office said in the year of our Lord 1868 

 concerning the buried waters, down in the sand and the 

 strata underneath the ground. Think of his prophetic 

 mind, and think of the chain of pioneers, puzzled but con- 

 fident, of government experts who wandered over this re- 

 gion from its settlement up to the near years of the recent 

 past, and of the concentration of thought and cohesion of 

 purpose that awaited only the passage of the reclamation 

 act of June, 1902. Then see what has happened at Garden 

 City since then. In preceding pages of Irrigation Age, 

 and in other numbers, I have described fully and simply 

 the work the government has put in the hands of the 

 Finney County Waterusers' Association, and the spread 

 of the water over ten thousand fertile acres in this vicinity. 



