426 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



Lewiston Clarkston 

 Valley 



Four Acres Is the Average Farm Intensive Culture 

 Brings Heavy Orchard Crops Water System Is 

 Unique Competent Experts Instruct in Orchard Cul- 

 ture Dahlhjelm Company Pushing Land Sales in 

 Eastern Markets. 



Irrigation is the wonder of the west. What it has 

 done is beyond the conception of those who have not 

 studied it closely. Every place where water has been 

 given to arid or semi-arid ground the agricultural possi- 

 bilities have been multiplied by four. 



The Lewiston-Clarkston Valley is an ancient lake bed, 



at the class of homes which the residents have been able 

 to build. 



While, of course, there are a few shacks and unpainted 

 cottages, many are the two story houses and low lying 

 bungalows. If by chance the house is a ppor house, it is 

 evident in the appearance of the surrounding orchard that 

 unthrift, and not unproductive soil, is the cause. 



We all know that intensive cultivation will produce 

 great profits from small acreages, but intensive cultivation 

 has been in no great manner responsible for the condi- 

 tions in the Lewiston-Clarkston country for the land is 

 no more extensively cultivated than any other orchard dis- 

 trict. The trees look like trees everywhere which are 

 properly handled in a horticultural way. They would ap- 

 pear to be set no closer together nor to be larger than in 

 any well handled commercial orchard in the West, yet the 

 profits must be exceedingly great to allow a four acre 

 tract, to say nothing of those of lesser size, to give a good 

 living to the owner. 



Peach and Apple Orchard, Lewiston Orchards, Photo, July 4, 1909. 



lying 2,500 feet below the general level of the country 

 surrounding it. Before the time of irrigation the valley 

 grew wheat, and wheat only, but the wheat it produced 

 was double in quantity of that grown in the grain areas 

 of the middle west. With irrigation the land became . 

 fruit land, and instead of the gold of the grain fields 

 came the green of the vineyards and orchards. 



The first section at Lewiston and Clarkston to be put 

 in irrigation has now been producing fruit crops for many 

 years. In this body of land are 2,000 acres, and in the 

 houses and cottages built thereon there live 3,000 persons. 

 The average holding of each family is less than 4 acres. 

 Many there be, plutocrats among the rest, who have ten 

 and a few that have fifteen and twenty acres. If the aver- 

 age be four and there be those who have more, then there 

 must be many who have very much less than four. 



Indeed, there are scores who crop but two acres. 

 There is at least one family which gets its living from 

 one acre. The visitor to this district having been told of 

 the small units into which this land is divided is amazed 



About four years since, a company of capitalists in 

 Portland, Oregon, conceived the idea of irrigating a large 

 body of land immediately suburban to the city of Lewiston 

 itself. They studied the conditions of the already produc- 

 ing orchards and vineyards most carefully, and decided 

 that with land so rich and in a locality so favored by na- 

 ture they could afford to do exceptional things in the de- 

 velopment of a fruit enterprise. They studied the evils 

 connected with orcharding and endeavored in their plans 

 to remedy them. The regular methods of irrigation with 

 open flumes and ditches they would not accept, but in or- 

 der to provide water for domestic purposes, as well as for 

 the thirsty soil, they laid down a city water system. 

 Water under pressure in buried pipes marked a radical step 

 forward in irrigation; something never attempted before, 

 on a large scale, in the world. 



A semi-technical description of the water system at 

 Lewiston will certainly not be without interest in the Irri- 

 gation Age, particularly as the idea of serving agricultural 

 lands with a pipe system of water is unique to this pro- 



