EORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



January 



manent. They will draw their supplies 

 largely from the manufacturing centers 

 of the East. 



It is impossible to create new com- 

 munities in the West and prevent the 

 prosperity which the)- will radiate from 

 finding its way into every channel of 

 trade in every section of the country. 

 Look at the matter a little in detail and 

 see how it works out. Take one of the 

 irrigable western valleys of , say, 100,000 

 acres, for which the government is now 

 preparing to construct irrigation works. 

 This settled up in homes averaging' 100 

 acres each and many of the western 

 irrigated farms supporting families in 

 plenty are often ten or twenty acres 

 each and we would have 1,000 farms 

 with an average probably of five per- 

 sons to the family. Each of these farms 

 would have an annual consumption of 

 $500 worth of the products of the fac- 

 tory. Not considering, then, the towns 

 and cities which would spring up, such 

 a valley would consume a half million 

 dollars' worth of manufactured prod- 

 ucts annually. Nearly everything of a 

 manufactured nature which the West con- 

 sumes today comes from the East, for 

 the West is not and probably never will 

 be much of a manufacturing section. 

 The farm implements which the farmer 

 uses come from the East. The wire 

 for his fences, the staples w r ith which 

 he fastens it to the posts, the nails 

 which he uses in building his house, 

 his wagons, his clothes, and the thou- 

 sand and one farm and household uten- 

 sils which he uses, all come from the 

 manufactories of the Atlantic coast and 

 the Mississippi Valley States. 



There are hundreds of such valleys 

 in the West waiting for the life-giving 

 touch of water to convert them into 

 prosperous farms and homes. The irri- 

 gated desert lands, rich in the accumu- 

 lated stored salts and fertility of ages, 

 yield under careful cultivation fabulous 

 crops, and for this reason the small farm 

 in the West takes the place of the larger 

 acreage in the eastern agricultural sec- 

 tions. 



The Salt River Valley in Arizona will 

 soon be an object-lesson as to what irri- 

 gation will produce in the way of both 

 crops and population. The great gov- 



ernment dam which is now being con- 

 structed will be a wedge of rock jammed 

 in between the precipitous sides of a 

 narrow^ canyon, some 300 feet from base 

 to curb. It will store the flood waters 

 for an area of 200,000 acres of land sur- 

 passingly fertile. Three crops a year 

 will result from this combination of 

 loam, water, and a sub-tropical sun- 

 shine. The people of the Salt River 

 valley will prosper ; they will consume 

 millions of dollars' worth of factory 

 products every year. 



The great Milk River Valley in Mon- 

 tana, where another government irriga- 

 tion project is under way, will, when 

 its w r aters are fully utilized, have over 

 a million acres under irrigation. In a 

 small way the new town of Hinsdale, 

 in the Milk River Valley, affords a strik- 

 ing example of what results from irri- 

 gation development. A few years ago 

 the amount of traffic handled at Hins- 

 dale by the Great Northern Railroad 

 was not sufficient to justify the estab- 

 lishment of a station ; the actual receipts 

 were less than $50 a month. Today 

 Hinsdale is a thriving farming colony 

 with railroad-station earnings of over 

 $25,000 a year and rapidly increasing. 

 The settlers who founded Hinsdale had 

 but little money. The conditions were 

 favorable for the building of a cheap 

 canal without the necessity of storing 

 the water. They cooperated and did 

 the work themselves, reclaiming about 

 Q,OOO acres. They are fast becoming 

 independent, for their land earns them 

 annually $25 an acre, or a total of 

 $225,000. There are dozens of just 

 such instances in Montana and the other 

 arid land states, and there will be hun- 

 dreds of them, and on a much greater 

 scale, when the government irrigation 

 operations are fully under way. 



In the West the day of the long-horn 

 range steer, who roams undisturbed 

 over the public domain, has passed. 

 In his place have come improved breeds 

 of cattle and fine sheep. This is the 

 second stage of improvement, but it 

 must now give way to the third. Great 

 herds .will continue always to graze 

 upon the public land, for millions of 

 acres of it can never be reclaimed in 

 farms, but where w r ater and land can 



