4 8 4 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



October 



lions of tons of earth, cutting out new 

 channels and building up new lands 

 miles and miles in extent. Some day 

 it may be possible to put in a great dam 

 a couple of miles wide at one or two 

 points where the river is confined be- 

 tween high sandstone bluffs ; but this 

 would be a work which, while it would 

 create a great empire of its own, would 

 make the Nile dam, with its 25 mil- 

 lions of cost, sink into comparative 

 insignificance. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE TODAY. 



But there are other means of making 

 the Missouri contribute to American 

 prosperity. The writer was fortunate 

 enough to take a trip of some hundred 

 miles up the river on a steamer piloted 

 by the last of the old-time river kings, 

 Captain Grant Marsh, famous as a pilot 

 and river explorer under Custer, For- 

 sythe, Sheridan, Miles, and an impor- 

 tant factor in many Indian expeditions. 

 There was little in common in my un- 

 eventful trip and such a one as when 

 Captain Marsh brought back to Bismarck 

 the first news of the dreadful Custer mas- 

 sacre, which made 26 widows of army 

 officers stationed at Fort Lincoln, just 

 across the river, and brought likewise 

 a score of wounded soldiers from Reno's 

 detached troops. The Sioux have had 

 their passing and ranchers and farmers 

 may dwell and till without fear of swift 

 annihilation from marauding braves. 

 But from the pilot-house of the little 

 steamer I could discern, in the not far 

 future, a development along the Mis- 

 souri which would woik a yet greater 

 change than that of the past decade. 

 For hundreds of miles the river is en- 

 compassed by steep bluffs from 200 to 

 250 feet high and from 2 to 3 miles 

 apart. Between these the river winds, 

 a stream of from a quarter to a half mile 

 wide, gradually changing its course from 

 side to side, but forming great areas of 

 ' bench' ' lands 20, 30, and 50 feet high- 

 hundreds of thousands of acres of sur- 

 passingly fertile soil, needing only irri- 

 gation. And the watering of this land 

 turns out to be among the easiest of 

 projects. 



Every bluff of the Missouri showed a 

 coal vein of from 6 inches to 12 feet in 



thickness ; in fact, enormous areas of 

 North Dakota are underlain with splen- 

 did lignite coal, worth at the mine only a 

 dollar a ton. There you have it. The 

 water of the Missouri, a limitless, cease- 

 less supply, just above it land made by 

 centuries of river sediment, and immedi- 

 ately at hand one of the cheapest known 

 fuels to pump the water onto the land. 

 It did not take an engineer to see the 

 feasibility and cheapness of this under- 

 taking. 



But why, I asked myself, had it not 

 been done ? Why had not farmers them- 

 selves put in windmills and small pumps? 

 Was there, after all, some insurmount- 

 able obstacle? No. Talks with a few 

 of them showed them as ignorant of irri- 

 gation and its simplicity as are the farm- 

 ers of Vermont. In fact, they were 

 ' rainfall ' ' farmers and they spoke of 

 irrigation as a mysterious and compli- 

 cated process. 



UNCLE SAM TO PUMP THE MISSOURI. 



My return to Bismarck justified my 

 conclusions. I found two government 

 engineers even then investigating the 

 problem, and, far beyond supplying the 

 great areas of lower benches, they pro- 

 pose to elevate the water a hundred and 

 possibly 200 feet out onto the great 

 mesas. I left them preparing for a trip 

 down the Missouri from the Dakota- 

 Montana line, in a small skiff, on a care- 

 ful reconnaissance of the Old Muddy, 

 its tributaries and its lands. If they 

 find conditions as favorable as they 

 would seem, a party of surveyors will be 

 put upon the project at once to make 

 surveys and detailed plans, to be fol- 

 lowed by the installation of giant pumps, 

 water engines, each of which will create 

 a small river. 



This work of the ^government is 

 fraught with unbounded possibilities for 

 North Dakota. A great empire lies la- 

 tent in the midst of the state, the worth 

 of which her own people are but begin- 

 ning to comprehend. The fertility of 

 the ages is stored in the ink-black soil 

 and the water of half a continent flows 

 by, an unused agent of wealth. 



The day of great things for the land 

 of Laughing Water may be close at 

 hand. 



