VAST HIDDEN WEALTH IN THE 

 SEMI-ARID REGION 



BY 

 GUY ELLIOTT MITCHELL 



Secretary, The National Irrigation Association 



A GREAT inland conquest is being farmer, and especially from the vast 

 ** waged by the Department of high, dry lands of Central Asia, known 

 Agriculture which is completely over- as the Cradle of the World, where ag- 

 turning the time-honored theory that riculture reaches back from history in- 

 the vast areas in the West which can- to dim tradition, have come some of 

 not be irrigated can never be made the most remarkable of desert plants, 

 to produce anything but a scant natu- requiring but a minimum of moisture 

 ral growth of grass. The engineer to produce luxuriant yields. The ac- 

 and the ditch builder will bring under tivities of Secretary Wilson's depart- 

 cultivation many millions of highly ment bode ill for the continuance of 

 productive acres, but the water supply any great stretches of our once limit- 

 of the West is limited, and there will less great desert, 

 remain perhaps half a billion acres of AS GOOD FARMING LAND AS ILLINOIS. 

 the arid region for which there is no A student of desert reclamation 

 water. The aggressive work of Sec- through the agency of drouth plants, 

 retary Wilson's department, however, is Frederick V. Coville, the Chief Bota- 

 promises fair to make a very large pro- nist of the Department, who is person- 

 portion of this land, heretofore sup- ally very familiar with the West, 

 posed to be entirely unfit for agricul- "There are millions and millions of 

 ture, into farms through scientific acres," said Mr. Coville, "in the strict- 

 methods of soil culture and the intro- ly arid region, now considered worth- 

 duction of exceedingly drought-resist- less for agriculture, which are as cer- 

 ing plants. tain to be settled in small farms as 



"There are no bad acres," said Sec- were the lands of Illinois. This ap- 



retary Wilson. "We have no useless plies particularly to the great plateaus 



American acres. We will make them in the northern Rocky Mountain region, 



all productive. We have agricultural I do not hesitate to predict that the 



explorers in every far corner of the transformation of these barren-looking 



world, and they are finding crops lands into farms through the introduc- 



which have become so acclimated to tion of desert plants will be as exten- 



dry conditions similar to our own in sive a work as the enormous reclama- 



the West that we will in time have tion through irrigation.' 1 

 plants thriving upon all our so-called A case in point, as suggested by Mr. 



desert lands. We will cover this arid Coville, is indicated in a recent State 



area with plants of various sorts which report of Wyoming, which shows as 



will yield hundreds of millions of tons a result of experiments near Cheyenne 



of additional forage and grain for on a vast plateau 6,000 feet above the 



western flocks and herds. Our farm- sea that profitable crops can be grown 



ers will grow this upon land now con- on lands which heretofore have been 



sidered practically worthless." universally regarded as suitable for 



The machinery'of Mr. Wilson's cle- nothing but the sparse grazing of cat- 



partment is certainly far-reaching, its tie and sheep. The area of this class 



explorers are traversing every distant of land in the Northwest is almost im- 



land in the interests of the American measurable. 



