230 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



May 



farmers are doing well and although 

 last year was unusually dry, there was 

 a very large increase in the products 

 shipped from the different stations in 

 North Dakota and west of the Mis- 

 souri. This country is being rapidly 

 settled up by a good class of settlers 

 attracted by the large areas of unoc- 

 cupied government lands and the low 

 prices at which lands are being sold 

 by the land companies operating there. 

 It is a constant source of surprise 

 to all who are familiar with the con- 

 ditions that the settlement of north- 

 ern Minnesota does not proceed more 

 rapidly. There are millions of acres 

 of excellent lands in northern Minne- 

 sota where the timber has been cut off 

 which are waiting for settlers and 

 which are obtainable at very low 



prices. There appears to have been 

 no systematic effort towards securing 

 immigration in Minnesota, and the re- 

 sult is that settlers have gone and are 

 going farther north into Canada, try- 

 ing to make homes on lands not nearly 

 as well adapted to their purposes as 

 those they are passing by in Minne- 

 sota. An excellent move to cure this 

 condition of affairs would be the es- 

 tablishment of a State Immigration 

 Bureau. The ownership of northern 

 Minnesota lands is so diverse that it 

 would be difficult if not impossible to 

 secure unity of action by the land 

 owners, and as every settler adds to 

 the wealth of the State it is entirely 

 proper that the work of securing them 

 should be borne by the State as a 

 whole. 



IRRIGATION IN TEXAS 



"TEXAS has at present about 

 300,000 acres of irrigated 

 land, of which 75,000 acres 

 are planted in ordinary crops and 

 225,000 acres in rice. For years stock 

 raising has been the only industry of 

 the arid and semi-arid portions of the 

 State, but the homesteaders of the 

 last decade have cut up the great 

 ranches into small farms and created 

 a demand for water with which to 

 make their crops grow. Cotton fields 

 are pushing their way now into west- 

 ern Texas. The rice fields are con- 

 fined for the most part to the coast 

 country, but the belt of irrigated land 

 where general farm products flourish 

 extends from El Paso to the Guada- 

 lupe, and from the Rio Grande to the 

 Red River on the north. 



Irrigation is, however, no new thing 

 in Texas. It must not be forgotten 

 that the Lone Star State is a com- 

 monwealth with the romantic history 

 that befits a border State. Long be- 

 fore it became a republic the Indians 

 were irrigating land along the Rio 

 Grande. Afterward the Franciscan 

 friars who came with the early Span- 



ish conquerors carried on irrigation 

 for the cultivation of their fields in the 

 southwestern part of what is now the 

 State of Texas. In the northern and 

 central parts of the State irrigation 

 has been carried on to a limited extent 

 for many years. 



For some time irrigation develop- 

 ment in the Pecos and Rio Grande 

 valleys has been retarded by the lack 

 of water supply which the heavy de- 

 mand on those rivers in New Mexico 

 and Colorado occasions. There are 

 many places, however, in the trans- 

 Pecos country, where impounding 

 dams might be constructed across 

 narrow canyons or gorges to form res- 

 ervoirs for the storage of flood waters. 



In the Pecos Valley and along the 

 Concho in Tom Green County water 

 for irrigation is taken from flowing 

 streams. Big springs supply irriga- 

 tion systems in the trans-Pecos country 

 and along the San Felipe and San 

 Antonio rivers. Some of the best re- 

 sults in the State are produced by ir- 

 rigation from artesian wells near San 

 Antonio and in the Rio Grande coun- 

 try from Corpus Christi to Browns- 



