1905 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



273 



and to the ingenuity of Supervising 

 Engineer L,. H. Taylor. 



When the scheme for Nevada's res- 

 urrection was laid before the Depart- 

 ment, the Secretary of the Interior 

 tentatively approved the plan and set 

 aside $2,740,000 of the reclamation 

 fund with which to initiate the great 

 work. A portion of the project 

 which would form a complete system 

 was immediately laid out. It consisted 

 of a canal thirty-one miles long to take 

 the waters of the Truckee River over 

 into Carson Valley, where a storage 

 reservoir with a capacity of 286,000 

 acre-feet was designed. Four and a 

 half miles below this reservoir site 

 the combined waters of the Truckee 



Owing to the wise provisions of 

 the Reclamation Act, the colonization 

 period under the Truckee-Carson pro- 

 ject will differ from that which has 

 taken place in any community on our 

 continent up to the present time. 

 Whenever there has been a great im- 

 migration movement for any reason, 

 a host of speculators has rushed in, 

 skimmed the cream and departed. 

 The man who takes a forty or eighty- 

 acre tract under this project must 

 come to stay. He may not commute 

 his entry after living a few months on 

 the land, but must prepare the tract 

 for cultivation, till the soil, paying his 

 annual stipend of $2.60 per acre for 

 ten years before title passes from the 







sn .. 



_ , 



T f*fN 



Scene in Mason Valley, near Wabuska, Nevada, showing character of land that is to be irri- 

 gated. 



government. 



The eagerness with which the land 

 is even now acquired by practical 



and Carson Rivers are to be led out 

 upon the plains in two canals, one on 

 each side of the river. The north 



side canal will have a capacity of 400 farmers, and the favor in which the 

 cubic feet per second and will irrigate first experiment of the government to 

 approximately 40,000 acres of land, reclaim its arid lands is regarded, is 

 and the south side canal, with a capac- apparent in the vicinity of Wads- 

 ity of 1,500 cubic feet per second, will worth and Hazen. The desert is al- 

 supply water to about 160,000 acres, ready dotted with buildings of pros- 

 It is a portion of these lands which pective owners, and all along the rail- 

 were formally opened to the public road, at short intervals, new hamlets 

 on June 17, and before another sea- are rising. When once the great bene- 

 son the first payment from 50,000 fits of this initial work are fully dem- 

 acres will be replaced in the original onstrated, Nevada will experience an 

 investment. immigration movement which has had 



