1905 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



549 



the Forest Service at Washington. To 

 secure this reservation in the White 

 Mountains, all New England should 

 unite, and all friends of the White 



Mountains throughout the country 

 may extend the agitation and urge 

 their congressmen to vote for these 



measures. 



IRRIGATION IN THE NORTH PLATTE 



VALLEY 



BY 



ROBERT TUDOR HILL 



T F IN any phase of economic life man 

 * is the creator of his circumstances, 

 it certainly is true in a good system of 

 irrigation. Then he is his own rain- 

 maker, in a sense of the word, and, 

 provided the good Lord fills the river 

 upon which the water system depends, 

 the irrigation farmer is a comparative- 

 ly independent individual. Rain or 

 shine, wet or dry, wind or calm, it 

 makes but little difference ; if he can 

 get the water, he is a happy man. 



Modern irrigation systems are not 

 widely different from those of ancient 

 and medieval times, whose traces may 

 be found in many places ; but they 

 have been so highly developed, and 

 made so" completely adequate to the 

 needs of man, that we can easily for- 

 get that we have only developed an old 

 idea. Irrigation, in itself, is the sal- 

 vation of a country which has little or 

 no rain, for it turns land absolutely 

 worthless, because dry and barren, in- 

 to blooming and productive fields, and 

 consequently raising land values from 

 practically nothing to many dollars 

 per acre. A single irrigation system 

 is like an inverted river system. The 

 water of the river flows from a dimin- 

 utive source to a wide mouth, the vol- 

 ume being increased by tributaries. 

 The ditch water, however, flows from 

 a wide mouth until it is lost in the 

 fields, while the laterals draw from, 

 instead of contributing to the system. 



The North Platte valley is not very 

 wide; in fact, it is simply the flood 

 plain of the present river, which, by 



the way, is never flooded, and which, 

 in early geological times, was the ac- 

 tual basin of a large river. It varies 

 in width from four or five miles to 

 twelve and fifteen miles, and beyond 

 rises to high dry lands and sand hills. 

 The river channel averages about a 

 half a mile in width, but is not filled 

 with water the year around. In July 

 and August the greater part of the 

 channel becomes a bare expanse of 

 shining and wind-shifting sand. In 

 the spring months then, and during 

 the early summer, the water must be 

 used, when the river is higher and 

 when the water level reaches above the 

 head gates of the ditches. 



To irrigate this valley of about six- 

 ty miles long and a few miles wide, in 

 Scotts Bluffs county, Nebraska, bor- 

 dering on eastern Wyoming, there are 

 today at least seventeen ditches, vary- 

 ing in their lengths from five miles to 

 twenty-five miles, and correspondingly 

 in their widths from one hundred and 

 fifty-six feet at the head gate of the 

 farmers' canal to two feet or less at 

 the lower end of any ditch where it 

 runs out. The size of an irrigating 

 ditch depends not so much upon the 

 distance to which the water must In- 

 carried as to the amount of land it 

 must supply with water, and conse- 

 quently with the number and size of 

 the laterals. 



A lateral is a branching ditch, no 

 matter whether it br large or small. 

 They are al\va\s frd by what is known 

 as a lateral gate or box which meas 



