454 IRRIGATION PRACTICE 



The greatest recent progress in irrigation has come 

 about in every country during the last forty or fifty years. 

 The year 1880 may well be taken as a convenient marker 

 for the beginning of modern irrigation on a large scale, 

 with governmental support and based upon modern 

 knowledge. 



262. The founding of modern irrigation in America. 

 During the first half of the nineteenth century, there was 

 no irrigation progress in America. The native Indians 

 in some few places in Mexico and South America, were 

 irrigating small fields. The old missions in the United 

 States were falling into decay. The European conquerors 

 of the new continent were busily engaged in the humid 

 portions of the country. The more arid or remoter pans 

 of the country had been explored only by the handful of 

 trappers and a few others, who had ventured westward 

 largely in search of adventure or scientific truth. The 

 great territory now covered by the mountain states was 

 designated on the school maps as the Great American 

 Desert, and with the country adjoining it on every side, 

 was held to be unfit for agricultural purposes. 



The opening of the Oregon country brought venture- 

 some settlers across the continent more frequently, until 

 the old Oregon trail was pretty well defined, but those 

 who traveled it sought their homes on the Pacific Coast, 

 where the rainfall was quite as heavy as in the far East. 

 The old southwest trail from Santa Fe was practically 

 unused by emigrants. There was no American irrigation 

 of any consequence during the first half of the nineteenth 

 century. 



Early in the spring of 1847, a party of pioneers, under 

 the leadership of Brigham Young, set out from their 

 winter camp, near what is now Council Bluffs, to find in 



