MAIN DAM ON THE TRUCKLE IRRIGATION DITCH 



CHAPTER I 



In Which Is Contained Much that Is Decidedly at Variance with Outside Public Opinion Concerning the 

 Agricultural Resources and Possibilities of this Great Arid-land State 



A~TATE where no special attention until recently has been paid to its agricultural 

 resources; desolate and unpropitious when viewed from the car windows of the 

 transcontinental trains which traverse little of its farming sections; and for fifty 

 years given over to mining as its paramount industry, with stock-raising second and farm- 

 ing third in the industrial list; with a preconceived opinion in the minds of the public 

 that, generally speaking, it is as hopeless of transformation into fields of husbandry as 

 are the tablelands of central Asia, or the Desert of Sahara Nevada is somewhat handi- 

 capped in its appeal to homeseekers in that conditions are not what they are understood 

 to be and that this great inland empire has its own marvelous agricultural destiny. 



Progress of Agriculture and Irrigation. 



But we have been making progress the last few decades, and very much so in agri- 

 culture and irrigation. In keeping with this advance, economic pressure is constantly 

 crowding the surplus population of the country into every opening and available field 

 of opportunity. Necessity that wise old mother of invention has the comfortable 

 faculty about the time we are apparently up against a stone wall to disclose that the 

 wall is not an obstacle after all, but is capable of being turned to very excellent advantage. 



Now, it happens that while many are bewailing that all the desirable public lands 

 have been appropriated and no further opportunity is left the homeseeker, irrigation and 

 agricultural progress more particularly the conservation of the natural sources of water- 

 supply, improved methods of irrigation, and more intensive methods of farming have 



