18 



THE IREIGATION AGE. 



of sand, empty, silent, like a sand sea, dividing habitable 

 place from habitable. You are all alone there, left 

 alone with the universe; by day a fierce sun blazing 

 down on it with intolerable radiance ; by night the great 

 deep heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a 

 swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men." Utah is truly 

 a land of "great, grim deserts, savage, inaccessible rock 

 mountains, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure ; 

 wherever water is there is greenness, beauty; odorifer- 

 ous flowers and shrubs, fruit orchards and waving pop- 

 lars. 



Scientific irrigation is the secret of Utah's prosper- 

 ity. The vast social organization which has reared the 

 great Mormon Temple at Salt Lake City, perhaps the 

 most imposing single edifice in America, owes its exist- 

 ence to irrigation. The Mormon pioneers in 1847 

 turned the mountain streams upon the alkaline desert 

 and cultivated the virgin soil. This was the first effort 

 of the Anglo-Saxon race to reclaim desert lands, with 



under present land laws. The problem of administra- 

 tion, which we do not propose to do more than hint at, 

 also presents vital issues. (1) Shall development be by 

 the State or (2) by public corporations or (3) by pri- 

 vate enterprise, operating under restricted grants from 

 the State. These are all important problems before the 

 country today, and must be answered largely according 

 to local conditions. In the final analysis irrigation as 

 an economic problem is composed of five parts, as Mr. 

 Brough, in an article on "Irrigation in Utah," points 

 out: 



(1) An adequate water supply. 



(2) Suitable lands to put it on. 



(3) Efficient and lasting works for delivery and 

 distribution constructed within economic limits of cost. 



(4) Fair and efficient management of these works 

 in the interest of the consumers under them. 



(5) A contented, industrious and skillful popula- 

 tion of irrigators located on the land. 



Orchard Irrigation. (.One of illustrations used in the Primer of Irrigation. I 



the exception of the flooding of the rice farms of South 

 Carolina, Much remains yet to be done before the sys- 

 tem will have reached anything like the perfection aimed 

 at. Not only in the Escalante desert region, but all 

 over Utah by far the largest amount of the annual 

 water supply runs to waste, all the water is entirely lost 

 except that flowing during two or three months of the 

 irrigation season. The Escalante Desert is underlaid 

 by vast quantities of alkali water> which can easily be 

 pumped to the surface. As we have said, irrigation has 

 reared this vast social fabric out of the dust. Its cost 

 has been over $563,000,000 and $20,000,000 would 

 be a very liberal estimate of the value of personal prop- 

 erty brought into the territory. This is the economic 

 argument in justification of the reclamation of arid 

 land. Where irrigation is practical various problems 

 arise as to (1) whether the Federal government shall ap- 

 propriate money and enter upon the reclamation of its 

 arid public lands, or (2) whether it shall cede the public 

 domain to the States either unconditionally or with 

 such conditions or limitations as would secure this land 

 to homeseekers or (3) that the land shall be reclaimed 



Many sections of the Escalante region fulfill these 

 conditions and have been converted into garden spots. 

 Such are the beautiful towns of Parowan and Cedar, 

 where the State Normal School is located. 



But even more important than irrigation with its 

 wonderful possibilities in this section of Utah, is the 

 wonderful natural deposits of iron and coal, particularly 

 the former in Iron county. The marvellous resources 

 of the Iron Mountain region, situated in the very heart 

 of the Escalante Desert will soon be revealed to the 

 world in a volume of the annual report of the United 

 States Geological Survey. My work on a leveling 

 branch of the Geological Survey gave me opportunities 

 to study these marvelous deposits. Professor Newberry 

 says of this so-called "Iron Mountain" : "These depos- 

 its are probably not excelled in intrinsic value by any 

 in the world. There -are certainly no other deposits to 

 compare with them west of the Mississippi for the man- 

 ufacture of pig and bar iron and steel, and it would be 

 difficult to estimate the influence they would have on the 

 industries of the Pacific Coast." Another eminent ex- 

 pert says that Utah's iron resources much exceed those 



