THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



143 



make a crop in the field, but we do not know what 

 the clouds are going to do. Dependence upon them is 

 guesswork, irrigation is certainty. 



In California the pressure of natural conditions 

 steadily impels the farmer towards irrigation, and to- 

 day there is a pretty general conviction that if the 

 State is to make the most of its great agricultural 



in which grain will have a part. This will include the 

 application of water to the grain itself, which has not 

 yet been tried. 



Water for irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley 

 is chiefly derived from the San Joaquin, Kings and 

 Kern rivers, but a considerable area is watered by 

 artesian wells and by means of pumps. The foothill 

 region east of Fresno for some distance along the edge 



advantages that agriculture must be based on irri- 

 gation. It is estimated that over 2,000,000 acres are 

 being watered artificially and that 35,000 irrigated 

 farms are raising one-third of the total agricultural 

 produce of the State. 



As always in matters of this kind, the evolution 

 of irrigation has followed the lines of least resistance. 

 That is to say it has consulted financial returns and grown 

 up most rapidly in sections where rainfall was most 

 uncertain. Southern California has led the rest of the 

 State, partly for this reason .and partly because the chief 

 industry there is the growing of citrus fruits, which 

 require a good deal of moisture. The spread of agri- 

 culture into the desert region adjacent to the Colorado 

 River has also enlarged the irrigated area in the south. 

 Next to this stands the San Joaquin Valley, with an 

 average rainfall at Fresno of 10.13 inches, and last of 

 all the Sacramento Valley, where the annual precipita- 

 tion ranges from 19.41 inches at Sacramento, to 25.40 

 at Red Bluff. 



Bakersfield in the upper or southern end of the 

 San Joaquin shows 4.76 inches of rain, and Redding 

 at the head of the Sacramento Valley, shows 36.11, 

 as an average of a dozen years. Naturally under these 

 conditions the development of irrigation has proceeded 

 more slowly in the north, but in the whole great central 

 valley, which embraces the largest continuous area of 

 high class agricultural land in the world, there is a 

 very general movement toward irrigation, and a convic- 

 tion that with rainless summers the artificial use of 

 water must be the chief dependence. There will nec- 

 essarily be diversified farming and rotation of crops, 



Kings River, at head of Reedley Cana!, San Joaqum VaUey. 



of the valley successfully produces oranges, the quality 

 being fine and the quantity reaching many hundreds 

 of car loads. Owing to a larger aggregation of heat 

 units during the season, the fruit here ripens two to four 

 weeks earlier than in the South. The orange district 



Irrigating Canal near Fresno, San Joaquin Valley. 



is steadily enlarging its bounds, and this calls for 

 more extended irrigation. Vast fields of alfalfa through- 

 out the valley call for repeated irrigations and the dairy 

 interests are growing everywhere. The Modesto Dis- 



