352 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



THE LA GRANGE DAM OF THE TUOLUMNE. 



FRANK J. BRAMHALL, OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC SYSTEM. 



The scene we present by courtesy of Sunset Maga- 

 zine is one of great picturesque beauty, surpassed, how- 

 ever by its wonderful potentialities of production and 

 resultant home life in the broad valley of the San 

 Joaquin Valley below. Stanislaus county lies on the 

 level floor of the great valley about a hundred miles 

 southeast of San Francisco. For a generation it has 

 been a part of that great domain of wheat so graphic- 

 ally described by Frank Norris in The Octopus. Year 

 after year, as far as the eye could see, stretched the im- 

 perial fields of wheat brown in the fall after the 

 gang plows had left it naked to the sun and the seed 

 had been sown green when the winter rains had 

 sprouted the grain and the warm sunlight of spring 

 had developed its adolescence amber as it waved in 

 the light breezes and ripened under the warmer rays of 

 early summer a scene of strenuous activity as the bat- 

 talions of combined harvesters swept down its serried 

 ranks, threshed and sacked the rich harvest, leaving 

 the great piles of sacked wheat on the field under the 

 cloudless and rainless sky, still and silent as a battle 

 field after the storm of war had passed. 



These great ranchers supported but a sparse per- 

 manent population, the great bulk of the army of work- 

 ers being required only during the active campaigns 

 of plowing and harvesting, nomadic and not allied to 

 and of the soil upon which they worked but a small 

 portion of the year. Homes were few and isolated 

 and life on the ranch was in the main lonely and 

 dreary. 



Thousands of acres of the great wheat fields were 

 thrown upon the market in smaller tracts and the 

 farmer began to replace the ranchman. But more was 

 needed. Nature gave but three to ten inches of rain- 

 fall per annum enough for wheat raised upon a large 

 scale, but not enough for the diversified agriculture 

 of the farmer for alfalfa and live stock, for grape 

 vines and fruit trees, for vegetables and vines. Yet 

 here was a great river of sparkling water that poured 

 into the San Joaquin its useless flood only to seek the 

 freedom of the sea through the Golden Gate. 



The Tuolumne is one of the most important tribu- 

 taries of the San Joaquin- one of the largest streams 

 that drains the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. 

 Its sources are in the great snow banks fifty feet or 

 more in thickness that clothe the summits of the great 

 range, ten, twelve, fourteen thousand feet high, not 

 only in winter, but far into the summer season. Its 

 drainage basin is nearly 1,600 square miles larger than 

 Rhode Island and more than two-thirds the area of 

 Delaware. Its volume varies with the seasons, being 

 greater during the winter and the melting of the moun- 

 tain snows in the spring and early summer, but ranges 

 from 5,000 to 10,000 cubic feet per second, an amount, 

 properly impounded, sufficient to irrigate two millions 

 of acres. 



An irrigation district was formed, bonds issued for 

 $600,000 at first, and subsequently for $600,000 more, 

 and the work of development actively entered upon. 

 At the point shown in our illustration the highest 

 overflow darn in the world was well constructed of 

 enormous blocks of blue traprock, weighing from one 

 to six tons, laid in cement, those of the outer face 

 being cut to fit each other. Eighty-four feet thick 



at the base, it is 336 feet long and 129 feet high. At 

 the top of this great dam the waters are diverted for 

 irrigation not all by any means, for a superb cataract 

 pours over it, but the waterways and headgates of the 

 Modesto canal at the north end and the Turlock canal 

 at the south end regulate the flow. 



To describe one of these is sufficient, as the other 

 is like unto it. The Turlock canal runs through a 

 rock tunnel 600 feet in length. The waters are then 

 carried through an open canal cut in the solid rock 

 for two miles, and through flumes, cuts, a basin 2,000 

 feet long made by the miners of former days, and 

 through the bed of a creek for a mile and a quarter 

 to a concrete dam which diverts it from this artificial 

 lake into a canal; and again by flumes, dams, tunnels 

 and earth canals down to the scene of its real labors. 

 It has come eighteen miles, sometimes sixty feet in 

 the air and now enters into some 125 miles of laterals, 

 about two miles apart and running east and west, for 

 distribution over the thirsty fields. The Turlock dis- 

 trict contains 176,000 acres, but the canal brings water 



La Grange Dam on the Tuolumne, California. 



enough to supply double the area. 



Instead of a sparse population and a great area 

 of wheat, the big ranches have become small farms, 

 which, under intense cultivation, yields marvelous 

 products. Five and six crops of alfalfa per year make 

 great quantities of beef, mutton, pork, milk and butter. 

 The district is famous for its sweet and Irish potatoes, 

 for its prunes, apricots and grapes. It raises figs, 

 peaches, berries, beans, oranges what does it not 

 raise ? Everything grows and the variety of its products 

 is wonderful to contemplate. This more compact 

 population is prosperous, telephones are more numerous 

 than in many eastern towns, good schools abound, and 

 churches are seen in every community. Best of all 

 its products is the human race of boys and girls, in- 

 telligent men and women, happy homes and good so- 

 ciety. No finer example could be offered of the benefi- 

 cent effects of irrigation. 



