THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



151 



IRRIGATION PROBLEMS IN KANSAS. 



Fertility to Be Solved by Moisture Retaining, Soil Cultivation 

 and New Adaptations of Tree Life. 



[From an address delivered by Congressman Victor Murdock 

 before the Western Kansas Irrigation Association.) 



Since last spring I have devoted a major portion 

 of my time to a study of the question of irrigation. 

 The greatest barrier in the way of western Kansas in 

 this matter is a widespread disbelief, outside western 

 Kansas, that irrigation in western Kansas is practical, 

 a disbelief that reaches the departments here in Wash- 

 ington as a distinct denial of the feasibility of all plans 

 so far proposed. I will recite presently some of these 

 denials, greatly disheartening as some of them may be, 

 but before I do, I want to say this to the western Kan- 

 sans : The true pioneer never played a craven before 

 a hard problem. The nation builder, wherever he is, 

 has been always a man who dared face complex and 

 difficult propositions. The difficulty in front of him 

 always contained an invitation, it beckoned him while 

 it defied him. From the day that the Pilgrims landed 

 on a grim and forbidding coast, this has been true. It 

 was true of the men who plunged westward in the 

 wilds of Ohio, who faced the swamp problems of Indi- 

 ana witli their traifi of death-dealing fevers, true of 

 the men who pushed beyond the Mississippi and made 

 settlement alone among hostile and treacherous savages. 

 The western Kansan has no problem of disease to face 

 his is the healthiest climate on earth there are no 

 hostile savages near, but before and about him stretches 

 a vast plain, uniformly inviting, without stump or rock 

 or mountainous tracts, with bordering wash-plains of 

 coarse debris bare of soil to bo deducted from the 

 total, a great prairie of unsurpassed soil strength with 

 a flood of God's sunshine to invigorate it but with a 

 single problem presented that a physical problem 

 the occasional recurrence of groups of years of insuffi- 

 cient rainfall. Ho will, with patience, and fortitude, 

 solve the problem with new methods of moisture-re- 

 taining, soil cultivation, with new adaptations of tree 

 and plant life, and with irrigation applied in the years 

 of insufficient rainfall. And it will be well to remem- 

 ber that irrigation in this country is yet in its boyhood. 



In 1890 the area, in this country, irrigated, totaled 

 4,000.000 acres. In 1900 it was 7,300,000 acres. The 

 total area of the arid regions in this country is 800,- 

 000,000 acres. Of this area it is estimated that not 

 quite one-half is cultivated that is, if irrigation were 

 not necessary, so much could be farmed with profit 

 but it is estimated also that from all sources there is 

 water available for more than 60,000,000 acres. In 

 other words not more than 7 per cent is reclaimable, 

 and the actually irrigated area of which we hear so 

 much is less than 1 per cent of the whole. 



Western Kansas is not in the arid region and is 

 not so placed by the scientists. It is designated as snb- 

 humid, with an acknowledgment that it is a portion 

 of the time humid. Since 1874 the Government has 

 kept a record of precipitation at Dodge. The normal 

 annual rainfall there is 20.38 inches. In 1875 it was 

 nine inches below this ; in 1876 four inches below ; in 

 1877 seven inches below; in 1878 two inches below; in 

 1879 four inches below; in 1880 two inches below: in 

 1881 thirteen inches below; in 1882 seven inches be- 

 low; in 1882 eight inches above; in 1884 nine inches 



above; in 1885 three inches above; in 1886 one inch 

 below. 



It was this group of years of great rainfall, from 

 1881 to 1887, which brought on the great boom, it 

 will be remembered. Since that period there have 

 been other periods above the normal. It was in 1891 

 eleven inches above the normal and eleven inches above 

 again in 1898. 



In the light of this condition of occasionally per- 

 fect wheat-growing conditions, and the fact that irriga- 

 tion wherever applied is confined to restricted and in- 

 tensive farming, and all western Kansas is productive 

 during years of sufficient rainfall, irrigation in Kan- 

 sas will be supplementary. To the west of Kansas the 

 agriculturist has no help from nature at all ho looks 

 upon rainfall as practically negligible he must de- 

 pend upon irrigation entirely. 



Here I come to the first obstacle in the way of 

 interesting the Government in irrigation in western 

 Kansas. 



The Government contends that whereas the agri- 

 culturist in the arid region must either irrigate or move 

 out, there arc so many years of sufficient rainfall in 

 western Kansas that the agriculturist there can and 

 does get along without it, and his interest in the sub- 

 ject wanes, and necessity does not drive him, as it does 

 the farmers in the arid regions, to adopt means a 

 position, of course, not wholly well taken, but assist- 

 ing in benumbing government interest in our case. 



Now,. in the matter of water supply, some of the 

 hydrographers insist that the catchment area of the 

 eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains is not sufficient to 

 irrigate the arid regions at the foot of the mountains, 

 to say nothing of the prairies of western Kansas, and 

 point out the frequent trouble in the arid regions where 

 the man of later settlement suffers while the man with 

 a prior water right is supplied, in case of interminable 

 ill feeling. But we all see floods of water waste sea- 

 ward, in the Arkansas, every spring. Could that water 

 bn stored ? The objection is made here that, because of 

 the silt, the life of the reservoirs would bo too short. 

 I think that objection, and I think you will agree 

 with me, is far-fetched, not well founded. Now the 

 geological survey says it has not been able to find in 

 that part of western Kansas topographically surveyed a 

 reservoir site of any considerable area which could be 

 reached by a division of the flood waters and have 

 beneath it lands of an irrigable position. The bureau 

 wants the topographical survey of Kansas, on which 

 little has been done since the days of Plumb and In- 

 gnlls. completed, and, in the hope that a complete sur- 

 vey will reveal, to the geological survey's satisfaction, 

 reservoir sites, I will work to have it completed. 



As you know, the geological survey is working un- 

 der the reclamation act. This act provides that a suit- 

 able reservoir having been found, or profitable diver- 

 sion of water, or other irrigation enterprise, the Secre- 

 tary of the Interior shall withdraw from public entry 

 all irrigable lands beneath such work, shall upon the 

 completion of such work sell these lands at increased 

 price to reimburse the Government for the cost of 

 construction of such work, the- work to pass ultimately 

 to an association of the irrigators. As Kansas has 

 little public lands manv of us. at our meeting at Gar- 

 den City last spring, thought we did not come under 

 the reclamation act. But it is now believed that the 

 act will be so construed that private lands under an 

 irrigation work can be given a? security to the Gov- 



