THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



371 



SOME ADVANTAGES OF THE ARTESIAN WELL 

 FOR IRRIGATION. 



BY S. W. GILBERT, 

 President of the First National Bank, Artesia, N. M. 



In this arid West any permanent supply of water 

 is appreciated. The important questions are the quan- 

 tity and the quality. There are at present three means 

 of irrigation. First the surface wells, from which the 

 water is raised by pumps run by windmills or gasoline 

 engines. Surface water is obtained at a depth of fifteen 

 to 150 feet below the surface and the supply seems 

 to be inexhaustible. My surface well for domestic use 

 is only thirty-five feet deep. The water stands three 

 and a half feet in a six-inch pipe, but the hardest 

 kind of pumping will not lower the water. For a 

 garden or a small truck farm a man may be suc- 

 cessful with surface water. But one need not hope 

 to farm on a large scale with water raised by a wind- 

 mill. 



Second We have the ditch or canal system taken 

 from the rivers. The rivers are mostly fed by springs 

 and a good head of water is obtained, but it is so 

 often accompanied by that expensive and disagreeable 

 lawsuit that makes company water rights so objec- 

 tionable. Then another serious objection to co-part- 

 nership water is when unscrupulous members live on 

 the ditch and insist that they have "prior right" and 

 want to take water out of their turn. Just a little 

 taken now and a little then does not amount to much 

 at the time, but when summed up it is no worse to 

 steal a man's crop than it is to take his water. I 

 have had all of my water cut off at night and turned 

 on the next morning. Just when you need the water 

 the most some one else needs it just as badly and 

 helps himself. 



Next comes the artesian well, which to my mind 

 is the most satisfactory. A man who is fortunate 

 enough to own 320 acres of land with an average arte- 

 sian well on it has an independent fortune. I say 

 independent because he does not have to depend on 

 any man nor company of men to say when he shall 

 or shall not have water, nor how much he may use. 

 He has his supply 'always at hand and can use it at 

 his convenience. But some one will say one well is 

 -not enough for 320 acres of land and besides they 

 are so expensive. Yes, they are expensive, that is, 

 the first cost is considerable, but you are not compelled 

 to pay a water tax each year, neither are you com- 

 pelled to help keep the other man's ditches clean. The 

 average well in this part of the Pecos Valley is enough 

 for 320 acres with a good deal to spare. What is be- 

 ing done with some of the large wells? I shall men- 

 tion only two or three average wells. From February 

 1st to June 1, 1904, Mr. E. N. Heath had irrigated 

 250 acres of land two and one-half times. This irri- 

 gation was done directly from the well through new 

 ditches. The land had never been irrigated before. 

 This was government land two years ago. Most of the 

 irrigating was done by inexperienced men and conse- 

 quently a great deal of the water was wasted. Almost 

 the entire 320 acres of land has been planted and Mr. 

 Heath is renting water to his neighbors. This well 

 is 715 feet deep, cased with 7% casing and flows 2,000 

 or 2,500 gallons per minute. 



Mr. J. B. Cecil has a well 830 feet deep, cased with 



6-inch standard pipe and the water gushes seven feet 

 above the casing and flows about 2,500 gallons per min- 

 ute. He is cultivating about 400 acres of land that is 

 planted in corn, oats, barley, alfalfa 1 , and forty acres 

 of orchard. United States Land Commissioner Smith 

 has a well 740 feet deep on 320 acres of land and almost 

 the entire tract is in cultivation. The greatest won- 

 der of wells is that of R. B. Barnes, near the Penasco 

 River. This well is only 530 feet deep and flows five 

 feet above the casing. The well was completed too 

 late to allow of much planting. About ninety acres 

 is being irrigated, however. 



The water from these wells is hard, but there is 

 no sulphur, as is found in the wells farther north. The 

 average temperature of the water as it flows from the 

 well is about sixty degrees. Therefore there is no 

 danger of chilling the vegetation directly from the 

 well. 



PLAN FOR RECLAIMING VALUABLE WASTE 

 LAND. 



Irrigation to Make Fertile 500,000 Acres in North Dakota. Water 



Will be Pumped from Upper Missouri and 



Distributed Through Ditches. 



ST. PAUL, Sept. 23. When certain irrigation plans 

 for North Dakota shall have been put in operation 

 North Dakotans declare that the "slope" country, now 

 a semi-arid region, will be made to blossom like a rose, 

 and that the State will be the richest agricultural 

 State in the Union. 



E. A. Williams, United States surveyor general 

 for North Dokota, who is at the Merchants' Hotel, is 

 an enthusiast on the subject of reclaiming the great 

 areas on each side of the Missouri and the Cannon Ball 

 Rivers by pumping the water of the rivers up to the 

 table lands, and distributing it by means of reservoir 

 systems over a great area of lands. 



The State has a fund of more than $3,500,000 for 

 the reclamation of the dry lands of the slope country, 

 and the expenditure of only a part of this sum, it is 

 said, will bring under cultivation an area of fully 500,- 

 000 acres of lands only awaiting the introduction of a 

 comparatively small quantity of water in addition to 

 the annual rainfall. Said Surveyor-General Williams : 



PLENTY OF FUEL AT HAND. 



"The cost of pumping water from the level of 

 the rivers to the table lands for subsequent distribu- 

 tion over the prairies, can be kept at a minimum by 

 the presence of great beds of lignite coal found in 

 limitless quantities along the streams and, which, it is 

 asserted, can be mined for a sum insignificant when 

 compared with the cost of bringing coal from the coal 

 fields of Illinois or Iowa. 



"There is plenty of water in the Missouri, the 

 Little Missouri and the Cannon Ball, there is coal 

 available for driving the pumps, and only the pumps 

 and the system of irrigating ditches remain to be in- 

 stalled to convert the great area of now almost waste 

 lands into highly productive farms, capable of produc- 

 ing immense crops of every grain grown in the lati- 

 tude of the State. 



"Government engineering experts who have tra- 

 versed the section of country that I describe say that 

 there is the greatest opportunity for a giant irrigation 

 plant in the country. 



