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THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



"The Valley of Content 11 



In This Famous Section, the Capital of Which Is 

 Pueblo, the Eighteenth Congress Will be Held. 



A NEWSPAPERMAN, one of the high priests of this won- 

 derful section has aptly called the Arkansas valley 

 "The Valley of Content." 



The name has made good. Today, scarcely anyone in 

 the valley calls it "The Arkansas Valley." Instead, he 

 says, "The Valley of Content." 



And it is, in very truth, the Valley of Content. 



Throughout its 306 miles of length, and its varying 

 width of from two to five miles, the irrigated Arkansas 

 valley stretches its sinuous way in perfect peace and con- 

 tentment. Today, whatever conditions elsewhere, however 

 unfortunate certain sections of the West may have been 

 as to water, the Valley of Content is smiling and happy. 

 It gets a little better each year, and not the least of its 

 pleasures this year is the fact that the eighteenth Na- 

 tional Irrigation Congress is to meet at its capital, Pueblo, 



seven crops are annually cut. Some way, the alchemy of 

 the soil and sunshine perhaps being the contributory 

 causes, the alfalfa is a little more dank and lush, a little 

 more plentiful and profitable, a little more succulent, the 

 seed a little more sought for, in the valley than elsewhere 

 in the land. The seed crop is a great one, especially in 

 the Garden City, Kansas, district, that town being the fore- 

 most seed market for alfalfa in the world. 



Of beets, there are in the neighborhood of 75,000 acres 

 in the Valley of Content. This makes an average of more 

 than 10,000 acres for each mill, for there are seven fine 

 beet sugar mills in this splendid domain. They are located 

 at Rocky Ford, Swink, Sugar City, Lamar, Las Animas, 

 Holly, in Colorado, and at Garden City, Kansas. Four com- 

 panies are represented. The American Beet Sugar Com- 

 pany, which owns the mills at Lamar, Las Animas, and 

 Rocky Ford; the Holly Sugar Company owning the mills at 

 Holly and Swink; the National Sugar Company owning 

 that at Sugar City, and the United States Sugar and Land 

 Company owning that at Garden City. 



Fruit is raised in abundance in the Valley of Content. 

 One county alone, Fremont, the county seat of which is 

 Canon City, produced last year more than a million dol- 

 lars worth of apples, and a quarter of a million dollars 

 worth of small fruit. Fowler, Rocky Ford and Garden City 

 are also great fruit districts. 



New Hotel Vail, Pueblo, Colo. 



the second city in size in Colorado, and the third in the 

 Great Mountain West. 



The Valley of Content has more than a half million 

 acres under water. It embraces every known kind of irri- 

 gation, from the open ditch to the perfect type of sub- 

 irrigation by means of concrete pipe; from the earliest 

 forms of irrigation to_the latest; from gravity to pumping. 

 At the upper end of the irrigated Valley of Content sits 

 the beautiful little town of Canon City, enthroned amid 

 the scenic grandeur of the Grand Canon of the Arkansas. 

 At the lower end is Garden City, that beautiful, thriving 

 little town of 4,000, in Kansas, with its full development 

 under pumping, and with the towns of Cimarron and 

 Dodge City just below it, themselves becoming the centers 

 of added irrigation to the eastward in the valley. 



This more than one-half million acres under water in 

 the Arkansas valley will be added to within the next year 

 by almost a like amount of irrigated area. Projects are 

 already under way, and will be soon completed, many of 

 them. The fame of the Valley of Content is great indeed, 

 leading thousands to view it with increasing delight each 

 year, and making it more and more the perfect type of 

 irrigation and intensive cultivation. 



The three grdat crops of the Valley of Content in Col- 

 orado and Kansas are beets, alfalfa and fruit. There are 

 more than 100,000 acres of alfalfa, from which four to 



Truck is raised in great quantities. The famous 

 Rocky Ford district raised last year more than a million dol- 

 lars worth of cantaloupes. Celery, potatoes, watermelons 

 and other truck abound. 



There is no section of the country coming more 

 rapidly into intensive cultivation than the Valley of Con- 

 tent. The small areas are constantly increasing. The old 

 cattle days gave way to quarter-sections. These dwindled 

 to 80-acre farms; then to 40-acre tracts; then those of 

 twenty and ten acres, and celery and sweet potato tracts 

 of from one to five acres are many indeed. 



A factor in the complete development of the Valley 

 of Content is the Valley Commercial Association. This is 

 the merger of commercialtclubs of the valley. The number 

 of local bodies included in the federation is now twenty- 

 two seventeen in Colorado and five in Kansas. The 

 membership extends from Canon City, Colorado, to Dodge 

 City, Kansas. The organization was formed the first of 

 this year, and the work has been great already, with many 

 campaigns planned. This association has pointed the way 

 for many others which have since been formed. 



The president of the Arkansas Valley Commercial 

 Association is R. H. Faxon, of Garden City, Kansas. The 

 vice-president is H. S. Maddox, of Canon City, Colorado. 

 The secretary-treasurer is L. R. Fenlason. of Rocky Ford, 

 Colorado. 





