THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



9 



gauging stations on the most important western rivers 

 for many years, it is doubtful if actual construction 

 could have begun on more than three or four out of the 

 twenty-four projects upon which work is either under 

 way or will commence this spring. 



The settlement of questions of purely personal mat- 

 ters, such as adjustment of claims, purchase of rights of 

 way, etc., involving no engineering features, are fre- 

 quently more trying and consume more time and labor 

 than the work of digging canals and building dams. 

 In every community the human equation is injected in 

 matters of private property, in schemes for personal 

 aggrandizement which endanger the success of the 

 greater work, and which give way unwillingly and usu- 



to offer it to homeseekers in eighty-acre farm units, 

 provided they would live thereon, cultivate the soil, and 

 repay to the government in ten years, without interest, 

 the pro rata cost of the irrigation works. These matters 

 were adjusted satisfactorily, the Legislature having ex- 

 pedited the resolution making the donation of lake beds 

 and Congress having been equally obliging in granting 

 permission to destroy navigation. Then came the neces- 

 sity for harmonizing the vested rights in land and water 

 in the valley, in order that all might be brought into 

 one community of common interest to develop on the 

 broadest plan possible the latent resources of the whole 

 region. The spirit of push and energy which charac- 

 terizes nearly every progressive movement in the West, 



Digging the Main Canal of 

 the Klamath Project; More 

 Than 100 Miles of Main 

 Canal Will Be Required. 



Excavating a Tunnel in the 

 Klamath Project; One of 

 the Expensive Details of 

 the Undertaking. 



ally only when the pressure of public sentiment threatens 

 the promoter with social ostracism or financial ruin. 



The Klamath project, which recently received the ap- 

 proval of the Secretary of the Interior, and for which 

 a contract covering an important unit of construction 

 has just been made, presented a multitude of difficulties 

 of this nature and others which gave the government 

 engineers many hours of discouragement and more than 

 once seemed destined to wreck all their hope of initiating 

 a great work of reclamation there. 



This project embraces lands in Oregon and Cali- 

 fornia and presents interstate features which involved 

 new questions for the legal experts of the government 

 and of the states. The irrigable lands include the beds 

 of two navigable lakes which must be drained. The 

 matter of drainage and subsequent damage to navigation 

 required simultaneous legislation on the part of the 

 States and of Congress. The States of California and 

 Oregon by legislative decree gave to the government 

 the beds of Lower Klamath and Tule Lakes, and Con- 

 gress granted permission to the Reclamation Service to 

 uncover these beds, to irrigate the land so exposed, and 



was not lacking in the Klamath Basin. The land owners 

 and the merchants quite generally extended hearty and 

 helpful co-operation, and it is to their industry and 

 forcefulness more than to any efforts on the part of the 

 Reclamation Service that all of the obstacles were finally 

 overcome. 



Today the government is in control of the entire 

 water supply and practically all of the land in private 

 ownership has been signed up to come under the gov- 

 ernment canals. This marks the passing of the private 

 ditch owner and the canal company, and ushers in a 

 monopoly of the water resources of the valley, a monop- 

 oly, however, in which the land owner in the valley is a 

 stockholder and in which all have equal voice in its 

 operation and equal share in its benefits. Under the 

 new regime a system of common sense home rule is to 

 obtain which will work for the fullest development of 

 the valley's abundant resources, and which is destined 

 to place this favored region in the forefront among the 

 nation's prosperous and populous agricultural communi- 

 ties. 



The Klamath project provides for the reclamation 



