THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



173 



to be had at a depth of from 12 to 21 feet. The com- 

 pany had ordered 25 windmills and tank outfits. There 

 will also be a number of gasoline engine experiments 

 made on the tracts, and if these are found more satis- 

 factory than the windmills, they will be used exclusively. 

 The company is capitalized for $50,000. The officers 

 are: C. M. Crego, president; Maxon Chase, vice- 

 president; W. C. Morgan, secretary, and A. M. Tate, 

 treasurer, of Spokane. 



The Spokane Canal Company, of which L. Mac- 

 Lean is president, has purchased 250 acres of land at 

 Otis Orchards and adjoins the present German settle- 

 ment on the west. It is directly crossed by the 

 Spokane & International Railroad. This land will be 

 platted in 5 and 10-acre tracts and water will be placed 

 on it. The cost was $20,000. Otis Orchards now com- 

 prises about 4,000 acres of land, all of which is or will 

 be irrigated. The company will continue to buy land 

 in the neighborhood of Otis Orchards and add to its 

 holdinp until 9,000 acres are secured, this amount of 

 land being the limit which can be irrigated with the 

 water owned by the company. 



Nine hundred acres of land east of Spokane, and 

 adjoining property will be put under irrigation this 

 summer by the owners of the property. Twenty own- 

 ers of land have organized a company under the state 

 irrigation laws, to be called the East Spokane Irrigation 

 Company. The company is a co-operative concern, hav- 

 ing no capitalization. Those concerned in the project 

 , are George Mudgett, H. D. Kay, H. W. Kinne, L. 

 Quigley, James Merager, J. Henry Thierman, Sparks 

 brothers, and J. A. Yungreen. It is the plan to sink 

 wells to supply water, an abundance of which is avail- 

 able within 50 feet of the surface. A pumping plant 

 will be built, costing about $18,000, and equipped with 

 a pump having a capacity of 1,600 gallons per minute. 

 This will supply water not only for irrigation purposes, 

 but for domestic use. 



John S. Malloy of Sokane has taken 1,000 acres 

 of land near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, 34 miles east of 

 Spokane, where he will install an irrigation plant. The 

 contracts specify that water will be on the tract by 

 June 1. 



Advices received in Spokane from North Yakima 

 are that it is likely the Tieton canal project (govern- 

 ment), to reclaim 25,000 acres of land in the Yakima 

 Valley, will be somewhat delayed because of the scarcity 

 of labor and inadequate service of the railroad in carry- 

 ing supplies. It was intended to have the ditch com- 

 pleted by 1908. Work on the opening of the portals 

 of the three long tunnels has progressed as far as pos- 

 sible until more machinery arrives and the power house 

 is completed. Joseph Jacobs, engineer in charge^ finds 

 it impossible to secure sufficient laborers, although he is 

 offering $2.25 for a day of eight hours. Sixty men are 

 now at work on the portal of the long tunnel, about 

 10 miles from Naches City. It is the intention to 

 place 700 men at work as soon as drilling machinery ar- 

 rives. The government is doing the work itself as the 

 bids for construction are rejected because they are 

 excessive. Mr. Jacobs says he may ask a number of 

 contractors to take contracts for small portions of the 

 work and handle a few stations. Commodious bunk- 

 houses and dining rooms have been built and the work- 

 men have more comforts than usual in camp life. 



THE EVOLUTION OF IRRIGATION INSTITU- 

 TIONS. 



BY ELWOOD MEAD, CHIEF OF IRRIGATION AND DRAIN- 

 AGE INVESTIGATIONS, UNITED STATES DEPART- 

 MENT OF AGRICULTURE. READ BEFORE THE 

 FOURTEENTH NATIONAL IRRIGATION 

 CONGRESS. 



Your program committee has assigned me a coo- 

 genial subject. It so happened that the first fifteen 

 years after I came to the arid region were spent in the 

 states which have exercised a potential influence in 

 shaping the principles and rules which govern the con- 



DR. ELWOOD MEAD, 



Chief ol Irrigation and Drainage Investigations, Office of Experiment 



Stations, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 



Washington, D. C. 



trol of water in irrigation. During nearly all of this 

 time I was connected with the state engineers' offices of 

 Colorado and Wyoming. They were the years in which 

 the rights of those streams were being acquired and the 

 laws and customs under which rivers are controlled 

 were wrought out. 



What I shall say of the evolution of irrigation in- 

 stitutions will have something to do with the attitude 

 of the irrigator ; how he has thought, talked and acted in 

 the pregnant years when institutions were being formed, 

 as well as the growth of those principles which regulate 

 human conduct in irrigation. 



Colorado was the first state to pass a law requiring 

 a measurement of the flow of ditches as a guide to the 

 division of streams. I helped measure the first ditch 



