THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



283 



Boise Statesman: The portions of this staje where land 

 can be irrigated, if the practical results of dry farming con- 

 tinue to be satisfactory, will not be the only sections in 

 demand among homeseekers and practical men who are seek- 

 ing to secure all possible return from their efforts, if a pro- 

 ject now being considered by Senator Heyburn is carried out. 



With the growth of the dry farming propaganda the idea 

 recently suggested itself to Senator Heyburn that it might 

 be possible to find a way in which it may be feasible to grant 

 or sell land on which no water could be secured, for the 

 purpose of cultivation of crops by the new method. He 

 accordingly has prepared the framework of a bill under which 

 land may be entered under the desert act but without the 

 requirement that water shall be put on it, while residence 

 will not be necessary. 



The price of land, it is stated, will be probably fixed at 

 $1.25 per acre. Should the bill, or one similar, pass congress 

 it would open up thousands of acres of land that might not 

 otherwise be cultivated, and would without doubt be a great 

 incentive to the broader experimentation with the already 

 promising results secured from cropping without water. 



Deseret Farmer (Salt Lake City) : The subject of prac- 

 tical irrigation from the viewpoint of the small land holder 

 and as a practical and actual part of the conduct of agricul- 

 tural pursuits, rather than as a matter for the larger op- 

 erator and as a, perhaps, scientific theory, is attracting more 

 and more attention. In this western part of the United 

 States and those sections particularly where the rainfall is 

 confined to the wet season, or winter months, every agri- 

 culturist and horticulturist is, if he has not already done 

 so, beginning to take an interest in irrigation as a practical 

 science and one absolutely necessary to best results, and per- 

 haps necessary to any results at all. Of course, the necessity 

 for irrigation and the interest that individual landholders 

 take in it is a matter dependent entirely on local conditions 

 which may and do vary within a comparatively short dis- 

 tance. This naturally requires local application, but the gen- 

 eral theory of irrigation is an accepted principle, and all the 

 more progressive growers of products of the soil are study- 

 ing this subject with interest. Within the confines of Cali- 

 fornia may be found almost every condition of soil, from the 

 extremely fertile, where often no irrigation is necessary, to 

 the absolutely barren and entirely arid regions. The value of 

 water to the soil, even to arid sections in this state, is very 

 remarkably illustrated in the orange growing territory in the 

 southern end of the state, where in most cases a once barren 

 desert has been truly and literally made to bloom and blos- 

 som as the rose, and one in traveling through many parts of 

 California is particularly struck by the abrupt change in the 

 character of the country, passing, as one travels along, from 

 the desert to the highly productive orange groves, and back 

 into the desert again within a few miles. This change is 

 brought about almost entirely, and in most cases absolutely, 

 by the application of water to the land, and irrigation in that 

 section has been studied and reduced to what might be called 

 an exact sci 'iice. 



Sacramento Union; The bane of irrigation in every coun- 

 try where employed has been the the development of alkaline 

 salts upon the surface. If, as reported, this tendency has 

 been counteracted by government experiments at Fresno, and 

 at a cost that bears small relation to the value of the land, 

 there has been that achieved which will be worth hundreds 

 of millions to California, thousands of millions to the arid 

 west, and millions of millions to the world. 



Sacramento (Cal.) Bee; The area of the floor of the 

 Sacramento Valley, as determined by actual surveys not "es- 

 timated" is a fraction over 2,661,000 acres, all of which is 

 subject to irrigation from the projected government works. 

 In addition to this, there are several thousand square miles 

 of foothills and tributary valleys, which may be included in 

 the tillable area of the Sacramento basin. The thing most 

 needed to break up the remaining big ranches is irrigation. 

 For many years the tendency of wheat growing has been 

 toward increase rather than decrease in the size of farms, 

 because it is relatively cheaper to grow wheat on a large than 

 a small scale, owing to the use of gang plows, traction en- 

 gines and combined harvesters. But when an abundant sup- 

 ply of water is brought to a large ranch it may be subdivided 

 and sold in parcels of ten, twenty or forty acres, at good 

 prices, so that it is no longer worth while to continue g*w- 

 ing wheat upon it. Thus water is the best solvent for land 



monopoly ever discovered. The government irrigation works, 

 added to the private irrigation enterprises now under way in 

 this valley, will result in a great increase of its population 

 and in multiplying the number of its rural homes. One of 

 the best features of the federal irrigation law is that it re- 

 quires subdivision. Water will not be supplied to any farm 

 unit larger than 160 acres. 



Pocatello (Idano) Tribune: A definite step toward the 

 application of water to 60,000 acres in the Fort Hall tract 

 will be taken this week by Civil Engineer W. A. Samms of 

 this city, who has been awarded a contract for surveying an 

 immense storage reservoir on Little Blackfoot River, as a 

 part of the big Fort Hall irrigation project, for the construc- 

 tion of which congress at its last session appropriated $350,- 

 000. Engineer Samms will leave with his corps of assistants 

 on Wednesday and estimates that the work will take the bet- 

 ter part of two months. The first camp will be established 

 at Henry. It is the plan of the government to construct 

 .somewhere on the Blackfoot river an immense storage reser- 

 voir for the conservation of the flood waters of that stream 

 and its various tributaries. This will insure plenty of water 

 for the irrigation of the 60,000 acres of land in the reserva- 

 tion and the land in the ceded land within the five-mile limit 

 owned by whites. While it is not expected that actual con- 

 struction of the storage reservoir and canal system of the 

 Fort Hall project will begin this year, at the same time it is 

 believed that everything will be placed in readiness before snow 

 flies next winter for work next year, and it is not impossible 

 that the Fort Hall tract will be under water in time for the 

 irrigation season of 1908. Engineer Samms' work will be 

 the running of lines along the Little Blackfoot river to the 

 main stream of that name, and to select a convenient point 

 of diversion for the main canal. The work will be under 

 the general supervision of the Indian office at Washington. 



* 

 i 



Bulletins and 



Publications 



Manual on Semi-Arid Farming. 



The latest contribution to the literature of semi-arid 

 agriculture is a new edition of "Campbell's Soil Culture 

 Manual," a handsome volume of 320 pages filled with infor- 

 mation of immediate value to every farmer of the western 

 country. This literature is not as yet very extensive. The 

 few bulletins that have been issued concerning it have been 

 looked upon with suspicion. A good many farmers are 

 unaware of the fact that general agriculture is now exten- 

 sively carried on in regions which had long been relegated 

 to the coyotes or given over to the herds. The accepted 

 theory that twenty inches or more of annual rainfall was 

 absolutely necessary to general farming has persisted, and 

 it has stood in the way of the development of the west. 

 But practical farmers, armed only with determination and 

 some good sense, have pushed back the border line until 

 nobody now pretends to know where it is. 



This latest manual is by Mr. H. W. Campbell, of Lin- 

 coln, Neb., who is perhaps the best known of the workers 

 in this particular field. He has devoted his life to experi- 

 ment and investigation of the problems which have faced 

 the western farmers. During more than twenty-five years 

 of steady application he has farmed in a half dozen states 

 and has conducted experiments all the way from Canada 

 to Mexico. Here he has embodied what he has learned 

 of the way to conquer the drouth. Mr. Campbell has made 

 good in the semi-arid region. He has got results. He has 

 not accepted anybody's dictum that this or that could not 

 be done. He has tried until he has found the way. His 

 plan is simple and yet it involves so much that in applica- 

 tion it is not an easy matter. He would cultivate the soil 

 with special reference to conserving and storing the soil 

 moisture, and he would follow this up so closely that not 

 a drop of the precious water could get away without being 

 used in some manner. While thus making a strong point 

 of saving the moisture he would so cultivate and treat the 

 soil as not only to keep up its quality but to actually make 

 available soil fertility by a process of building up the soil. 



