THE IKRIGATION AGE. 



339 



Mountain Home, Idaho 



Something About the Wonderful Development of a Large Irrigation 

 Project Great Western Beet Sugar. 



It has been truly said that without irrigation there 

 would be no populous and prosperous West. It was the 

 first weapon seized by civilization in its battle with des- 

 olation. When Brigham Young assumed the awful re- 

 sponsibility of moving his 10,000 followers to the desert 

 valley of the Eocky Mountains he did it upon the faith 

 that irrigation, one of the oldest arts of the Old World, 

 could be successfully applied to the land he proposed to 

 settle and before the close of the day of his arrival in 

 the Salt Lake Valley he began the building of the first 

 irrigation canal. Time, in its gentle. manner, has shown 

 wonderful results that have been realized through the 



Mouth of Tunnel and Flulne, Mountain Home, Idaho. 



the water supply during the hot summer months when 

 lands were thirsty. 



Away back in the Bennett and Saw Tooth Moun- 

 tains are, until the middle of each year, immense bodies 

 of snow. As the snow melts in the spring of the year 

 the streams are large rivers, emptying into the great 

 Snake River, and then to the Pacific Ocean, and are 

 lost. The problem was to husband this great volume of 

 water and retain it in the mountains, until the hot 

 summer days arrived and the fields were thirsty. 



Through the process of elimination it was found 

 that the extension of irrigation in the Mountain Home 

 district of the Snake River Valley could not be expected 

 unless effort was applied to large storage reservoirs. It 

 was useless to expect any extension of irrigation by 

 relying on streams already taxed to their limit. 



If all this vast region could be brought under the 

 field of observation it would present a most picturesque 

 aspect. In the view would appear snow-capped moun- 

 tains, their life-giving reservoirs of water flowing to 

 the plains at their feet. The streams which find in 

 these glaciers their source have flood maximums wherein 

 their waters have run to waste. When all of the pre- 

 cipitation which is caught by the condensing uplifted 

 surfaces of the mountain ranges and the sub-surface 

 reservoirs of water are so developed as to be applicable 

 to the fertilization of this arid area, it requires but a 

 superficial knowledge of the topographical and mete- 

 orological conditions of this region to declare that sev- 



Steam Plow at Work on Land Near Mountain Home, Idaho. 



irrigation projects both large and small in the arid 

 regions of the West; and yet today there are millions 

 of acres of desert lands that could be reclaimed, if the 

 vast waters that flow down the mountain creeks and are 

 lost could be stored for use during the hot summer 

 months. 

 A number of years ago a few settlers believed that 



" 



Grain "Stacks Up" Well at Mountain Home, Idaho. 



the immensely fertile lands in the Snake River Valley 

 at a point where is now located the town of Mountain 

 Home, Idaho, could be reclaimed through waters taken 

 from the mountain creeks. A small per cent of the 

 lands in this part of the Snake River Valley was placed 

 under irrigation and cultivated. Such magnificent grain 

 and fruit crops as were obtained from this comparative- 

 ly small area of cultivated land created a great deal of 

 interest and ways and means were sought to increase 



Grain Field, Mountain Home, Idaho, 



