330 



THE IBRIGATION AGE. 



the work of development. They have delivered water 

 for irrigation to the first segregation of 30,000 acres 

 of the North Side Tract and the entire system will bo 

 complete this year. An extension is now under way to 

 bring 40,000 acres in Clover Creek Valley, lying north 

 of the Oregon Short Line, under water. The storage 

 diim for the Salmon Tract is now under way and for 

 the next eighteen months 100 to 300 men will be em- 

 ployed in this construction. Besides their interest in ir- 

 rigation, the Kuhn Brothers are men of large affairs 

 elsewhere. Nine floors of the Pittsburgh Bank for 

 Savings building are occupied by the executive officer 

 of the Kuhn properties. 



James S. Kuhn is president of the Pittsburgh 

 Bank for Savings, president of the First National 

 Bank of McKeesport, president of the Municipal and 

 Corporation Securities Company, and director of the 

 Colonial Trust Company of Pittsburgh, the Germania 

 Savings Bank of Pittsburgh, First National Bank of 

 Pittsburgh, and Trust Company of America, New York. 

 He is also president of the American Water Works 'and 



The Art of Irrigation 



CHAPTER FOUR 



By T. S. VAN DYKE 



The first point to consider in making levees for 

 checks is whether they are to be permanent, as for al- 

 falfa, or whether they are to be broken up for culti- 

 vation after each irrigation, as for some kinds of or- 

 chard and garden work. If they are to remain year 

 after year, with the cijpp growing on top of them 

 just the same as in the bottom of the check, then they 

 must be made with care and smoothed off along the tops 

 and sides. They must be broad enough on the base to 

 allow a gentle slope rounded to top so that mowers and 

 hay wagons can go over them the same as on the level 

 ground. I have seen them fifteen feet wide on the bot- 

 tom and two and a half feet high causing no incon- 



Rio Grande Project, New Mexico Leasburg Diverting Dam. 



Guarantee Company which has a paid up capital of 

 $2,000,000 and a surplus of over $2,000,000. 



W. S. Kuhn is president of the United Coal Com- 

 pany, which owns and operates nine important prop- 

 erties in Pennsylvania and West Virginia; president 

 of the West Penn Railways System, which supplies 

 with power, light and transportation some fifty cities 

 and towns in northwestern Pennsylvania, and president 

 of the Twin Falls North Side Land and Water Com- 

 pany, which is spending millions of dollars on irriga- 

 tion work in Idaho. He is a director of the First 

 National Bank of Pittsburgh ; First National Bank of 

 McKeesport, Pa., the Pittsburgh Bank for Savings, 

 the Commonwealth Trust Company and Commercial 

 National Bank, all of Pittsburgh. The Kuhns and 

 associates are the largest private operators in irrigation 

 and to have them back of any enterprise insures its 

 success. Their broad and liberal policy has won the 

 firm confidence of people who are seeking homes upon 

 irrigated tracts. The cause of irrigation was certainly 

 given a great lift when J. S. and W. S. Kuhn entered 

 the field! 



venience to machinery and carrying as good a growth 

 on their tops as there was down in the check. This 

 is higher than is generally necessary for small checks, 

 but on account of the danger of breaching from waves 

 when first made, and before they are settled down and 

 filled with roots it is best to make them at least twelve 

 feet on the base and eighteen inches high. This makes 

 them safe until the growth of the crop stops waves in 

 the highest wind, the roots bind the soil so that a breach 

 will be a mere leak instead of tearing away a large part 

 of the levee. A gopher hole can make .little more than 

 a leak and that may be stopped by tramping down the 

 top material of which you have so much that you don't 

 have to haul in any. I have some much smaller than 

 this which have lasted six years in good shape, but if you 

 don't lose too much top soil by scraping up big levees, 

 big ones are the surest. Scraping off top soil is no ob- 

 jection for alfalfa, except for the first year, perhaps. 

 After that, if you have true alfalfa ground, perfect 

 drainage its fertility makes little difference if you 

 handle the water properly. Care must be used at first 

 in letting in the water, watching the wind and search- 



