646 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



the Reclamation Service, Truckee Carson project (Nevada) 

 advised me land there was worth $300 to $500 an acre, an 

 advance in value rive hundred per cent per annum. The Pecos 

 River Irrigation Company, at Carlsbad, reports land selling at 

 $150 an acre, unimproved ; $400, improved. At Orland, Cali- 

 fornia, irrigated lands have advanced one hundred per cent in 

 the last twelve months. Ernest Walter, an irrigation expert 

 of Grand Valley, Colorado, visited Imperial project, Pecos 

 Palisades, and wrote : "I sold my one-year-old Grand Valley 

 orchard at $500 an acre and bought 160 acres from you, and 

 I am sure that in a few years my Pecos land will be worth 

 more than the orchard I just sold." 



Can you any longer doubt the advisability of buying an 

 irrigable farm under a completed project early in its history 

 before development conditions have brought about the gigantic 

 profits that are set out above? You may ask why these rich 

 Pecos Palisades lands with a perpetual water-right under a 

 completed irrigation system sell at $85 an acre, one-fifth cash, 

 balance in four equal annual payments, when other projects 

 maintain a price of $200 to $1,000 per acre. The answer is 

 plain the railroad is not there the farmers are just beginning 

 to plant crops. Although in the near vicinity rich fields of 

 alfalfa and profit-bearing orchards abound, the Palisades tract 

 is new. But another year will witness a great change. His- 

 tory proves that just as soon as an irrigation project is fin- 

 ished and the first crops are harvested, land values double and 

 treble. With the coming of the Orient this next spring, values 

 of Palisades land will increase. 



If you locate in Palisades district, you will find good neigh- 



W. M. Reed, district engineer of the Reclamation Service, 

 in talking to the El Paso Herald, September 25th, said : 

 "Farming conditions at Carlsbad are the best I have ever 

 seen." (The Carlsbad project is a short distance above Pecos 

 Palisades and the only other reservoir project on the Pecos 

 River.) "Carlsbad farmers have sold $80,000 worth of alfalfa 

 seed and have unmarketed $100,000 worth more." 



L. C. Draper, Fort Stockton, says : "One farmer at Fort 

 Stockton on irrigated land this year made $120 per acre on 

 forty acres of alfalfa. C. E. Boyle, a farmer in the Barstow 

 Valley, from twenty-five acres of his first cutting of alfalfa 

 netted $14 per acre." 



Astounding crops grown in the vicinity of Pecos Pali- 

 sades is of great encouragement to the new settlers. J. D. 

 Wilcox, an Illinois farmer, who bought eighty acres, writes 

 March 20th : "It would take $100 an acre to get my land 

 now." Mr. Wilcox bought early, paying $60 per acre. He 

 paid $15 down and refuses nearly three hundred per cent more 

 profit than cash invested. 



A field manager at Buenavista, Pecos Palisades district, 

 says : "Everyone is active. Our people have bought for early 

 delivery several thousand Keifer pear trees, several thousand 

 grapes (malaga, cornishon, tokay and mission)." Ross Alli- 

 son, resident engineer, reports over one thousand acres now 

 being prepared for cultivation and irrigation. One syndicate 

 will plant at least one thousand acres in alfalfa this winter. 

 Three new town sites on the land now, there are churches and 

 school facilities, telephone lines, daily mail service, many mod- 

 ern conveniences. Twenty thousand dollars are being ex- 



Illinois Delegation at the 18th National Irrigation Congress. 



bors there now. The Orient Railroad desires high-class citi- 

 zens making up the new districts along the line. "The Orient 

 Railroad," says Wm. E. Curtis, the famous Chicago Record- 

 Herald correspondent, "has so far cost twenty million dollars, 

 and not one dollar has come from Wall Street. The Mexican 

 Government contributed $3,555,000 ; the States of Chihuahua 

 and Sinaloa, $800,000. The remainder of the money was 

 raised in the United States and England by private subscrip- 

 tion." 



Prof. L. H. Bailey, of Cornell University, editor of Coun- 

 try Life in America, and head of Roosevelt's Farm Commis- 

 sion, appointed to investigate profits and social life on the 

 farm, says : "The man who purchases good irrigated acres 

 now is lucky above all others who have purchased land in 

 America. The amount of irrigable land is very limited, and 

 the man who buys this land now will be thanked by his chil- 

 dren and his children's children." 



Samuel Fortier, chief of irrigation investigations for the 

 United States, says : "We do not know the exact area, but 

 there is approximately 13,000,000 acres under irrigation now, 

 with 50,000,000 acres susceptible of irrigation. Ninety-five per 

 cent of acreage under irrigation now comes under private 

 projects, although the government has twenty-five projects 

 completed or nearly completed and has just borrowed twenty 

 million dollars for reclamation of arid lands. The results of 

 this stupendous labor of bringing water onto the land will be 

 the greatest heritage we leave to a human race." 



pended now in clearing and planting the land. Despite the 

 drouths in Texas and shortage of water under direct-from-the 

 river irrigation systems, there is no reasonable fear about 

 water under a reservoir such as Imperial. Stored water (taken 

 from the river at flood times) is a great assurance of water for 

 the crops when needed, hence activity in the Palisades district. 



In selling the land. Commissioner Hornbeck has employed 

 distinct methods. It is customary now in colonization work 

 for capitalists to purchase large tracts of land at a net price 

 and add large profits for the selling. But this land was sold 

 direct from the owners to the purchasers. Applications have 

 been passed with a view to getting good honest settlers not 

 speculators and we have gone into irrigated districts and 

 endeavored to get a desirable class of people. 



The best talent possible was engaged to build the Imperial 

 Irrigation system. Men experienced in the business are now 

 employed to instruct the farmers who take up land under this 

 irrigation system. The soil and water system will be studied 

 carefully and scientifically by men who have been long in the 

 service of reclamation projects and who understand applica- 

 tion of water to arid soil, fruit and alfalfa planting and best 

 methods of successful soil tillage under irrigation. These ex- 

 perts will deliver lectures to settlers in Pecos Palisades dis- 

 trict and instruct them as to best methods. 



Remember the irrigation movement is growing by leaps 



(Continued on page 673.) 



