912 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



UTAH. 



The work on the Strawberry tunnel reclamation project 

 is more than half done, which is good news for the Spanish 

 Fork farmers who will, on its completion, reclaim some 

 seventy thousand acres of arid land. This tunnel is probably 

 the longest ever undertaken by the reclamation service, being 

 but little short of four miles in length. 



A number of the officers of the Sego Irrigation Com- 

 pany visited Provo bench recently to see the water turned into 

 the system and delivered on the land owned by the stock- 

 holders and others. The company owns water in the lakes at 

 the head of Provo River in connection with the Provo Reser- 

 voir Company, and also high water rights in Provo River. 



At a mass meeting of citizens, county and city officials 

 and members of various irrigation companies of Weber 

 County, held recently, the project of constructing for Ogden 

 and vicinity a monster reservoir in South Fork Canyon was 

 carried through with great enthusiasm, sufficient stock in the 

 proposition being subscribed to insure the success of the 

 enterprise. 



An irrigation project is now well under way with Presi- 

 dent Jos. R. Murdock at its head. It is a pumping and canal 

 system that is designed to irrigate about 40,000 acres of 

 ground lying west and north of Utah Lake, from which body 

 the water will be taken. It is the purpose of the company 

 to have its system in working order for use in 1912. 



VALLEY LAND RESTORED. 



The fruit of an actual inspection of Owens valley "for- 

 est" lands by forestry bureau heads is here at last, in a 

 proclamation eliminating 275,424 acres of land from the 

 Inyo reserve. The proclamation was signed by President 

 Taft February 23d, a fact of which we would without doubt 

 have been immediately advised but for the illness which com- 

 pelled Congressman Smith, our faithful champion, to leave 

 Washington. 



There have been additions to the forest made to the 

 amount of 80,502 acres, a small part of which is in Nevada. 



At this writing no copy of the proclamation has been 

 received here, and the new lines are not positively known. 

 At the conference here between Associate Forester Potter 

 and our citizens, the latter asked that the line be moved 

 back to its first location, which practically followed the 

 base of the Sierras. Mr. Potter indicated that this would 

 be acceptable to the Forestry Bureau. It is presumed that 

 the line has been practically re-established as it was before 

 Roosevelt and Pinchot, to help Newell and Lippincott along 

 in their Los Angeles allegiance, overrode the spirit and letter 

 of the forestry laws, in blanketing fertile Owens valley with 

 the obnoxious reserve. Obnoxious it is only when placed or 

 used contrary to all justice ; in its proper place, covering the 

 forests or mountains irreclaimable by settlers and admin- 

 istered by men of practical sense rather than by theorists, 

 we believe the forest service was created none too soon. 

 It simply fell into fanatical hands. Whatever else may be 

 said of Secretary Ballinger, he did real conservation a ser- 

 vice when he kicked out Pinchot. In its local bearing, only 

 that change made it possible for this valley to secure the 

 tardy justice which has been done to it. 



The United States has nearly 13,000,000 acres under irri- 

 gation and 8,000,000 acres in course of irrigation. This shows 

 the tremendous development toward land recovery, because 

 of the high food prices. 



Several stupendous irrigation projects are contemplated for 

 the section west of San Antonio, Texas. They came to light 

 recently in the hearing before the Railroad Commission when 

 the question of the devolpment of that section was being dis- 

 cussed in connection with the extension of common points 

 territory to Del Rio and Eagle Pass. 



E. H. Perry's irrigation well, five miles west of Dallas, 

 Texas, was tested recently and made good in every sense of 

 the word, and is throwing about a thousand gallons per min- 

 ute, the flow having increased from 370 gallons. 



Indications are that there will be greater activity in irri- 

 gation enterprises in the western part of Kansas this year 



than ever before. Ritchfield, Kansas, already has a big arte- 

 sian well and two more are being drilled not far from there. 



An effort is being made to turn 98,000 acres in the vicinity 

 of Tonopah, Nevada, into fertile agricultural property by 

 men connected with the Tonopah and Goldfield railroad. 



MAKING IT EASY FOR ALASKAN FARMERS. 



Governor Clark, of Alaska, who is a plain newspaper man 

 when he isn't governing, and a very shrewd one, said that 

 farming would some day be Alaska's chief industry. That 

 was a large order and it made a lot of people who have 

 never been to Alaska smile scornfully. They forgot that 

 Governor Clark was a newspaper man and that he knows 

 Alaska a great deal better than most New Yorkers know 

 their state, for instance, or than most Coloradoans know 

 theirs. They also forgot if the same thing had been said 

 of Colorado, or California or Idaho or Oregon a few years 

 ago, they would have smiled just the same and would have 

 been quite as wrong. 



Uncle Sam has been notoriously remiss in care of the 

 baby empire he is bringing up on the fresh air plan up 

 north there, but there is one thing he has done. He has 

 proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Alaska is no 

 more unsuited to farming that Norway and Sweden, which 

 is another way of saying that Governor Clark's pronuncia- 

 mento has been officially confirmed by the Department of 

 Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, Congress and 

 various individual officials. 



Moreover, "something is. being done about it." In this 

 respect, at least, Uncle Sam is taking care of his baby. He 

 is doing all that can reasonably be expected of so self-ab- 

 sorbed a parent to make a farmer of the youth and the 

 child is responding well. 



For several years Uncle Sam has maintained five experi- 

 ment stations in Northland. That was not a great many, 

 but it was enough to make many important and hopeful dis- 

 coveries and to start real farming. Then he doubled his 

 inducements to settlers, by making the Alaskan homestead 

 320 acres instead of 160 as it is in "the States." This still 

 left it necessary, however, for the Alaskan settler to pay the 

 cost of a survey before he could secure title and a survey 

 in Alaska was often an expensive thing. Now this obstacle 

 is being rapidly overcome. Congress made an appropriation 

 in 1910 to cover the cost of a government survey of the 

 chief farming areas that would first be occupied. This 

 work was put in charge of the Geological Survey and the 

 first part was done last summer. A basis has now been 

 established that makes it needless for farmers taking up 

 land in Alaska to bear the cost of the survey. They have, 

 in fact, virtually no expense, except getting to the place 

 they want to occupy 



Numerous homesteads have already been taken up in 

 the territory, notably in the Tanana valley of the interior, 

 in the new Kotsina-Chitina country recently penetrated by the 

 Copper River and Northwestern Railway, around Seward and 

 in the Susitna basin. There are four well-developed farms 

 near Seward, several around Knik on Cook Inlet and any 

 number in various parts of the interior. They are making 

 money, too, whereever they are near local market not too 

 available to Seattle. Around Fairbanks, for instance, the 

 only competition that homegrown oats and potatoes must 

 meet is produce shipped by rail to Seattle, then carried on a 

 2,000-mile sea voyage and transferred to river steamers that 

 must haul it upstream another thousand miles. The cost of 

 all this haul makes a protective tariff in favor of the local 

 farmer that even the Aldrich bill cannot equal. Compared 

 with gold mining, even as it is in Alaska, these northern 

 farmers have been doing almost as well in a surer, easier 

 way. 



Moreover, there is room for a great many more. A 

 mining camp will absorb many hundreds of tons of supplies 

 in a year, a large part of which can be grown locally. And 

 there are many mining camps. One article for which there 

 is always a demand is oats. The heavy work of the trails 

 makes hearty feeding of pack horses necessary and oats are 

 everywhere at a premium. Yet they can be easily and suc- 

 cessfully matured in a score of valleys of the territory. 

 The suitability of Alaska for stock raising has been 

 amply proven and this, it is predicted, will play a large 

 part in its future fame. Yet this industry is only just begun. 

 We may not have enterprise enough to go and pioneer our- 

 selves, but we may well watch with interest the progress 

 of this most important development. 



