THE 1 KH I G A TI X AGE. 



85 



town of Barber is a natural reservoir site, called "Dead 

 Man's Basin," which was reserved by the United States 

 Reclamation Service a few years ago. This will be used 

 in this project. It covers an area of about 2,000 acres 

 and will hold 20 to 30 feet of water without additional 

 diking on the edge. The estimated cost of the project is 

 $208,139. If a supply canal should be found necessary 

 the cost will be increased by $54,000. 



John L. B. Mayer of Augusta has been awarded the 

 contract for manufacturing 250,000 feet of lumber to be 

 used on the structures of the Sun River irrigation project. 



NEBRASKA. 



The Secretary of the Interior has authorized the 

 Reclamation Service to execute contract with the Pitts- 

 burg Valve and Construction Company of Pittsburgh, 

 for furnishing needle regulating valves for the Mini- 

 tare dam, North Platte irrigation project, Nebraska. 

 The contract price is $4,528. 



The irrigation plan of the North Platte project pro- 

 vides for the storage of the flood waters of North Platte 

 River by the Pathfinder dam about three miles below the 

 junction of the North Platte and Sweetwater rivers in 

 Wyoming, and in smaller reservoirs along the canal lines. 

 Minitare dam, which impounds the waters in one of these 

 small reservoirs, is a structure Go feet high, 3,370 feet 

 long along its crest and will have a volume of 570,000 

 cubic yards. The North Platte project includes 129,270 

 acres of irrigable land, the greater part of which is in 

 Nebraska. 



C. N. Philbrick of Fullerton recently applied to the 

 State Board of Irrigation for water rights lor power pur- 

 poses from the Cedar River at Belgrade. Patterson & 

 Patterson, attorneys for the Hoard Cattle Company, 

 protested against the granting of the petititon on the 

 grounds that the ditch will cut through the cattle yards 

 of the company. The petition was denied. 



The Lodge Pole Irrigation Company, combining sev- 

 eral smaller irrigation projects in western Nebraska, have 

 incorporated with a capitalization of $250,000. The in- 

 corporators are M. M. Bennett, R. P. Fuller and Samuel 

 Corson. The headquarters of the company will be at 

 Kimball. 



The Dawson County Irrigation Company, with a 

 capital stock of $30,000, has filed its articles of incor- 

 poration with the Secretary of State. The men behind 

 the project are Roy Stuckey, F. L. Temple, C. G. Wallace, 

 Roy Haas, P. J. Hewett. Headquarters of the company 

 will be at Lexington. 



NEW MEXICO. 



The Secretary of the Interior has authorized the 

 Elephant Butte Water Users' Association, Rio Grande 

 irrigation project. New Mexico, to receive subscriptions 

 to an amount not exceeding 110,000 acres of irrigable 

 land, with the proviso that if a larger acreage offers, 

 preference shall be given to that owned in the small 

 holdings. The association is required to make the receipt 

 of additional subscriptions conditional upon all excess 

 holdings, entering into the usual contract to subdivide 

 the tracts into holdings not exceeding 80 acres. Addi- 

 tional subscriptions will be conditional upon all assess- 

 ments heretofore levied by the Elephant Butte Water 

 Users' Association being paid by the lands subscribed. 



When the Rio Grande project was taken up it was 

 estimated that the water supply would be sufficient for 

 180,000 acres, ^5.000 of which would be in Mexico under 

 the provisions of the appropriation of Congress for this 

 purpose, 4.">,000 in Texas and 110,000 in New Mexico. 



The allotment of 110,000 acres was subscribed in 

 Xi-w Mexico to the Elephant Butte Water L'sers' Asso- 

 ciation, but subsequent surveys have shown that a large 

 amount of the land so subscrbied is non-irrigable, either 

 from its physical character, or by its location above 

 gravity service, and this authorization to allow the asso- 

 ciation to receive additional subscriptions is to make up 

 the original allotment of 110.000 acres of irrigable land. 



The Secretary of the Interior has authorized the 

 Reclamation Service to execute contract with the Coffin 

 Valve Company of Neponset, Mass., for furnishing serv- 

 ice gates for the Elephant Butte dam, Rio Grande irriga- 

 tion project, New Mexico. The contract price is $23,248. 



The Elephant Butte dam is one of the largest struc- 

 tures of the Reclamation Service, having a height of 300 

 feet and a length on top of 1,600 feet. The reservoir 

 created by this dam wil cover 67% square miles, an 

 average depth of 66 feet, and will contain 860,000,000,000 

 gallons of water when full. It will be the largest storage 

 reservoir in the world, with a storage capacity nearly a 

 third greater than that of the Assuan dam in Egypt. The 

 structure will cost nearly $5,000,000 and will provide 

 water for 180,000 acres of land in the Rio Grande Valley. 

 A considerable portion of this land has been under irriga- 

 tion for several hundred years, and some of the old 

 ditches of the Pueblo Indians are still in use. 



OREGON. 



Articles of incorporation have been filed by the 

 Northwest Company of Portland, Ore. The purpose 

 of the company is to operate reservoirs for irrigation pur- 

 poses and do a general irrigation business. The company 

 is capitalized for $200,000. A. F. Jones of Portland is 

 president of the company, and T. L. Croetau of that city 

 is the treasurer. The principal place of business is Port- 

 land. 



The suit of the Maxwell Land and Irrigation Com- 

 pany against the Hermiston Bank and Trust Company 

 to prevent the sale of plaintiff's lands under the Umatilla 

 project, by which an injunction had been secured which 

 was afterwards set aside on demurrer, has been appealed. 

 The sale of the lands was fixed for December 27, 1913, 

 but in view of the appeal of the case to the Oregon Su- 

 preme Court, which now has the matter under considera- 

 tion, the sale did not take place on that date, as advertised, 

 but must await the decision of the Supreme Court of the 

 state relative to the validity of the deed of trust given 

 by the Maxwell Company to the Hermiston Bank and 

 Trust Company. 



The Umatilla project in Northern Oregon is one of 

 the smaller of the Government irrigation projects, but by 

 reason of an extremely fortunate combination of soil, 

 climate, and market facilities, it embraces land which 

 would eventually take its place among the most valuable 

 farm land in the United States. Already a large propor- 

 tion of the area is devoted to fruit and truck, and the 

 first shipment of peaches was made this year. 



During the season just closed 4,994 acres were irri- 

 gated, and 3,033 acres cropped. The remainder was in 

 young non-bearing orchards, new alfalfa, etc. The total 

 crop yield was $84,078, or an average of $27.72 per acre. 

 This is a most gratifying report in comparison with the 

 yields in other sections, especially in view of the fact that 

 five years ago the Umatilla project was raw desert land. 

 In 1909 the value per acre for the United States of land 

 irrigated and cropped was $25.08. 



Following is a record of some of the season's yield 

 on the Umatilla project: Alfalfa hay, $31.66 per acre: 

 clover hay, $12.50; Indian corn, $16.32; Small fruits, $55.33; 

 garden, $48.05; potatoes, $58.12; and miscellaneous crops, 

 $64.71 per acre. 



WASHINGTON. 



The Secretary of the Interior has authorized award 

 of contract to the Roslyn Fuel Company of North Yakima 

 for furnishing approximately 3,000 tons of coal for the use 

 of the Reclamation Service on the North Yakima storage 

 project for a period ending November 30, 1914. The price 

 of coal under the accepted bid is $2.75 per ton. 



Governor Lister recently signed for the state a con- 

 tract with the federal government for the expenditure of 

 the state's $10,000 appropriation for the survey of the pro- 

 posed Palouse irrigation project. This appropriation was 

 made by the last session of the legislature, and the action 

 of executing the contract is but a formal carrying out 

 of the provision of the law, the state and the federal 

 government to share alike in the expenses for the survey. 



