18 IRRIOATION INVESTIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



makes winter a season of seed time instead of stagnation; which g-ives to 

 farmers many of the products of the Tropics witli the cHmate of the temperate 

 zone; which withholds moisture in liarvest time and thus reheves the hus- 

 bandman of the most serious vicissitude of regions of ample rainfall. It is 

 an aggregation of advantages which those Avho live elsewhere find it hard 

 to believe exists, and which the people of the State do not fully appreciate. 

 The delay in extending the watered area is due to obstacles local in 

 character and origin and not met with in equal measure in aii-y other arid 

 State. In no other State are rivers used for both irrigation and navigation. 

 The owners of canals which divert the Sacramento and San Joaquin have to 

 keep in mind the steamboats which ply on these rivers from San Francisco 

 to Stockton and Red Bluffs. There are many miles of pipe lines in the 

 Sierras which bear witness of an interrupted but not abandoned application 

 of water in placer mining and which represent rights to streams which seem 

 to grow more numerous and valuable with age and disuse. The recent 

 improvements in transmitting power by electricity have enormously enhanced 

 the utility of California streams for the generation of power. It used to be 

 that the factory had to go to the stream ; now the stream is carried to the 

 factory, even when far removed. , The i)ower of Tuolumne Ri^-er is being 

 carried 160 miles to San Francisco, and this enterprise is only the foi-erunner 

 of a development which will not cease until the latent force of the cascades 

 in every mountain canyon has been harnessed in one way or another to the 

 wheels of California's industries. When to these various interests we add 

 the needs of irrigation, the management and control of the water supply 

 assumes an overshadowing importance. No other element outside of land 

 is of such general and primary necessity or is destined to exert an equal 

 influence on the growth of the State in wealth and population. 'Jlie problem 

 before the people of the State is to adjust the diverse and conflicting interests 

 of navigation, mining', power, and irrigation; to provide a just and stable 

 basis for titles to water in order to create an industrial civilization suited to 

 the climatic and economic needs of a State where water and land are both 

 important. 



The history of irrigation in California, from the time when the mission 

 fathers first turned its streams on the thirsty soil, has shown an unusual 

 minyling' of romance and selfishness. Men have worked with each other 

 and for each other in cooj^erative ditch enterprises, many of which have 

 been remarkably successful, while on the other hand they have sought to 

 ])lace their neighbors in bondage by speculative appropriations of streams. 

 Along with remarkaljle ability shown by engineers and irrigators in 

 diverting and using rivers has gone controversy over water rights in the 



