4 Fruit-growing in Arid Regions 



they had 'salted' their gardens from a barrel of Ben 

 Davis or "Greenings from beyond the Mississippi. The 

 stranger just arrived and full of the dreariness of the plains 

 may smile at the mere suggestion of fruit in Colorado, 

 and may ask, in the slang of the day, 'What are you 

 giving us?' We shall offer neither bananas nor oranges, 

 pomegranates nor figs, but shall beg to place before the 

 mind's eye every kind of fruit grown in the belt north of 

 Mason and Dixon's line." 



The prevailing opinion that fruit could not be grown 

 in the arid regions was fostered locally by the disastrous 

 failures that resulted from many of the early attempts at 

 tree-growing. But it is a difficult task for a man who 

 may have been a successful farmer in the East to work 

 out, unaided, the principles of irrigation. Failure often 

 stimulates desire. So with the pioneers, they seem not 

 to have been disheartened, and the repeated attempts 

 finally proved to the world that fruit and forest trees can 

 be grown. It surely took a man of courage in the face 

 of almost universal opposition and no small amount of 

 ridicule, to make the round trip from the Rocky Moun- 

 tains by wagon to Iowa for a load of nursery stock. The 

 general trend of public opinion was that this region was 

 to be devoted forever to mining, and to some extent, 

 to grazing. Anything like the present development in 

 general agriculture was not dreamed of; and that it 

 should ever become noted for the production of fine fruit 

 is not yet realized by a majority of the people. 



The Mormons were the first to grow fruit in the arid 

 section. The history of their immigration to Utah, the 

 hardships and privations they endured, are so well known 

 that it would be out of place to recount them here, even 



