THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



of England, framed for a country which needs drainage 

 rather than irrigation, and suffers from too great an 

 abundance of water in the clouds above and the earth 

 beneath. The result has been the most disheartening 

 struggle among farmers and settlers which could be im- 

 agined. Lawyers have grown rich upon it, but the pro- 

 ducing classes have been impoverished, and the men of 

 enterprise who sought to broaden the foundation for civ- 

 ilized society in our western valleys have been discour- 

 aged and driven out of business. Stream after stream 

 has been appropriated over and over again, and, in com- 

 pliance with stupid laws, courts have calmly confirmed 

 grants to water aggregating many times the entire vol- 

 ume in the channel. Then they have left the farmers 

 to fight it out among themselves, sometimes with rival 

 attorneys, sometimes with shot-guns. Cases have gone 

 from court to court, and the same issues have been tried, 

 retried, and tried again. Litigants defeated upon these 

 trials have ignored judicial decisions and taken out their 

 neighbors' head-gates and dams in defiance of injunc- 

 tions and decrees. So the battle has gone on from year 

 to year, with victory at last for those who could longest 

 withstand the drain for legal expenses. 



This was the condition in Wyoming when Elwood 

 Mead came upon the scene and assumed the duties of 

 Territorial Engineer. A native of Indiana, ho had 

 moved to Colorado in earliest manhood and was at onco 

 attracted by the irrigation possibilities of the country, 

 in which he saw opportunities for usefulness and dis- 

 tinction. He served for a time as a member of the 

 faculty of the Agricultural College of Colorado, and 

 there learned the science of irrigation in its relation to 



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