THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



ditions, and it was here that the youthful desperado lived, 

 fought, and died. While his kind are not yet wholly 

 extinct in the neighborhood, cattle and cattlemen have 

 fallen back before the advance of irrigation and railroads, 

 of towns with schools and churches, and of planters and 

 home-builders. Civilization has laid its hand on the 

 Pecos Valley, and a crop of new institutions has begun to 

 sprout from its soil. 



The valley is fortunate beyond any other part of the 

 Territory in its water supplies. The Pccos river and its 

 tributaries drain a vast watershed and furnish a perennial 

 flow of large dimensions. This has been reinforced by 

 huge reservoirs, of which one is the second largest irriga- 

 tion reservoir in the world. Besides these facilities, the 

 valley is blessed with extraordinary springs of flowing 

 water, with artesian basins, and with underground supplies 

 that may be lifted to the surface at comparatively small 

 expense. With splendid disregard for immediate finan- 

 cial returns, these supplies have been utilized and led 

 over the valley by a thousand miles of canals and ditches. 

 The same liberal enterprise built a railroad from the 

 Texas and Pacific line northward for a distance of two 

 hundred miles, and later still farther, to a connection 

 with the Santa Fe system, established towns witli mod- 

 ern facilities, and acquired large tracts of irrigable hind. 

 These improvements have succeeded one another in rapid 

 succession, and cost, in the aggregate, over five million 

 dollars. 



Lying in an altitude varying from three thousand to 

 three thousand five hundred feet, but in the latitude 

 of the extreme south, the Pecos Valley enjoys a good 



climate. Its winters arc short and not severe, thoticrh 



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