Millions for Moisture 



227 



The Barker Brick Company, Heyburn, Idaho 



Three years ago, when the government irrigation works were started here, there was not a house 

 within 30 miles (see below) 



irrigable home will also help to establish 

 that greater, that composite home, the 

 United States of America. Our nation 

 is indeed affected by this problem which 

 the Reclamation Service is on the eve of 

 solving, for on the success of the irrigable 

 home rests today the prosperity and sta- 

 bility of more than one western state. 



A REMARKABLE TRANSFORMATION 



In March, 1903, a party of surveyors 

 ran their lines over a vast, unbroken, un- 

 inhabited plain in southern Idaho, com- 

 prising 150,000 acres of sage-brush. It 

 was a most uninviting and unattractive 

 region. After the surveyors, came the 

 engineers. In turn they were followed 

 by the contractors. The desert's awful 

 stillness was broken by the shrill whistle 

 of engines, by the creaking of giant 

 cranes, and the voices of hundreds of 



laborers. Attracted by these evidences- 

 that Uncle Sam was about to do battle 

 with the desert, scores of home-seekers 

 flocked to the scene and began to erect 

 their homes in the desert. The trans- 

 formation which has followed the advent 

 of that little band of surveyors is so re- 

 markable that one is led to believe that 

 Uncle Sam, in the role of Aladdin^ 

 rubbed the magic lamp and the desert 

 vanished. 



In 1904 the Minidoka project had not 

 a single inhabitant ; today it contains 

 more than 4,000 people; it has three 

 thriving towns, a railway, schools, news- 

 papers. Every eighty acres of that vast 

 desert has a dwelling upon it with a fam- 

 ily living in it. Lands only a short time 

 ago counted as worthless are now valued 

 at from $40 to $75 per acre. On Au- 

 gust, 1904, a contract was let for the con- 



