1 54 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



The irrigation works of the Salt River Rec- 

 lamation Project, including the famous Roosevelt 

 dam, 280 feet high, through which this transforma- 

 tion was brought about between 1903 and 1927, cost 

 the United States government $15,106,942, of 

 which a third has already been repaid by the farm 

 owners. The farmers' total indebtedness to others 

 than the United States government averaged less 

 than forty dollars an acre in 1928. 



In 1903, a certain two hundred and ten square 

 miles in South central Washington was a sage brush 

 desert bisected by the Yakima River. To-day six 

 fine storage dams, the Tieton, Cle Elum, Clear 

 Creek, Keechelus, Kachess and Bumping Lake, 

 ranging in height from 45 to 222 feet, reinforced by 

 two diversion dams, store water producing a ten- 

 years' average crop return of $104.50 an acre. Beet- 

 sugar, dried fruit and canning factories, creameries, 

 and cold storage plants, help furnish eighteen towns 

 with 22,000 people, not to mention the city of Yak- 

 ima's equal population. 



This is Reclamation realized. Besides the Salt 

 River and Yakima projects here described, the gov- 

 ernment has started twenty-nine others in western 

 deserts, of which three are new and incomplete. 

 Four have been abandoned through failure. That 

 is the other side of the story. 



In an address in Yellowstone National Park in 

 the summer of 1923, Representative Charles E. 

 Winter of Wyoming exclaimed : 



