156 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



deep below the surface than it would have been, a 

 couple of decades ago, to count on grinding the pe- 

 trol of the future out of solid rock ? 



Irrigation began in America long before Co- 

 lumbus. Remains of dams and ditches are among 

 the most interesting relics of the thrifty tribes which 

 peopled our Southwest a thousand years or more ago. 

 The Mormons who followed Brigham Young across 

 the Wasatch Mountains to settle the arid Salt Lake 

 plains, overrunning hundreds of desert miles north 

 and south, were our earliest irrigationists on any 

 organized plan. Their methods were simple. It was 

 their industry, responsibility and faith that pointed 

 definitely the desert's subjugation. With the great 

 emigration which followed the gold seekers who 

 crossed the continent in covered wagons two years 

 later, began, for the Pacific Coast the perpetual 

 hunt for water whose results have measured the pace 

 of progress ever since. 



"It is now almost impossible," Dr. F. H. New- 

 ell, first director of the Reclamation Service, wrote 

 in 1924, "to realize the great difficulties encountered 

 by pioneers among the scientists, such as Major 

 John Wesley Powell in his efforts to induce Con- 

 gress to investigate the extent to which the waste 

 lands of the country might be utilized. He did 

 succeed, however, after years of patient persever- 

 ance, and in 1888 was authorized by Congress to 

 begin the work upon which has been founded the 

 great national policy of reclamation and home-mak- 



