386 DRY-FARMING 
tant one in the near future. This is one of the great 
dry-farm districts of the world. 
The Great Basin 
The Great Basin includes Nevada, the western 
half of Utah, a small part of southern Oregon and 
Idaho, and also a part of Southern California. It is 
a great interior basin with all its rivers draining into 
salt lakes or dry sinks.. In recent geological times 
the Great Basin was filled with water, forming the 
great Lake Bonneville which drained into the 
Columbia River. In fact, the Great Basin is made 
up of a series of great valleys, with very level floors, 
representing the old lake bottom. On the bench 
lands are seen, in many places, the effects of the wave 
action of the ancient lake. The chief dry-farm crop 
of this district is wheat, but the other grains, includ- 
ing corn, are also produced successfully. Other 
crops have been tried with fair success, but not on a 
commercial scale. Grapevines have been made to 
grow quite successfully without irrigation on the 
bench lands. Several small orchards bearing lus- 
cious fruit are growing on the deep soils of the Great 
Basin without the artificial application of water. 
Though the first dry-farming by modern peoples 
was probably practiced in the Great Basin, yet the 
area at present under cultivation is not large, pos- 
sibly a little more than four hundred thousand acres. 
