Home-making by the Government 



2 53 



their acreage in this crop, as it is very 

 profitable. Unusual facilities for trans- 

 porting crops to the large markets are 

 afforded by two lines of transcontinental 

 railroads, the Northern Pacific and the 

 Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, which 

 traverse this tract. No farm is more than 

 three miles from a shipping point. There 

 are eight new towns on this project at 

 intervals of about 5 miles along the two 

 lines of railroad, and town lots are now 

 offered for sale by the government at 

 reasonable prices. 



SUN RIVER PROJECT, MONTANA 



Not far from the thriving city of Great 

 Falls, Montana, the first unit of the Sun 

 River project will be opened to settlers on 

 May 7. This project, when completed, 

 will be one of the largest undertaken by 

 the government, irrigating nearly 256,060 

 acres, or considerably more than the cul- 

 tivated acreage of Rhode Island. An in- 

 teresting feature in connection with this 

 project is the proposition of the engineers 

 to augment the water supply by taking 

 water from the streams now flowing into 

 the Pacific Ocean through a gap in the 

 continental divide to a watershed which 

 drains into the Atlantic Ocean. The Sun 

 River Valley proper is about 70 miles 

 long and from 1 to 5 miles wide. The 

 unit to be opened in Mav is the abandoned 

 Fort Shaw Military Reservation, which 

 contains about 200 80-acre farms. 



On this project the rural settlement 

 plan of the Reclamation Service will be 

 carried out, and there will be a village 

 about every six miles. The soil is a 

 warm, sandy loam covered with buffalo 

 grass, gramma, and wheat grass. All 

 the crops which can be grown in the 

 northern countries can be raised in this 

 section. The principal crops will be 

 largely alfalfa, sugar-beets, and potatoes. 



MIEK RIVER PROJECT, MONTANA 



In northern Montana the Milk River 

 project, by reason of the international 

 character of the streams to be diverted, 

 has attracted a great deal of attention. 

 The irrigable area in the valley of Milk 

 River is greater than the water supply, 



and the engineers propose to store water 

 now flowing into Hudson Bay to aug- 

 ment the insufficient flow of Milk River, 

 a tributary of the Missouri. Nearly 

 250,000 acres are involved in this project. 

 The valley has a soil of sandy loam well 

 adapted to raising all the products of the 

 north temperate zone. The construction 

 of the necessary dams and canals will 

 require several years. Milk River Val- 

 ley is tributary to the Great Northern 

 Railroad. 



SHOSHONE PROJECT, WYOMING 



On the northern border of Wyoming, 

 in a region of exceedingly rough country, 

 the government is building the highest 

 masonry dam in the world. This struc- 

 ture, which will rise 310 feet above 

 its foundation, blocks a very narrow 

 gorge. It will be 108 feet thick on the 

 bottom and only 175 feet long on top. 

 We -might get a better conception of the 

 enormous height of this dam if we com- 

 pared it with the height of some familiar 

 building. Take, for instance, the Flatiron 

 building, in New York. Placed side by 

 side, the Shoshone dam would rise one 

 ■story higher. 



The work here is difficult and dan- 

 gerous. Workmen are lowered into the 

 canyon, the walls of which are hun- 

 dreds of feet high, and, with ropes about 

 their bodies as they work, put in the drill 

 holes for blasting. Before work could 

 be begun on this structure it was neces- 

 sary for the Reclamation Service to build 

 a road 8 miles in length to get into the 

 canyon. This road was cut for the most 

 of the distance from the solid walls of 

 rock. The dam will create behind it the 

 largest lake in the State of Wyoming, 

 with a superficial area of 10 square miles 

 and an average depth of 70 feet. 



Twelve miles below the Shoshone dam 

 a diversion dam is being built in the river 

 which will turn the stream into a tunnel 

 3^4 miles in length, connected at the other 

 end by a large canal which carries the 

 water out upon 100,000 acres of choice 

 land. A portion of this area will be 

 watered next spring, and is opened to 

 settlement at this time to bona fide citi- 



