Home-making by the Government 



2 8 5 



eral, starting as common laborers, showed 

 such industry and ability that they were 

 promoted to responsible positions, as road 

 supervisors in charge of their own tribes- 

 men on difficult road work. 



There is something like poetic justice in 

 the labor of the Indian with pick and 

 shovel to reclaim a valley he so often 

 watered with the blood of the white man. 



While the braves are working for the 

 government on the road, in the cement 

 mill, the brick-yard, and elsewhere, the 

 squaws in the teepees weave wonderful 

 baskets, which find ready sale in the camp 

 and in the valley below. 



Sixty miles below Roosevelt another 

 enormous structure is rapidly nearing 

 completion. It will divert the stored 

 waters into canals on each side of the 

 river which lead it to the fields below. 

 One of these canals was partly excavated 

 by the cliff-dwellers, who cut it through 

 solid rock. Think of the patience and 

 time they must have expended in a work 

 like this, when their only implements 

 were of stone. 



Settlers are already erecting their 

 homes on the desert, and soon we shall 

 call this the land that God remembered, 

 for, with water from those distant moun- 

 tains stored in vast reservoirs and led 

 through a thousand miles of canals and 

 ditches, the desert will smile, oases of 

 green will spring forth, and homes of 

 beauty and peace will dot the landscape. 



TERMS OF SALE OF GOVERNMENT LAND 



If the thousands of inquiries which are 

 addressed to the Statistician of the Rec- 

 lamation Service, at Washington, D. C, 

 can be accepted as any indication, the 

 West will be the Mecca for hundreds of 

 home-seekers this spring. Many other 

 projects of the government which are 

 ready for irrigation contain large areas 

 of land for sale by private owners who 

 are under agreement with the United 

 States to dispose of their holdings. By 

 the terms of the Reclamation Law no 

 farm will contain more than 160 acres. 

 Every settler must reside upon the land, 

 and must cultivate it for five years before 

 he can secure a patent. The homestead 

 rights of soldiers and sailors are not 



abridged by the Reclamation Act. Home- 

 seekers should have money — how much 

 depends, of course, upon the settler and 

 the kind of farming he expects to do. 

 While there are numerous opportunities 

 to secure work, the settler with money 

 and equipment will be able to get his land 

 in condition for irrigation and will thus 

 secure an early income from his farm. 



A knowledge of irrigation is not ab- 

 solutely essential. The government will 

 have a practical farmer on each project 

 to advise new-comers. On several pro- 

 jects there are demonstration farms on 

 which are grown the crops adapted to 

 that section. During portions of the year 

 the government will give employment to 

 settlers in constructing canals, laterals, 

 and building roads. 



SUMMARY OF WORK DONE 



A summation of the work of the Rec- 

 lamation Service for 1907 shows that it 

 has dug 1,881 miles of canals, or nearly 

 the distance from Washington to Idaho. 

 Some of these canals carry whole rivers, 

 like the Truckee River in Nevada, and 

 the North Platte in Wyoming. The tun- 

 nels excavated are 56 in number, and 

 have an aggregate length ,of 13^ miles. 

 The Service has erected 281 large struc- 

 tures, including the great dams in Ne- 

 vada and the Minidoka Dam in Idaho, 80 

 feet high and 650 feet long. It has com- 

 pleted 1,000 headworks, flumes, etc. It 

 has built 61 1 miles of wagon road in 

 mountainous country and into heretofore 

 inaccessible regions. It has erected and in 

 operation 830 miles of telephones. Its 

 own cement mill has manufactured 80,000 

 barrels of cement, and the purchased 

 amount is 403,000 barrels. Its own saw- 

 mills have cut 3,036,000 feet B. M. of 

 lumber, and 23,685,000 feet have been 

 purchased. The surveying parties of the 

 Service have completed topographic sur- 

 veys covering 10,970 square miles, an 

 area greater than the combined areas of 

 Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The 

 transit lines had a length of 18,900 linear 

 miles, while the level lines run amount to 

 24,218 miles, or nearly sufficient to go 

 around the earth. 



The diamond drillings for dam sites 



