The water supply is the flood flow of the Umatilla River, which is carried in a large canal to a reservoir having a capacity sufficient to cover 50,000 acres a foot deep. This reservoir was created by a dam 115 feet high. The diversity of crops, many of which are high priced, made possible by the exceptionally favorable conditions of soil and climate, produced small farms intensively cultivated, and provided homes for an intelligent and prosperous husbandry. The promise of a compact community of scientific agriculturists in this valley has been fulfilled. From the nature of the crops and the character of the people who are growing them, it requires no particular gift of prophecy to predict the establishment in this valley of a rural settlement which will be likened unto many of those nearly ideal communities which have grown up under methods of intensive irrigation in southern California. On the eastern side of the Cascades in Washington, are a succession of valleys in the drainage of the Yakima River (Plate VII). Comprehensive plans have been worked out by the Reclamation Service, and construction is well under way for the reclamation of the largest project yet undertaken. The irrigable area is nearly a half million acres, and the cost will probably exceed $25,000,000. The work is being taken up in divisions, each involving the irrigation of specified areas (Plate VIII). Storage is provided by erecting dams at the outlets of the several mountain lakes, the capacity of which will total 1,000,000 acre-feet. On the Sunnyside unit the Government purchased a large canal, enlarged it and rebuilt the diversion dam in the Yakima River (Plate IX). This system now supplies about 100,000 acres, and the crop yield amounts to $70 per acre. No section of the United States gives more generous returns for the labor employed than the Yakima Valley. Among the wealth producers the apple orchards take a high rank. Full bearing orchards produce frequently from $300 to $1,200 per acre annually. The fruit grown here is attractive, sound, and ships well. Its market is New York and Europe, and the commission men are so eager for the crop that it is often contracted for in advance. Orchard lands have sold for as high as $2,000 and $3,000 per acre. The pear crop is very profitable, and peaches, cherries and grapes do well. The Yakima Indians find employment in the hop fields during the picking season, and usually camp just outside the fields. Alfalfa is another money maker, producing from six to eight tons per acre, worth an average of $5 per ton in the stack. Ten and twenty acre farms are common in this valley, and this has brought about compact rural settlements along the irrigation canals. In turn there has followed a gradual improvement in social conditions, with the elimination of the isolation of farm life, which has in itself proven such an important factor in swinging the pendulum of population from the farm to the town. The luxuries of town life are enjoyed in a measure by the farmer, who at the same time lives a life of freedom in the open. When the works in this section are completed, the Yakima Valley will become one of the show places of the country. Over the greater portion of the irrigable area the farms will not exceed forty acres in area, and we may look for a population of 250,000 in this favored region in the not far distant future. The area which can be reclaimed is nearly double that which is now irrigated in southern California. A splendid part of the life in the Yakima Valley is that one can live out of doors so much of the year. The same share of clear skies and dry air that makes southern California so attractive is enjoyed in Washington. On the western border of the Great Interior Basin in the bed of ancient Lake Lahonton, in Nevada, an important work is now completed to irrigate 100,000 acres of land. This is the driest part of the United States except Death Valley, and was called "Forty Mile Desert" by the gold hunters who crossed it en route to California. The old overland trail can still be traced across the desert, and we come upon many melancholy evidences of desert tragedies enacted in the early fifties. In excavating canals the great shovels of the Government engineers encountered the bones of men and horses who perished of thirst. We know now that much of their suffering was unnecessary. There is plenty of good water not far below the surface of the sands. In fact the grave diggers, had they gone a few feet deeper, would have been able to satisfy their own thirst. The irrigation works in this valley in a way have changed the physical geography. The Truckee River is turned from its bed by a huge dam thirty feet high (Plate X), which diverts the water into a broad and deep canal thirty-one miles long and lined with cement. Truckee River is now flowing into Carson River. Another dam in Carson River diverts the combined flow of both streams upon the desert which has already begun to blossom. Over a thousand farms have been taken up here. President Roosevelt is responsible in a measure for the present widespread interest in the delta of the Colorado River, having made it the subject of a special message to Congress. This region has been likened unto the wonderful valley of the Nile, which it so greatly resembles in soil, crops, and climate. The world is familiar with the catastrophe which threatened for a time to destroy a very large area in the lower valley, but few people appreciate the almost super-human engineering feat by which this powerful stream was forced back into its old channel. This was accomplished by the engineers of a great railroad Company, which placed at their disposal vast sums of money and almost the entire equipment of the system. Since the river was controlled the Government work at Yuma and above has progressed rapidly. The great weir at Laguna closes the river (Plate XI). Its length is 4,780 feet. The Laguna dam is interesting as it is the first structure of this kind to be erected in the United States. It is similar to several weirs built by the English engineers in Egypt and India. The project contemplates the reclamation of about 100,000 acres in Arizona and California. These lands are without question the most valuable in the country when watered, being composed of vast quantities of silt brought down and deposited on the lands by the Colorado River. President Roosevelt, in his message to Congress, said: "The most conservative estimate after full development must place the gross production from this land at not less than $100 per acre per year, every ten acres of which will support a family when under intensive cultivation." Last year the gross average return per acre from cotton was $100.00. Yuma, the principal city in this section, is on the Southern Pacific Railroad. In December of this year the Government will sell at public auction 20,000 acres of the frostless mesa land adapted to citrus fruits. In southern New Mexico one of the largest reservoirs in the world has been created by the recent construction of Elephant Butte dam. This dam stores the waters of the Rio Grande River in a reservoir with a capacity exceeding 2,500,000 acre-feet (Plate XII). A peculiar interest attaches to our far Southwest, for the reason principally that long before the first word of our Nation's history was inscribed, a semi-civilized people dwelt there and cultivated its fertile soil. |