RECLAIMING THE DESERTIrrigation
ONE
Irrigation, the artificial application of water to produce crops, is as old as agriculture. Genesis 1,17: “A river went out of Eden to water the garden.” The practice of irrigation is probably coincident with that of the earliest agriculture of record for the reason that the latter was begun in regions of deficient rainfall in the Old World—Egypt, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Ceylon and China. Evidences abound of the existence of important storage and distribution systems constructed previous to 2000 B. C. Even greater antiquity is ascribed to similar work, the remains of which are found in the valley of the Euphrates, and also in China. The ancient aqueducts and subterranean canals of South America, extending for thousands of miles, once supplied great cities and irrigated immense areas. Irrigation on the Continent of North America was old when Rome was in the glory of its youth. Centuries before the venturous Norseman landed upon the bleak and inhospitable shores of New England a large population dwelt in the hot valleys of the Southwest, in New Mexico and Arizona. From the solid rock, with primitive tools of stone, they cut ditches and hewed the blocks for many chambered palaces, which they erected in the desert or on the limestone ledge of deep river canyons. These voiceless ruins, older than the memory of many centuries, tell the story of a thrifty home-loving and semi-cultured people, concerning whose fate history brings us no word. The long lines of their canals, now choked with the wind-swept drift of centuries, give mute and pathetic evidence of the patience and engineering skill of the builders.
Early in the sixteenth century, when Coronada, the first great American explorer, swept up the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and New Mexico, he found a pastoral race dwelling in pueblos and practicing irrigation as had their forefathers, perhaps as far back as in the days of Abraham.
The priests with the aid of their Indian converts extended the practice of irrigation wherever they established the missions, and introduced many varieties of fruits and vegetables from Spain and Italy.
Irrigation by English-speaking people began in America in 1700, and, for fully a century, was confined to use in the cultivation of rice on narrow strips along the coastal rivers of the Carolinas and Georgia.
The first Americans to reclaim extensive areas in the arid region were the Mormons, who, in 1847, settled on the eastern borders of the Great Interior Basin, on the site of Salt Lake City. Under wise leadership and through community effort, numerous canal systems were constructed and extended to thousands of acres of desert lands.
Between 1862 and 1880 many canal systems were constructed in Colorado, though none was important. The success of the Greeley colony, established in 1870 in the northern part of the State, gave considerable impetus to irrigation all over the arid region.
In the last thirty years there has been an awakening to the opportunity that lies in the arid West for the homemaker, and a remarkable transformation has taken place in many parts of this region. Irrigation canals long enough to girdle the globe three times now distribute the normal flow and the stored water of Western streams to millions of acres, which support hundreds of thousands of contented farmers. Cities, populous and great, have sprung up, rural communities, attractive and prosperous, broad vistas of fertile fields and blossoming orchards have replaced the wastes of sand and sage brush.
WRITTEN ESPECIALLY FOR THE MENTOR BY C. J. BLANCHARDILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 17, SERIAL No. 165COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
HIGH LINE CANAL, UTAH VALLEY, UTAH
HIGH LINE CANAL, UTAH VALLEY, UTAH