Paradise Valley, at 4,600 feet, is cattle and hay country with scarce water and a growing season of about ninety days. Its modern capacity to produce fine crops and cows is largely the result of intricate and efficient irrigation systems that pioneer farmers and ranchers checkered across the cleared fields. The region is at once inviting and threatening. With only seven to nine inches of rain each year, the people depend on the winter's snowfall and snowpack in the mountains, which produces the spring runoff that renews the bunchgrass, brings back creeks, and provides water for the irrigation of pastures and fields that sustain cattle herds through the following winter. The summers are very hot but the winters are moderate.
Spring comes early, and there is almost no summer rain.
There are few permanent streams, and occasional dry years slow to a trickle even steady creeks like Martin and Cottonwood. It is a world of sagebrush, alkali flats, bare gray mountains, and stark beauty. Just over the valley's eastern apron lies the vast Owyhee Desert, where no farming has succeeded. The endless sagebrush and rocky hills are broken only by an occasional buckaroo camp nestled in a draw or canyon. Thin lines of aspens and willows in these places enfold the small creeks flowing on into the Owyhee and Little Humboldt rivers.