Bozeman avant courier. [volume] (Bozeman, Mont.) 1872-1882, 1873-03-07
Irrigation and its Results.

j
One of the most successful colonies eve
founded in the United States is that at Gree
/ ley, Colorado, thrty-five miles southeast 0
Cheyenne and fifty-flye nearly due north o
/ Denver.
The Greeley colony occupies a locality il
which it is said nine months elapsed few
years ago without the fall Of drop of rain
| The site. In tact. is un the great American
desert, as it was once ignorantly called. Tht
colonlsts depend upon Irrigation for most o
their supplies of moisture In raising crops
Instead of viewing this as hardship, ii il
found to be q positive benefit, for the reason
| that If rain could have been counted OH al
all the farmers would not have been willing
to have gone to the expense they did in max
ing their irrigating canals and connecting
bitches either so long, effective or reliable
The main canal is twenty-seven miles long,
fifteen feet wide at the bottom and four feet
deep, and has a fall of five feet to the mile.
1t cost $50, 900, and is already, in the second
year of the colony, held to be worth half a
million.
Full average crops have already been
raised, twenty three bushels of wheat and
.orty Of oats to the acre, though in many
places everything is not yet in good working
order. 1t is asserted that the wheat is not
surpassed in quality by any raised in the
United States. 1t is sometimes said that
crops growl. on irrigated land are watery
and poor in flavor. There may possibly be
some truth i'll this as regards those fruits
and berries in which sap or JUICE preden,i-
mates: but even in them we think it proba-
Bile that the objection only apples where the
land has been partially exhausted by work
ing for ten or fifteen years IN the same crops,
and without fertilizers. Certainly the eApe-
rience of the Greeley colonists ard of those
who have used water artificially in our San
Joaquin valley, is that all the crops raised
are noted quite as much for their fine quality
and flavor as for their bountifulness in point
of quantity. a. ,.
The use Of water for irrigating purposes,
and its complete success in that direction,
reaches back to the most remote periods OF
the worlds history, and mo. greater success,
as rule, attended any business branch or
manual industry. We have made begin
ming in this direction, in our largest and dry
est valley, that of the San Joaquin, and
when the canals anG their branches now pro-
ected, or under construction, are completed,
IS they probably all will be within tour
years or so, that region which in dry years
and has frequently been called a
lesert, will produce the very largest crops OF
Ill kinds of agricultural products that are
grown on the Pacific coast. The cost of sup
,lying the great valley named with water,
will be small indeed, when the certain re-
;ults that will accrue therefronl afe taken
nto account. About three hundred thous-
md tons Of wheat were last year raised in
he San Joaquin Valley. In ten years hence.
when it is all supplied with water and thick
Y settled, 1t will no doubt yield at least four
lines that amount, while in many places a
econd crop OF corn will be planted and cut
ii the same years. r. Bulletin.