The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-07-12
ABOUT ARID LANDS.
DR.. POwelrS Report to the Senate
Committee.
VALUABLE FACTS AND FIGURES.
What Irrigation Has Accomplished and What
it Can DO-Sage-brush Land as
Fruit Farms.

DR.. Junius L. Powell, of the United
States army, has prepared a report for the
special committee of the United States
Senate on irrigation and the reclamation
of the barren lands of the west. The sub
iect is one in which all the people of the
west are interested, and the report is pub
lished for the information of all concerned.
Surgeon Powells opportunities for study
ing the topography, climatology and soil Of
Texas, the Indian Territory, Kansas, Colo
RADIO, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and
Dakota have been extensive, and his views
in connection with the growing industrial
interests of the regions involved invite
careful attention. The committee, of
which Senator Allison is chairman, will
begin the practical part Of its labors
some time in the early part of July, tax
ing st. Paul as its point of departure. In
his report Surgeon Powell says:
II dare say there are few persons who
have been raised in the productive regions
of the Atlantic or Pacific slopes, where all
the conditions of RAINFALL temperature,
etc, combine under the operation of a reg
ular cyclical law to give variety to the pur
suits of man, who would not, at first sight,
assume that every foot of territory east of
area indicated would be utterly worthless
for any purpose save that of grazing, and
very much of it not even for that. Such
were my impressions some sixteen years
ago, upon the occasion of my first expert
ence on the western plains, while serving
as medical officer TO various commands
operating against hostile Indians. Since
then have had an opportunity of watching
and noting what can be accomplished by
courage and enterprise, even in a section so
forbidding as that which it is proposed to
COZ S der, and the result has been to cause
"a material modification of my views and to
suggest to me a chain OF possibilities for
this western desert, 50 to speak, which l
think are neither visionary nor imprac-
ticable
Wherever agricultural or horticultural
pursuits have Oeen attempted, under the
least favorable conditions, the results have
been more than gratifying, indeed Surpris-
ing. ,ry measure, however, has had its
concoluloant of failure, which l think may
be largely attributed to u widespread fal-
lacy that prevails as regards an increasing
rainfall over the western prairies. To my
mind the data do not justify an affirmative
conclusion on this point. and the results
have been not only damaging, but cruel
To those VINO have fixed their homes in the
valleys and near the banks of the small
streams that here and there traverse the
prairies, the results have not been so IN
satisfactory and where they have been SO
situated as to make available for purposes
of irrigation the water supply, which,
though exceedingly limited and circum-
scribed in extent, has proved to be the only
thing needful for the raising Of every va
riety of farm and garden product.
THE INsuFFIcIExcY OF RAIN.
LAS long as the climatic conditions chiefly
as respects rainfall, continue as they are,
o,,d no
fined to the narrow acreage of the valleys
while the broad and expansive mesaS will
continue to produce the tough buffalo grass
without hope of reclamation save by artif
cial agency, and just so long prove to be the
rock upon which the hopes and spirits of
many a hardy pioneer will be dashed in
vain endeavor to extract from their parched
surface the means of livelihood. From
what has been said, it will be readily under
stood that the amount of land available as
homes for the annually increasing tide of
immigrants to the west constitutes but an
insignificant portion of the millions of acres
embraced within the territory that was
formerly termed the Great American
Desert
"When it is considered that but one con-
dition is necessary to bring this whole re-
gion-alike valley ar i plain-into uniform
adaptibility to all the pursuits in which a
rural people engage, the question Of means
to this end is one which assumes the high
est Importance and merits the wisest and
most serious consideration. 1t is admitted
that the soil possesses all the elements of
fertility. How, then, shall be supplied the
other essential for successful tillage! What
method, in the absence of the requisite
amount of rainfall, which is the marked pc
culiarity of the region in point, and by
which circumstance it is so distinctly diff
ferentiated from all others, can be thought
or suggested as a substitute for cloud pre-
cipitation! There is but one source from
which it is possible to derive the needful
moisture that must nOurish and sustain the
farmers crop until seed time and harvest
have passed, and this is to be found in the
lofty peaks of the Rocky mountains, where |
nature has established perpetual reser- !
yoir in the great snow heaps that are there
annually collected and dissolved away, and
then sweep on uninterrupted and unutil- |
lied to the ocean.
THE WATER COURSES OF THE WEST.
D'sBy taking up map of the United States |
and tracing line from its most northern |
boundary to the Gulf of Mexico and about |
midway between the Mississippi valley and
the Rockies, one will be struck with the
number of water courses of various sizes
that will cross it as they make their way
eastward, following the trend Of the great
water shed that they would be supposed TO
drain. Like the waters, however, that |!
make the Colorado and Columbia rivers,
thew. too come from the mountains, and
not from the plateau through which they
flow, for the amount of precipitation that
annually falls on the great plains east Of
the Rockies is too small and too infrequent
to require a channel to take it TO the sea
What there is OF it is quickly absorbed by
the arid soil on which it falls 1t is a re
markable and striking fact, then that
while these same plains that we are now
considering are so parched and barren, on
account of an almost entire absence of rain
fall, comparatively speaking, there peri
olically flows across them volume of
water that can only be described as meal
Gllable.
1.-THE annual rise and fall, uniform and at
stated periods, of the Yellowstone, the
Missouri, the Platte, the Arkansas and
other water courses that have their sources
in the great mountain chain that stretches
north and south across the western portion
of the United States, confirm this stale !
ment. American enterprise, alert and ever /,
on the lookout for theatre in which pc
euniary recompense will be the reward Of
energy properly applied, has already
grasped the situation, and atvarious points
we hear of private or corporate measures !
being set on foot to utilize in the reclama-
tion of the barren lanis of the west the
great waste of waters that annually runs
to the sea. Some three or more years ago.
NAAn of Nnln