The Camden journal. [volume] (Camden, S.C.) 1866-1891, 1889-02-14
TREE PLANTING.
The Practical Observance of Ar
Dor Day in the West.
Farmers of the Plains Benefited
by an Extended Rain Belt.

One of the local Colorado papers some
time ago published the following item:
There has been no entire failure of crops
in western Nebraska or Kansas since the
big drouth of.1SS0. During that time,
Iowa, Illinois and some Eastern States
have been parched more than once.
The reason for this was found in
very general tree planting. This has
been one of the annual labors of the set
Ter of the plains, and as a result the rain
belt has been steadily extending further
west with each succeeding year. Where
once the sandhills were given up to the
gopher and jack-rabbits, are now seen
cosey farm-houses, fields of growing
grain and herds of cattle fattcning for
the Eastern markets. The westward pro-
gress of the rain limit-the imaginary
boundary of the region within which falls
sufficient rain to sustain vegetation and
beyond which even cattle find scanty
picking has been so marked that it is
almost possible to trace each years march.
Already three-fourths of the vast region
has been covered, and another decade
will have seen the last of the Desert
under cultivation.
The extent to which trees have been
planted on the plains is easily observable
along any of the railroads. Leaving
Omaha or Kansas City, over the Union
Pacific for Denver, one goes through the
rolling country extending half-hundred
or more miles back from the Missouri, the
streets of the little towns lined with rows
of fshadc-trees, and looking cool and invit-
ing. Each farmhouse has its grove of
cottonwood, maple or walnut trees hard
by. The lanes about the house arc lined
with trees, and frequently there arc rows
Of trees all around 10, 20
or 40 acre lots. Then every little
stream or spring is made to furnish nour-
ishment to other trees which line its
bank. In places, acres upon acres Of
young trees are planted in long rows,
traversed by bitches supplied with water
from a neighboring stream, by the friend
ly aid of windmill, or, where practica-
BILE, by part of the stream itself turned
aside. Further west the number of
trees seen is less and less, and finally
there is nothing but waste of barren
land. Not tree is in sight, not even q
scrubby cottonwood, except right on the
banks of the sandy streams.
Eastern Colorado and Western Kan
sas have overcome the lack of rain to a
great extent, by systems of irrigation.
Great bitches extending from away up
among fhe mountains west of Denver
convey water out over the plains, and
wherever the system of irrigation ex-
tends the desert is made to blossom.
The change from the desert to the irri-
gated district is even more striking here
than when entering the rain-belt, for in
the latter the change comes gradually.
Unfortunately the supply of wator is
limited, and barely sufficient to supply
the districts already established,
while there is demand for
water from large outlying
country. A movement is On foot to obtain
Congressional aid in establishing storage
reservoirs. But with the rapid western
movement of the rain-belt and the in
creasing rainfall in the vicinity of the
mountains, it is question whether the
expenditure of millions on irrigation for
western Kansas and Nebraska would be a
profitable investment. Still it would
open up hundreds of thousands of acres
! of land now untillable. But between
nature and irrigation it will not be long
before the last vestige of the "Great
American Desert" disappears, supplanted
by a region of unsurpassed fertility
| New York Tribune.