Workmen's advocate., 1890-07-05
IRRIGATION IN THE SOUTH
 WEST.

Important operations for retaining the arid lands of the southwest are un- der way. It is not easy for eastern people to comprehend their magnitude How, for example, can the statement be grasped that New Mexico has 80 ,2S9,- 722 acres now unoccupied which water can make suitable for agriculture? This is almost one fourth as much again as the whole area of New York. New Mexico, all told, now has fewer people than any one of score of our cities, and is popularly supposed to be a vast, hot desert, and yet it is confidently as- serted that in less than half a century this one territory will have farming area of nearly as many acres as the whole of New England.
 Extensive tracts in New Mexico alrepd require no irrigation, and they are steadily enlarging because of the in- creasing annual rainfall and the earlier coming of the rainy season. T. B. Mills, the Treasury expert, whose ex. haustive treatise on New Mexico appears in the last report on internal commerce, thinks it safe to predict that within few years the raising of abundant crops by rainfall will be the rule and irriga- tion the exception. Irrigation, however, insures certainty of crops, and for this reason capitalists are undertaking enter prises of magnitude that would excite great interest and attention were they in the east These enterprises are being equaIed all through the far western country, and as an illustration of the sort of engineering going on all along the Rockies and the Sierras some facts about them are worthy of attention.
 The report referred to gives the names of seven irrigation companies now at work in New Mexico. When their dit. ches are completed they will irrigate 720,0 ,000 acres of land, or more than 1, 100 square miles This is almost 100,O ,O00 acres more than all the land at present under ditch and subject to cultivation in the territory. Heretofore the irri- gating ditches have been generally con. fined to the narrow alluvial valleys immediately adjacent to the streams. The projected ditches, or, properly speaking, canals, are carried entirely out of the beds of the streams upon the tween the water courses. When the L,, ,1l J.. gation Company had completed Il miles of canal 8 feet wide, and If miles of late 'ditches, with 130 miles more pro- ject , to irrigate in all 225. .000 acres. A correspondent from Roswell, writing on the lst inst, says that the Pecos Irrigation & Investment Company has taken out of the Pecos canal that ex- tends 45 miles south. It is 30 feet wide at the bottom, carries 6 feet of water, and will reclaim more than 15, ,000 acres. Another lower down is 45 feet wide at the bottom and will reclaim over 125, ,00O acres
 To show the nature of the work the correspondent illustrates by the project for taking water from the Hondo. The streams that make this river rise in mountains covered with snow the year round, which, with numerous springs, give a large volume of water at least nine months in the year. The streams have two yearly overtows, and during these seasons it is intended to store the surplus water To this end the company is about to begin the construction of two great reservoirs, which it is expected will take 200 men eight months to con- plete. The capacity of these reservoirs will be something more than 3,000. 900 cubic yards. It is estimated that if their contents were distributed over 100000 acres they would be covered to the depth of about F inches.
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