Arizona republican., 1891-11-08
GENERALS REPORT.

The report of the Hou. Commissioner of the General Land Office for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 1891, is at hand. On page l9 of the commissioners re- port, he has quoted extensively from the annual report of Surveyor General Johnson, regarding the hardship the surveying statute is working on the people of Arizona, inasmuch as the masses of our settlers cannot under stand why they cannot secure surveys. We will print the following from the commissioner report:
 Referring to the act making appro- priation for surveys and to the annual surveying instructions, the United States surveyor general, in his annual report. states as follows:
 Under the peculiar conditions in Arizona it is very difficult to determine what is agricultural land in that state. For instance, what would be agrlcultu- ral land if water was brought on to the land,. may be at the present moment the most barren of desert land, and consequently, though dgricultUrdl m point of sOil, not agricultural m the prdc- tiedi sense Of the WOrd. Within five miles there may exist flow of water in winter and natural dam-site location, where the flow of water might be hus- banded for agricultural uses in the summer at small expense, which would make the land very valuable, and agri- cultural land in the meaning of the statute. In the execution of surveys l deem it to be to the interest of the gov ernment and the people to be lenient Tn Interpreting the spirit of the statute as applied to Arizona, where the clrcum- stances are so peculiar, inasmuch as soil that is in every way superior agrjcultu- ral soil and adapted to wonderful crops, and which is comparatively sparsely settled at the present moment on ac- count of it's desert state and it's inability to produce any agricultural crops, may, even by the time the surveyls approved and filed in the local land offices, have been redeemed by the successful storage of water and it's application to the sur veyed lands. There are many instances of this kind within the boundaries of this territory.
 "In considering the character of the lands for which application is made for survey, conceive it to be competent for
  culiarities of the location and the gen. eral adaptability of the land for future artificial irrigation.
 ''In connection with this understand ing, l have to say that west of Gila Bend and its neighborhood there are thousands of acres of land the soil oi which believe to be the equal of any in the world. 1t is adapted particularly to the growing of semi-tropical fruits, and will produce mammoth crops of cereals or hays. At present this land Is as sterile as the lands on the Sahara desert, because water has not been brought on to the land, and no remuner ative crop can be grown without water at this point, although in small places, by the application of water, 1t has been demonstrated that this land is in every way better adapted to the raising of fruits than the best land in California, and will produce fruits fully month in advance of that state. The Gila river flows within few miles of this mag nifcent body of land, and has a flow of water that is not utilized sufficient to redeem hundreds of thousands of acres of this most desirable land, but until recently no means had been found whereby water could be permanently placed upon this land. At present the preliminary work for the "Woliley dam," which is located twenty-fOur miles north of Gila Bend, has been com menced, and the work will probably be completely within six months at the outside, when all this desirable land will be as fruitful as any land on our continent.
 "I hold that it would be perfectly competent for this land to be surveyed as agricultural land. In asking for in- creased allowance in the surveying ap- portionment for Arizona, in my letter of June 25, 1891, 1 particularly cited the large amount of surveying that would be required for the lands that were re- deemable by the water from the Wolf ley canal" in the neighborhood of Gila Bend, and also for lands in connection with the vast dam to be constructed above Calabasas for the irrigation of lands along the Santa Cruz valley.
 "Almost all the lands lying adjacent to mountains, in the form of mesa lands and at present entirely unproductive, may properly be termed agricultural, though at present used chiefly far graz ing purposes. The land will grow al- most any ordinary crop by means of water stored in the caiions in the winter time, and such cailons exist in the neighborhood of the mesa lands, which lands, by liberal outlay of money, could be made highly productive; still the people making permanent homes on-the mesas cannot make surveys un- der the law as passed by Congress, be- cause they happen to be compelled to live on land that is excluded from the -.- Al II for surveys. These men may have high ly productive mines in the mountains adjacent to their mesa homes, or they may live on these mesas on the pursuit of the cattle industry; in either case, can not see why these bona fde settlers should be deliberately excluded from the benefits of the act for survey, and