Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1895-02-13
DROWNED GRAIN.
The Sacramento Valley Lands I'm
der Flood Water.
WHATWILLC OMEWHEN SHOWS MELT
10000 Acres of Colusa Grain Fields Sub
merged-Thousands Of Fruit Trees
Dying of Overdrinking.

Boston looks anxiously to California
for part of its supply of brain food,
and the high water in the great Sacra-
mento valley has dampened the pros
poets of beans Boston will not have
to change its Sunday morning break
fast because of the floods in California,
but it may have to change its bean
dealer. That is one effect of the heavy
rains of this winter.
Eight hundred thousand acres of land
in the Sacramento valley under water!
That is the condition to-day. A lake
as big as the Zuyder Zee covers arabic
land in the central part of the State,
ruins bean and wheat crops and even
destroys fine fruit trees in bearing.
The Yolo basin, opposite Sacramento,
is sheet of water forty miles long and
seven miles wide. The rich wheat
land in the Colusa basin is under
water. The fertile fruit and vegeta-
BILE land on the east side of the Sacra-
mento river about Walnut Grove is
fine broad sea. Yet the interior val
legs have escaped a greater damage that
was threatening.
During last week and up to Monday
of this week the water gauge at Sacra-
mento showed the height of the river to
be twenty-s six feet and a-half. Some
rain had fallen in the Siskiyou noun
tains sending melted snow into the
Upper Sacramento. The snow in the
Sierras remained hard. There the
weather was cold and no rain fell.
Had warm rain dropped its melting
influence into the huge snow piles the
rivers would have known no banks
and the sloughs no levees. That peril
is over for the present. The Sacra-
mento river is falling foot day and
the night climate at Boca is 80 degrees
below zero. The Sierra SHOWS, there
fore, are firm.
Marsden Manson, the friend of the
Sacramento river, has just returned
from trip of inspection of the over
flowed lands, and Marsden Manson
knows all the tricks of the stream, its
queer freaks of opening through levees,
the mysteries Of back-water, and the
changes in channels.
Coming down the river the damage
begins at the Colusa basin, the water
flooding the great grain fields in Colusa
county and the lower end of Glenn
county. The fertility of these lands
is indicated by their product. Colusa
and Glenn produce 2 per cent. of the
wheat raised in the whole United
States. The flood here comes princi-
pally from Cache creek, the outlet of
Clear Lake, and Putah Creek. Once
Cache Creek emptied into the Sacra-
mento near Knights Landing, but now
the banks of the big river are high
above the level of the basin, and water
will not run up hill. So the waters of
Cache and Putah creeks spread all over
the lowlands, covering 10000 acres of
fields Of seeded grain, bringing sorrow
to the farmer and hopes for the big
canal which some day will take the
water down to the river in banks.
The levee construction on the banks
of the Sacramento stops at Bound
slough, three and half miles below
Jacinto, the landing on the great Glenn
ranch. This ranch is higher than the
land south of it, and little if any was
flooded this year.
The next out-of- place lake south of
the Colusa basin is the Yolo basin, that
now contains the stretch of water forty
miles long by seven miles wide.
Across this basin is built the railroad
track from Davisville to Sacramento.
On Sunday, when the north wind blew
forty miles an hour, this temporary
lake became very cross and dashed
water over the tracks, softening the
causeway until no trains could run
upon it. A considerable part of this
Yolo basin is unreclaimed tule land
An overflow ON these lands is not SER
ious damage, but some pasture and
farm land is comprehended in the
waste of waters.
The Yolo basin received its flood
from breaks in the Sacramento river
levees below Knights Landing. lhe
only dry lands in the basin are Suffer
island and Ryer's island and the bank
lands near the river, and some of the
bank lands were Tapped by the waters
and the crops were damaged.
On the east side of the Sacramento,
back of CORTLAND and Walnut Grove,
the only districts out of water are the
pocket lands known as Pierson' s
District. The food here is due, not to
any breaks in the strong levees along
the river, but to back water from the
Mokelumne, The Costumes and the
Mokelumne are responsible for much OF
the damage near the outlets OF the
rivers. Here is tho place where the
fine fruit trees are dying from over
drinking, and where beans are not, and
where other vegetables are lost.
Grand island is in excellent condi'
ton. The pumps are serving their pur.
pose, and no lands are flooded.
The upper end OF Andrus island is in
good condition, and the pump is doing
It's duty. The middle part of the
island is suffering from too much