The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1896-04-24

~ undertaken near
the Arkansas river
by enterprising merchants in the neigh
boring community of Garden City: but
the new institution began and ended
with a mill race. Before the building
and machinery were required, the
wheat crop had surrendered to dry air
and hot .winds. The semi-arid char
acter of the. great plains west of the
hundredth meridian, long known to
stockmen and Indians, but denied by
greedy land agents and discredited by
eager and hopeful settlers, had again
asserted itself with unmistakable en-
phasis. Not an acre of the crop was
harvested. The prairie-schooners set
sail and steered for other parts. Towns
dWindled to mere hamlets. All the
nebulous industrial, educational, and
railroad projects suddenly descended
from the sublime to the ridiculous. And
yet the blighted seed was destined to
bear another and far more fateful crop,
and the forgotten mill-race on the
banks of the Arkansas to grind a grist
LudC WOulu prove historic.
A few settlers remained to rake amid
the ashes of their ruined hopes. Among
them was a man who had learned the
methods of irrigation while living in
California and Colorado. It happened
that his land adjoined the abandoned
mill-race, and he readily obtained the
right to turn the water upon a part of
his farm. The result, though not sur
prising to the practised %irrigatOr, was
a revelation to his thoroughly dis
heartened %neighbors.
The soil which had produced nothing
in the previous summer responded to
the new method Of cultivation with
enormous crops of all varieties of prod
ucts. In quality they surpassed any
thing previously grown in that region.
AS these facts became known a new
hope arose, like a star in the night,
against the dark background of past
diScOuragements. The Garden City
experiment" became the Mecca of stu
dents of irrigation throughout the
wide regions devastated by the drought.
The ruined crop of the previous year.,
and the useless mill-race, gave birth to
an influence which in fifteen years has
assumed far-reaching proportions. This
influence, by revealing the need of ir-
rigation in a territory which had hith-
erto depended entirely upon the rain
fall. extended the known limits of arid
America hundreds of miles to the east
ward and more han one thousand miles
north and south, thus adding to the
empire of irrigation all the western
portions of the Dakotas, Nebraska,
Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, together
with eastern Colorado.
In this vast district it has begun to
revolutionize both the industrial and
social life of the people. 1t has COM
PEELED the attention Of legislatures,
created new laws and administrative
systems in several states, wrung a few
meagre appropriations from congress,
and set on foot various industrial and
educational undertakings. The prob
lens of the semi-arid region are pecu-
liarly it's own, differing materially from
VI JAC uCOClC OIdSCD "CoC VI LIZ
continental divide. The movement
which has wrought these momentous
changes alike in public sentiment and
n methods of industry has found it's
Warmest championship in Kansas,
where it has been reduced to perfect
organization through the instrumental
1ty of press and platform. Throughout
the semi-arid region, but particularly
IN Kansas, there are effective state,
county, and township associations urg-
ing the adoption of irrigation as the
price of prosperity, and extending. by
means of conventions and popular lit
e%rature, the common knowledge of it's
practical aspects.--"Ways and Means
in Arid America" by William e.
Smyth, in the Century.