Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-12-21
AMERICAS BIG VACANT LOT
The Great Arid West and What IRRIGATION Would
Do for It--An Empire of FdII0W Fields
Awaiting Reclamation.

tention. Rollin Lynde HART, speaking
of Americas Vacant Lot the great
arid west. and of the plans to irrigate
and people it, says:
At the National Irrigation congress,
which met in Chicago last month, there
was read a very letter from
Colonel Roosevelt, urging the federal
government to assume responsibility for
the reclamation of Americas Vacant
Lot. This is just what Colonel Roose>
welt nigh have been expected to urge.
He wants material for a new volume on
! the Winning of the West. But that is not
all. Expansionist that he is. he wants
to see a new empire founded within the
arid region; republican that he is, he
wants the new millions of the new em-
pire to be so prosperous that they Will
vote the right ticket: ranchman that he
is, he loves my project that will develop
the wild and woolly' west.
What now of that merry task which
Brigham Young began and which Colo
mel Roosevelt wants the federal governs
ment to finish? A trifling proposition
merely the peopling of 600, 900, 900 acres
with SO, 900. 900 Americans! The colonel
says the thing can be done; so says Cen
eral Miles: so says Secretary WILSON,; SO
says the irrigation congress. And really
l don't know whether the matter sounds
more amazing to the Boston stay-at-
homes or to the Boston rover. If YOU
never have seen the unwatered empire
of the west. you know it by its dreary
nomenclature-the Great American Des-
ert. the Rainless Region, mountains
called Rocky, a state whose name means
apiJ vppn a GpripS nf towns with SnciI
desiccated sobriquets as Boulder, Butte,
and their kind. You know it by the
stories of Bret Harte and Owen Wister,
and by the notable chapter in Conan
Doyle's Study in Scarlet" There are
hints of it, too. in the backgrounds OF
drawings by Frederick Remington and
Mary Hallock Foote and in hundreds of
magazine half-tone pictures. From the
stay-at-home's point of view it doesn't
seem a very jolly place for a mortal to
live in.
Neither, I fancy, does it seem much
the jollier to him who goes touring west
ward. You get an impression of general
treelessness: of yellow plains blisterins
in the glow of a pitiless, cloudless sky;
of striped buttes, aglare with many
colors and ablaze with fierce sunlight; of
parched soil, where the alkali comes out
in desolate White patches; of naked
mountains strewn with broken stones
that would reno the foot of the tres
passer; of endless vistas where once
dwelt the bison and where now the
hungry coyote ekeS out a miserable en-
istence: Of dry gulChes where the rattle-
snake and the horned toad keep torpid
company; of m~easureless ranges where
coarse sage-brush gathers the blown
dust of the desert, or where the sparser
hppob- ORE &C NialiS Sj1StananSp fnI. rowing
cattle attended by cowboys on pitching
bronchos. There is only rarely a sign OF
life. All is desolate, wierd, bizarre.
Here and there a canyon yawns beneath
you: here and there a ragged pillar OF
rock towers monument fashion above
you. An occasional Indian makes the
general awesomeness more dreadful.
Day after day you ride through the
~boundless Vacant Lot which separates
east from west, and YOU even begin to
clap your weary eyes on aught civilized.
And yet it is this very wilderness, this
very waste of sun-glare and aridity-
comprising a good part of Colorado. Ari-
IONA, Utah. southern California, Idaho,
Wyoming. Montana, Nevada and New
Mexico-that the irrigation congress is
inviting 10, 900, 900 human beings to go
out and inhabit! They will remedy ma
lures neglect concerning the desert,
they will PROFOUND to the nation a SIM
pie proposition in two words of one syl-
liable each: WET :t!'
But how? Your eyes instruct you.
Look yonder! Those distant blue ranges
(they seem some Is miles away; they are
actually SO miles away, or for what I
know, 1907, loom crusted with eternal
SHOWS. The SHOWS are continually melt
ing. Or wait till the spring-time, and
/ road xGu1V mnrpinr ne nar-nn news
l from South Dakota, because South Da-
l kota has suddenly been turned into one
continuous duck pond; meager intell1-
gence from Nevada because Nevada is
E smitten with washouts and landslides; a
dispatch from Montana saying, "Traffio
. suspended. Rivers rising to terrific
height. Railways submerged. Bridges
+ gone.' There is water enough and
to spare; the arid region now goes
around in rubber boots or in boats-at
S least in places. All the nation needs dc
= is to keep that water pent up in reser'
voirs and let it out little by little
e through the dry season. With ditche!
and minor bitches, and still smallel
%ditchlets. it can he distributed jus
where it is wanted. Happy thought
Already it has been shown that thu
d desert lands may be made more produc
tive. acre fora ere, than many a region
e of Iowa, Illinois or Ohio.
This is nothing new. Brigham Younl
" did it in Utah. The prehistoric Ameri
cans did it in Arizona. and you will Sc
the remains of their system of irriga
4. ton canals in the Salt river valley. TIL
y Spaniards and Mexicans did it in south
% ern California, over-netting the Ian
SC with a series of acequais and zanjas
III The Japs did it thousands of years age
l. So did the Chinese and the Persians an
ID the Egyptians and the Assyrians and tn
he natives of India. Why should not We
n Sir Edwin Arnold, in one of his mos
lie fascinating chapters. says:
ut Nothing has struck me more in m
he visit to America than the slope .of you
re Siarras Your orchards and YineYard