Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1904-08-18

or orchard and vineyard, of which
Producing an annual revenue of $780,
QUO In fifteen years there would be
tI4.32O acres, worth in round figures
$5OOO00O0O and yielding net profits of
$lO963,200 a year, which would be null
tlplled by ten as soon us the younger
trees and vines should come to ma
turty.
l felt sorry for the poor Vanderbilts
and AStorS who hal to get along on
S1O0.O00.000 apiece. My only fear WIS
that there might be no land left in the
San Joaquin valley when L got there
but | found to my relief that there was
Il considerable amount still to be had,
and | succeeded in securing $50 acres
from philanthropic real estate agent
before it was all gone. In fact, un-
derstand it is not all gone yet.
This was my first Introduction to
practical irrigation. which | found quite
| had gained of the subject at
college and from books. We got our
water from Kings river by the method
of prior appropriations" A number Of
farmers would forr! q ditch company
and stick up a notice somewhere along
the upper course of the river claiming
100 or 200 of 1000 cubic feet of water
per second. rs the case might be. Then
they would pay i'll u little money on
their stock to meet the absolute neces-
sary cash expenses OF the company AMI
work out the rest With their teams and
scrarers. They wo:iti iuild dam of
boulders and brush. L! il a heaa-@ate
and scrape out trunk canal. From
this each man WOuld dig his own
branch ditch to his own farm. Some of
the canal companies were organized on
Il more capitaiistic basis, and dealt in
water as a commercial speculation, but
all Of them tapped the river in the same
way.
Now Kings River, like all the
streams of the arid region, had its
regular seasons of flood and scarcity
In the spring it rose like a little Nile,
filled all ,thc canals and flowed on
never missing the loss. But two
months later it was tricking rivulet
The first dam it struck turned the
whole stream into the neighboring
ditch. The canals lower down went dry
Then there was trouble. A company
that had A right by prior appropriation
to 200 cubic feet Of water per second all
the year round found itself cut off by
a later conner that had built dam
higher up the river. Moreover the
great landowners On the lower course
of the stream denied the right of the
irrigators to divert any water at all.
They insisted upon the old English
riparian law. which ordained that
water should flow as it had been accus-
toned to flow
The result was that our particular
ditch company, in which I filled the
honorable but not lucrative Office of
treasurer, was involved in eight law
suits at once. Nor did the rows al
ways stop with suits. On one occasion
l was requested to drive to 4 town in
the next county, buy twenty pounds of
giant powder and carry it twenty miles
to the dam Of a rival company. 1t was
suggested that it might be well for me
to take my Winchester along. | eXecu-
tod the commission. and when / reach
ed the dam ] found that about sixty of
the honest farmers in our company had
happened around with their rifles, pre-
pared to spend the night. The giant
powder got itself inserted among the
bodders of the dam, and by morning
there was a little water in our ditch.
Later the riparian owners beat the
irrigators in the courts. and their sue
cess led to the passage of a law au-
thoriZing the formation of irrigation
districts and the condemnation Of
water rights. This law has worked
very imperfectly. as have similar
statutes in other States.
The fundamental defect Of all neigh
borhood irrigation work has been the
small scale upon which it could be APP
piled. There are some substantial
storage reservoirs in Southern Califor-
MIA and elsewhere, but the streams
whose waters they impound are all in
significant. What is needed is a sys-