The Imperial press., 1905-09-23
Given the Imperial Valley Pic
 neers by Golfers Weekly
Journalist Who Visited Us With Con. gressionaI Party Last June Writes EetertdiningIy Of
 Oar Valley and
 People


 panied by Arthur Ruhl of Collier Weekly, and that popular Journal i, now publishing his letters on the trip. Tn. letter on the Roosevelt dam i, Ariz'na and on the results of irrigati"r in aud about Phoenix was of absorbin. interest. This is followed by a letter or the imperial country, which is eyer bctsa- Mir. Ruhl has imagination d, Wei a9 happy faculty of absorhin, accurate information, and his articles are sure to be of great value to the ari, west. He calls his Imperial article, "Pionrers of the Dry Places," and w, quote as follows from its closing pafa- graphs:
 In all our lonely Western lands our empire of the dry places-there + none where the fight between man ami inanimate nature is so stripptd to the essential, SO bold and naked, as it is here. A desert far below the level O. the sea, lying like q bakeOven between the volc tnic rock and ghostly sand dunes no place so alien, SO far from the natural trail of the Saxon. OtheI places are less fertile, may be as lonely in the sense of being as far from the noiTes of civilization, but they have C0mpenSa nSations-mOuntain and canyon that lift a man out of everything he has been in before ard make 1t seen, fuSsy and small: air that makes mere moving ailDut and breathing a sort oi continuous exaltati0n timber full of game and trout streams only a days rlde awav-a hundred and one things that make up for the lack of mere hu,naus to the healthy active, man. BuJ here ia the Imperial Valley thers + ~-or rather was when men first came in here two OF th~s-e years agO-nothine oulv the sUnken desert, with it's sage and creosute bush and occasional mes ouife. and the heat-''hot enough a. oHr Pullman porter said, ''to meli the tin on the roof of the ear, let alone
 
 The enc thing that must impress one most, aside from the Valleys wonderful fertility and its inmeasureable pros poets, is the pluck and chterfulness of the people who have come in here anC started iu t. create a land Iiyable and lovely This fight with the land-it re SD ,nds SO maryelnusly to irrigation that suppose they would hOtly resent hay ing it called a fight at all-is like fight on board platform in a roped ring, face to face with ones antagonist. There is no relaxation, no escape. By day in the white heat plodding ovtI "mesquite minps' and greasewuOd with a raj road rail leveler or a "buck~cfap er,' or wadimg about in the pasty mud as the water is turned on the land al nigl4t nothing to do hut creep int" ones tent or the hot, smelly, little pine box which he homestealer may legally cal d house, and liste" to the silence. Pres entlv the day com s-the same day precisely as yesterday and the day before-aud again the slew drag of the lev, Ter and the dust, and the wadinp in the steaniy ooze. and the white heat aud iLe unbroken plain across which D hing moves perhaps, but a sand sl al agae'v s-eu in the blazing dis tance aS it uais its skirts lazily over the saaebruall, it's head lost in the upper 8ir.
 And 10 keep tiis mp day iii and day out. ami month in and month out, un- til the crop comes; year in and year ont, uniilthe ire, grow and the streets are laid and the town is built, until the cheerful bang of tie trolly gong sounds in the air and whistles blow at noon time, and the railroad uaius st,p be cause there are people who really wan1 to get off, and boxes and bags on the platform that really need to be carried awav-this takes nerve and hackhone and imagination. It's harder sort of nerve Io sunmon up than that needed for bronco busting, more enduring sort of imagination and backbone thal. that which braves the hardships of the trail to the goldfelds, only to rob the