Arizona republican., 1906-03-16

While lt IS an old story to the resi- dents of the great Salt River valley. l the theory of irrigation and its prac- l tee are a never-en ending source Of won der to the newcomer and to those wlo l have been accustomed to the tilling of l the soil in regions where the rainfall ] is depended upon to sustain plant life. ! There was time when the rain 1 maker lad his vogue and made at l tempts, generally futile, to bring rain l from a clOudless sky and relieve a sui i fering community from the effects of 1 dryness and drought. For the irriga- ! tiOnist there is no need of rain mak- ! ing from the clouds. He has his rain
 supply on tap. as it were. a stream ready to be turned on to nourish his crops when the headgate in his ditch is raised.
 The crumbling remains of old canal and ditch banks leading from the ] river far out upon the plain show that ancient irrigatOrs were at work in the , Salt River valley. Modern investiga- tors have declared that every acre in . an irrigated region is capable of sup porting d unit of population. At this rate the country surrounding Phoenix
 should be Iceming with half 9 million people when the present plans Of pub lie and individual reclamation projects
 
 has a double meaning in the Salt River valley. There it is not only the reclaiming of land from the desert . barIen of nature but restoring it again tC the uses of man. for in by ] gone times thousands upon thousands inhabited its pueblos. as is evidenced ! by the ruins of the ancient habita-
 tons in which they were housed and which dot the valley in mounds Of ] great interest to students of prehis- ! tOric times.
 The white man for a time followed l the ruins of the old canals in some ! cases utilizing even the old banks. and l then he became bolder Engineers were set at work upon whas was erst- while the desert and the lines of arti- ! licial waterways were stretched for scores Of miles from the river For 1 the past twenty years a dozen main | canals have been distributing their 1 life giving tribute of the flood waters ! of the river over thirsty land to Iipen ] fruit and nourish grain and alfalfa [ fields. About 125,0 ,00O acres of fertile l land have been in cultivation in re- cent years but the area has been re- ! stricted almost one-nalf by the lack of means to storee the flood waters of winter and utilize them to augment the summers slack flow.
 Conservative experiments in the Salt River valley show that the land needs annually about four acre feet of water to be continuously productive. For ordinary forage crops this means about an equal distribution of this water supply throughout the year. To the resident in a rain country it seems like a large amount of water to think Of a body four feet deep covering the land, yet a second thought of the or dinary forty or fifty inches of rainfall '' :: ':' '.- structure is fully completed. In all probability this will mean the use of stored water from the TontO reservoir. if it is needed during the summer of 1907
 The Tonto' dam is reached from the Salt River valley by means of a wagon road running from Mesa through sixty miles of picturesque scenery. Travel CTS competent to speak from Observa- ton compare this road favorably with any in this country or abroad from a scenic and utilitarian standpoint The road was built under government su- pervision by the issue of $75.OOO in bonds of the cities Of Phoenix. Tempe and Mesa over it is being hauled construction and living supplies by strings of freight teams: while daily stages care for passengers and ex- press traffic.