The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-11-01
NEWELL TALKS ABOUT HIS WORK

, than in the other states, and here also
there were large forest areas which
were being homesteaded, although not
agricultural land, to be afterwards sold
/ to the lumbermen, until President
Roosevelt had withdrawn them from
settlement and combined in forest re,
serves selling the timber where proper,
but leaving the land for further affor-
estation.
/ Another map was shown on which
were pointed out the reclamation pro
! iects that have been undertaken. These
were very small in comparison with
, the whole area. In New Mexico, Ari-
zona, Utah, Wyoming and other states
from half to nine-tenths of the whole
area of the state is still public domain.
Reclamation ear. only make something
like two per cent of the whole area
suitable for cultivation. But if it does
this it viii make possible popula-
ton west of the Mississippi as large
as that east of it. These reclaimed
tracts make possible the development
of grazing and of mining low grade
ores around them that would not be
possible otherwise. Pictures were
shown of the project near Phoenix, Ari-
iona, where dam across the ella river
will reclaim about 100000 acres of land
surrounding Phoenix. Another project
shown was that near Yuma where a
dam across the Colorado river will re-
claim about 10000 acres. Incidentally
MIR. Newell explained the break in the
! Colorado river which filed the Salton
Sink and made it necessary for the
| Southern Pacific to remove its tracks
three times.
The next project shown was one IN
volving, the storage of flood waters by
| the creation of lake more than thir-
! ty miles long and which would contain
! about six hundred thousand million
! gallons. This lake is to be created by
+ damming up the stream in a gorge.
1t is located up in the Apache reserva-
! ton. A road had to be built up to
| it at a cost of about a quarter of a
/ million dollars The road was built
! by the Apaches who, when they had
nothing to do, had the reputation OF
being bad and troublesome Indians, as
every energetic man who has nothing
to do is apt to have. But put to
work they proved the best road makers,
Mr.. Newell said, that he had ever
, known. Water for drinking had to
! be carried up to them, and they drank
four gallons day apiece. They didn e
use water for any other purpose and
therefore it was certain they drank
that much. In the course of this work
the government built its own cement
works which proved great direct adj
vantage and great indirect advan-
| tage by giving them cement for their
| other work at a very reasonable price,
| little less than dollar a barrel.
cit IS pretty hot in the country where
this work is being carried on. have
been asked good many times since /
have been here if | do not find it hot.
l haven't experienced a hot day since |
came here. | don't call it hot until
it gets to be 40 in the shade, and
there isn't any shaded"
Mr.. Newell showed pictures of the
works on the Rio Grande and the Pecos
rivers in Texas; of the project to di-
vert the Gunnison river into the I'm
compare valley by tunnels through
the mountains, in Colorado. He show
ed pictures of the Truckee river project
which will make OF Nevada great
agricultural state; of a project in
North Dakota where the land is fiat
and irrigation by gravity impossible,
bat by the discovery of deposits of
Ignite for fuel, water can be pumped
for irrigation. Other projects in Idaho,
Oregon, California and Washington
were shown.
'EOne of the things that has inter
ested me,'' he said, "was the height
to which you pump water for irriga-
ton here, three and four hundred feet
and more We seldom pump more than
fifty feet, though we pump greater
quantities than YOU"
The reclaimed lands are divided up
into ten, twenty and thirty-aere home
steads, seldom larger. The effort is to
divide them into such size as expert
ence shows would enable a family to
support itself in comfort and even ac-
quire a moderate competence. The
homesteads are small enough SO that
the farmer himself does practically all
the work, with the aid of his family.
Farming by irrigation, Mr.. Newell
said, was not a lazy man s kind of
farming The land had to be well cul-
tivated and insect pests were numerous.
In Colorado and in Washington and
Idaho and pretty nearly everywhere
else, marketing problems had to be
solved. From these regions fruit was