Arizona republican., 1909-05-12

Klamath project of the reclamation service. and has been ordered to Wash ington to take charge of the technical section of the bureau. He is improv ing his opportunity while en route to the capital to inspect the Salt River project MT. Murphy will probably spend a portion of today riding over the north side lands, with Engineer Reed and inspecting the distributing canal system. Tomorrow or next day he will go to Roosevelt.
 The Salt river project and the Kla- math project, of which MT Murphy has been in charge, illustrate nicely the often observed fact that there is no one place on earth where one can get all the good things, though this valley. through water storage. comes as near to it as any place in the world that civilized man has yet exploited. Klamath not only has all the water that anybody in that country could possibly want, even too much of 1t sometimes, but has the greater part of it held back by natural storage. Nature built the finest kind of res ervoir in Klamath lake, and in such a way that no storage dam was need ed. But while Klamath has water to burn. she is short on climate. The irrigating season is only five months long, and a month of that there is very little water used. It is, therefore. not surprising that two crops of alfalfa is all the Klamath farmers can make in a year, together with one grain crop. alfalfa and grain being the principal crops.
 The Klamath project is all right and a glowing success, but if the Salt River valley could have had Klamath lake and it's water supply, along with the ideal climate it now possesses. there would never have been any contro versy about where the originai-garden of Eden was located, for it could have been nowhere else.
 The Klamath project embraces from 150.OOO to 10000 acres, about 50,OOO acres of which is marsh land that will have to be reclaimed by drainage. The supply for the greater portion of the project which needs irrigation is what is known as Upper Klamath lake, a natural reservoir of great depth. one that never runs dry or whose surface is ever lowered, even by the diversion of irrigation water more than three or four feet. The lake is a natural basin at a high elevation and is the source of the Klamath river. the minimum discharge of which in the dry season is about twelve hundred second feet The natural flow of the river is suffi- cient to irrigate the available lands below, and no dam. has to be con structed at the outlet of the lake to hold back the surplus water. However. the water is taken from the lake just above the source of the river, the lake being tapped a very few feet below it's normal surface, so there is ample water at all times by a ditch that runs along the high contour of the country be- low, and which in its course passes through a low mountain by means of a tunnel $500 feet long. This tunnel is lined with cement and the ditch is dry a good part of the year when no irrigation is necessary.
 A feature of the project also for the watering of other lands is an artificial reservoir. now under way, with capa- city of 46O,OOO acre feet.
 Heretofore the Klamath project has been somewhat hidden away from the | world, and the incentive to agricul- ture there was lessened by a lack of | proper transportation, as the town of | Klamath Falls was thirty-six miles | from the railroad and could be reach ed only by a rugged mountain road. | Now, however the future has been | changed by the advent of a railroad, which it is expected will be completed | into the town by next week.