The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1911-12-29
THE ECONOMICAL DISTRIBU.
TON OF IRRIGATION
WATER.
By L. M. Winsor,
Utah Agricultural College.

According to many historians, ir-
rigaton is one of the oldest applied
arts; one writer even claims that it is
made distinctive feature of the mid
die status of barbarism. Ancient
Egypt became the granary of the
world as result of natural irrigation
through the OVERLOOKING of the Nile;
through irrigation Chaldea, Assyria,
and Babylonia, located as they were
in a practically rainless country along
the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates
rose to enviable prominence and do
minion.
The Chinese, the Romans and the
Moors, all made use of irrigation.
In this country we find evidence of
it as practiced by the ancient inhabi-
tants of this continent and later in
the gardens of the old Mission
Fathers of Southern California. MI
merous other examples to prove the
importance of irrigation as a factor
in nation-building might be cited; but
to the Anglo-Saxon race the art had
its birth but little more than half a
century ago. This seems doubly
and find that at this time over 1885,
100000 acres of land had been re-
claimed by irrigation in different
parts of the world. Perhaps this can
be explained on the theory that the
Germanic peoples have always writ
ten history much faster than they
have read it.
However this may be, the first at
tempt by the Anglo-Saxons to reclaim
the arid wastes of land was made in
the summer of l847, in the Salt Lake
valley by a little band of Mormon
pioneers. To them we owe the birth
of the modern art of irrigation, and
the working out of the cooperative
system as we have it in practice to-
day.
The irrigation contagion soon
spread and became not only the gov
erning factor in the establishing of
Mormon towns but in the colonizing
of the entire arid west.
Irrigation as an art falls into two
divisions:
lst. Irrigation as primary art, and
I'd. Irrigation a secondary art.
By the first we mean the using of
irrigation to take the place of cult
walton, fertilization, and so on; and
by the second we mean the using of
irrigation water merely to supplement
the natural precipitation. The latter
is the correct use of irrigation. If a
farmer uses dry farm methods along
Will PId(IlCC VI CdIl-
not go far wrong.
One of the grave mistakes made by
our early irrigators was the indiscrim-
mate use of water, with the result that
thousands of acres of once productive
land have rendered into veritable
swamps. and allI;.h beds. The lament
able feature of this question is the fact
that with our sixty odd years of ex-
perience some of our farmers are still
following these erroneous methods,
and are running not only their own
farms but those of their unfortunate
neighbors, by a too liberal and care
less application of water. This is
especially true in some of the newer
sections where a more or less heavy
application is needed for the first few
years. The trouble is that they do not
"set the brakes" until it is too late.
Once a new soil has been moistened
below the range of the plant roots it
needs great deal less water than it
required to begin with, the actual
amount for the maturing of any GER
tain crop will vary only with the sea-
sons, cultivation, and so on being the
same. This being the case it is pos
sible to make an