Mohave County miner., 1912-11-16
An Overlooked Opportunity.
Special correspondence.

ed from a months sojourn at Cotton. wood Island, on the Colorado river, fifty miles above the Needles, and was much impressed with the opportunities there presented for the landless people tcSecure lands and homes in that part of Mohaye county.
 On the Arizona side of the river is a tract of land extending distance of about i've miles in length by an aver age width of two miles, commencing at the Klondike mill and extending down to the lakes, almost half town ship of level river bottom land, with but two ranches situated upon it at the present time. This land is divid- ed in character, about half of it being adobe, lying near the foothills and being the washed alluvium from the mountains, and the balance being close to the river and consisting of the silt from the overhows of that stream. It is this same sandy silt that makes the Nile valley, in Egypt, the richest soil in the world, and the Colorado river valleys resembles the Nile valley in this respect and it's soil is it's equal in productlveness.
 First a sand bar forms, then the arrow weed shoots up and it's tangle of roots and close growing stems catch the sands that are carried by the winds and soon build up the land far above high water mark and presents it to the agriculturist for human use. Last June the river was three feet higher than the highest ever known water mark since 1872. John H Weaver, who lives there now, was there in 1872 aud told me it reached about the same night then. Comparatively a small part of this track was submerged last summer and very little dyking would have prevented the greater part of these lands from overflow. The river is dyking itself rapidly, wherever the overflow comes in contact with the arrowweed, it forms dead water and the silt and sand settles. forming high CT ground.
 The writer travelled wagon road cut out since the high water along the river bank, where three strand wire fence was stretched. the road going right over it with nothing but an oc- casional post to mark where the fence had been. It may be another forty years before the water again covers that barrier.
 It costs money to irrigate in any country, so it will here. But a man can own his own irrigating system, as all ranches here do. It consists Of steam or gasoline power and centrl- fugal pump, rising water from the river. The night of lift depends on the stage of water, possibly from two to ten feet. It is claimed by those ir. rigatng there with such plants that the cost would be about seven dollars per acre.
 On the Nevada side of the river the bottom lands are surveyed, being seven miles long and averaging mile wide. There are five ranches taken up there. MT. Weaver had heavy crop of truck, consisting of hay, melons, etc. destroyed by the June flood when just ready for market. As the river receded he planted in July in the mud. A waterspOut came down from the mountains and overhowed him again, causing much of the seed to rot in the ground, but nevertheless he is now taking off another fairly good crop. The crops each summer is not bad it. self.
 This land should be densly settled, instead of lying an idle waste, and if under cultivation once it would yield about all the vegetables our mining camps could consume together with all the hay and grain that the whole county could use.
 The logical solution of the trans. portation problem is by river to Needles, floating the produce down stream in barges and flat bottomed boats, bringing these back empty, or loaded with the necessary supplies from the farms. Over thirty years ago Eldorado Canyon was supplied by river boats with all it's supplies. some