C. J. Blanchard

“ While the glamor of romance in years agone is dispelled, it is still romance-land, but with a new background. The romance of creation now pervades the once silent desert, and the dominant thought and impulse is to establish there the well ordered life of New England with all the highly organized facilities for making existence in the country attractive.
American people cannot rightly claim to have measured up to their opportunity until the deserts of the West and the swamp lands of the South have been replaced by vistas of prosperous farmsteads. ”

“ SUBURB OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA—Reclaimed from Desert Land
RECLAIMING THE DESERT
The Romance of the Desert SIX
A vein of romance runs through every form of human endeavor. No life so sordid, prosaic, or wretched, but has felt sometime its light and gladsome touch. In the desert, romance finds its chief essentials in adventure, courage, daring and self-sacrifice. For more than half a century man has been writing a romance of compelling interest upon the face of the dusty earth. Irrigation, with Midas’ touch, has changed the desert’s frown to smiling vistas of verdure. ”

“ These green spots are desert farms—fresh oases where, under the spell of water, the soil is wakening from its centuries of slumber and yielding up its stored wealth. These desert farms make a strong, human appeal to the passing traveler. They tell an assuring story of man’s return to the soil and of rich returns from the soil—a story of well-being and content attained, in substantial, comfortable homes. In some such modest way as pictured on the preceding page the settler begins his conquest of the desert. ”

“ We should know by the time the war ends, not merely how much arid land can be irrigated, nor how much swamp land reclaimed, nor where the grazing land is and how many cattle it will support, nor how much cut-over land can be cleared, but we should know with definiteness where it is practicable to begin new irrigation projects, what the character of the land is, what the nature of the improvements needed will be, and what the cost will be. ”

“ Irrigation canals long enough to girdle the globe three times now distribute the normal flow and the stored water of Western streams to millions of acres, which support hundreds of thousands of contented farmers. Cities, populous and great, have sprung up, rural communities, attractive and prosperous, broad vistas of fertile fields and blossoming orchards have replaced the wastes of sand and sage brush. ”

“ The history of national reclamation is as interesting and romantic as a tale from the Arabian Nights. Romance colored the vision of builders that saw in the sparkling streamlets, the unchecked floods, the wide, free plains and the vacant mountain valleys a promise of independence, happy homes and laughing children. ”

“ Notable among the engineering works calling for courage and daring is the Gunnison Tunnel. This great bore, which in a sense changes physical geography, is excavated under the Vernal Mesa in western Colorado. The river portal is in the famous Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a precipitous chasm 3,000 feet deep, and the tunnel extends for nearly six miles, 2,500 feet below the surface of the Mesa. The outlet is in the valley of the Uncompahgre. By means of a low diversion dam, the waters of the Gunnison are turned into the tunnel and transferred to the desert valley of another stream. ”

“ The American Government has given of its resources as no nation ever did before or ever can again. To thirteen Western States alone over a hundred million acres have been given. The peoples of the world have been called in and tendered homes. Now, out of an area within the United States of a billion and a half acres of public domain, we have left as public lands subject to disposal as homesteads and otherwise less than 280,000,000 acres, not one-half of which, it may safely be said, will ever prove to be cultivable. ”

“ Splendid highways of concrete and macadam connect the farming communities with numerous thriving towns, and the quaint groups of adobe houses, which here and there rise in the desert, are the last remains of vanishing races that are slowly giving way to modern progress. ”

“ Much of this land can be made suitable for farm homes if properly handled. But it will require that each type of land be dealt with in its own particular fashion. The arid land will require water; the cut-over land will require clearing, and the swamp land must be drained. Without any of these aids, they remain largely “No Man’s Land.” The solution of these problems is no new thing. In the admirable achievement of the Reclamation Service in reclamation and drainage, we have abundant proof of what can be done. ”

“ Getting a farm is comparatively a simple proposition. Making good on it is quite another matter. In the first instance, the Government has made the way easy and inexpensive. Any citizen of the United States who has not used his homestead right is qualified to make a filing on any surveyed public lands not withdrawn from entry.
The procedure is about as follows. After a personal inspection of the vacant land desired for a home, the homeseeker makes application to the proper local Land Office or Land Commissioner and deposits filing fees of $8 for an 80-acre or $16 for a 160-acre tract. ”

“ One of the great advantages of owning The Mentor Library is that it grows in value from year to year—giving an endless supply of instructive and wonderfully illustrated material that would be impossible to obtain elsewhere. It constitutes one of the most valuable educational sets that you could possibly own, and, each year, the set is enlarged by one volume at a very small additional cost. ”

“ It is an economic axiom that the stability of a nation is assured only when the bulk of its citizens reside in their own homes. The ideals and principles for which our forefathers fought cannot be preserved and maintained by a citizenry whose interest does not extend beyond mere wage earning. The American desert was won by war, treaty, discovery and purchase. ”

“ We gave our swamp lands, but to be reclaimed. We found our coal lands going as farms and we put a price upon them. We saw our forests being swept clean or monopolized and we held them out for the mass. Use! Use by as many as possible! The superior use! These were the things we wished and these gave form to our legislation. The homesteader may have 320 acres if it is dry farming or grazing land. But he cannot have it as a speculation. It must be made a home and brought into the body of the world’s producing area by cultivation. ”

“ It is doing for the world what the world needs most. It is producing a great people. The sentiment of it has been expressed in eloquent terms by the late Henry Grady, “A citizen,” he said, “standing in the doorway of his home, contented on his own threshold, his family gathered about him, while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes that are dearest,—he shall save the republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are deserted.” ”

“ The beautiful numbers of the unique Mentor Library will never be out of date, as every issue of The Mentor is devoted to an important subject of enduring interest. The concise form in which scores of subjects are covered makes it of the greatest practical value to the business man, to the active woman who appreciates the importance of being well informed, and to children, who will find it of great direct value in their school work. You will want volume Number Six, which will complete The Mentor Library to date. ”

“ Flying at one time the flags of four nations, its history is rich in thrilling incident and adventure. Its milestones are the bones of trappers, explorers, and pioneers. Its people are strong and courageous. To battle with the elemental forces of nature has become a passion. ”

“ Under wise leadership and through community effort, numerous canal systems were constructed and extended to thousands of acres of desert lands.
Between 1862 and 1880 many canal systems were constructed in Colorado, though none was important. The success of the Greeley colony, established in 1870 in the northern part of the State, gave considerable impetus to irrigation all over the arid region.
In the last thirty years there has been an awakening to the opportunity that lies in the arid West for the homemaker, and a remarkable transformation has taken place in many parts of this region. ”

“ In the building of new commonwealths in the arid West the Government is utilizing its own undeveloped resources. It is creating opportunities for its citizens to establish themselves in permanent homes in which patriotism, loyalty and civic pride are bred and fostered. For a number of years the growth of population has been abnormal when compared with the development of the agricultural industries that must support the people. ”

“ A later civilization merely absorbed and extended the primitive canals until the era of national reclamation aroused the valley to new life and purpose. While some of the primitive methods of agriculture, differing but slightly from those of Biblical days, are still practiced, modern harvesting machinery is replacing the hand sickle, the sulky plow supplants the sharpened stick, and the threshing of grain is now performed by modern methods, and rarely by means of goats and ponies. ”

“ Our national strength is in its citizens, and the place in which the best is bred is in the country. The threat of urban congestion, no longer remote, and the pressure of population, which even now is bearing heavily upon our resources, are unanswerable arguments for increasing and making permanent the nation’s virility, prosperity and growth by creating more country homes. ”

“ Contrary to popular opinion, this region is not a vast wilderness, desolate and unpromising. Between the mountain ranges lie many beautiful valleys, through which flow numerous streams fed by melting snows. Utah and Nevada contain large areas of sage-brush desert, comprising what is known as the Great Basin, which has no outlet to the sea, and is doomed to aridity by reason of the absence of living streams. ”

“ The plans of the Reclamation Service for the present and for the immediate future are centered upon the completion of twenty-six projects, embracing a total of 3,118,000 acres. To date, engineering works have made available an adequate water supply for approximately 1,800,000 acres. In 1917, water was applied to about 1,200,000 acres, and the gross value of crops was nearly $60,000,000. It is conservative to state that with the irrigation of all the lands included in these projects, 50,000 families will have been established on individual farms. ”

“ It has to its credit the highest dam, the longest tunnel and the largest storage reservoir for irrigation in the world. By an investment of $120,000,000, which is repayable by the farmers in twenty years, the productive territory of the nation has been expanded by more than a million acres, and there has resulted an annual increase in its food supply valued at $50,000,000. Where once the wilderness reigned, the hearth-stones of 200,000 people have been erected, and a citizenship established which constitutes a new bulwark of American liberty, and bulkhead the flood waters of anarchy. ”

“ How much capital should a man have to take up an irrigated farm? It is extremely difficult to answer this question. Experience has shown that success depends about 75 per cent on the individual. The chief requisites for success may be stated as energy, business ability, judgment, capital and experience. Experience has been placed last for the reason that it has been shown repeatedly that experience in farming in humid regions is not a particularly valuable asset in irrigated farming. ”

“ Farming as a profession has been languishing and falling behind the general development of the country. The rapid increase in land values has made it correspondingly more difficult for the man of small means to acquire a foothold on the land. ”

“ The lining for the canal was molded on the river bank, where water, sand, and gravel were available for concrete making, and the forms were carried to the top of the canyon by tram and cableways. The capacity of the canal is 300 cubic feet per second, and it is now irrigating 40,000 acres. The High line Canal of the Strawberry Valley project swings around the steep slopes of the Spanish Peaks of the Wasatch Range in Utah for several miles. At one point a portion of the water is dropped in pipes to the turbines, where power is developed and distributed to several towns in the valley. ”

“ On the west the arid region extends to the Pacific Coast in extreme southern California, but from Monterey north there is a narrow belt of semi-arid and humid country bordering the Pacific Ocean. The Coast Range is humid, especially in Oregon and Washington, where the rainfall is as heavy as in any other part of the United States.
FORTY BUSHELS OF WHEAT PER ACRE
Shoshone Project, Wyoming. This was desert land in 1915
The true desert, wherein the production of crops is wholly dependent upon the artificial application of water, lies for the most part west of the Rocky Mountains. ”