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54 WATER RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. ? increasing the rate of settlement than the present. The lands that are yet to receive irrigation waters are lands that have been left after the more easily developed projects have been completed, and the cost of water for them will be at an enhanced rate per acre over that which has prevailed in the past. These residual lands are equally fertile, but are usually situated more distant from the source of supply. Some are tracts more uneven of surface and so require eleborate systems of canals to carry the waters to the place of pouring out upon the soil. Others have to acquire water rights before a supply may be obtained, and all of them will have to construct storage works to hold over win­ter flood-waters for summer use and the run-off of wet seasons for times of drouth. The cost of these projects will be large in comparison with the ones undertaken in the beginning of irrigated agriculture when projects were small and the works simple. Future enterprises also must organize in increasingly large units, for there will be many more problems presented for solution than here­tofore, and these must be surmounted in order to consummate ulti­mate success. Practically all the summer flow of California’s streams is now diverted for irrigation use and the lands which can be watered by constructing short canals have been put under irrigation; but only one-quarter of the state’s lands that need accessory moisture for greatest productivity can be watered by projects already constructed. Even now, huge combinations of hundreds of thousands of acres have been found necessary that lands situated remote from stream channels or source of supply may be improved. By building many miles of canals and huge reservoirs to augment the summer flow with saved-over flood waters from winter, these projects are preparing to carry water to the lands that, through intensive farming, they may be made to yield har­vests commensurate with the favorable climate and fertile soils of Cal­ifornia. The united efforts of whole communities is proving to be nec­essary to bring water to the needy lands which would otherwise remain dry and unproductive or whose yield would only be realized during seasons of copious rains. So that to bring water to the land, large projects with their immense construction programs are proving neces­sary even at this time, and their size and complication will grow with the future. The successful culmination of extensive and costly enterprises not alone necessitates that sound plans be adopted for the construction of the works, not alone that they may be erected in an efficient man­ner, not alone that I they bring water to fertile soil at the time and in the quantity needed, but also that the land be quickly occupied by the large number of tillers of the soil, which irrigated agriculture demands to nurture and harvest the increased yield. The fruition of effort, the repayment of borrowed capital in interest and principal, and the production of wealth to the community involve thousands of oper­ators in these large enterprises, each farming from twenty to forty acres of irrigated lands. The running of the waters through the con­structed ditches or even on to the plowed fields does not make the land produce. The yielding of harvests is just as necessary for the success­ful project as to secure adequate sums of borrowed money with which to build the works. The very essence of.utility of these works.is the interested and tireless efforts of the farm operators that strive with w A TTilP? (YE1 C A L IF O R N IA . 55 and overcome the many annoyances incident to maturing crops on the land. But are there sufficient numbers of people possessing the experience, and skill, the capital and desire, to animate these works and quickly bring the lands to fruitful harvests under the requirements of existent conditions of land sales and farm credits? The holders of large proper­ties for several years past have been searching for them and many still believe that they may be found, but their only partly rewarded efforts are indicative that perhaps they are not to be immediately found in the numbers desired. As the years succeed themselves, the markets for California s farm products are ever widening. Refrigerator cars, fast express trains, and the cold storage of ocean transport are carrying California’s fruits and foods for display in markets undreamed of a few years ago, and the demand for these is increasing at an accelerated rate. W ith propitious climate and soils, this state is attaining ranking position, a precursor to all the states of the Union in value of agricultural and horticultural products yielded by their lands, and an analysis of the reports of the United States census indicates that there will be a market for Cali­fornia’s products in 1940, but seventeen years hence, three-fold greater than in the year 1920. The multiplying population of this state also demands food in greater and even greater amounts, for the state is growing fast.. During the decade that closed with 1920, California experienced an enlargement in the numbers of people inhabiting its farms and cities, of forty-four per cent of the aggregate of 1910. These investigations show that there is land and water ample for production commensurate with this enlarging demand for California’s agricultural products, and the past success in financing irrigation con­struction demonstrates that money will be at hand to erect the works and fashion the canals, but the greatest success can only be attained through effecting a system of colonizing the land that will hasten the influx of settlers and secure a multiplicity of tillers of the soil without delay, so that long periods of stagnation between their construction and time of use may not bring embarrassment to the enterprises. The large units in which future development must be organized will make it increasingly desirable to accelerate the rate of rural settlement of this - state. Two examples of well coordinated and systematized colonization may , be seen at Durham in Butte County, and at Delhi in Merced County, the two state land settlement projects.C1) However, these two colonies are but a demonstration of possibilities in stimulating rural settlement for their combined area is only 13,920 acres, A statewide stimulus to the occupancy of farm lands would greatly increase the naturally expeditious growth of California’s irrigated communities, insure a full measure of production to meet all demands, and assist California in seizing and holding agricultural and horticultural supremacy among the states of this nation. <»For description of these projects see “Report of Division of Land Settlement,” a subdivision of the Department .of. Public Works of the State: of California, the report being Part V of the first biennial report of that department) dated September 1, 1922. 25712 4-23 15M O