Irrigation, the artificial application of water to produce crops, is
as old as agriculture. Genesis 1,17: “A river went out of Eden to
water the garden.” The practice of irrigation is probably coincident
with that of the earliest agriculture of record for the reason that
the latter was begun in regions of deficient rainfall in the Old
World--Egypt, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Ceylon and China.
Evidences abound of the existence of important storage and distribution
systems constructed previous to 2000 B. C. Even greater antiquity
is ascribed to similar work, the remains of which are found in the
valley of the Euphrates, and also in China. The ancient aqueducts and
subterranean canals of South America, extending for thousands of miles,
once supplied great cities and irrigated immense areas. Irrigation on
the Continent of North America was old when Rome was in the glory of
its youth. Centuries before the venturous Norseman landed upon the
bleak and inhospitable shores of New England a large population dwelt
in the hot valleys of the Southwest, in New Mexico and Arizona. From
the solid rock, with primitive tools of stone, they cut ditches and
hewed the blocks for many chambered palaces, which they erected in the
desert or on the limestone ledge of deep river canyons. These voiceless
ruins, older than the memory of many centuries, tell the story of a
thrifty home-loving and semi-cultured people, concerning whose fate
history brings us no word. The long lines of their canals, now choked
with the wind-swept drift of centuries, give mute and pathetic evidence
of the patience and engineering skill of the builders.
Early in the sixteenth century, when Coronada, the first great American
explorer, swept up the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and New Mexico, he
found a pastoral race dwelling in pueblos and practicing irrigation as
had their forefathers, perhaps as far back as in the days of Abraham.
The priests with the aid of their Indian converts extended the practice
of irrigation wherever they established the missions, and introduced
many varieties of fruits and vegetables from Spain and Italy.
Irrigation by English-speaking people began in America in 1700, and,
for fully a century, was confined to use in the cultivation of rice on
narrow strips along the coastal rivers of the Carolinas and Georgia.
The first Americans to reclaim extensive areas in the arid region were
the Mormons, who, in 1847, settled on the eastern borders of the Great
Interior Basin, on the site of Salt Lake City. 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. 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.
WRITTEN ESPECIALLY FOR THE MENTOR BY C. J. BLANCHARD
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 17, SERIAL No. 165
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: HIGH LINE CANAL, UTAH VALLEY, UTAH]
_RECLAIMING THE DESERT_
_Skyline Canals_