IRRIGATED CALIFORNIA.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 367, 7 June 1911, Page 3

IRRIGATED CALIFORNIA.

THE MORMONS AND THEIR DEBT TO IRRIGATION. Mormonism is baaed upon irrigation. The heroic resistance to persecution in the States to the East, the more heroic pilgrimage across the desert, the triumph over isolation and the hostility of the Indians had all been in vain but for the discovery of running waters which could be turned on to the soil. To-day, in the striking capital of Utah, the headquarters of Mormoiiism, it is not easy to recast the picture of only sixty years ago, when Brigham Young led his party out of the wilderness into the valley. Salt Lake City is one of the finest towns in the American West. Amidst a noble setting of mountain and lake and river its building has been attended by the spirit of an ambitious, patriotic people, and a modern city, beautiful although so new, is the result. It would not be correct to say that irrigation is everything in Utah. The State is rich in minerals and other resources besides agriculture. But agriculture is an easy first, and that agriculture is mainly dependent upon irrigation. It is good to drive through these Utah districts of lich soil and many farm homesteads. We saw them in the autumn, when the fine clumps of trees were all in gold, when the apples were red in the orchards, and' on the roads one passed load after load of sugar beets on their way to the mills. It was an irrigation district, as it should be, a place of small fields and many roads alive with many men and teams, and very often a school-house. It is interesting that as you go west in America the autumn colours lose their rich, deep colouring. You don't get in the western States, as you do in the east, the fine reds and browns, but rather a uniformity o£ yellow. Coming back to small holdings: Utah has a number of sugar-beet factories, and they are increasing, and the managing director of th© strongest compsny assured us that the average area of beets cultivated by the farmers was seven acres. Add a few acres of fruit (apples have a big future in Utah), and potatoes and grain, and a larger expanse of lucerne, and you have some idea of the crops which engage the attention of the rural Mormon. By the way, in Utah they use the word "lucerne," as we do in Australia and not "alfalfa, as in the rest of America. Also they tell you that the great fodder plant originated from the Lucerne district in Switzerland; which it did not, the veracity of the Latter Day Saints notwithstanding. The headworks and main canals are among the wonders of American irrigation engineering feats, and _ teach how in order to gpt Walter the American is careless of obstacles. The weir has been built across the Bear river at its entrance to a rugged, narrow canyon, through which the fall is very rapid. The cliff walls rise almost sheer from the water, and surveys for the canals on either side were 'only made possible by letting the operators down by ropes from above. It was essential that the water should be taken from the river at ths high level above the entrance to the canyon. This was done, and the canals were carried through on the cliff sides of the canyon, atjovtf the wild stream below. The canals are chiefly in solid rock, and much of the way is by tunnel. Thus, in the narrow canyon you have three streams the river with its bed at the bottom, and the canals high at the sides. _ To add to the wonder of it as an achievement over Nature, a trans-contenti.al railroatj has also used the pass, and high above one of the canals goes the permanent way, a precarious succession of tunnels and bridges. \ou could throw an appie from the train clear across the water-channel into the river, hundreds of feet below. befoye the Cjin*oh is cleaved the \vater company has put in a generating plant, and electric-light and power are sent thence—a few score miles to Salt Lake City, Ogden, and a number of smaller towns. Another remarkable piece of work on the system is the carriage of the main canal across the Malade river in a wooden flume, supported by iron trestles, at a height of 80ft above the stream. The engineering for the irrigation works is still another of the debts tne Western States owes Mr Elwood Mead. He was at that time State engineer for Wyoming, and was "lent" by the Government to the enterprise in Utah. Water is not cheap in Utah, at least, it is not cheap to anyone accustomed to what the Water Commission is asking in Victoria. The new owners of the system, the Utah Sugar Company, have sold water "rights" at £4 an acre, and after that have charged an annual "rent" of from 4s to 12s an acre for the water supplied, or in other words, for the maintenance of the canals. In recent years charges have gone higher, and where transfers take place between farmer and farmer, prices climb to twice those figures.-—From a Special Correspondent in the "Melbourne Argus."