OCR Text |
Show UNDERGROUND WATER USED IN IRRIGATION A statement just made public by the United States Geoglogical Survey indicates indi-cates that in the western portion of Utah an important amount of irrigation may be accomplished by the local util- I ization of underground water supplies that havp heretofore remained unproductive. unpro-ductive. The statement includes specifically spe-cifically the results of a recent geologic geolog-ic examination by the Survey of Box-elder Box-elder County and a portion of Tooele County in Utah and of small areas in southern Idaho, in portions of which there is good promise of obtaining water at moderate cost for use in irrigation. irri-gation. The region now comprising the State of Utah was almost unknown before except from the indefinite reports of the traders and trappers who occasionally oc-casionally made expeditions into it. In that year Captain Bonneville conducted con-ducted an excursion to Great Salt Lake in the interest of fur traders, and his notes were later published by Washington Wash-ington Irving. In 1842 Captain Fremont Fre-mont explored the Utah region, he and his party being the first white men to sail a boat on Great Salt Lake. In 1847 the Mormons settled at the pre sentsite of SaltLakeCity and two years later Captain Stansbury made a comprehensive com-prehensive study of the lake and its environs. en-virons. The rush to California opened a road through the country, the route usually taken being around the north end of the lake, but not until the completion com-pletion of the Union Pacific and Central Cen-tral Pacific railroads was communication communica-tion with the outside world rendered easy. From the first settlement of this arid State irrigation was adopted. The water of the mountain streams and springs was led upon the parched but rich soil, and the land became dotted with productive communities, each supporting sup-porting an agricultural population proportionate pro-portionate in size to the stream or spring by which it was sustained. In many of these communities development develop-ment practically ceased when all of the normal stream flow had been appropriated, appro-priated, but in recent years, stimulated by the urgent need resulting from the constantly increasing population, the irrigators have persistently crowded back the limits of the desert and re-claied re-claied more and more of the waste land. This agricultural expansion is being accomplished ac-complished by the construction of reservoirs res-ervoirs to conserve the flood waters that formerly ran to waste, by the improvement im-provement of irrigation methods whereby where-by the duty of the water is increased, by the application of dry-farming methods meth-ods to large tracts that lie near the mountains and are favored with more rainfall than most of the desert and to a small extent by the development of underground supplies by means of artesian ar-tesian wells or pumping plants. (To be continued next week) |