| Show THE OLD SETTLER by albert H R lyman in the splendid ariely of altitudes soils and climates in san juan uan county there is an equally splendid range of untouched possibilities it is strange how mankind must have discovered to them the thing which is right before their eyes what we see every day we generally do not see at all san juan is classified as a dry country too dry for any but a very A 11 population yet itz its babun dance of water has made channels of escape everywhere towards its lower altitudes those channels are deep and wide and with the spring thaw haw t and the summer rains they become torrents which pour into the san juan river or the Cold colorado rado leaving the country to bear its unfair rep reputation as a dry unprofitable region would this country be if all the water provided by providence for this region were reserved in the region you may assume that this presupposes artificial barriers suh as reservoirs terraced hillsides hill sides and diversion ditches but they are a small part of a complete program for saving the rain and the snow with our cattle our sheep and our horses and our vandal mania for denuding the hills and mountains of their forest covering we have converted much of the watershed into a shingle roof it is no longer the ready receptacle nature made it to drink in the falling rain and the melting snow this sin in against nature is on too wide a scale for one man or any small number of men to correct but jf if people once get the idea and the new generation harks back to conditions as they were and as nature would make them again we will be started towards recovery if some little group of progressive farmers would proceed on the belief that ther them maker jaker of the country i intended tended li it for use md and not for 1 or snow show that he provided it with th the e necessities of human abode the idea would spread and a more wise itse sentiment would restore the watershed and make san tuan juan the verdant place it used to be if farmers would resolve that all the water falling on their farms belonged there land and rilus must t be retained there it would mark the beginning of a new era A popular saying begins god made the country and it might go on truthfully to say man robbed and ruined it wherever he went here is a neglected or deserted farm 0 denuded of the rush and t trees rees which used to cover it and because it is not properly plowed to receive the rain the water runs off leaving it more dry and di desolate than at any time before man an came to strip and abuse it from Froni many a place at the foot of our hills there are now chasms cut to carrini off water which formerly tank F rank into the pedant surface u e before that surface was changed from what nature made and intended it to beso ali we affirm again that the country was not only half made and insufficiently provided for fol as unthinking peopled people assume the land the water the climate the soil is here possibilities unlimited are liere here god made the country it remains for man to appreciate and avail himself of its ample facilities |
