Utah Centennial County History Series - Emery County 1996

good-sized family farm. However, John Wesley Powell had argued in his Report on the Lands of the Arid Region that the homestead laws were poorly adapted to an arid region such as Utah. The rectangular grid survey did not take into account the necessity of bringing irrigation water to the land. Drawing upon what he had observed in the developed valleys of Utah, Powell concluded that irrigated agriculture was both more labor-intensive and, at its best, more productive than agriculture that depended on natural rainfall. Therefore he proposed that irrigated farms should be no larger than eighty acres and should be attached to "pasturage farms" of at least four full sections (2,560 acres). This would allow for the mixed farming and stockraising economy that had developed in Utah. Powell believed this was the best way to extend to the arid region the American ideal of the small independent farmer. He proposed further that the survey system should follow natural drainage boundaries, and that the laws should be made to encourage the "colony" system in which settlers would form cooperative irrigation and grazing districtd7 The Report on the Lands of the Arid Region was published almost simultaneously with the colonization of Castle Valley. Powell's proposals were not incorporated into the homestead laws, but the Castle Valley settlers made their own adaptations of the homestead system.

Even the first small irrigation ditches usually required cooperative labor and served several farms. The high-line canals needed to bring water to the benchlands were constructed by organized companies involving up to several dozen landowners. As more land was brought under cultivation, the streamflow proved insufficient during dry periods, requiring formal determination of "water rightsn-a process that required several decades to accomplish.

Although in theory a homesteader could claim 160 acres and add another 160 by preemption, only a few Castle Valley farms were as large as 160 acres during the settlement era. The first comers claimed the prime riverbottom land, but in many cases their rectangular homesteads extended onto the dry benches, making only part of the land irrigable. Furthermore, not all colonists desired so large a farm.

For example, John F. Wakefield claimed a 160-acre homestead adjacent to the Huntington townsite, but even before he obtained title to the land he had subdivided it with a brother and two brothers-in-law,